gardens

Sleepless Nights, Rain Showers and Owls

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

It’s 8:30 in the morning but I’ve been awake and up sporadically since 2 AM. That’s a typical scenario for me the day after my chemotherapy session at the hospital on Thursday mornings. It’s the dexamethasone (a corticosteroid) that keeps me awake. The other meds just make me feel ill generally.

Being awake at 2 AM until 7 or so when Carolyn gets up has its perks. The rain showers were amazing last night. The rain just pounds on the steel roof above the bedroom and the harder it rains the more intense the sound becomes. The first one started at around 3 AM but only lasted for twenty minutes or so. The one at 4 AM was much more intense and lasted much longer. The rain will be steady today, and probably tomorrow and the day after. The Weather Network predicts that we might just see the sun again by Tuesday. We’ll see about that.

At around 4:20, just before sunrise, I heard a great horned owl shouting its call at the back of the property. The owls like to perch in the tall conifers at the back of the property and in the forest behind our back fence. They usually sound off earlier in the year as the mating season gets into full swing. This owl may just have been a little late getting itself going, like many plants in the yard. The wisteria is just starting to sprout and the honey-locust is still yawning its opposition to getting up and at it. The ferns, though, are as happy as pigs in a wallow. They like the cooler, rainy weather and they show it.

So, at 2 AM, wide awake, what could I do? Well, I could just lay there and stew, or I could pick up my Kindle and start reading. Of course, as soon as I start reading, the cat decides it’s time for me to pay attention to her so she walks right in front of my face, sticks her tail up my nose and generally makes a pest of herself. Notwithstanding the feline interruptions I often read novels that are on the humorous side from authors like Thomas King, Kurt Vonnegut and Christopher Moore. But I also read a range of books on ‘more serious’ topics like sex, misogyny and patriarchy.

Last night I continued reading a book I picked up recently by David Friedman entitled A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis (2001) that had been referenced in another book I just finished on a related topic: Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha (2013). Like Sex at Dawn, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis is a must read if you want to understand how the social and cultural relations we’ve built around sex is so out of line with our biology. After outlining some of the most egregious sexual cultural practices in the Middle Ages in Europe around sex and later witchcraft along with a compendium of culturally weird sexual practices all over the world and since recorded history, Ryan and Jetha get into some very interesting musings on the United States and its perverse official political views and practices around sexuality, many driven by religion and the drive for power by mostly white, Protestant men of a certain age. After outlining the horrendous treatment of Black people by powerful white folk and their less wealthy followers, their base in current language, during pretty much the whole of American history starting with the arrival of slaves from Africa to work in Southern plantations, they get into some more current issues, including the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. [He is a year younger than me] His appointment was very controversial for a number of reasons, the most important one being that he was (is) black. This is a long quotation, but it demonstrates clearly the issues at hand and the players that are still involved in government, including Joe Biden. It’s important to note here that Thomas had been accused by a fellow attorney Anita Hill of sexual harassment but he dodged that one. He had been nominated by George H.W. Bush. According to Wikipedia he’s widely considered the most conservative and ‘originalist’ of the Supreme Court justices. It appears that he hasn’t changed his tune at all since 1991. His views are anathema to me.

From Friedman:

“Six decades later, another black American faced a committee of white men agitated about his penis. For hours those white men listened, many of them visibly appalled, to complaints from a woman about the black man’s lewd behavior toward her, all of it, she said, unwelcome and unsolicited. They heard how he bragged about the size of his organ, comparing it to a supernaturally endowed porn star named Long Dong Silver. Now that same black man faced the same committee. Unlike Claude Neal, however, he was not dangling from a rope. Except, he said, metaphorically. “From my standpoint as a black American,” Judge Clarence Thomas told the senators considering his nomination to the United States Supreme Court, “[this] is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who … deign to think for themselves … and it is a message that unless you kow-tow to an old order, this is what will happen. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.” (from “A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis” by David M. Friedman, page 129 Kindle edition)

and

“The exchange between Senator Hatch and Judge Thomas about racial stereotyping ensured that no lynching would occur, high-tech or otherwise. If nothing else, the all-white members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were determined to show this was 1991, not 1891. At 10:34 P.M., on October 11, when Senator Biden recessed the hearings for the day, the verdict was clear. The nominee, so close to political extinction, had come roaring back to life. When Senator Hatch left the hearing room, he was stopped by Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio. “Senator, you just saved his ass,” she told Hatch. “No, Nina,” said the Utah Republican. “He just saved his own ass.” What both probably knew, but neither could say, was that it was another part of Thomas’s body that had really been at stake all along.” (page 139 kindle edition)

I’m about half way through Friedman’s book, but so far it’s making for compelling reading. It was clear to me back in 2010 before I retired that as I was teaching a course on Love and Sex, that women had been subject to an intense misogyny for as long as recorded history and probably for as long as our species started walking upright on the African savannah. Actually, I was aware of misogyny long before 2010 but that’s when I began a more intense focus on its deconstruction. The focus of Friedman’s book, the penis, is a literary means of shifting the conversation about sex and procreation from the biological to the cultural realm. So far, I think that he’s done an excellent job of it. His analysis of Freud’s penis envy as a metaphor for the way women have been disenfranchised and generally kept out of the highest positions of business and government is particularly good and one I hadn’t considered before, at least not in the kind of detail Friedman goes into.

More on this later…as I read the second part of Friedman’s book and tie it into other books I’ve been reading, including one by Christopher Moore.

Our Vagarious Lives

~ Roger JG Albert

Our Vagarious Lives

Ah, the weather is still out to lunch. We are at least a month behind in the garden. The wisteria is not showing any signs of blooming. Just sticks up there. Last year at this time it was in full bloom with a small complement of leaves coming forth. Some plants, notably some ferns and, thankfully, the garlic seem to be quite happy. 

Wisteria 2021
Wisteria 2022
Garlic Bed

So is the Japanese Butterbur. Within a month it went from three or four buttons at the bottom of the garden to what looks like giant rhubarb. The leaves are so heavy they fall back on themselves.

