Roger G. Albert

Stormin’ Out There OR I’ll Nap When I Want To!

~ Roger JG Albert

Wed. Jan. 18, 2023 -8:50 AM

Sky is blue this morning and it’s calm with no wind, but last night I swore the sky was falling. Sure felt that way. We sleep on the south-east side of the house, that’s the direction of the prevailing wind. 

If there’s going to be a tree fall on the house during a storm, it will be from that direction, from the south-east. We seldom get strong winds at our home in Cumberland, but when they happen, they aren’t shy. 

Last night the weather had no shame, no sense of propriety. It came banging on the side of the house, undeterred by the fact that we might be sleeping (or trying to sleep) inside. The rain aimed to engrave the windows with incessant beatings. There would be no sleep, at least not until the weather lost its angry edge. 

One thing about sleeplessness is that my brain has plenty of time to speculate on things transpiring in the midlin’ parts of my body. Normally my brain is in denial, but storms put a wrench into that. The storms seem to amplify the ‘discomfort’ I feel in my back. Most of the time I don’t think about it. It may be that atmospheric pressure has something to do with the pain in my midsection, but that’s only speculation on my brain’s part. The pain is real, though. 

I was supposed to get a visit today from my palliative care doctor, but she was called away to an emergency so we’re putting that off until next week. 

Thursday, January 19, 2023 – 8:00 AM

0.0˚C. Jeez. That’s cold in my books. Looks like winter is carrying on. It’s going to hang around for some time yet, whether we like it or not. There’s no denying that. It may be that we escape more serious dumps of snow, but there’s no guarantee of that either. Ski patrollers would like to see lots of snow fall and we do need as big a snowpack as we can get, but I don’t welcome snow. I’m decidedly not a cold weather person. I like to sit by our politically incorrect woodstove, especially when I just get up in the morning and Carolyn has got a fire going in our new, very efficient Pacific Energy woodstove (rated at 1.8 parts per million). Ah, a nice wood fire, warm and welcoming, along with a nice cup of coffee. Life is good, isn’t it? Well, there is that other thing. 

My back has been a challenge lately with constant ‘stitches’. The pain isn’t horrible, but it is a pain in the butt (a little higher, actually) and pushes me to take more hydromorphone. If I take 4 mgs of breakthrough hydromorphone on top of the 18 mgs of the slow-release flavour, I can usually fall asleep and stay that way for a while. Lately, I’ve taken to sleeping in my recliner. It’s much more restrictive than my usual bed because it’s so much narrower, but also much more flexible in terms of position. Actually, I find my recliner quite comfortable to sleep in. Come to think of it, I may want to use it tonight.

Now, enter the game-changer. The Home Care team has arranged to have a hospital bed delivered to the house next week for my pleasure and sleeping enjoyment. This bed is kindly provided by the Canadian Red Cross and is available to me for as long as I need it. That has me a little unnerved, but I need to accept it in the same spirit it was offered. Thank you, Red Cross. 

The problem is that all the people I’ve ever known to get a hospital bed delivered to their homes have not come out alive. I guess that’s to be expected, but I don’t feel as though I’m that close to the final frontier. So, I’m of two minds about the hospital bed. On the one hand, yes, I want it because I think it would increase my level of sleepy time comfort and probably reduce my dependence on opioids. On the other hand, anything that reminds me of hospitals leaves me a little cold. 

I suppose the best thing for me to do is relax. Not sure I can do that. I’ll work on it. 

Friday, January 20, 2023 ~7:30 AM

The menagerie awakens to growling tummies. The cats, Princess and Sunshine, are prancing around wary of each other, but impatient for breakfast. Sunshine is a guest, Arianne’s cat who is here waiting for the renovations to their house in Vancouver to be finished allowing him to finally go home and relax on his favourite perch on the back porch. 

Tilly is impatient. She has that big tummy to fill up and she’s quite convinced that she will starve to death given that Carolyn hasn’t fed her yet and it’s getting late. Cooper, the neighbour’s dog sits at the deck doors waiting for something. He’s not sure what, but he’s convinced that it’s in here whatever it is. Food, maybe? A spot in front of the woodstove, maybe? Making decisions is tough. Every once in a while he lets out a bark, not one with great conviction, and just loud enough to ensure that the residents of this place know that he’s out there and needs something. What? Who knows?

Tilly is on guard making sure Cooper doesn’t exceed his privilege. She charges him from this side of the door. 

I had a good sleep last night. It was one of those rare ones. The pain in my back wasn’t present enough to wake me up and I didn’t have to pee. I slept a solid seven hours straight. Miraculous! 

My back is still twitching but that should attenuate shortly because I just took my meds, and they will take care of the twitching. After that, I’ll take a nap. I probably don’t need a nap, but it’s my right as an old man to nap whenever I feel like it. 

ActualIy, I nap out of a sense of duty. If I don’t nap, the government might feel justified in removing that privilege from me. Governments are like that, you know, according to the CPC. Liberals and Trudeau are always waiting to pounce to revoke our privileges. Bad government! Be scared of bad government! Be scared of everything! LOL! Ha Ha! He! He!

Keep Busy, Don’t You Know!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 8 Comments

In my last post I mentioned that I’ve put together one hundred and fifty thousand words on my blog since I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in the fall of 2019. 

