Author: Roger JG Albert

4 I got to ride in an ambulance!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

No sirens or anything, but still. We drove to Victoria (I should say Carolyn drove to Victoria) last Wednesday for an appointment with an oncologist at the Victoria Cancer Clinic. Wednesday went well enough although I’m in severe pain and the stress is overwhelming. Despite my distress we had dinner at the hotel. That was great. The Inn at Laurel Point is a superb hotel and the staff is excellent.

On Thursday morning we got a cab (Carolyn wasn’t particularly interested in driving, parking, etc) to the Cancer Clinic which is right next to the Royal Jubilee Hospital. We waited for a bit then had a good appointment with the oncologist which lasted probably an hour and a bit.

After our appointment we decided to head into town to have lunch and do a little shopping. Big Mistake! Multiple Myeloma is not a forgiving disease and doing regular daily activities can be impossible. I was to find that out in spades. Instead of doing the logical thing and taking a cab back to the hotel I decided a walk would be good. Wrong! A walk is the last thing I needed. I was in severe pain by the time we got to the hotel. I lay down on the bed to see if I could dissipate the pain a bit and that seemed to work until I thought about getting up. Impossible! The pain was over the top, way over the top. Eventually I got out of bed by sliding off the end of it while in a critical state of pain. Well, a normal person might just have decided at that point to call an ambulance and get to the emergency department of the Royal Jubilee. Not me. I’m tougher than that, and way more stupid. So I took a schwack of T3s and went to bed. Hardly slept at all. We were supposed to drive home in the morning but that wasn’t going to happen. We called the oncology nurse and after a bit of discussion she told us to get an ambulance back to the hospital to get an MRI and to deal with the pain. So we called an ambulance and the paramedics came to our hotel room and got me on a gurney, etc., put me in an ambulance and took me to the emergency department. I think that will be the last time I let anyone talk me into going to emergency. I don’t blame the staff, they have their protocols, but the truth is I wasn’t there for a diagnosis. Nonetheless they took some blood (why, who knows) and had me sit in a waiting room with 60 or 70 other people. while I was in severe pain. Well, we were there for several hours. I got no pain meds for hours but finally got a CT scan, when what I needed was an MRI.

In any case, by the time I was in that black hole of an emergency department my pain was at a critical point so the ER doctor got me a hydromorphone drip and a prescription for hydromorphone. We got back into the truck but now had to stay another night because Carolyn can’t really drive after dark. Thankfully the Laurel Point Inn was able to accommodate us. I slept that night fully in the hands of my opioid angel. The hotel has a wheelchair which is good because by now I’m unable to walk because of the pain. In the morning we go downstairs, have some breakfast and then head for home. I knew that by the time I got home I’d be a basket case. More hydromorphone. Slept (I suppose we can call it that) when we got home. Now I sit here awaiting further instructions. I may have to get a wheelchair if I have to go any distance. The oncologist promises pain relief after I start chemo. I’m looking forward to that.

That’s it for today. I’m beat!

3 What? I’m giddy about seeing an oncologist?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Well, giddy might not be exactly the correct word to use here but it’s close. I’ve known for a month or so now that I have multiple myeloma, an incurable bone marrow cancer, but I have also been told that it’s treatable and some people live for some years after their diagnosis. But I’m not sure about anything yet because I have yet to see an oncologist. That changed yesterday, at least the anticipation part.

Yesterday, around 1 PM I got a call from the BC Cancer Agency in Victoria, telling me that I have an appointment with an oncologist at the clinic on Thursday, the 31st of October, Halloween morning, at 10:30 AM. I have no idea what to expect because I have no idea at what stage my cancer is at nor what treatment options there are. Oh, I can make up stories based on Dr. Google research, but that’s a futile pursuit. This disease is idiopathic. No two patients are alike. I guess that’s true for most cancers. There are commonalities and there are individualities. The only reason they can be treated at all is because of the commonalities. Without pathological patterns no illness could be treated. Still, the idiopathic aspects of this disease make it hard to compare experiences with others facing the same disease. We can commiserate, but that’s about as far as it goes. That said, there is comfort in commiseration.

So, this morning at 7:45 I attended the medical lab in Cumberland so they could take a dozen vials of blood and some urine (boy, did I have to pee when I got there) in anticipation of my appointment with the oncologist, but also with a nephrologist in Nanaimo on November 7th. On Saturday I have a CT scan and on Sunday I do a twenty-four hour urine collection for the nephrologist. I might already have told you this, but I am taking prednisone now and I’ve had an infusion of some drug the name of which I forget. So, in effect, my treatment has already started. I can’t wait to see what the oncologist has in store for me come Halloween morning.

2 Multiple Myeloma Makes Me Special!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 9 Comments

I’m always a sociologist so whatever happens to me triggers an instinct I have to do check it out, do the research, connect the dots. In my book, the more information we have the better. At the moment, we have an information deficit and that’s frustrating but, hopefully, that’s about to change.

In any case, one of my first research stops is Statistics Canada. What’s there to learn there? Well, for one thing, multiple myeloma (MM) is a pretty rare form of cancer and that makes me special, don’t you think? Stats Can reports that there will be about 3000 people in Canada diagnosed this year with it. That’s not a very high number. Stats Can also projects that from 2018 to 2022 only 70 men in BC will be diagnosed with MM in my age group every year. Because doctors seldom encounter it, it can be difficult to diagnose, but back to that in a bit.