Japanese Butterbur Buttons
Japanese Butterbur
Mature Japanese Butterbur
Elderberry
Fern in the front yard
Bit of the front garden

Spring time has always been considered a time of joy, growth, and possibility. And so it is. Like a baby born with all the potential of a lifetime ahead, the garden is looking to the future of the rest of the spring and the full delight and warmth of summer. Fall and Winter come inevitably. They tease us with beautiful garden colours and the bare branches of winter which then carries on for what some of us think is way too long. Spring does finally come around again and soothes us with hope. We commonly call what I’m talking about here as the cycle of the seasons. Of course, it’s not a cycle. It appears to be, but last spring is not this spring. It might be more accurate to talk about the spiral of seasons.

Like one year in the vast scheme of things, a human life is that time between our birth and our death. It’s finite. This is not a fact we find comfortable because, gee, we live through many springs, summers, falls, and winters. We are not just one-year wonders. That’s true, but the illusion of the cycle of seasons should not fool us into believing that this thing goes on forever.

To carry on with the analogy of the garden and human life, for me, winter is not coming, it’s here, even during the month of May. My leaves are falling, my bark is dry and cracking. There is no moving forward to a new spring for me. If that were to happen, it would defy all evolutionary logic. No, I have to be satisfied with my life as it is, and I am, even if I am in my ‘sunset’ years. I have an intelligent, talented, and beautiful wife and my daughters have taken after their mother. I have a loving family, and I live on a gorgeous garden thanks to Carolyn’s magical touch and hard work.

There’s one thing I agree with Sadhguru* about and that’s the idea that we had better enjoy life while we can, because we’ll be dead for a long time. Of course, many people are unhappy with the coming of winter, period, and they deny it by vacationing in Mexico or somewhere else near the equator or on the other side of the planet where summer coincides with our winter.

For a time as I read Sadhguru I had the sense that he really understood Evolution and Life, Science even. For example, when he argued that we don’t die, I thought maybe he referred to the (scientific) notion that every atom that makes up our body has always existed and always will. In that sense, ‘we’ are immortal. From my perspective, our consciousness is toast, but the little things that together constitute our bodies carry on. There is some disagreement about this, but the cells that make up our bodies get replaced at various rates for a very rough average of every seven years or so in total. Another strange factoid: we very likely breathe the same air molecules that Caesar exhaled during his last breath. Cool. But Sadhguru didn’t go there. He still insists on the survival of consciousness.

So, we exist at many ‘levels’: atomic, molecular, cellular, and organic. All of these together make it possible for us to have consciousness. Once our physical platform is gone our consciousness follows. I’d be glad to change my mind about this given scientific evidence to the contrary, but that is very unlikely.

So, what’s vagarious about our lives? Well, the dictionary defines vagarious as: “erratic and unpredictable in behaviour or direction.” Boy, is it ever. One day I’m able to walk long distances with Carolyn. The next day I can barely walk at all. I would not have predicted that. Cancer and old age gang up on me and don’t back off, ever. That’s life. There’s a slew of things I used to do effortlessly. Now, every once in a while I still think I can do things but after trying for a bit, I realize that I can’t go back in time. The trick for me is accepting my new age-appropriate capabilities. I’m living the life of a seventy-five year old, not a fifty-five year old. I must accept that and not sweat it. I’m getting it. It’s a process. It’s a good thing I have Carolyn and my family to remind me from time to time of my limitations. I need reminding.

I’m quite fond of metaphor and analogy as you are probably aware by now. Well, let’s pull out another one. Cancer is like cats as they play with us mice. There are many flavours of cat, some hunt mice and kill them quickly. Some play with their mice prey for some time before losing interest and finally killing them.

I have multiple myeloma. My cat analogue is one that likes to play with its prey. Little shit. It bats me around and chases me under the dresser where I get a bit of a respite knowing full well, Mr. Cat Myeloma is just out there, waiting for me to lose patience and make a run for it. I have absolutely no chance of escape. So be it. That damn cat will get me, no doubt, but not yet.

I love the garden. Carolyn has done an amazing job cultivating it, encouraging it, and never losing faith in it.

You never know, though. I may get it into my head that I can do things again that I used to do effortlessly. I may try. I can still handle a chainsaw. I got mine started a few days ago. I need to sharpen the blade. I think I can do that. Time to find out, but I do need to be cautious, now don’t I?

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*I wrote about Sadhguru on my May 4th post: https://rogerjgalbert.com/2022/05/04/aw-come-on-lets-talk-about-death-some-more/

Fall is upon us. I’m liking it.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

It’s late September and Fall starts by the calendar in the next couple of days. It actually started about three weeks ago reckoned by dropping temperatures and increasing humidity. I quIte like this time of year. Cool temperatures and refreshing rain. I managed to get out yesterday. We went to the official opening of our new firehall and to the Foggy Mountain Fall Fair where we bought some T-shirts at the Cumberland Community Forest Society booth and some goodies (including Palestinian organic olive oil) at the World Community booth before getting some lunch from a food truck the name of which escapes me (Farmers something or other- the food was excellent). I was quite tired from a poor night’s sleep the night before, but everything turned out okay. I had a nap when we came home while Carolyn went out for coffee with a friend. Chemotherapy is keeping me alive but there is a price to pay. I get tired easily and the pain is still a big part of my life. The fact that I’m seventy-four years old may also have something to do with my lack of spark! Of course it does! I’m walking some, and I’m going to try riding my bike later this week when there is less rain in the forecast. I’m willing to pay the price. I always seem to benefit from exercise even though there is short term pain involved. I’d sure like to get off hydromorphone and gabapentin, but the withdrawal symptoms are hard to take. Tomorrow I hope to get some work done on the canoe. I may just do a blog post on that project alone. I’ve done a bit of drawing lately too but my neck pain really puts a damper on any sustained drawing practice. Sometimes I wear a neck brace and that helps.