Looking back on my many posts, I’m now concluding that I’ve said pretty much all I want to say about my relationship with myeloma. There may be a few more details I can profitably address such as increasing levels of pain, and Its location, but I have myeloma, there’s no question about that, and it’s going to kill me. Now that I’m palliative and not under the care of any oncologists, I feel that all I have left to do is take a schwack of pain meds and wait to die. 

Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023 –  ~ 11 AM

This morning I got up at 7 or so in anticipation of going to the hospital for a lab visit. I was feeling just fine until I went into the bathroom to ablute. I got my gear out, but while I was doing that, I felt a twinge of pain in my ‘gut’ area (generally in my midsection, right through my body.) Soon, that twinge developed into generalized pain severe enough to take my breath away). Then it ramped up to a 9 or so on the 10-point scale. As soon as I realized that the pain had got to a 5 or 6, I started taking hydromorphone breakthrough meds. I took three times as much as I would normally take. I also took some dexamethasone (8 mgs). I was supposed to take 4 mgs). I also took some acetaminophen (1000 mgs). 

It took an hour to an hour and a half to settle the pain down to a 4-5 on the 5-point scale although at the time I thought that the pain would never attenuate. I thought that dying at that point might be a good idea.  

Pain, in and of itself is not a bad thing. It signals that something is wrong in the body that needs correcting. (This is a perspective inherent in the pathological end of the medical spectrum.) Pain may never be eliminated from a body. 

Earlier I wrote that: ‘Now that I’m palliative and not under the care of any oncologists, I feel that all I have left to do is take a schwack of pain meds and wait to die.’ Well, what of that? 

We all wait to die. But we’re not supposed to do that, don’t you know? It just isn’t right. We’re not supposed to just sit around waiting to die. Actually, it’s downright immoral to just wait around for anything, especially for dying. As humans we’re meant to move around, to get ‘er done! Ironically, we go on vacation every once in a while with a major goal of sitting or lying around doing nothing. There’s a contradiction there, but we can ignore it if we turn away and don’t pay any attention to it.

People do get freaked out when they see people in care homes not doing a lot of anything. “Look at all the crumblies, laying around, just waiting to die! They aren’t productive. They can’t even clean their own bums.” We’re supposed to DO something, anything. “The devil makes work for idle hands” don’t you know? 

Yes, true on all counts. But before we get all self-righteous, we should consider what is so morally superior about doing things. I’ve already written somewhere that, following Ernest Becker, we think of wealth and health as the two most important moral imperatives in our lives and in our civilization (although we very seldom think in those kinds of abstract categories). 

Since we’re already primed for thinking about things on a ten-point scale, can we think about morality and health on a scale? Maybe using a scale where a 5 is average (the mean in statistical language) and the extremes are at 1 and 10? What would morality and health look like on a scale of 1 to 10? Caution: this analysis is simplistic in the extreme but it works on a very basic, silly way.

The scale would look something like this I think: If you’re a 10 you’re buzzing with activity. You can’t stop. You run marathons every week. You have two jobs, or you make money by investing in stocks and bonds. The downside about being a 10 is that you’re possibly on your third marriage because nobody can stand to live with you for any length of time. Thus, if you’re not actively pursuing wealth and are not super healthy, buff and running marathons, you probably suck. At 1 you suck a lot, at 3, yeah, you suck, but not irretrievably. If you’re a 5 you’re probably normal in our world. You probably have a decent job, and you do some exercise. Nobody’s going to look up to you, but, conversely, nobody is going to look down on you either. 

If you’re a 1, you’re a slob, a poor slob. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge). 

Let’s look at this ‘distribution’ statistically.* If you draw a random sample of the population on a characteristic like height. you should come up with about 68.2% of the population who ‘fit’ within one standard deviation from the mean, or the average. Leaving aside height for a moment, in moral terms, if you’re on the left side of this histogram, you tend to the sucky side of life. On the other side of the mean you tend to the above normal side of life. You’re nothing special, but you’re a nice, positive person. You know, nice and positive. Further up the scale and we can detect sugar dripping from your lips. 

From: http://openbooks.library.umass.edu/p132-lab-manual/  Physics 132 Lab Manual by Brokk Toggerson and Aidan Philbin.

The further you get on the left side of the distribution, the suckier you get until you dissolve into a slimy pile of suck. It’s good that not very many people fit into that category because wading through slimy piles of suck could be downright tiring at times. The fewer of those around the better. Rain puddles are way better, in my opinion. 

Well, this is all well and good. We judge people all the time, even the way we die. We live in a very strange world if you haven’t noticed yet. We are a very strange species. 

If you want to stay on the good side of your civilization, keep busy and try not to let your knuckles drag while you walk down the street. 

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*I wouldn’t take ‘statistically’ very seriously here. Just having a bit of fun. Oh, the histogram is fine, but fitting morality and health into it may not be so fitting. 

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January 13, 2023. 

Today is the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death. She died in 2018 at the age of 94. I miss her even though I barely saw her at all in the last few years of her life. 

It’s my Birthday.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 11 Comments

Yeah, it’s my birthday. No big deal.