I’m in good company too when it comes to MM. Jim Carr, the Liberal Member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre and Minister of International Trade in the Federal Cabinet, was diagnosed with MM the day of the election (Monday, Oct. 21st) when he went into the hospital complaining of flu-like symptoms. By Tuesday he was receiving chemotherapy and dialysis and by Thursday the CBC was reporting that the Minister said he was doing fine, felt okay and was going to continue serving his constituents and the Canadian People. I’m so happy for him. He won’t be cured, but he will probably be able to function quite well for some time to come. By contrast, my doctors knew I had MM three weeks ago and I have yet to see an oncologist and will have to drive 225 kilometres to Victoria for the pleasure. Living in the boonies as we do, access to specialized health care can be spotty at best and will only get worse if the Vancouver Health Authority has its way. (That’s the subject of another blog post but DecafNation, George Le Masurier’s excellent blog, has been on to this for some time). It’s true that an oncologist in Victoria is on my case and has already prescribed medications for me and I got an infusion of a drug a couple of days ago at the hospital here to help with the pain and ‘strengthen bone’. Still, I feel that I’m not getting the level of care I would have gotten if I were a member of the Canadian political aristocracy or if I lived in a large metropolitan centre. My age likely has something to do with it too. I’m an old guy and not likely to live too long anyway and besides, I’m no longer a contributing member of the economy having retired from teaching at North Island College in 2012. Does that sound like sour grapes? It may be, but socio-economic status (class, gender, age, and geographical location, etc.) has a lot to do with health care provision whether we like to admit it or not.

Alright, so back to my situation. I’ve probably had MM for a long time. I have low B12 and was diagnosed with pernicious anemia at one time by a locum (temporary replacement for my regular doctor) , but my doctor didn’t really accept this diagnosis and prescribed B12 monthly injections (which I do myself). The thing is, I had been going to my doctor for years complaining of being tired, having brain fog, being in lots of pain, and suffering from peripheral neuropathy. To give my doctor credit, he ordered MRIs of my brain and spinal cord, lower back, ultrasounds, etc., because there is a history of Multiple Sclerosis and other immunological diseases in my family. To add to this, I has a kidney removed in 2002 because of renal cell cancer, leaving me with one kidney. For a long time we tested my creatinine levels to ensure my kidney was functioning properly and it did for years. In the last three or four years however my kidney showed signs of being very unhappy. Creatinine levels were rising and still are, and I was getting weaker and weaker all the time with worsening symptoms.

My social life was taking a huge hit. Over the past few years I’ve had to pretty much give up going out in the evening because I’m exhausted. I had to give up life drawing, printmaking and sculpting. I had to resign from the Village of Cumberland’s Homelessness and Affordable Housing Committee and I had to resign as Chair of the Board of the Comox Valley Art Gallery (although frankly I had been doing that long enough). I can no longer go on long walks with Carolyn, something that we both really enjoyed.

After a while, I think my doctor kind of gave up trying to figure out what was wrong with me and I was beginning to wonder if it was all in my head.

About a month ago, all that changed. We had gone camping in Strathcona Park in August. I was not feeling great, but well enough to get the canoe out and paddle/sail/motor around a bit. A couple of times, however, we got into bucking huge headwinds and were forced to paddle hard. Carolyn and I are seasoned paddlers and we know what to do. I felt pretty strong and we handled it fine. Of course we had some muscle pain, but scotch helped out with that a bit! Then my daughter and her family joined us. One day as I was sitting at the camp site doing nothing, my back started hurting something awful. By the time I decided to take some ibuprofen (not to be taken by anyone with any kidney issues) my pain was pushing 9 or 9.5 on a 10 point scale. I was taking T3s like they were candy. When it was time to go home, my son-in-law drove the truck and trailer. I rode shotgun. I have driven very little since and not at all for the last month.

A short time later, I made an appointment to see my doctor to let him know about the back pain and my use of ibuprofen. He figured we had better do some blood testing and we did. He was headed out on vacation for three weeks so I wouldn’t be seeing him again until Oct. 22nd or so. Well, he called me on Friday at around 5:30 and told me that my kidney was leaking protein into my urine and that he had referred me to a kidney specialist in Nanaimo. That was a bit of a shock. I didn’t quite know what to say so I left it at that.

Over the weekend, Carolyn and I sat down and wrote down all of my symptoms and questions to which we wanted answers. On Monday, I called the medical clinic and got an appointment to see a locum to ask questions about what a protein leak meant and to lay out my symptoms. Well, he ordered more blood tests and imaging. We saw him again on Thursday by which time he already had a strong suspicion that I had multiple myeloma. On Friday he called and pretty much confirmed the diagnosis. On Monday we saw another locum and she ordered more tests and imaging as well as a bone marrow biopsy. She also referred me to the Cancer Clinic in Victoria.

So, in less than ten days, the locums had figured out that I had cancer and were moving fast to get me treatment. Possibly all that it took was a fresh set of eyes on my case. Certainly, the referral to the kidney specialist would have got me some results but I’m not scheduled to see him before November 7th. I wondered what my regular doctor would say when he got back from vacation. I am definitely pissed off that I went so long undiagnosed, but I don’t really blame my GP entirely for that. I may not have impressed on him the real state of my distress and MM is not easy to diagnose because it shares symptoms with so may other ailments. Besides, raving about past injustices will get me nowhere. I need to focus my full attention on the present and the future.

So, in any case and in the meantime, I called the Cancer Clinic and a person there confirmed my referral, gave me an ID number and said that I would be seeing such-and-such a doctor. Well, my regular doctor informed me just this past week that there had been a mix-up in the referral and that I would be seeing another doctor at the clinic. We have yet to hear from the Cancer Clinic. If I don’t hear from them by tomorrow afternoon I’ll be calling them again. We need some goddamn answers and I need to get some goddamn treatment. Stay tuned.