Plant life here in the garden is both rejoicing at the rainfall, and at the same time preparing for the dormancy of Fall or the end of life. The vegetable garden is almost done. The raspberry plants are still throwing out a few stragglers but are pretty much done as are the blueberries. We picked the pears a couple of days ago and the plums a couple of days before that. We now have several jars of delicious plum jam thanks to Carolyn’s hard work. The pears aren’t quite ripe yet so we’ll wait until the end of the week to process them. That’s always a bit of a chore, but the results are worth it.

The ferns and grasses are still standing firm against the oncoming seasonal changes, but most of the flowers are giving up and bowing to the need to get some sleep. A few, like the begonias, sedums, and Black-eyed Susans

Begonia
Black-eyed Susans
Sedums

still buck the trend and proudly flaunt their colours against the overwhelming greens and browns of the fall and winter. Of course, speaking of colour, winter could also bring the white of snow, but that won’t be for some time yet. The long term forecast is for snow early in the season this year, but we’ll wait to see what happens. It’s always a crap shoot as to when the snow will come on the mountains, but the ski hill on Mount Washington generally aims to open in early December. It doesn’t always work out that way because the freezing levels are fickle in this area and it’s possible that skiing won’t happen until January. We should see the first snow on the Beaufort Range soon. Logging is about to start again close to the Village too. I’m of two (maybe three) minds about that. As a woodworker I can hardly condemn the practice of cutting timber and I know that my pension plan is invested in forestry companies, but I’m not keen on seeing logs go offshore to be processed either and I’m interested in learning more about how clearcutting and road building affect carbon sequestration and the production of atmospheric oxygen. We don’t have to worry about running out of atmospheric oxygen just yet (Google it). The processes of atmospheric change fascinate me at a scientific level. I’m particularly interested in long-term modelling of atmospheric change.

Pond Pano shot

The pond is full after the recent torrential rain. The sticklebacks will probably survive the winter as they have over the past few years (except for the year of the turtle!), but it would be good to keep Tilly out of it so as not to disturb their nests. That won’t be an issue as we enter Fall. Next summer she will be over two years old and we’re hoping she will leave the pond alone. That’s probably an empty hope. For now, Tilly loves the pond and she wades in it often then comes into the house to shake, spraying water everywhere. Yes, she is a bit of a brat.

Sculpture

I’m not sure why I’m making note of this here, but this sculpture lives up by the pond area under a big cedar tree and surrounded by ferns. I finished it with spar varnish the year I carved it (maybe three or four years ago?) and I thought about refinishing it because it’s showing signs of deterioration. However, I decided to leave it and let entropy take its course. I’m not concerned about how long it will last in the elements but it will be around long enough for me to enjoy it.

I guess that I’m attracted to the changes of seasons rather than to the seasons in their full bloom. That may be because the times that mark seasonal change are the best reminders of entropy and its importance in our lives and in life generally on this planet. I quite enjoy this time of year even though it marks the end of the warmth of summer and the beginning of the cold of fall nights and winter days. I’m not a big fan of the heat of summer or the cold of winter. I’m more a middling kind of guy.

Ta ta for now.

Up, up in the air.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 8 Comments

What do I want to do with this blog? The thought crossed my mind that just giving up on it would not be the worst-case scenario. I’ve been at it for a few years now so it wouldn’t be outrageous for me to either quit entirely or maybe just take a break over the summer. Mygawd, I’m not making any money writing it. Lots of bloggers make money on YouTube with their blogs. I don’t, so what’s the point? Maybe I could monetize my blog, attach it to a video log and turn it loose on YouTube. After all, we DO live in a capitalist society. Might work. Probably not. 

The weather has been wonderful lately if you want to lay about on a deck. I sit on the deck close to the rock/fountain and watch the birds come down for a drink. The one in the video here is a female goldfinch we think. She flits around avoiding direct contact with the fountain. It would probably knock her over if she did. 

The wisteria gives them some shelter and protection before they come down to the fountain, but they’re still wary. Smart birds. There are cats prowlin’ around here. Our princess is one of them and she’s a hunter sometimes, mostly mice, but we don’t want to tempt her with birds. She’s being such a brat lately. She seems to have figured out exactly when I’m just about to fall asleep, then she pounces on the bed, meowling like crazy and poking my face with her paw. 

Tilly has been hanging around the pond a lot lately. She patrols the perimeter sniffing around trying to get frogs to abandon their rocks along the shore. I don’t like the way she’s been fixated on frogs lately. She come close but she hasn’t caught any yet. I’d be very pissed off if she did. She spends most of her time under the deck these days where it’s cool. She’s got such a thick black coat she must really suffer in this heat, but she never complains.

Got a call from my Oncology GP this morning. He noted that my bloodwork is coming back from the lab within reference ranges (normal). Tomorrow I go to the hospital for another infusion of Daratumumab. After that, I don’t get another one until the end of August. As of this month, I’m down to once a month for the Dara. I keep taking my regular chemo meds, lenalidomide and dexamethasone, three weeks on, one week off. So, I’m in a weird space where I have no myeloma detectable in my blood, but I’ll be on chemo for the foreseeable future, that is, until the drugs don’t work anymore. At that point they’ll put me on another regime. That means that I must be vigilant around the side-effects of the chemo. It’s not always easy to tell chemo med side-effects from pain med side-effects. 

For an old man, I’m feeling pretty good these days for about fifty percent of the time. I’m sleeping moderately well most of the time, but I have wakeful nights periodically. My neck is what’s tormenting me the most these days. According to my Oncology GP I have OAD (Old Age Disease). I can’t turn my neck more than 3% left or right. Maybe 4%. Makes it hard to do shoulder checks when I’m driving. Of course, I still drive. What are you thinking? I just have to turn my whole body when I do a shoulder check. That’s fine.

Technically, I have degenerative disc syndrome and it’s common among older people. I’m getting a CT scan early next month to confirm the diagnosis. Once I get the scan, I can ask my GP for a referral to someone who might be able to do something for me. That would be good. If I do get some relief, I’ll be able to do more writing, and maybe some sculpting. I’d love to do a bit of printmaking too. Or maybe I could just lie on the couch more comfortably. That would be good.