I’m starting on my 77th year. That seems like a long time, but time is relative. I just finished a book by Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. Time in the context of dinosaurs is measured in millions of years. Even then, two million years is a relatively short period of time. Now, I’m reading another Brusatte book, The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us. It’s all very complicated stuff, and it’s certainly true that mammals got a leg up following the crash of the Cretaceous sixty-six million years ago thanks to an asteroid strike in what is now the Gulf of Mexico. In the next few weeks I’ll look for a good book on the differences between the prokaryotes and the eukaryotes and the evolution of the latter into us, eventually (after hundreds of millions of years).

So, to say that I’ve lived for 76 years is not saying much. The context is what’s important.

I think most people would agree that I’ve had a good life. Being a white male has given me substantial advantage to start with, and I was able to build on that foundation to create a decent life for myself and my family (albeit, one based on patriarchy).

This post will be very short because I’m not motivated to put out a regular length bit of writing but I’ll put out a couple of posts soon enough. I need to comment on oncology and the few other things. I don’t have an active relationship with myeloma at the moment. Obviously the disease is have a field day in my innards and I want to write about that. But that’s for another day.

How Long Does He Have?

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 7 Comments

I don’t know, but I wonder if anyone has asked any of my family or friends that question about me. It’s a common question in movies or on television ‘medical’ dramas. Of course, it’s virtually impossible to answer that question unless the circumstances have been set up ahead of time to determine the time of anyone’s death. In most circumstances we just don’t know. In some we do. Maybe you have a gun and are about to shoot a hapless victim. In that circumstance, you would precisely know the day and time of your victim’s death. Somebody on death row in the U.S. would know when they were scheduled to die, but with all the appeals possible, some death row denizens have been there for sixteen years and more. Still, eventually appeals run out and off you go to the abattoir. Or you might get up in Toronto some dreary Monday morning expecting to spend the day dispensing cash and stamping statements as a teller in a bank downtown, only to be stabbed to death leaving a subway train at your usual stop.  

You might have come across the same story I did about the young woman (31) stabbed to death in the subway in Toronto on December 9that around 2 PM. I have no idea if she was a bank teller, that’s my invention, but it would be possible. The fact that she was stabbed at 2 PM is significant. There are many reasons why she would be out and about midday. Her killer, 52-year-old Neng Jia Jin, required a Mandarin translator for his court appearance and was given a list of people he was not to contact even though he was held in custody. He killed the victim, Vanessa Kurpiewska, randomly. Who expects to get up in the morning, get dressed, maybe make plans for the holidays, have a coffee, go off to work, take an afternoon break to do a little shopping, and end up dead on a subway train? On the same day the CBC reported a deadly shooting in Mississauga and every day the papers are happy to report on any number of random shootings and stabbings across the country and in the US. Regular, typical, unspectacular deaths generally appear under the radar, in the obituaries, not on the front pages. 

So, a significant number of people die randomly every day from any number of causes, some endemic, some violent, and all unpredictable. It may happen that I get surprised by my death, or at least by my dying. Probably not, but it’s not in the realm of the impossible. My palliative care team can track the deteriorations in my body, some of which are clear signs of impending death. Kidney failure is a sure sign of imminent death. When I came close to dying a month or so ago after my last chemo treatment, it was because my kidney was shutting down. That’s an indicator of major bodily shutdown. I remember clearly in the ER at the time that the docs asked us what we wanted to do if my kidney did shut down. We made it clear to them that no heroics were to be used to keep me alive. Palliative care doctors are really attuned to changes in the functions of major organs. I’m fortunate in that I have a strong heart and no indication of any cardio-vascular issues. 

We (Carolyn and I) drove to Campbell River last week to see an orthopaedic surgeon about the lytic lesion in my right femur. The palliative care docs flagged it as a potential major issue because it seemed to be growing. The orthopaedic surgeon, Deke Botsford, concluded that the changes that had occurred over the past few months in my femur would not likely cause a pathological break, that is one that would happen with no provocation (a fall, for instance). Anyway, we decided that I would get an X-ray in a month or so and that we would have another chat at that time. Fair enough. No problem for now.

I’m reading a book that was kindly given to me by a very thoughtful neighbour. It’s called: With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial by Kathryn Mannix (2018). I’m almost finished it. Mannix is a physician and a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (CBT). Her approach to death and dying is psychological and biological. My approach you will realize, if you’ve followed this blog at all, leans much more to the cultural, social, and anthropological side of things. Of course, I also inject lots of personal anecdotes and experiences. That’s where Mannix and I cross paths. Her book is a compendium of stories about the end-of-life experiences of a whole range of people of all ages in Britain. My blog is a mix of things, but it leans heavily on my experiences in hospitals, with medications, and with medical staff. Denial, for Mannix, refers to how individuals come to accept or reject the fact of their imminent death. For me, following Becker and others, denial is considered primarily a cultural phenomenon which rubs off on every one of us via religious or magical traditions and practices that we rely upon to convince us that we are immortal. Our traditions, practices, and protocols act as collective reinforcement of our beliefs in our immortality. Émile Durkheim, the first French sociologist and education theorist, wrote about the importance of what he called collective effervescence as an important structural component of social coherence. 