1 I Have Cancer. Damn!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 18 Comments

I was recently diagnosed (late September) with multiple myeloma or bone marrow cancer. My bone marrow has gone buck wild and is producing way too much of a particular substance the pathologist euphemistically calls ‘muck’. I’ve probably had it for some years, but the symptoms are very similar to those of other diseases and conditions making it difficult to diagnose. I’ve not been well for years. The past two years have been especially difficult and the last four months almost unbearable. I’m still functioning, but at a much-reduced level than I’m used to. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve had cancer. I had kidney cell cancer in 2002 and had my left kidney removed in an operation that left me with one (fully functioning) kidney. Now my remaining kidney is compromised because of the multiple myeloma so things aren’t looking particularly good for me. There are still tests to be performed and a prognosis to be arrived at, but as soon as the test results are in the BC Cancer Agency in Victoria will give me a call and arrange an interview and set a course of chemotherapy. A lot will depend on the stage of my myeloma. Some people do very well with chemotherapy and new drugs are being developed every day to target the specific pathogen that’s attacking my blood. I still may squeeze a few more years out of this old body of mine yet, but the next few weeks will tell the tale. Multiple myeloma is not curable, but it is treatable. 

I’m not afraid of death. I’ve often written about death and the cultural systems we’ve created to deny death, which actually build on our natural, biological aversions to disease and death. As you can easily ascertain by reading my blog this has been my main focus over the past few years. Dying is another matter altogether. I’m not particularly afraid of that either, but it is full of unknowns. I’m going through the various stages people do when faced with this kind of diagnosis: grief, anger, sadness, self-pity although these feelings are fleeting, and I soon get on to more positive emotions. I feel some guilt too. Yes, guilt. Guilt that’s impossible to escape in this culture. Guilt for succumbing to disease and death, the twin evils that we’ve identified as the greatest threats to us. In moral terms, and culturally, we abhor weakness, physical or social. Sick or poor people are to be feared in our culture. We tend to marginalize both if we can, but that’s not always possible because the world is not as simple as that.  

I know I’m on my last legs. I’m almost 73 after all and have had a great life. Nobody gets through life avoiding death except in novels and movies. I have no idea how long I have to live, but whatever time I have I just hope that my quality of life improves enough so that I can finish some paintings I’ve been working on, maybe re-canvas our canoe and continue writing this blog. In fact, I’ll use this blog as a kind of journal chronicling the process of being ill, then diagnosed, then treated. Stay tuned. 

Please don’t suggest any treatments or diets or whatever. I won’t be going to Mexico for any heroic treatments. (If and when I feel better we may go to lie on a beach though.) I’m not desperate. I won’t be buying a juicer either and I’ll continue to eat the great, wholesome mostly unprocessed food that I currently eat but my body will follow, as it must, the second law of thermodynamics. I’m okay with that.

SOMETIMES I KISS MY FEET: Wheelchair Adventures in Pakistan and India (2019 Sky Road Publishing) by Judy Norbury

~ Roger JG Albert

I seldom publish book reviews here, but I’m making an exception for this book by Judy Norbury about her adventures travelling in Pakistan and India in the Fall of 2007 and the Winter of 2008.

A Review

I’ve known Judy Norbury for decades. Our daughters are long-time friends, and in their youth were roommates in the Commercial Drive area of East Vancouver. Judy is a neighbour and has been since 2002 when we moved to Cumberland, BC on the eastern slopes of the Beaufort Range in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. I also know Judy as a performer. She has a wonderfully powerful voice, played guitar and sang for some time with Joanna Finch, another Cumberland resident and singer (they still perform together on occasion). I always knew Judy as a talented, warm, generous human being. However, before reading Sometimes I Kiss My Feet I had not known Judy as an author. I was surprised to learn that Judy had published two other works in 2008 or thereabouts, both available on Amazon. Reading Sometimes I Kiss My Feet confirmed for me, once again, Judy’s wonderful creative abilities. 

Norbury was born in the foothills of the Himalayas at a place called Mussoorie in Uttar Pradesh. At four years old she contracted a severe case of polio after which she was left unable to walk. Following her recovery, she and her family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, travelling via Britain and France. There she went to school and grew up as any other kid would. Still, she had wanderlust and travelled often with her family and later with friends. She did not allow the fact that she was wheelchair bound to dampen her enthusiasm for travel, even for camping. In fact she writes: “…my disability has taken me to places I could never have gone were I able-bodied.” This can-do attitude is what allowed Norbury to plan travel in North America and eventually to Pakistan and India. 

In 1996 Norbury, accompanied by her partner, Ross, and her twelve-year-old daughter Belinda, returned to India for three months. That experience, after she got over memories of how difficult and distressing it can be to travel in India where life is so completely different from what it is in North America, where disabled people are considered the lowest of the low, and where sanitation and rodent control are not high on government priority lists, she recalled the joy and friendliness she also encountered in India even among the poorest and disadvantaged inhabitants. Travel can be crowded and unpredictable. Indians are not always the most law-abiding travellers. Still, she longed to return to the unpredictability and the adventure of travel in India. 

In 2004 Norbury and Finch were asked to perform at the Disabled Peoples’ International World Summit in Winnipeg. There she was with two thousand disabled delegate from all over the world. There she met Ghulam Nabi Nizamani who would figure prominently in her return to India, this time via Pakistan, Nizamani’s home, in the winter of 2007. Nizamani is the vice-chair of the Disabled Peoples’ International, Asia-Pacific Region and he had plans for Norbury when she arrived in Karachi, Pakistan at the mouth of the Indus River Valley, especially when, by chance, Norbury and her husband, Ross, would be in Pakistan on December 3rd, the UN-designated International Day of Persons with Disabilities. She (and Ross) would be expected to give speeches and attend functions as head table guests. Norbury is the consummate storyteller as she describes being driven to venue after venue, she and Ross making speeches, meeting dignitaries and disabled people in Karachi and in Nizamani’s hometown some rough kilometres away. After a month in Pakistan, Judy and Ross packed up and headed to India and Mirzapur, a city with which she and her family had close ties. 

