Apology Foreword

I open with a note of apology. For the ongoing and multiple years battle with cancer, I have set this blog at a high priority for getting into print by Sunday (at the latest. Many of the entries make it by Saturday night). For its entire life, except for a few times when the blog has been overridden by a perfect storm of “facts on the ground,” it’s been Priority One, challenging whatever fog of medicines, treatments, ongoing pain and discomfort, new pains and discomforts, inability to hike and general crankiness that go with terminal illness. 

Besides, I figured, it was an easy way for people to know I’m Not Dead Yet. A quick look at the blog, and whatever gibberish may be there (we’ll return to that point in a few minutes), at least you know enough shards of me exist to get stuff blurted into an MS Word file. 

I’ve maintained this procedure through 2 full rounds of radiation and chemo. Last week, in a stealth move, the doctors had me in the hospital for a variety of minor physical tune up items. Before they could finish up and get me back on the road, they went ahead and pumped me full of chemotherapy toxins. I barely recall it happening. The nurse hooked me up at around 2 a.m. By dawn, my brain was re-scrambled and the physical impacts of the treatment were starting to manifest. Having the chemo done as an inpatient had innumerable benefits. The docs could monitor and respond to pain, dehydration, nutrient imbalances, vomiting and nausea. The chemo still beat the shit out of me. In fact, today is the first day I can say that I’m back to a “normal” level of pain and discomfort, and able to sit and write. Obviously blowing the whole theory of the regular-like-clockwork blog indicating I’m alive. So I’ve screwed up royally here. But honestly, I forgot (or suppressed) how savage the chemo was. 

Thus, it’s taken me until now to get this into print. My deepest apologies to all!

Back to Normal-ish Blog Update

The pot of contagion in the human ecosystem is stirring itself into existence. The slow cooker of pathogenic microbes (from viruses through bacteria to protozoans), plus a big-ass bucket of multicellular organism that we (“we” in this case stands for old and cranky parasitologists) used to lump together as “worms”. Some of the latter are the weirdest damn things your imagination could conjure. Don’t think for an instant that the creatures of the “Aliens” cinematic franchise are anywhere near as extreme as the living yield of the evolutionary dance between hosts and parasites right here in River City, on earth, right the hell in front of us. Where we got two drinking bars, and that starts with B and that sounds like T and that stands for trouble. 

Now, in addition to diseases and parasite loads, an emergent property of modern ecosystems is the redistribution of human beings across the biosphere. Some of you may recall that I’ve been bitching about this in publications and presentations for decades. The issue is simple, and represents a logical inevitability. Having visited impoverished communities in the tropics and near-tropics of Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, and Europe, one factor overrides all others—information. Take a walk through a couple of the larger, older souks any city in the Muslim world, or, now, some of the outer ethnic suburbs of the enormous megacities of Europe, Asia, and the Americas.  When you get back to your hotel, sit at the bar with an iced fresh mango juice (everywhere) or a Negroni or Mojito (in countries allowing visitors to consume alcohol) and think quietly for an hour or so about what you’ve seen.

What you’ve observed is this. Everybody, from those living in extreme poverty, to those stressed but hanging on to a difficult middle class have access to English and local language Al Jazeera, CNN, networks (parent holding companies) news and opinion broadcasts, etc. In short, the more than TWO BILLION people living at or below the U.N. and World Bank poverty threshold, see perfectly clearly on the screen at the neighborhood waterpipe emporium that pretty much everybody north of the tropic lives in relatively clean, dry, safe-ish conditions with opportunities to rise economically at least theoretically achievable. And they don’t.

My vaguely alarmist theory foresaw millions of environmental refugees pouring north. Because if your choice is to watch CNN in a damp mud-floored hut where malaria (or worse. See, for example, River Blindness) is endemic, emergent diseases jump from wild and feral animals to humans and back again (see hemorrhagic virus for a scary glance into that world), potable water doesn’t exist, economic opportunities are somebody else’s…and the list goes on. Live in shit and watch your kids explode their lives in work, illness, and a 24/7 search for food and water? Or consider the possibility of raising them in London, Paris, Copenhagen, Hamburg?

Well, duh. Time to wrap the last couple of cut down paint cans used for cooking pots, pay off the smuggler, and get on the overcrowded boat to Sicily. Maybe we make it in. Maybe we don’t. At least we have something to focus on besides mud, malaria, and finding sufficient twigs to boil water to drink for one more night.

Ah. We already live in the clean northern world. And it’s a good thing, because Your Obedient Servant (that would be me) has been stricken with a particularly complex and dangerous illness. The kind of thing where, if I didn’t have health insurance, or lived in a country lacking high-powered medical talent wielding high-powered medical tools, I would have been dead years ago.

Next up is a continuation for 5 more infusions of the chemotherapy drugs. The impacts of the drugs themselves on my physiology are extreme and difficult to tolerate. Having been in the hospital (by chance) for the first application in this series, I can see a lot of advantages in being treated as an in-patient. As doctors point out, insurance won’t pay for such in-patient treatment. This despite the fact that every other chemo infusion I’ve had through 2 full courses has put me in the hospital, usually via the Emergency Room. I see no reason to anticipate that this round is going to be any different. Likely we’ll follow the same path as before. A couple of nasty, painful, disgusting days immediately following treatment, a determination that I’m dehydrated and cursed with intractable vomiting, a trip to the ER, admission to hospital for several days to get physiological wreckage back on track. 

We do have an advantage this time, and it’s something that worked pretty well getting me through the last round of chemo. With the assistance of a home-visit nurse, Cathy has been trained to administer intravenous fluids and even i.v. treatment drugs. This certainly has the potential to ease our way into this round of chemotherapy. 

OK, sports fans. My deepest apologies to all for being so late with this report. I am indeed alive. Difficult as I find it to say this, we’ve already stepped onto the treadmill for a 3rd round of chemotherapy. We’ll just have to let this one play out. It’s a fair bet it won’t be pretty. But, translated into an uncensored weekly weblog, it can it least be entertaining. Be here next week everybody—I will not be late with next week’s entry, unless something untoward (correct idiom?) occurs. In such an event, I or one of my children will get a quick note up to get information out. So rock and roll. And use ‘em while you got ‘em. Remember, your drummer could spontaneously combust at any time (cross-reference Spinal Tap. Frequently. Along with a couple liters of really good beer. My love to everyone!!!