I guess if I have any institutional or cultural connections with denial mechanisms, they would be associated with science, especially physics and chemistry. If I have any belief about what happens to my body after I die, it’s that all the atoms and molecules that make up my body will return to the biosphere, to be taken up by organisms in their process of growth. My consciousness will evaporate to nothingness.  So, it goes. 

This Blog

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 7 Comments

November 30, 2022 (8:35 AM)

If you’ve been following this blog since the Fall of 2019, you will know that I was diagnosed with cancer (multiple myeloma) at that time and that ever since I’ve dedicated the blog to exploring my relationship with ‘my’ cancer and its treatment. Lately, I’ve been compiling my blog posts into a Word file. Word tells me that I now have close to 150,000 words in that file. I’m sure I have double that in the blog since I started publishing it in 2012, the year I retired from teaching at North Island College. That’s a lot of verbal regurgitation. 

It’s been a ride. 

Looking back over the years it’s obvious how much of a rollercoaster ride it’s been. The thing is the rollercoaster has two primary seats and a number of others that can also be involved. Of course, I’m in the lead seat. If I didn’t have myeloma there would be no rollercoaster, but since I do have myeloma, any rollercoaster rides I’m on also involve my family. Carolyn is my wife but also my primary caregiver. It has not been easy for her. My daughters who both live in Vancouver have made every effort to support Carolyn and I on our ride. They have come here which is highly disruptive of their lives, never a word of complaint. One of my brothers and one of my sisters who live on the Lower Mainland have come to visit and help out. I have a sister who lives in Nanaimo. She and her daughter, Janice, come as often as they can and bring meals for us to relieve some of the caregiving burden from Carolyn. We are very fortunate also in that we have fantastic, generous, kind, and supportive neighbours. 

I can only go by my own experience but living with myeloma for anyone (and its treatments) means that some days we feel fine (more or less) and other days we feel crappy. Not long ago, after my last disastrous treatment and hospital stay, I spoke with my oncologist at the BCCA in Victoria. I was determined to stop all treatment, chemotherapy, and radiation, which I did. It seemed that I would always get a high fever and some form of infection following treatment. Last month I wrote about how my last chemo treatment almost killed me. Of course, stopping all treatment has its consequences.

As I noted in a previous post, the upshot of ceasing treatments means that I now have to face myeloma head on without the help (or hindrance) of treatment. I am now considered palliative, meaning that any treatment I get now aims to deal with pain alone. So, tomorrow late afternoon I go to the hospital for a CT scan of my right femur. The palliative care doctors want to know what the state of that femur is to better decide on what to do about it. They may recommend surgery. When we know more, we’ll decide what to do. I’m not sure what to think at this point. 

December 1, 2022 (8:00 AM)

It’s probably the coldest day of the year here today at -5˚C. Snow is deep in the yard and we’re expecting more today and tonight. It’s quite bright out now but that can change quickly, just like how I feel. 

Yesterday I introduced the role of caregiver. Caregivers, family, volunteers, or paid members of palliative care organizations are essential for people who are sick or somehow disabled and who can’t always look after themselves, who can’t cook, feed themselves, do laundry, wash dishes, etcetera. Caregiving is tough, one of the toughest jobs around. Imagine going to work not knowing what will be expected of you when you get there. Never mind all the bum wiping and other physically related work that is expected of you. Some of us who need care are quite large and heavy. Caregivers risk injury to themselves as they care for their charges.

For some caregivers who provide in-home care the issue is mental illness or dementia. Imagine going to work and immediately getting verbally assaulted and insulted by the person you’ve come to help. It can be the same in the hospital. While I was there, I often heard caregivers, nurses, and aides, get yelled at and abused in a number of ways by patients. Or the issue can be that the patient may have had a stroke or are otherwise incapable of communicating verbally. Professional caregivers are normally prepared for all exigencies and requirements of the work, but there are certainly times when the work gets overwhelming and tiring.  There are several resources available through government and non-profit organizations that can help caregivers. I list some of the more obvious ones here along with their web links. This Island Health website contains a lot of links to other resources. I don’t feel the need to replicate all of them here. A principal non-profit is the Family Caregivers of British Columbia. It is funded by Island Health, United Way, and the Province of British Columbia. 

December 2, 2022 (12:20 PM)

There is a weather warning posted online by Environment Canada for our region indicating that there might be up to a 15 cm dump of snow today. So far, the snow has been light but it’s picking up now. I’m still expecting to go to the hospital for a CT scan at 5:15 PM, but we’ll see. We haven’t heard from the hospital yet. We’ll see. 

December 3, 2022 (10:00 AM)

Heavy snow out there. It snowed a lot last night. I did go to the hospital for a CT scan. It was snowing hard, but David did a stellar job driving the car, which is great in the snow. The hospital seemed deserted, but that’s an illusion, of course. The wards are full of people behind closed doors, and I’m sure the emerg was busy, but the reception was empty, suitable for bowling.  

December 4th, 2022 (9:22 AM)

So, I wrote on December 1st that it was the coldest day of the year. Well, today is even colder at -6˚C. It matters not to me, not in the slightest. I sit here in my recliner, nice and toasty. I can look out to the beautiful scene outside, but from the comfort of my living room. Works for me. I have good meds and it seems that I’ve been able to figure out how best to take them to minimize pain.

