Memorial Day

“Hello, fellow babies,” as Dr Johnny Fever used to greet his audience in “WKRP in Cincinnati.” As my experience indicates that one who apologizes too much tends to have little to apologize for but too big an opinion of himself, I’ll omit mention of the gap between this and my last posting on the blog. Let me simply state that the blog is not a cruel mistress, more of a friend with privileges, but that she does need to lose a few pounds and touch up her make-up, maybe get a new haircut, if she wants more attention from me at the moment.

My last chemo treatment was two Thursdays ago. I snored and snorted, dreamed (and, boy, did I ever have weird dreams – is anybody else out there familiar with the new religion founded by and lead by Dennis Rodman?) and occasionally ambulated out of the house during the hell week that was last week. I even managed, aided by a cunning combo of prescription and otc drugs) to attend the combined High and Middle School chorus concert (think “Glee” with a tad less talent, equal enthusiasm, but a hell of a lot more class) and heard my son join in a rendition of Stephen Paulus’s arrangement of “The Road Home” that was among the top 5 performances of anything that I have heard – nearly perfect.

I kept feeling signs that Beno molecules were stirring back to life over the weekend and awoke this morning feeling like I was within spitting distance of normal. Of course, “normal” is a term of art, not science or normal usage, when applied to the Beno, so I’ll leave you to imagine “where I’m at” at 11:00 AM of a Memorial Day morning. Let me just say that there is a fresh pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen, nothing on TV, birds to watch and heat to enjoy from my porch, and John Prine singing on my CD player. Life is good.

The family is dashing off to Tilghman Beach for long weekend starting next Friday, then we’ll return home in time to celebrate my birthday by delivering Harry to Governor’s School. It’s a toss-up whether he or his parents are more excited. In the following week, I get bent, spindled, folded, mutilated, leeched, inundated with x, y and z rays, and I don’t know what-all else, in an attempt to evaluate my medical progress to date. At that point, we’ll figure out what if anything more needs to be done and do it. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the longest set of needle-free weeks I have known in a long, long time. Seashells and balloons, dudes, seashells and balloons!

May 19, 2010

“Silence is golden,” sang the Tremeloes or some such somebody, but the person who wrote those lyrics did not have blogging cancer patients in mind when he put pen to paper.  A long time has passed since last I wrote, and it dawns on me that a lacunae in communications causes concern in some friends and readers.  Every day (well, not every day….maybe every other or third day) brings a phone message from somebody eager to know (well, not necessarily eager…..perhaps mildly curious might be more apt) how I am doing, why I haven’t been writing.  Short answer:  I’ve been a little slower on the upbeat after the last chemo treatment and simply have not felt much like writing.  This ain’t no harbinger of imminent demise or anything so severe, it’s just a simple fact of life.  If, in the words of Bobby Bare and others, some days are diamonds, some days are stone, I have experienced a week of mossy, slimy, brackish creek-bed river rock, a week of driveway grade gravel, and a week of  mica dredged from an abandoned mine (it glitters, but doesn’t spark too much).

My blood work today shows I am at least as hale and hearty as a twenty year old mule that can still pull the wagon for scout or youth group hayrides, so I get to enjoy chemo again tomorrow.  Hope is that I will recover with a bit more alacrity this time, achieving vim and vigor within a few weeks, and if results are as hoped, I may qualify for a few more treatments or might even be put on a maintenance pill regimen that resurrects a peppy Beno eager to laugh at Fatz on the golf course again.  I may or may not write again soon, but don’t make anything more out of it other than that I fighting quietly, trying to serve aces and hit winners, but without a Williamsian or Kournikovian grunt when I make contact with the ball. 

Come to think of it, that might not be a bad thing to try out the next time I hit a golf ball.  Address, swing, and grunt loudly……it might add 15-20 yards to my drives.  Hell, I might be able to hit a 400 yard green in less than three shots…….now, wouldn’t that be something!!!  Listen for it the next time you play:  “Arghumph…..FORE!!”  It might mean Beno is once again on the links.  Duck yore heads, y’all.