I will not retrace Norbury’s adventures here one by one. Instead, I encourage you to buy Sometimes I Kiss My Feet and discover for yourself how Norbury masterfully weaves stories of filthy, often wheelchair inaccessible toilets, barriers to wheelchair access at every turn, rude, uncompromising able-bodied travellers and crowds everywhere. Mixed in with the nasty, frustrating aspects of touring northern India, Norbury never wants the reader to forget the generosity and kindness she and Ross experienced everywhere they went. She gets in the odd dig at the Indian government’s failure to accommodate the disabled. This book is more than a retelling of the frustrations of travel in a wheelchair unfriendly country. It’s also a love story and an understated political statement about social justice and the value of human life. Buy the book. I couldn’t put it down, I expect you won’t be able to either. 

New American Civil War?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

I’m sitting here pretty much incapacitated by some undetermined health issues, anticipating yet another doctor’s appointment tomorrow to go over yet another set of lab results, and trying to distract myself from too much inward looking self-pity. At least I can still write. The brain fog I’m experiencing makes it somewhat more difficult than in the past, but I can still do it, especially if I write about something I have some passing knowledge of.

A new American Civil War? Perhaps. The first American Civil War in the 1860s was fought by agricultural capitalists in the South against industrial capitalists in the North but it was couched in state-based rhetoric: Northern states versus Southern states. During the war, there was less emphasis on the economic interests than on slavery, ‘freedom’, and the need for a ‘United’ States. Capitalism can tolerate slavery to some extent, but it really needs a labour force that is also a consumer force. Slavery is incompatible with a growing need for mass consumption. Of course the first American Civil War was fought using non-economic rhetoric and propaganda but the underlying logic of the war was economic and political. Contemporary Confederate flag wavers are not focussed on economic, but on some imagined lost ‘freedom’, and Southern solidarity: Us hard-done-by-Southerners versus You overbearing, holier-than-thou Northerners. The longevity and sustainability of Southern feelings of oppression by the North should tell us something about the depth of feeling in the US now. Looking at a map of the US featuring red and blue states illustrates that there are still glaring geographical differences in people’s attitudes and in their political loyalties. The Southern states, now including Texas, are still feeling hard-done-by. (Some of the northern mid-American agricultural/rural states likewise). Visiting Texas it’s clear that there is an underlying uneasiness and separatist impulses have not completely dissolved. I haven’t visited Idaho, Wyoming or Montana, but rural, agricultural areas are clearly alienated from New York and California. It may be the United States of America, but it’s not the Solidarity States of America. Internecine squabbles and jealousies abound.

The Second American Civil War may well have a rhetorical veneer of statism and rage (yes, rage) over perceived (and sometimes real) social and economic inequalities, but if Donald Trump is successful, it will be a moral war, one fought by people who have fully absorbed the moral imperatives of the capitalist promise of free enterprise (while hardly benefitting from it personally) against people they perceive to have abandoned American ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’. The move to impeach Trump will only further solidify the camps, but Trump has not given the Democrats many options. I’ve recently read a number of articles in the New Republic and in other publications that argue that the way to combat Trumpism is not to call out Trump supporters as stupid, ignorant morons, but to engage in dialogue and community building with them so as to understand their grievances and support them in coming to a more reasoned assessment of the issues. I’m not sure there’s time for that.

Trump will continue to inflame passions with his frequent Tweet storms and rallies, accusing high level policy makers of treason and high crimes. How long can this go on? How long will it be before we see a convoy of Mad Max wannabes rampaging through the streets of America’s major cities randomly shooting people, raping and pillaging? How long will it be after the initial skirmishes and outburst will be see anti-Trump militias grow in defence of their families and communities? What of the police? Will they serve the American Constitution against concerted attacks on democracy from all sides? Will they be peacemakers or will they take sides? And what of the military? Will the military take sides? Would the military support Trump if he decided not to vacate the White House after a narrow electoral defeat in 2020?

It’s dreadful to even think about possible scenarios of violence, lawlessness, and totalitarianism but to not think about them is irresponsible.

I’m a Canadian. As Pierre Trudeau said decades ago, we are a mouse sleeping next to an elephant. Woe be the moment when the elephant rolls over in his sleep. For Canadians there is no isolation from American extremism. Over 80% of us live within a hundred miles of the American border. We have family and friends in the US. We worry about their safety and security.

I am a retired college teacher. I told my students decades ago that America was headed for a civil war. The tensions caused by American corporations creating global markets and (at least for the moment) eliminating good paying jobs in manufacturing to exploit cheap labour in Asia, Africa and South and Central America, were bound to lead to widespread social unrest, nationalism and jingoism. I don’t think that global supply chains and markets are going to be easily dissuaded by Trump. They continue to create subsidiaries and engage contractors in China, India and elsewhere. North American manufacturers continue to expand their supply chains and are not interested in containing their activities to US territory nor would they be interested in repatriating manufacturing. I can’t imagine Nike returning to Oregon to manufacture its products. It has no capacity to do so in the US and it would be prohibitively expensive to build new factories in Beaverton, Oregon, the site of its headquarters. There are some agricultural corporations that are moving their processing facilities from Canada to the US in a move, in part, to placate Trump supporters, but they still need Canadian raw materials. The complexity of global capitalism is staggering and strangely enough, that is what gives me any hope at all that a second American Civil War can be avoided. Many US manufacturing corporations that keep research and development functions in the US but produce their commodities everywhere else on the globe are pushing back against Trump’s tariffs. For example, iPhones are made in several places, mostly in China (check out FoxxCon) but may also be made in India shortly. US tariffs will force the price of iPhones upwards, but that’s true for many so-called American products made in China and elsewhere. The world is now so economically intertwined and interconnected that starting a war with China, say, means crushing America’s own manufacturing and processing capacity. I’m hoping that America’s business leaders will have the guts to seriously oppose Trump. I’m not sure that will happen and they may just try to wait him out. I’m unconvinced, however, that any business opposition to Trump will be able to coalesce sufficiently to help ease tensions in the US domestically.