I’m still old and I’m still dying, but at least I have a lot of people supporting me. So many people die alone, violently, and/or in excruciating pain. I’m going to try very hard not to be one of those people. I aim to die peacefully with some good meds to deal with any pain issues I may have. When my ma was dying, the nurses came frequently to give her a shot of morphine. That seems like a good way to go although my mother wouldn’t have been able to tell you one way or another. From her bodily movements I don’t think that she was in a deep state of peace. She was agitated at times. It was almost like watching someone in REM sleep having involuntary limb movements. 

One of the generous neighbours I mentioned above gave me a book to read. Carolyn just finished reading it and found it delightful. Now, I’ll read it. It’s entitled: With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial. It was published in 2018. The author, Kathryn Mannix, is a British palliative care physician. As you can tell from the title, this book is right up my alley. It’s not an academic book, so no references. You won’t be reading any quotes from Ernest Becker* in its pages, but Becker is everywhere in the book as the scholarly backdrop to a book like this. 

I’ll leave this post for now. It’s long enough and I need to get on with reading Mannix so that I can discuss her book in my next post. If you are so inclined and you want to read a little scholarly background material for a book like Mannix’s, check out the first couple of dozen posts in this blog, the ones specifically about Becker and The Denial of Death. 

Bye for now.

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*This is the first in a series of posts on Becker’s and related work. I published it in 2014: https://rogerjgalbert.com/2014/01/28/ernest-becker-1-of-mouths-digestive-tracts-and-anuses/.

Memory Works With A Little Effort

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 9 Comments

I’m not sure if you’ll be able to access this Atlantic article or not, so I’ll just summarize it a bit for you. It’s about memory or remembering and whether you remember events in the past from the first or third person perspective. I would expand the argument to include imagined events in the future.

When you remember a past event, say one that was particularly notable, do you remember it as you initially experienced it, or do you see yourself in it as a character, almost as an actor, in a play?

I’ll die soon. Soon is an indeterminate word, mind you. I’ve already commented in previous posts about the fact that I’ve not done all that well with chemotherapy. It seems that I’m probably a high-risk cancer patient in any case. I’ve been subjected to a number of different chemotherapy protocols. Now, according to the oncologist at the BC Cancer Centre in Victoria in charge of my case, I’m running out of options. At the moment I’m on a two-month trial with a drug called carfilzomib (trade name Kyprolis). So far, I’m entirely underwhelmed by its effectiveness. The next month will tell the tale. I’m not very hopeful given my recent bloodwork and my reactions to the chemo drugs. But, I haven’t completely abandoned hope. I may still get to live a few more months.

Recently I had a bit of a discussion with the family about MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying). It’s not something I need to consider immediately but eventually it will become an option, particularly when the levels of pain and immobility outweigh quality of life issues for me. I see no need to lie in bed in pain awaiting more or less imminent and sure death when there is the option of assisted suicide. I’ve tried to imagine my dying moments. I can do that from the third person perspective, but definitely not from the first person perspective although I know what it feels like to go under general anaesthetic. I imagine MAID as like going under general anaesthesia but never waking up again. I see myself lying on a gurney with a doctor setting up the meds and then injecting me first with morphine or something like that before administering the killer drug. I can imagine that. I can remember in the first person going into the Hospital to have my kidney removed in 2002. Now that I try, I can also see those events in the third person. Strange.

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It’s amazing how many incidents and events I can recall if I put a little effort into it. I have seventy-five years of them to capture. Lots of fodder for remembering. I could write a book, although there is a lot that I would not share with you or anybody, private things.

This post is about me as I age from 1949 or so until now. My life isn’t over yet, but I’m getting close to a complete lifetime. I can track my parents’ lives, at least as far as major events go. My father was born in New Brunswick (1911), my mother in Alberta in 1924. They both died at the Dufferin Lodge in Coquitlam, my father in April, 2007 and my mother in January, 2018. Noting their dates of birth and death means nothing, of course. They are merely life’s parentheses. It’s what transpired between those dates that makes a life. The same goes for me, and you. Photographs tell a bit of the story, but in a static kind of way.

In the first picture, I’m standing there with my sister Denise. She was born in 1943, four years before me, to a mother who subsequently died in 1945 giving birth to what would have been her first son. Denise died on December 13th, 2004 of cancer. I’m not sure where this picture was taken. It looks like it could be in Sapperton, not far from the Royal Columbian Hospital. I would welcome correction on this from anyone in the family. By the time this picture was taken the family lived at 634 Alderson Avenue in Maillardille (Coquitlam).

In this picture I look to be maybe two years old. Denise would have been six. I am endowed with a natural Mohawk hair do. I still have it. I don’t remember anything of what was happening when this picture was taken. I was way too young. The photograph does nothing to jog my memory.

Denise and I always had an interesting relationship. She was pretty tough and I was mouthy. She threw a knife at me at the dinner table when I was probably a pre-teen. She missed, but it was close. That was memorable and I see it in the third person. But during my late, listless, teenage years, after returning from College St-Jean and not knowing up from down, I lived with her and her then husband, Roy, for six months or so, and often looked after the kids (which they had adopted). They had a fairly large home in Vancouver, off of 41st. The basement was made out to look like a TiKi lounge. Strange now, but not so for the times.