#84. One Day at a Time

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Spring is a magical time for me. I never tire of looking out the windows at the many flowers, ferns, plants and trees as they come out in response to the warmth in the soil and other encouraging signs of Spring. On most days, the sun is there to warm my face. When it rains, the droplets glisten on the leaves as the hummingbirds dart back and forth between the feeder and their favourite perch. The wisteria is blossoming and will soon be in full flower, providing a shade canopy for the deck in anticipation of those lazy, hazy days of summer.

Wisteria

Occasionally I will take a slow stroll through the gardens aided by my cane and revel in the glorious, delicious scents that emanate from the many flowers that are now in full bloom. Right now the crab-apple tree with its ten or twelve foot canopy is showing off its clusters of blossoms and establishing its perfumed dominance as it spreads out next to the driveway. In the vegetable garden, without the benefit of a sweet scent, the rhubarb has already provided us with a delicious desert and promises more. The garlic is as hardy as ever this year and will supply us with all that we could possibly want for the coming year.

  • Crab-apple blossoms
  • Crab-apple tree

I seem to be feeling better as time goes by. Springtime has that effect on me. Of course, I’m 74 and I have the emperor of all maladies as well as various and sundry ailments related to my vertebrae competing to see which of them can make my life most miserable. All of them can and do contribute to the waves of pain that frequently sweep over me, and that inspire me to reach for the opiates and the acetaminophen. That said, I expect improvement in my situation in the coming weeks as I move into a new phase of chemotherapy having Daratumumab infusions once a month but staying the course with lenalidomide and dexamethasone. Of course, because of the nature of myeloma I can only think in the short term, five years tops. I have another handicap that makes my situation somewhat different than others and that’s the fact that I have only one kidney. I lost my left kidney to kidney cell cancer in 2002. The pain in my left side due to the nephrectomy (kidney removal) has not let me forget it either. My left side is a constant source of pain.

I should say that cancer has not been my only tormentor. In my youth I lost a lumbar disk to a sawmill accident leaving my lower back especially vulnerable to re-injury. Given all the physical ailments and challenges I’ve faced over my lifetime, I’ve managed to stay physically active running and cycling as well as working in my shop and studio. Now, the limitations I face are those of old age and cancer. I just have to be super vigilant and not do stupid things, things that could leave me physically incapacitated.

Back to my chemo life, I checked my numbers earlier this afternoon. That means that I consulted MyHealth, an online access to lab results, imaging, appointments, etc., to see what all the blood tests I get periodically can tell me about my state of health. I have results as of May 4th, 2021. Looking at the results you’d have to conclude that you were looking at the blood serum of a very healthy person of my age. It seems that the chemo meds that I’m on now are doing the trick, that is they are suppressing my myeloma down to levels seen in healthy individuals.

Too bad my blood serum won’t maintain that level of normality for any length of time. My myeloma is kept at bay as long as I keep taking my chemo meds. Stop taking my meds and the myeloma wants to kill, kill, kill. The amount of time between when I stop taking my meds and the resurgence of the disease can vary a lot. The last time I stopped taking my chemo meds it was only a matter of a couple of months before my myeloma was back and as active as ever.

With this new chemo regimen it looks like I may get a better result than I got last time. It also looks like I’ll have a long-term relationship with some of my chemo meds. I’m not sure which ones at the moment.

The way these things work, chemo meds only work for a certain length of time after which a new cocktail of chemo meds needs to replace the meds that are no longer working. It looks like the Daratumumab/lenalidomide/dexamethasone triumvirate is going to give me a longer period of remission than I had the last time I went off chemo meds. I’m hoping for years of remission but that’s yet to be determined. If I could get a modicum of mobility as well as ability to use shop tools and studio materials even for a few months I’d be happy. So far my Dara/Lena/Dex trio is doing the trick. I hope it continues that way and buys me some more time.

All I can do is take it one day at a time.

#78. LIFE vs My little life.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 3 Comments

[I posted this in February, 2021. I’m re-posting because I think it expresses how I’m feeling right now about life and death. I will follow up with another commentary in a couple of days if all goes well.]

LIFE in capital letters is life writ large. It governs all manifestations of individual life. It goes on merrily as individuals live and die generation after generation. Ironically LIFE needs death to make more life. After all, we eat dead things, don’t we? Of course all plants and animals follow the same pattern. They come and go, often by being consumed by other living things. It’s almost March and the property here is getting ready to burst into life after the long period of die-off and dormancy that is winter. Flowers are appearing even with freezing temperatures.

The early ones are aconites, snow drops, early crocuses, and maybe violets. They express life briefly then give way to the grasses, the ferns and the flowers of spring. The pear, apple, plum and cherry trees will soon display their flowers in preparation for the fruit that will follow as long as the pollinators do their thing. The birds are into mating season and we’ll soon have baby robins, finches, nuthatches, flickers, thrushes, jays, hummingbirds, and chickadees hassling their parents, fluttering their wings and demanding food.

The sun is shining right now. It wasn’t supposed to according to the weather forecasters, but there ya go. Living and dying under the sun. That’s what’s going on. My adult life has been informed by the scholarship of life and death, that is, of life and death as considered by philosophers and scientists. The thought of my own dying hasn’t occupied very much of my time except when my mother, father, and sister Denise died, and then only briefly. Being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that is incurable but treatable, changed all of that. Myeloma kind of sets the stage for end-of-life considerations. There’s no escaping myeloma’s trajectory. It will kill me eventually if I don’t die of something else first. Now, I have a hard time not thinking about my dying.

For most of my teaching career I used Ernest Becker’s work (The Denial of Death, Escape From Evil) to discuss the role of the fear of death on our cultural institutions. The fear of death and the promise of immortality and their overriding presence in institutions such as patriarchy and misogyny have shaped our social relations and created the conditions necessary for human contest and eventually homicide on a grand scale and war.*Related to our fear of death is our propensity to cut deals with deities. Humans have invented thousands of gods (and related semi-gods or supernatural entities) over the millennia. We assign responsibility to those deities for natural disasters, crop success or failure, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, and the like. We even put faith in God for winning a football game or a war. We barter with the gods. We make sacrifices. We tell the gods: “Look, we are sacrificing this young woman for you by throwing her into this volcano, now you must reciprocate by ensuring our crops grow well next year.” A life bartered for more life. That’s largely the story of countless religious (and political) invocations over the millennia. Priests and politicians constantly urge us to make sacrifices so that the future will be better.