The picture is much more complex than I’ve presented it here, and I may be a victim, like many others, of hyped up, sensationalist news. However, I perceived, like others, this trend in America for decades, before social media, fake news and the gutting of the CBC and other formerly independent news sources. I read widely and I search out different points of view. Trump supporters are caught up in a cult-like mindset unencumbered by reason and will not easily be dissuaded even if dire predictions of the imminent collapse of America do not come to pass. Sadly, some extreme lefties are caught up in the idea that all Trump supporters are ignorant, stupid slobs. There isn’t much room for moderation, reconciliation, or peace in this extremism. Is it possible for the political ‘middle’ to assert itself and put a stop to all forms of extremism? If so, how would that happen? If not, where do we go from here?

THC and CBD: My Personal Experience.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 8 Comments

So, I’ve had chronic pain for decades, at least since the early 1990s. I use acetaminophen regularly, sometimes resorting to T3s and even hydromorphone (oral morphine) on occasions where the pain and discomfort were (are) extreme. I can’t take ibuprofen because I have only one kidney (my left one was removed because of cancer in 2002) although it works the best for me. The other day, as a tribute to our silliness, Carolyn and I went canoeing on Buttle Lake in Strathcona Park. Such a beautiful place, but the wind can come up very strongly. We knew it could do that, but we blithely went out in the canoe anyway, and surely enough we got caught in a very snotty windstorm. We had to paddle at ramming speed for quite a while. My 72 year old body protested on every stroke. A couple of days later things came to a head and I had excruciating pain in my back because of a severe muscle strain (probably a tear, but who’s quibbling). So now I had acute pain competing with my chronic pain for attention. Both were winning at this stage. Enter CBD and THC.

There are lots of websites extolling the virtues of CBD and THC for the treatment of chronic pain, arthritis included. Here is one example from Medical News Today. WebMD is what I judge to be a fairly reliable source of internet-based medical information. Like this article in WebMD argues, consulting a physician is always important before using CBD as a medicine.

Great, so in the interests of attempting to alleviate some of my chronic pain, and being desperate, I decided to try using CBD and THC. To that end I had an MD ( a locum in my medical clinic) refer me to a group of health care professionals (physicians, nurses and therapists) at a clinic not far from my home. I figured I’d be a test subject although I know very well that a one person study is not a study at all. I was called shortly thereafter to a consultation with a physician who has experience with using CBD and THC medicinally. I was prescribed the use of CBD daily for chronic pain and THC at night to help me sleep through the night. On the physician’s recommendation I bought a 40 MG vial of CBD and a 40 MG vial of THC from what they said was a reputable manufacturer. So far, I’ve found that the manufacturer has been very careful to sell me only what I have a prescription for. The physician I saw prepared for me a sheet of instructions for taking CBD and THC. Since then, I’ve had regular calls from the clinic inquiring as to my experience with the products. I completed my first course of using CBD and THC a while back and have recently picked up my second prescription.

I really hoped that CBD and THC would work for me. T3s are fine, but harsh on the stomach. The THC is fine. It gets me stoned to some extent so I tried to take it only at nighttime. Doing what I do in my daily life, I can’t be stoned all the time. I need a clear(ish) head. I have enough trouble with brain fog as it is because of my immune disease. I don’t want to add to it with meds that don’t work all that well. I don’t think CBD worked for me at all, ever. I kept giving it a shot paying very close attention to my symptoms but I felt no improvement.

After I injured myself canoeing, I saw an MD again. I still had a few T3s left so I wasn’t too concerned. Well, the T3s ran out really fast. At one point when my pain was pushing 9.5 out of 10, I took T3s, up to 4 at a time and washed that down with a ml of CBD and another of THC. I also had some alcohol to really wash it down. I was then able to sleep, but I couldn’t keep that insanity up for long. So, back to the my regular medical clinic for some more T3s.

I also went back to the other clinic, the one that prescribed the CBD and THC for me. I had a consultation with an MD there and we basically agreed that CBD was not going to work for me. Clearly, it doesn’t work for everybody. I may still try using THC, but only at bedtime, and only if I’m feeling I need it for putting me to sleep. I may cease taking it altogether.

I’m quite sad about this because I had high expectations. At the moment all I can do to keep my pain levels down is to do very little of anything. Obviously I can write, but walking is even difficult and going out to socialize is increasingly unpleasant. Damn it, I love to socialize! I still go out and do volunteer work and maybe go to a restaurant now and again, but I have to rest frequently.

I knew that CBD and THC had not been tested using double-blind studies, but I hoped they would work anyway. Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t (and isn’t) the case. I sincerely hope they work for you.

On the ferry with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

[I wrote this piece of writing a few months ago to submit to a CBC writing contest. I just learned that I wasn’t even shortlisted for the prize. That’s fine, but I still think it’s worth reading so I’m giving you a shot at it here. If you like it please share it.]

On the ferry on our way to Vancouver.  It’s an overcast day and the water is slightly choppy as the ferry glides towards its destination. My wife and I have seats on the starboard side. I sit by the window. Looking forward along the ship down the Salish Sea the sky and sea melt into a continuous light grey with swaths of steely blue. I can’t tell where the horizon is, where the water touches the sky. Gabriola Island is off in a distant westerly mist. We’re passing close to tiny Entrance Island with its lighthouse and scattered red-roofed buildings. The history of its many keepers is replete with impropriety and the occasional drownings. There’s a ten metre sloop under full sail between us and Entrance island. An older woman sitting behind us turns to her husband and asks him: “Is that boat anchored out there?” 

Fittingly, I’m reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr. His posthumously published notes and speeches, introduced by his son, Mark, are called Armageddon in Retrospect(2008, Berkeley Books). Anyone who reads Vonnegut’s books, especially Galapagos knows how apt this title is.  To Vonnegut the world is funny, tragic, and ridiculous. “Look at this planet…look at us go!”  People, their silly, impossible ideas, their botched projects, and their often short and brutish lives are grist for his mill. He lovingly dissects human idiosyncratic frailties, but death, death always has a place of honour in his narrative and so does war, that insane theatre where heroes are supposed to be made and so on.