I worked with my father at a couple of re-manufacturing plants in Surrey and Langley. But I also worked at a planer mill in Fort Langley. I got drunk on occasion with some of the guys from work. It’s amazing we didn’t kill ourselves on the way home from work. One of the guys drove a convertible and that’s what we came home in most of the time. Mom and Dad had to know but they never said anything.

From the time I left College St-Jean until I enrolled in courses at Douglas College in New Westminster in 1970 or so, I worked at a number of odd jobs, mostly in the lumber or related industries. For a few months I worked at a plywood plant on Braid Street in New Westminster. I remember the smells and sounds of that place the most, but I also remember (in the first person) the work I did, piling pieces of veneer in bins in preparation for pressing them into plywood. The last job I had before going to Douglas College was at a sawmill in Marpole. I worked there for maybe six hours total. I recall being required to ‘clean up the chain’ of massive timbers. I did that for a bit but then I slipped and had one of the timbers fall on me as I fell off the platform. I could barely walk after that so I dragged myself to the first aid shack. Nobody there. So I struggled to my car (an Austin Healey Sprite) and drove myself to the hospital. I had back surgery then. Dr. Hill (I recall his name to this day) removed a disc in my lower back. Worker’s Compensation (now Worksafe BC) paid for everything including my first year of studies at Douglas College. There was never an inquiry as to what happened at the mill and as to why there was nobody in the first aid shack when I went there for help. Workers Compensation just paid for everything, no questions asked.

I find the series of photographs here helpful in some way in jogging my memory. The early ones don’t help at all but the later ones do. The one I posted of me doing my Knowledge Network tele course is still available to me as a video so I can go back and see myself over and over again if I so choose. I have many more photos too, but I’m not going to post all of them here.

All I wanted to do here is give the flavour of my life as I grew up, then grew down. We all have individual experiences of life. I often think of the many thousands of people who have died in conflict over the centuries, their lives often cut short by machetes, as in Rwanda in 1994. I suppose if a long life is a good thing, then I’ve had a good life.

Look at the forehead on that kid!
Me, maybe two years old
Me, five or six

Me in 1959 setting off for College St. Jean
Me at sixteen or so
Me doing television – late 1980s, early 90s.
Me not long ago

Chemo and life

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 3 Comments

July 27th, 2022.

It has been about twenty hours since my second infusion of carfilzomib. I take dexamethasone in conjunction with my infusion and that’s what I’m feeling the effects of predominantly at the moment. I’m dexed out, and I will be for a while yet. What concerns me the most is a repetition of the fever I got last Thursday as a side effect of carfilzomib. That fever at 38.9˚C sent me to Emerg for a long day on Thursday. The irony is that the fever is not caused by an infection, but that’s what the staff in Emerg will focus on. That’s what they know. And, of course, they do have to discount the possibility of an infection so they prescribe high doses of antibiotics. I don’t need antibiotics, but there ya go.

This time around, if I get a fever tomorrow AM (it started at 4 AM last week) I’ll know what to do about it. If my fever stays below 39˚C or so, I’ll stay at home, take a cold shower, use cold compresses and wait for it to pass. Last week the fever lasted maybe a day, and it fluctuated a lot during that time. It was funny in a way, because we went to Emerg for a second time last week on Thursday evening because my temperature had gone up to 38.9˚C. By the time we got there it had dropped to 36.6˚C. Well, that was a bit embarrassing. At that point they took some blood and put me in a room to then ignore me for 4 hours. By midnight we had had enough waiting and just went home. I don’t blame the Emerg staff. They couldn’t do anything in any case. But it would have been good to just send us home even if we hadn’t seen a doctor yet.

In any case, I’m a little apprehensive about the next 24 hours. I really need this chemo regime to work so I need to deal with the side effects and not let them force a stop to the regime. Carfilzomib is one of the last possibilities for me apparently. After that, I’m on my own. That means facing my myeloma without any help from chemotherapy. The consequences of that are well, terminal. We all get there, but I was kinda hoping to see my 80th birthday. That’s not rational, of course, because whether I die today or in 4 years makes little difference. After I’m dead, there won’t be any regrets. So, my hopes and wishes for a longer life are purely emotional.

August 3rd, 2022

So, as of now I’ve completed the first cycle of carfilzomib/dexamethasone treatment. No fevers after the first infusion. That’s great. The thing is I need this protocol to work. I won’t know if it’s working until I get my next blood workup in a couple of weeks. I meet with my local GP oncologist on August 10th, but we won’t have the results of my blood tests by then. We will meet, though, so he can assess how I’m doing. Blood work is only one factor in making decisions about treatment, but it’s an important one.

As usual, I’m dexed out after my last infusion of carfilzomib and 12 milligrams of dexamethasone taken orally. The next forty-eight hours will tell the tale regarding other side effects. I’m feeling alright given the circumstances. Strangely enough I have more energy when I’m dexed out, at least until it wears off and at that point I need to lie down and maybe get a little sleep.