Modern medicine is an elaborate institution for the denial of death. It’s all about ‘saving’ lives, and it’s willing to go to extreme measures to accomplish that goal. Of course, ‘saving’ a life means little more than postponing a death. Obviously, I’m personally invested in modern medicine and pharmacology. I’m hoping that chemotherapy and radiation treatments will buy me time, effectively giving me more life and postponing my death. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments are not cheap. Just one of the drugs I’m taking will cost over $100,000. One of the pharmacists at the pharmacy in Victoria that dispenses the drugs I use told me over the phone recently that they have some million dollar patients out there, patients that have used these drugs for many years. I attend the Cancer Care Centre at the local hospital and I’m impressed by the technology and the expertise of the many staff nurses and doctors that work in that facility. That can’t be cheap either.

Modern medicine will go to great lengths and expense to treat patients hoping to extend their lives. It must do so otherwise it fails in its sacred mission to safeguard life and battle death, the ultimate enemy. As Becker notes, in our culture death and disease are the twin pillars of evil. Disease prevents us from enjoying the pleasures of life while death cuts them off summarily. So, we are willing to invest a great deal to save an individual life yet we are also willing to gleefully pile corpses in great heaps during war or in the context of ethnic cleansing, that vile excuse for murder, rape, and pillage as in Rwanda, 1994 or in any countless examples of such celebrated mass murders. We gladly kill for US, for our people because THEY(the enemy) are obviously responsible for our misfortune and distress. If we eliminate THEM our problems will be solved. That is the big lie. As Becker notes, we need a THEM with whom to enter into contests to show our prowess and to show our God (gods) how powerful and deserving of eternal life we are. Why do we spend so much time, energy, and money on organized sport? Sports reflect our constant need to show how deserving we are of life and more life. We win, we go to heaven. The gods are obviously on our side. We lose and we face shame and rejection. This analysis can easily be applied to American politics now too.

I’m rambling now. I guess I’m trying to avoid writing about the finitude of my life, my little life. In the face of LIFE and its overarching grip on the process of life and death, my little life doesn’t amount to much…but it’s all I’ve got really. Maybe I can celebrate my insignificance. Maybe I can celebrate the entirety of my life from beginning to end. In a way end is as necessary as beginning in the scheme of things. Let’s see what I can do with the little bit of life I have left.

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*The need for an opponent or an enemy (THEY) is based on our need to prove our worthiness in competition for the good things in life and for eternal life. The winner takes all! Very early on in human history, tribes split in two called moieties so that there would be contestants to beat proving the prowess of the winners and their qualifications for immortality.

#71 My Life With Multiple Myeloma

~ Roger JG Albert

I just finished reading Deaf Sentence, a novel by David Lodge. Carolyn tells me it isn’t Lodge’s best work, but I quite enjoyed it. I really should review it sometime on Amazon. In any case, finishing a novel for me is quite something. I don’t usually read books until I go to bed, and that’s usually around 9 PM. At that point I may read a few pages, but usually I fall asleep after a few minutes with book still in hand or Kindle on but with light out. I was about half way through the book a couple of days ago after reading it for a couple of months. For some reason, I went to bed as usual but unlike most nights, there’s no way I could fall asleep. I had no hint of sleepiness. So, I started reading the book at around 9:15 and, except for pee breaks, I didn’t put the book down until 5 AM. Now that’s a marathon reading session for me. Completely unpredictable and not particularly welcome, but after I realized that there was no way I was going to sleep I relaxed and enjoyed the book. Finished it too!. Damn the clock!

In the book, when the main protagonist’s father dies at age 89, he takes it as an opportunity to muse about death in general. He quotes Wittgenstein, probably the most famous of all 20th Century philosophers who died in 1951, and who wrote: ” Death is not an event of life. You cannot experience it, you can only behold it happening to others with various degrees of pity and fear, knowing that one day it will happen to you.” Having myeloma I can assure you that death is never far from my mind.

Still, life goes on. I certainly don’t think about death all the time. Every once in a while I’ll remember that I have incurable cancer and I say to myself: “Yeah, I’m on my way out. But then I think I might not face death for another ten years. There have been many other myeloma patients who have lived over ten years. It’s not at all uncommon. I really don’t dwell on it. Dealing with pain on a daily basis takes up much more brain power than contemplating death. Thankfully, I have some dedicated palliative care docs who talk with me every week so as to constantly tweak my meds. It seems to be working better than it has been. I can usually sleep these days without taking ‘breakthrough’ hydromorphone. The gabapentin seems to be doing its job but I wouldn’t swear to that in court.

Most days I spend in my recliner although I do get up now and again for a bout of exercise. We have a semi-recumbent bike in my studio. I use that occasionally although it’s not my favourite way of getting exercise. I really enjoy walking on the River Walkway but I don’t get there that often. It may be that I’ll have to drive myself down there two or three times a week. Carolyn usually walks the dogs in the morning on the trails in Cumberland. I really can’t join her because of the distances she walks, the pain in my legs, and the uneven walking surfaces. I’m not complaining, just thinking out loud trying to figure out a way of getting a little more exercise without too much danger to myself or others. I drove the truck the other day without too much trouble so I think I can do it more regularly. Carolyn is doing an important job walking the mutts, so she needs to be free to do that. It’s true that I don’t need as much looking after than I did a few weeks ago. I still have moments of excruciating pain, but Carolyn can’t do anything about that. She is already very attentive and an excellent caregiver. I am so fortunate.

A few days ago, feeling chipper, I went out into the yard to do a few chores, like chop firewood. Yes, we still burn wood. In fact, we just got a new wood stove that is rated at 1.8 gr/hr. It’s a Pacific Energy wood stove made in Duncan, same brand as we had before, but with many upgrades from our old stove. You won’t see smoke coming out of our chimney 98% of the time, only for a few minutes when we first get it going in the morning. We burn only dry wood, down at least 14 months. We check the humidity of our firewood with a humidity gauge. I expect we’re among the most responsible wood stove users in the Valley. I’m sure people will still object to us burning firewood. So be it.