On this trip, the ship is packed with people but not completely loaded with cars. The high ferry rates are most likely pushing many people to leave their cars at home and walk down the long corridors and up the foot passenger loading ramp at the terminal dragging luggage and sometimes kids behind them.

I couldn’t have a better traveling companion than Kurt Vonnegut Junior, except for my wife of course. He’ll help me come to grips with our collective denial to see the world as it is, our self-righteous ignorance, our misuse of language, our multiple genetic weaknesses, organic diseases, and absurdities like our stupid wars. As Vonnegut says, “We are impossibly conceited animals and actually dumb as heck…Dogs and cats are smarter than we are.”[1]If only people on this boat could see that they are all closet schizophrenics, there would be peace on earth. Too bad, but we’re actually dumb as heck!  Now, how many people would actually recognize that in themselves? 

In my former career I researched death, wrote and lectured about it, all uplifting stuff. I was not like Kübler-Ross with her focus on dying and good grief. Rather, my interest was all about how we collectively try to deny death using cultural institutions like hospitals. Of course, I feel some affinity toward my fellow passengers. In a sense, we’re all in this together. We’re all dying. Some of us don’t like that idea at all. Actually, we haven’t liked that idea for millennia, so we (humanity, that is) concocted some quite elaborate immortality projects[2], giving their adherents the delusional sense that they might live forever. Silly them. Of course, we die, and we’re a lot like mushrooms in that way. I realized years ago during a walk in the woods that humans are a lot like mushrooms. Mushrooms emerge from the hyphae of fungi that are concealed in the soil, spend a glorious few days flowering and spreading spores, then shrivel and die almost as quickly as they came into being. People are like that. Generation after generation we emerge from an underlying social structure of selfish genes, fruit into adulthood, spread a few spores if we’re lucky, then fade to slimy black in short order. Clearly, mushrooms, people, death, and Vonnegut go together swimmingly. So, what about my mushroom-like traveling companions? I did say we all die, didn’t I?

Aside from the poor unfortunates who will die suddenly of drug overdoses, car crashes, or suicide, I’m sure most of my fellow travelers will end up on their death beds surprised as hell at what’s happening to them because who knew death is for real? My mother wasn’t surprised when she died last winter. She had no idea what was happening to her. She couldn’t possibly be surprised. Life was nothing to her. Death was nothing to her. She had profound dementia and nurses pumping a steady stream of morphine into her veins. She was ninety-four years old. Fade to black. So it goes.

On this ferry, the old Queen of Cowichan, I’m captive on a floating maelstrom of silly humans, regular humans and exotic humans. There are babies, old codgers like me (one sitting in the seats behind us forlornly packing an oxygen bottle), the inevitable groups of young girls scantily dressed even in this coldish weather their sexuality bursting at the seams. They giggle and jostle each other as they push their way through the annoyed crowd waiting in the cafeteria line. There’s a mama pushing a stroller, and a few young men driven unconsciously by floods of testosterone looking sullen and as menacing as possible. So cute!

What can I say, I’m an inveterate people watcher, and I’ve got a lot to see on this old tub of a ferry.  The denizen aboard are my captive subjects, a social scientist’s dream! They are prey to my stealthy researcher’s gaze. At my leisure, I can try to figure out what makes them tick. I make up stories about them. Of course, I’m wrong a lot, but who knows? I’m not an untrained observer. I have hunches about people that are backed by loads of research. Social scientists can predict a lot about people, you know, even if their individual stories elude us in much of their detail. I’m certainly as good as GRIOT™[3]in figuring out what people’s life chances are. 

I’m having a hard time not staring at people too much, especially the more exotic ones like the fifty-something woman bleached blond, long stringy hair in leopard patterned tights, wearing red heels and a fur-lined vest over what looks like an ill-fitting red tank top, to match her shoes I expect. I somehow tear myself away from the spectacle and return to my reading. Vonnegut is his usual scathing self, his words are sometimes like little grenades, at other times like machine gun fire blowing the world’s silliness to bits. 

A big guy shuffles by us.  Well over 182 centimetres tall, slovenly, scruffy beard, thin, scraggly longish hair, battered old jeans, T-shirt with his hairy belly peeking out over his beltless jeans. I know nothing about him except for his appearance and demeanor. He is plugged into huge earphones. With his deeply furrowed brow, he is sadness and angst personified. A few minutes pass, he gets a chocolate bar out of the vending machine across the aisle, and he slowly walks down the starboard side of the ship towards a bank of almost empty seats and sits down at a window seat, fourth from the aisle. He’s almost out of sight. Vonnegut would have a field day with him.

If it’s possible to make any inference about a person’s sense of self based on their appearance and demeanor, I would say that there are quite a few people aboard who are sartorially indifferent. There are exposed butt cracks everywhere. There might be wealthy passengers aboard. Maybe not. One can’t always identify wealth by what it wears. There are a few BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, and such on the car decks below, intermingled with dirty old pickups, beaters, Toyotas and Hondas, but an expensive car is not necessarily an indicator of the owner’s wealth. It could be a commentary on their borrowing power. No, I think most of us on this boat are just plain ol’ working class folk hopelessly in debt. True Canadians. 

There are lots of young people on this boat. That’s strange because it’s a week day. Most of them haven’t experienced the alienation of work yet. Too young. Their age and inexperience seem to give them license to be brash and uncouth. So charming! This one kid, maybe fifteen years old, has the crotch of his jeans hanging around his knees forcing him to waddle around the forward lounge of the ship rather than walk upright.  One of his buddies has his hoodie so tight around his head I’m sure it’s constricting the blood supply to his brain. Careful you don’t pass out, kid!