I’m currently reading a book by Tom Robbins entitled Jitterbug Perfume. It hit the New York Times Bestsellers List in 1985. I read most of Robbins’ books back then along with books by John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut. Ostensibly about coming up with the definitive perfume, the book is all about the fear of death, immortality and dying. I can’t seem to get away from reading (and writing) about death and dying. That’s not surprising, really, given my time of life. Strangely, I feel I need to apologize for being so focussed on death and dying. After all, death, according to Ernest Becker, is one of the twin pillars of evil in our world, the other pillar being disease. It seems I’m immersed in the twin pillars of evil. So be it. It’s my life right now. Chemo is my life too at the moment. It’s a tough row to hoe sometimes because the end is nigh. But, it seems that we need to always focus on the bright side of life. Talk of death and dying are not welcome in a world that vociferously denies death and dying.

I know too many people right now with cancer, some with cancers much more aggressive than mine. Some want to talk about it, some don’t. Some have died recently, some are still dealing with their disease. Whatever type of cancer we have, we all face the same end. The ‘authorities’ claim that my cancer, multiple myeloma, is incurable, but treatable. Fair enough. However, the treatment can be quite harsh and whether or not it’s worth it is a question we still need to confront. That’s the case for all types of cancer.

As the song says, it’s summer time…and the living is easy. Yeah, right. For all you joung’uns with not a care in the world, you need to take this maxim and run with it. I’m not in a position to run anywhere. That’s fine. We’re all at different stages of life. Have a great summer.

Evolutionary Theory vs. Structural-Functionalism.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

[Don’t be too put off by the title of this post. It looks highfalutin. It may be, but the text isn’t.]

It’s a truism to say that our lives are finite and that we go through stages of development and change. But, it seems, sometimes we need to be reminded of obvious but possibly unwelcome realities. I’m sure we all understand that we follow a path of change starting at birth and ending at death. In between we move from infancy to childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood, and then to old age. Of course, not all of us get to go through every stage. For some of us, the stages get cut off and we die young or accidentally. We may contract a disease at any age that proves fatal. Governments document all of these things with vital statistics and publish all kinds of data on birth rates, types of mortality, morbidity*, et cetera. British Columbia offers a lot of this information online. Statistics Canada also gets into the act and publishes a lot of health related statistics. It’s not an exaggeration to note that we are obsessed with our health and wellness. How much of the internet is dedicated to health related websites? The woo flows freely and the sales of every magic potion, miracle diet, and supplement imaginable are on offer. And there is overwhelming evidence that at every turn we find ways to deny death. As I’ve often noted, one of Ernest Becker’s most salient observations is that the twin pillars of evil in our world are death and disease.

Our entire medical system is set up to discover and ‘fix’ any human organism that doesn’t conform to what we consider normal for any stage of development. It is often unsuccessful in that endeavour, but it doesn’t like to discuss its failures.

Pathology as I use it here describes a condition of abnormality (non-normality), a structural and functional situation wherein things have gone wrong in an organism. The underlying assumption of pathology is that organisms all have a normal condition, and if things cease to work as they are supposed to according to medical science, then they are considered pathological, or at least the cause of their malfunction is searched out and an attempt is made to restore the organism to normality. Medicine, and in fact, our whole culture, decided a long time ago what normal humans should look like and how they should behave. Yes, we all live and die, but pathology isn’t really interested in those realities. A pathological perspective is only interested in bringing a diseased organism back to normality.

Science and medicine have analyzed and dissected the human body in great detail especially over the past five hundred years. Leonardo da Vinci, born in 1452 was adept at dissection, and he led the way for countless others who carried on the tradition. Later, biologists analyzed the human body from many perspectives, broadly using anatomy and physiology as major categories, but focusing on systems (cardio-vascular, endocrine, etc.), organs, cells, and their functioning. I’m no biologist so I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of the investigation of human biological life. However, it’s clear that our organs (heart, liver, kidneys, et cetera) are of great interest to medicine, particularly if and when they cease to function the way they are supposed to.

As a quick aside, a major sociological school used (and still uses) what Emile Durkheim calls the organismic analogy. He suggests that society is much like the human body. He argues in his dissertation Rules of Sociological Method that there is no organic equivalence between human organs and social systems, but broadly, they share the same epistemological underpinnings. Human organs work in concert for the good and survival of the whole. That’s easy enough to understand. He then argues that human social systems, politics, family, economy, education, et cetera, must work in concert for the good of the whole society. Social pathology occurs when any one or other of the social systems that make up society fail to fulfill their function. The result is that the whole society is ‘sick’ or malfunctions. The problem with this perspective is that it’s not especially easy to find ‘a society’. From my point of view, societies are not be confused with countries or nation-states. They are not necessarily equivalent.

It’s easier to identify an individual human being than a society, or so it seems, until we ask the question: Is an individual human being a stand-alone organism? My answer is no. I could not and would not exist without air, food, water, et cetera. These elements are not necessarily a part of me, but they are essential for my life so excluding them from an analysis of what I am as a human is highly misleading. It suggests that we are somehow separate from the world that surrounds and sustains us. This is a foundational part of the individualism that characterizes our capitalistic world and it’s wrong.

So, broadly, we are captured by a world view that focusses on the structure and function of our organs in a biological sense and our social structures in a societal sense. This is why people often argue that what’s ‘wrong’ with our society is that the family isn’t doing its job, the economy is failing us, education is behind the times, and other simplistic criticisms. Figuring out how to fix it is another thing entirely.