My recliner is close to the stove. I like it. Keeps me warm inside and out.

Tilly is getting so big. Seven months old, well over 70 pounds now. Not only that but she’s losing her puppy ways and is becoming a really sweet dog. Carolyn has posted recent pictures of her on Facebook. She’s big buddies with Cooper, the neighbour’s dog. He’s ‘intact’ and was getting very interested in Tilly’s butt so we thought it wise to have her spayed. She got through that very well. Now, she and Cooper fly around the yard wrestling and playing tug-o-war with a toy or a stick. They’ve destroyed so much of the garden with their antics but Carolyn just shrugs knowing that things will recover and will thrive come spring. We can only hope the dogs get more relaxed as time goes on and are less apt to run around the property like gilly-galoos. We expect they will get mellower and mellower as they age. That’s generally the way it works with dogs. Tilly always gets treats from me first thing in the morning. She might even get some later in the day if she’s a good dog, and she is most often a good dog. She gives us lots of kisses.

Tilly

#65. Musings, Flowers, and In Memoriam.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Musings

It’s October 5th, 2020. That means it’s pretty much a year since I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. I expected that this month would be my last one in my first course of chemotherapy. As it turns out it was not my last month because I decided a couple of months ago to forgo my last two cycles of chemo treatments because of the neurological damage I was experiencing. Chemo was doing away with the myeloma protein in my blood but it was also killing me. That’s not good, so we decided to stop.

Who knows what happens now. I went to the lab last week for some blood tests in anticipation of visits with oncologists later this month. I have the results: they show that my Lambda Free Light Chains (a type of blood protein that is used as a marker for myeloma) are trending up, now out of the zone the medical profession has decided is the reference (some would say, normal) zone. That is not good news, in my opinion. The increase in my Lambda Free Light Chains hasn’t been dramatic, but it sure concerned me.

I contacted Dr. Malcolm Brigden’s office in Victoria. Brigden is the oncologist assigned to me by the BC Cancer Agency. His assistant, after consulting with the good doctor, advised that there was no clinical reason for me to have my meeting with said Dr. Brigden brought forward as I had requested because Light Chain numbers go up and down all the time.

That’s not what I’m seeing in the test results but I’m no oncologist. Still, I’m seeing a definite trend in one direction.

So we wait until October 21t to drive to Victoria for a fifteen minute appointment with said Dr. Brigden. The issue for me (for us, including the family) is where I’m at in terms of treatment. Brigden will decide what to do now that I’ve been off of chemotherapy for three months. He may decide to do nothing and wait for my next set of blood tests. He may decide to get me started on another course of chemo. I expect he’ll choose the former, that is he’ll choose to do nothing and wait for test results three months down the road. Whatever. I have some research to do about how Lambda Free Light Chains react in remission but before a new course of treatment is initiated. You may detect a note of cynicism in my composition here. If you did, you’d be right. I’ve read a fair bit about oncology, both the research and clinical aspects of it and I can’t help but feel that clinicians are all over the map in terms of treatment options and approaches. There are no real standards in the field. That is partly due to the idiopathic nature of myeloma. There is no one treatment option for patients in relapse.

I guess I need to be patient. I find patience a little difficult to achieve these days, but I need to cultivate a ‘letting go’ approach to this ‘problem.’

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In Memoriam. Thinking of you.

Sarah Kerr died on October 3rd after maybe six years of suffering with colon cancer. In 2018 she gave an interview to the Comox Valley Record in which she claims to have had over 60 chemo treatments over the previous five years. That’s just not the way it works for myeloma. I got one over the last year. In the same interview she reports on various different alternative therapies she tried including vitamin C infusions (@$200/week). Her quality of life was severely affected by her chemo treatments.I didn’t know Sarah very well. She was more of an acquaintance than a friend. I knew her from my pre-retirement North Island College days with Sarah making pots and just generally being around the Art Department. She was a Facebook friend too. We had a large number of FB friends in common.

The last time I spoke with Sarah was a few weeks ago on my way into the Cancer Care Centre at the hospital here. She was just heading out after a treatment. Neither of us had much time to chat. Sarah was obviously much distressed. I don’t know anything about colon cancer but I know she suffered tremendously from it. It was unrelenting. No more, Sarah.

Dennis Renaud died on September 30, 2020. He worked for many years at the Courtenay Return-it Centre. I got to know him a bit over the years partly because we were both French-Canadians from outside Quebec. He had Joseph in his name too. Many French-Canadians of a certain generation do. The women have Mary somewhere in their name.

The thing I noticed about Dennis was the way he worked. I’m always impressed by people who work in jobs that could be seen as extremely mundane and boring, but who seem to try to get the most out of every action they undertake as they work. It was obvious to me watching Dennis work that he was always looking for the most efficient way of moving cans and bottles along from the desk to the roller conveyers behind him. He could count bottle and cans very quickly and he never lost a beat. He was one of the most efficient workers I knew.

I didn’t know Dennis socially. He was a FB friend for some time, but he wasn’t that active on social media. In April of this year he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. Five months later he was dead. He was two years younger than me. A good, former Catholic, sort of French Canadian kid, like me.

In a way I envy you Dennis. No lingering around with chemo treatment after chemo treatment with shit for quality of life. I think Sarah might just agree with me and in a way she might envy you too.

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Flowers.

I love begonias. Carolyn grew these in a hanging pot just outside the back door. I saw the every time I walked to the back yard, a half dozen times a day. These flowers are deadly difficult to render realistically. I need a lot more practice to do them well. I’m learning, though. In ‘nature’ there are no lines but drawing this flower requires that I draw lines. The trick is to make the lines disappear into the contours of the subject. It’s not possible with ink, at least it’s not easy. Besides I love the effect ink gives a piece and if I want to look at a begonia not translated via the synapses of my brain I just look at the photo. The begonia I draw tells me as much about my synapses and my brain as it does about the subject matter.