There’s the usual contingent of the over sixty-five set on this boat. Lots of couples like us. We old folks get on for free as passengers Monday to Thursday and that does encourage us to get off the island and visit the kids and grandkids on the Mainland from time to time. Lots of grey-haired ladies and gents still read books it seems. Deliberately looking around now I see an older woman sitting by herself, coiffed and dyed hair, prim and properly suited, reading A Handmaid’s Tale. A guy about sixty-five with a long grey-speckled beard and slouching in a seat a couple of benches in front of us is reading The Sisters Brothers. His grey sweatpants are stained front and back with splotches of who knows what. Delightful! At least these two, whatever other qualities they have, show good taste in reading material, but I look around and see quite a few iPads and Kindles, smartphones too. It’s just not true that older people are all computer phobic. Just some of us are.

A woman about thirty, dark hair, slim, dressed in a dark green ill-fitting suit, passes by me pushing a child in a wheelchair. She is moving slowly. There is something up with the child, obviously, but I have no idea what. He strikes me as being around eight years old, but he can’t speak from what I can see although he does make sounds. He looks at me, but I don’t know if he actually sees me or not. His mother, I assume she’s his mother, stops to talk to the guy reading The Sisters Brothers. I overhear some of their conversation, “You had lunch yet?” and it seems as though they are related somehow. Maybe he’s her father. I don’t want to think about any other relationship they might have. I don’t know. I’ guessing they’re related.

Rounding Bowen Island now, the passage has gone by so quickly. We arrive in Horseshoe Bay in fifteen minutes or so. Foot passengers are already milling around on deck 5 waiting for the gate to open to disgorge them onto the ramp down into the terminal and out to the waiting busses and taxis. 

I checked my blood pressure before driving down to the ferry terminal this morning. It was fine: 126 over 65. That’s normal for me. So, that’s not the problem. A urologist removed my left kidney in 2002 because I had kidney cell cancer. Now I have high creatinine levels again. Fun and games! We’re headed to see a specialist in Vancouver. Maybe she can figure it out what my problem is. Something isn’t quite right, that’s for sure. 

I can’t stop thinking about my mother. The way she died, demented and drugged. Come to think of it, her mother died the same way. For some reason I don’t think I’ll get to die that way, but I can’t rule out drugs being involved. So it goes.

[1]Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. (1990) Hocus Pocus, New York: Putnam, page 146.

[2]To read about death denial and immortality projects see: Becker, Ernest (1973). The Denial of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster.

[3]To know what the reference to GRIOT™ is here you’ll just have to read Vonnegut’s Hocus Pocus.

Ship (a canoe, really) of fools!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Ship of Fools.

Alright, I have a confession to make. I’m not always the most reasonable person around. The photo above is of our fifty-year-old, sixteen foot “Huron” canoe outfitted with outriggers, a mast and sail, along with a deep-cycle battery and an electric motor, and paddles of course. First off, it’s a canoe, not a sailboat, but it did sail very well in moderate to somewhat higher winds. It’s tied here to a stump on Buttle Lake near Ralph River Provincial Campground where we recently spent a few days. The lake was relatively calm. We probably paddled and used the motor to get to this spot not far away from the campground. 

On another day, however, we went out in relative calm and while we were out there, the wind blew up. It often does in the afternoons on Buttle Lake. We sailed very quickly to a spot down the lake called Auger Point, a three-kilometre run. Getting back from there was anything but pleasant. We should have known better. Happily, we had the motor that I cranked to full power but even with that we had to paddle at ramming speed to get back to the river mouth where we kept the boat tied up, maybe a kilometre to our camp site. That was one tiring run home. It would have been different had we been able to sail closer to the wind, but with the sail we had and the lack of a leeboard, we were in for a rough upwind fight. Carolyn and I are experienced canoeists and at no time did I feel like we were in trouble, but paddling as hard as we could was feasible even ten years ago, not so much now that I’m 72 and Carolyn is handicapped by arthritis in her hands. Still, we are strong paddlers and we made it without swearing and berating ourselves too much. Now, having done this once and also having promised ourselves to never do it again, what do we do? We go out there again on another day and get caught in the snottiest wind and wave conditions I think I’ve ever seen on the lake. What can I say? Again, we went out on a day that promised to be benign so we headed up the lake looking for a nice place to swim. We paddled down to a bay maybe four kilometers from the campground but there was someone on the beach playing music and fishing from shore. So, we headed down and across the lake to a bay still some distance from the campground where we knew we could skinny dip. As we enjoyed the beautiful lake water and the most enjoyable swim, the lake decided to turn against us, and the wind started blowing strongly from the north. We set out with the motor at half throttle, but we soon had to up that to full throttle and full on paddle to boot. Well, we’ve had some situations in the past where we paddled as hard as we could against a wind without making much headway at all. But we were young then and had much more energy and stamina than we do now. Coming around the point close to the campground we were hit with two-foot chop. That was fine as long as we were able to paddle directly into the wind, but that was not possible as we rounded the point moving east towards the campground. We were abreast to the wind, paddling as hard as we could with the assistance of the motor, and we were being beaten hard by the waves to the point where we started taking on water from the port side. Sensing that we probably couldn’t make it back to the river’s mouth where we would have preferred to leave the boat, we turned the boat downwind and took her into shore on a muddy, unpleasant part of the lakeshore, but still within easy walking distance to our campsite. That’s where she stayed overnight. 

The next morning, we took her around to the river’s mouth. We were exhausted, especially me, and I hurt everywhere. Silly us. After that episode, we got reasonable and didn’t do it again. Actually, we got our best swim of our stay on Buttle Lake a couple of days later with no trouble. 