In terms of the human body, if medicine finds that the heart is weak or not working properly, it tries to ‘fix’ it, that is to restore it to its presumed former state. It may conclude that a weak heart will have deleterious effects on the kidneys, and it may even find that a weak heart will threaten the organism as a whole. In contrast, an evolutionary perspective expects the heart to weaken as it ages. It expects that lungs will lose their ability to process oxygen. It expects that over time, muscles weaken, no matter what you do to counteract it. It expects death because death is built right into the model, unlike functionalism whereby death is left unconsidered or considered a clinical failure.

It’s true that an evolutionary perspective has made substantial inroads in science and even in medicine. It hasn’t in sociology, although it’s coming along**.

An evolutionary perspective follows the logic I present in my recent post: LIFE vs My Little Life. From this perspective, birth and death are normal human events. Death, especially, is not considered a defeat, it being an essential part of life. No death, no life. It’s as simple as that. That doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it. Just the amount of effort the human species has spent on denying death, on convincing itself that death is not the end of life, is testament to how unhappy we are with death and dying.

I don’t want to die, but I don’t have a say in the matter either.

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*morbidity refers to the incidence of ill-health in a population.

**see my (slightly outdated) dissertation on the topic published on this blog.

#78 LIFE vs My Little Life

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 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.

Social Media Have Us Just Where They Want Us.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 12 Comments

April 29th, 2022

It’s still hovering around freezing in the mornings, but temperatures rise by early afternoon to hover around the 10 to 15˚C range. I usually get up around 7:30. By then the birds are well into their daily routine. The robins are pulling up moss to get at juicy grubs and worms. It’s great to see so many golden crowned sparrows and hummingbirds in the yard competing for access to the feeders. My recliner is in a position in the living room where I have a great view of bird activity in the front yard. 

Years ago, Carolyn and I would get up, get ready for work, have breakfast and listen to the CBC morning program. Now we open our computers or other devices and immerse ourselves in the problems of the day as expressed by MSNBC, CBC News, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, et cetera. Do this every morning and the only result will be a profound depression. I’m not suggesting that we should not check out internet news sources, but it’s imperative to keep their offerings in the right perspective. After all, they are all in the business of making money and that one characteristic of their existence should give up plenty of pause. Same goes for Facebook and its offspring Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. 

This morning in my Pocket email (check it out) I got notice of an article in The Atlantic, a liberal magazine I’ve been reading on and off for many years. The article is called WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID: It’s not just a phase.* The author is Jonathan Haidt.The (very long) article does a great job of dissecting the way social media have driven us into a number of hard social positions that make it increasingly difficult to engage with people we would not normally have anything to do with. I posted this paragraph from the article on Facebook: 

“Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that. But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”

Then I wrote: 

“Yes, indeed. But I’m not sure I would hang out with a lot of people in any case, ones who still have Canadian flags on their pickups and shout ‘Freedom’ at us at every turn.”

I was being slightly provocative, wondering if the article was going to be right. It was, in spades. On my computer, there was no further comment from Facebook, but on my phone I get several follow up suggestions: Totally agree!!! You got that right!!! I know right!! And Most definitely. 

These ‘suggestions’ for follow up comments make it easy to agree with me with very little effort. This, according to the article fosters a sense of us versus them, hardening social positions and creating even more division than already exists in our lives. Facebook could easily have provided comment suggestions like: Are you sure?!!! Is this what you really think?!! Maybe we should do a bit more investigating!!! Or something along those lines. 

It’s obvious that Facebook’s design is conducive to producing, over the past ten years, a decline in social consensus and civility. It seems we are having a more difficult time than every just being civil to each other…on the roads, in the grocery stores, and online. I’m picking on Facebook, but other platforms are just as guilty as Facebook of undermining our sense of democracy and encouraging an increasing acceptance of autocracy and oligarchy. 

Haidt argues that there is no malice in what social media are doing except that they are following the drive for profit. The article argues that: “ Shortly after its “Like” button began to produce data about what best ‘engaged’ its users, Facebook developed algorithms to bring each user the content most likely to generate a ‘like’ or some other interaction, eventually including the ‘share’ as well. Later research showed that posts that trigger emotions––especially anger at out-groups––are the most likely to be shared.” And the more shares, the more money for Facebook. 

I think it’s time we got a lot more savvy about how easily we can be manipulated into producing exactly the kinds of inputs on Facebook that make people increasingly impatient, angry and intolerant, precisely those kinds of emotions that create an environment where money can be most easily accumulated for Facebook itself. 

I strongly recommend the Haidt article. You can read it on The Atlantic website. I think you can read up to five articles before having to pay…but don’t quote me on that. If Haidt is right we’re in for a rough ride over the next few years. 

Before wrapping up this post, I do want to tell you that in the proper spirit of sociological research I’ve been watching several YouTube channels of people doing things like boat building, auto repair and restoration, industrial mechanics, woodworking, and that sort of thing. I suspect given the many clues they give me that they are most likely Trump supporters or the equivalent. Yet none of them talk politics, at least not directly, and they all offer interesting content that is unrelated to politics. My point is that people are multidimensional. We need to remind ourselves all the time that there is always a point of potential contact between people if we look for it. Still, I worry about Haidt’s findings. I reckon that he’s probably correct and that saddens me no end. 

* (Illustrations by Nicolás Ortega.)