This is quite impressionistic. Definitely not ‘realistic.’

The begonias below, one behind the other are stunning in my mind.

I draw them using a .3 copic pen and then use watercolour on them. This time I use a wet watercolour technique. I haven’t finished this piece yet as you can see. The next one I do will be done with no ink, just watercolour directly on paper with no preparatory drawing. We’ll see how that goes.

And now just look at all the other beautiful flowers that are still blooming in the garden in early October!

If you feel so moved you might just want to ‘like’ my post!

61 Apprehensive,Wistful, and Tansy* bugs.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

A couple of issues have been dogging me lately and are crying to be released into the blogosphere. One is the fact that I am no longer on chemo and what that means, particularly with regard to my future treatments and my relationship with ‘my’ medical team. The other is a nagging, recurring introspection around my death and dying. Let me start with my limbo between chemo and remission.

Apprehensiveness

So, I’m not on chemo, at least not for now. Since October of last year I’ve been carefully supervised by a local GP oncologist and the Cancer Care Centre at the North Island Hospital in the Comox Valley. What happens now that I’m not on a regular regime of chemotherapy? I really don’t know, yet.

I called the Cancer Care Centre last week and they told me to contact my oncologist at the BC Cancer Agency (BCCA) in Victoria. Well, I contacted the BCCA to find out that the oncologist I thought I had is no longer employed at the BCCA and hasn’t been for two months or so. (Gee, thanks for letting me know.) It turns out I’ve been assigned a ‘new’ oncologist, one who has recently come here from Alberta. I have not met him but I’m scheduled to go to Victoria for an appointment with him in late October. His assistant told me to contact my local GP oncologist in the meantime. I get the sense that I’m getting a bit of a run around. I don’t think anyone is out to deliberately mess with me, but I’m feeling a little apprehensive about what happens now. It looks like I’ll have to be the squeaky wheel to get any answers. Let the squeaking begin.

I’ve noted this before, but one thing I am very grateful for is a great palliative care team. I can now report that my pain levels are going down steadily. That said, the weakness in my legs has not abated and that’s my main worry. That means that the neurological damage is not being affected by the meds I’m taking for pain. The pain is attenuating but the weakness is not. I’m still walking with two canes. I DO expect my strength to improve. Patience is the name of the game right now but I’m not that good at being patient.

Wistfulness

Yes, I am a bit wistful, longing for a more settled, less precarious, state of life. Of course, life is never settled but that doesn’t mean I can’t wish for it. Life means movement and change but we are not alway happy with that state of affairs. We resist change by getting into routines and habits. We can delude ourselves into believing that life is stable when we do the same things day after day, week after week. The fact is, life is only finally settled when it reaches its destination.

In France in 2007, Carolyn and I boarded a fast train (TGV) from Paris to Montpellier in the south not far from the Spanish border. Arianne and Tim were living in Montpellier at the time doing post-graduate work at the university there. The train was incredibly fast (TGV is Très Grande Vitesse), moving at an average speed of over 300 kilometres per hour. Yet it was the smoothest train ride I had ever experienced (and I had experienced many in my youth). There was no clickety-clack, that most familiar sound I had heard on every train trip I had ever taken in Canada between New Westminster and Edmonton (where I attended boarding school). Lengths of track in France are welded together making for a single track running for hundreds of kilometres. No seams, no clickety-clack. Frankly, I found it a bit surreal but amazing at the same time. I had filmed part of the trip just as I had filmed other events on our six week visit to France that year, but I had a hard drive crash later and all my recordings from our 2007 trip were lost. What I have not lost, however, are my memories of that trip and our whole time in France that year. I still have vivid memories of catching the train in Paris, almost missing it, boarding without the requisite documents, settling down in first class (we decided to treat ourselves), and relishing this unique experience.

In bed a few nights ago after turning off the light by my bed my mind wandered again as it often has in the last few months to my death and dying. I had been looking for a metaphor I could use to make sense of my death, to give me some relief from the constant reminders of my demise. The reality is that I’m on borrowed time with the inevitable outcome of my death looming. My brain wants to keep coming back to that. It’s determined that I will be relentlessly reminded of my death and it will make sure that that reminder holds pride of place in my frontal cortex, not content with having it stay in the back of my mind where denial is so easy. We live by metaphors so I figured it should not be too difficult to come up with a good one. But I’m not sure a metaphor can win a contest with my brain when it comes to the ominous death watch I’m experiencing.

Then, our French TGV trip came to mind. The more I considered it, the more it made sense to me as a metaphor for life. That conviction was further reinforced as I read the article I link to below on our fear of death. The message in that article is simple: life is finite so make the best of it.

How to not fear your death by Sam Dresser

Using a somewhat questionable syllogism in this article Dresser asks us to consider whether or not we are afraid of the time before we were born, when we didn’t exist. If we aren’t afraid of that time, then why should we be afraid of death which is simply a time of non-existence much like our time pre-birth?

Yes, I suppose so, but it’s not that simple. Before being born, in that time of nothingness, there is no accumulation of life’s memories, of hugs, orgasms, loves, hates, good meals, accomplishments, and regrets. There is no possibility of loss or even the conception of loss. The anticipation of death, by contrast, involves facing the loss of everything, including experiences and all things material and immaterial.

Of course there is no perfect metaphor, but thinking of our TGV trip as a metaphor for life (actually any trip will do), it’s obvious that before boarding the train there was anticipation but no knowledge of the imminent experience. Once on board, there is full knowledge that eventually the trip will come to an end but the passing scenery, the food, the weird passengers on the other side of the aisle, all consume our attention. Eventually, of course, time is up, the train pulls into the station and we are compelled to disembark. We may not want to leave the train, having enjoyed the trip so much, but that’s not an option. We must leave the train and its memories behind. Yes, coming into the station and dying are comparable I suppose. Both are inevitable, both are necessary.

Yeah, maybe that works, but I have to think about it some more.

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Tansy!