The family joined us last Thursday and that was great, but I felt a pain in my right side and shoulder that was getting worse and worse. There’s no doubt in my mind that fighting the extreme winds on Buttle not once but twice contributed significantly to my injury. I was definitely injured. The pain got so bad (pushing 9.5 out of 10) that I was very relieved to know that I had some T3s in my toiletry bag. I took two and felt hardly any relief. Later, I took two more along with some CBD and THC (I have a prescription for them). I managed to sleep fitfully although some people might suggest I was not sleeping as much as in an altered state of mind. The next day the pain had not attenuated at all, and we had to leave the campsite and head home. I couldn’t help pack up at all and my son-in-law was conscripted to drive the truck home towing our old eighteen-foot Holidaire trailer. I could barely sit still on the way home, having to shift my weight often to try to lessen the pain. The drive home was uneventful, but I still hurt, easily pushing 6 out of 10. 

After being home for a bit and still at the end of my rope trying to deal with pain that prevented me from even taking a deep breath, I took two ibuprophen, went to bed for an hour or so and got up feeling fine. A miraculous recovery! I would have taken ibuprophen a lot earlier, but I was counselled in 2002 after my left kidney was removed because of cancer that I should avoid anti-inflammatory meds. I didn’t take any until this past weekend and just took two more a few minutes ago. The meds are still keeping the pain at bay, but I’m loathe to keep taking anti-inflammatory meds like ibuprophen because they are hard on the kidneys. So, tomorrow I call my doctor and make an appointment to see if there are any alternatives to ibuprophen I can take that might help mitigate acute pain. I’m used to chronic pain, but the acute pain brought on by the foolishness in our canoe was untouched by acetaminophen, even with codeine, and even supplemented with CBD and THC. My problem seemed to me clearly one of muscular inflammation. It’s clear that I need a solution to deal with acute pain because I can’t promise to always be reasonable in the future. My family was extremely supportive, and I love it for that, but I feel that I need to pull my own weight too. I will not always have my family there to support me if I get into unreasonable trouble again. I need good meds too!

I’m a Cancer Survivor but I won’t be a Life Survivor.

~ Roger JG Albert

It seems odd for me to describe myself as a cancer survivor. Oh, I had cancer, alright. In 2002, very early in the year, I was diagnosed serendipitously with kidney cell cancer. I had gone to see my GP about acid reflux so he sent me to to the hospital to have an ultrasound to check it out. The ultrasound tech wasn’t looking for anything in particular is my guess, but she zeroed in on my left kidney and sure enough there was a lesion there that they strongly suspected was kidney cell cancer. The techs didn’t tell me that, of course. They don’t discuss the results of a scan with patients in my experience. My GP was the one to break the news to me. His office called me to tell me the doctor wanted to see me at 5:30 the following day. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but in hindsight, that was an unusual thing for my GP to do. In any case, he broke it to me and said that the best chance of a full recovery for me was surgery as soon as possible. Then he sent me off to see the urologist who would perform the surgery. They didn’t perform a biopsy they said because of the fear of spreading the cancer which at that point was restricted to my left kidney. Fair enough.

So, after all the preliminary tests were done and I had seen the surgeon and the anesthesiologist my surgery was scheduled for the third week of February. Normally, of course, I would have been teaching at that time, but that wasn’t going to happen so the college arranged for subs on very short notice, one of whom was to die of cancer a few years later. The thing is that there are no obvious symptoms with kidney cell cancer. As far as I know, it doesn’t usually affect kidney function, so my kidneys didn’t show any signs of stress or disease. I felt fine. I did some work around the property. It so happened that we were just in the process of buying a new place in Cumberland, BC when I was diagnosed. There was a lot to do. We had an acre of property with the house and several outbuildings. It was a good thing that I wasn’t particularly debilitated. That was to come later.

Needless to say, a cancer diagnosis is traumatizing for everyone involved. I was concerned for my family as much, if not more, than for myself. Strangely, I was convinced that this cancer wouldn’t kill me so I was pretty upbeat about the whole thing. Why I felt this way I have no idea. It could be I was in denial. We humans are great at denial, even me.

Finally, I had my day in the operating room. I arrived at the hospital with Carolyn early in the morning with hardly anyone around. We said our goodbyes and I was taken to the pre-op area. They didn’t waste any time getting me ready and into the operating room. That I remember. My GP was in attendance and assisting, although I didn’t see him in the operating room at the time. Later, my GP told me that the surgeon had cut me in half laterally on my left thoracic area so that the kidney could be gently lifted out helping to keep the cancer contained. He said it was quite daunting. That’s what happened. Since then I’ve made do with one kidney. One of my former students was a nurse in the OR. We joked around until the anesthetic kicked in. Having a former student in OR isn’t unusual because many of my students were in the nursing program and were taking my sociology courses as electives. It happened again last year when Carolyn went in to have her appendix removed. My former students are everywhere!

I tell you all of this so you get a sense of what I mean when I say I’m a cancer survivor, but I find it hard to describe myself as such. I think of cancer survivors as people who have had to struggle for weeks, months or years on chemo and/or radiation, losing their hair and being in horrible pain the whole time. I have known many people who have succumbed to cancer, but I also know a number of people who have fought it, and fought it valiantly for long periods of time and survived. My cancer recovery was not at all long and drawn out. The surgery put an end to it. Done. Well, mostly done. My surgery was seventeen years ago and my left thoracic area has been a source of constant pain since then, aggravated often by the slightest movement. The pain in my side never lets me forget about the cancer that almost claimed my life. It gets pretty tiresome at times and saps my energy, but I carry on because what else is there to do? No, suicide is not an option.

So, I guess I’m a kind of cancer survivor, but I won’t be a life survivor. No one has ever been, nor will anyone ever be a life survivor. Nothing can ‘cure’ us of death. My surgery has allowed me to live longer and that’s fine, but I’m still in line for dying. And that’s fine. I don’t have any illusions about life and death. Life demands death. Life cannot happen without death. Denying that gets us nowhere. So, every day is one more day to enjoy and struggle over. When it’s done it will be done. That’s it. I know that some of you might think it odd that I say it, but if I had died on 2002, that would have been fine too. Carolyn and my family would have been sad and would have mourned my loss, but they would have gotten on with their lives. That’s what we do when people close to us die, we get on with our lives until our turn comes.