You might have seen tansies at one time or another. They aren’t super common but can often be found on vacant lots. In fact, the tansies in images 1 through 3 were photographed in an otherwise empty lot in our neighbourhood (by Carolyn). I sequenced the photos below to go from a wide to a tight view. The 4th image is one I took with the WiFi microscope at full magnification. Every one of the tansy flower heads is made up of over a hundred of the compacted cone/shafts you see in the 4th image. So, in image 1 you look over a minor sea of flowers. In image 4 you get close and personal.

What you don’t see in any of these images is what you see in the video that completes this gallery of images, namely the army of insects that populate tansy flower heads. You may be seeing only flowers when you look at images 1 through 3, but you’re also looking at bugs, lots of bugs, bugs invisible to the naked eye. The number of microscopic bugs out there is staggering. I won’t speculate on how many of them you had for dinner or are living in your eyebrows. That may be something you’d rather not be reminded of. Sorry.

I find it fascinating that we miss so much when we see the world with our limited eyesight. Truth is we see a narrow slice of the world, and that, unfortunately I think, also limits our appreciation of vast unseen, yet important to us, aspects of the world.

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Tansy flower at full magnification with thrip (we think). Click twice on this image to activate it.

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*a plant of the daisy family with yellow flat-topped button-like flower heads and aromatic leaves, formerly used in cooking and medicine.

58 Seventy-three Years At It, Birds, and Bees.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 3 Comments

So, I’m sitting on the deck overlooking the fountain that Tilly has fallen in love with, and I can see the bees working the St-John’s Wort, flower after flower. I tried to capture of video of bees and flowers, but so far it just hasn’t worked. In any case, I swear I’m telling the truth (bees swarm those flowers!) so don’t press me for visual proof although I have posted a picture of the St-John’s Wort above the fountain. Spot the bee!

St-John’s Wort

Hummingbirds are into the honeysuckle to the right of this picture, making regular trips here from the feeder in the front of the house. We have huge huckleberry bushes close by which we usually save for the robins and for my brother Léo when he often comes to visit with his family in the summer. But this year who knows where the robins are and Léo is safely distancing in Maple Ridge. Someone will probably write a book: Romance in the Time of Covid or maybe, Covid-19: Mess up our world will you?

The weather is getting warmer and the reclining chairs we have on the deck are very comfy. Sleep comes easily unless I’m on one of my dex days. Two and a half more chemo cycles. Must make it through. I’m trusting that I won’t be in a wheelchair after my first chemo course is over in October, but who knows, oncologists are not known for committing themselves to a particular prognostication. Oh well. Such is life.

Winding down. Sometimes I lay awake at night, especially on those nights when I’m on a dexamethasone high. Wakeful periods at night are a new things for me. I never had trouble sleeping, not even during really stressful periods in our lives. Now, at least three nights a week I have a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep.

At these times, all kinds of thoughts come into my head. They’re not all bad thoughts. I sometimes go over plans I have for a project I’m working on or I’ll muse on the news of the day. Sometimes wakeful periods can be quite productive. I promised myself years ago that when I got old I wouldn’t be one of those people who lived in the past reliving regretful events or sad moments in my life. Oh, that happens on occasion, but then I catch myself doing it and move on. Inevitably, these days, my mind wanders into the wall of truth that is my seventy-three years of life. Seventy-three years can seem like a long time, but it’s just a flash, really.

In a previous post I wrote:

As Brian Cox, the famous British physicist put it, the universe itself lives and dies in a moment. Individual organisms come and go in an instant. The passage of time is an illusion that allows us to cope with the need to die. One human life lived over a period of eighty years is no more fleeting than the life of the universe itself. 

Cox could have said “One human life lived over a period of eighty years is just as fleeting as the life of the universe itself,” because it is SO fleeting. Lately I’ve been musing about the lives of my parents and of their parents. My parents lived fairly long lives by most standards, both into their nineties, but they’re both gone and now their lives are a complete thing. It’s possible to trace their lives from beginning to end, to focus on the things they did, the children they had, the jobs they had and the way they related to us kids and their friends and relatives. There are photos and some film that my father took with his Super 8 movie camera. Everything they were and did is packaged up and we call that their lives. The finitude of a past life is obvious. It has a beginning and an end.

In our own lives we look back on past events, camping trips, weddings, stressful situations at work, strained relationships, special bonds we create with like minded people and with community. We look forward to and anticipate events, meetings, occasions, going to bed or working on a project. Time never stops for us until we fill that space we call life. At the time of our death, our life space is complete. A life is not complete until death, no matter when death comes.

Yet we are like mushrooms.

We are products of a cultural, social, and physical mycelium that has existence over time. We are much like mushrooms that sprout from a mycelium that has existed underground for some time and will exist long after the mushrooms that it produced slowly melt away back into the soil. Like mushrooms, humans flower for a short time, then decay returning to the soil of our ancestors. We are expressions of a process. Yet, no matter how elegant and truthful this metaphorical explanation may be for our lives, it does not satisfy.

No matter how hard I try to intellectualize the problem of time, life and death, I can’t help but get choked up a bit when I think that I’m on my last legs, that my death is immanent. It’s still a bit of a shock to me to think that I have incurable cancer. No way of getting out of this one. One day soon(ish) I will die. Am I prepared for that day? Not really. I want to think that when the time comes I will courageously and stoically meet my fate, but I may just beg for more morphine. Who know? However I spend my last moments of consciousness, nothing will change the outcome.

Yes, there’s currently a lot of research being done on a cure for multiple myeloma but like AIDS, it’s cure is elusive. There are treatments for myeloma that make it more like a chronic disease than an immediately fatal one, but still, the writing is on the wall, as the saying goes. Besides, myeloma or not, my death is inevitable, as is yours because that is the way it is. Life and death dance together. Learning the final dance may be the toughest thing I ever do.

Addendum

A minute ago I mindlessly killed a mosquito. It’s an automatic reaction. A Jain would be very displeased with me. Janism is an ancient Indian religion. “Jains believe that animals, plants, humans (irrespective of different spiritual development) all have a living soul in them and all should be treated with equal respect and love.” (From the website)

Shit. Well, I guess I’m no Jain.

How mindlessly we treat most life, and how quickly life comes and goes.