Weary

Dayroom laptop too hard to use (Chinese interface}. Upgrading this week to iPad with help from my consigliere, empowered by excellent new habits of thrift. Should be back up in full soon.

Daily workouts as always.

30 Oct 2013: Soft smack of ball

Dragged ass when Man-zuo (Uncle Man) woke  me yesterday for physio: planning 20 min physio today, 100 lowrise steps if possible first thing tomorrow.

24 Oct 2013

Out of four-day semi-coma.original stlln daze but hanging in there twice, 10 minute work out includes 100 step aerobics. Don’t have that abioity to be breeziy mispleed. As you can see that’s  bullsjit.

20 Oct 2013: Stayin’ Alive

Fell into a semi-coma for a day or so, backup, “stayin’ alive” in the ruins. Will try to resume the daily workout today with ten min on the stairs today, back to morning workouts tomorrow. These seances  due, perhaps, to simple exhaustion.

Awoke to pain following the usual Sciatic Highway but it is under control, as far as it shall be.

The extraordinarily clumsy input method, where 10% of characters entered have me throwing my arm across my torso to reach an alternative, is like trying to hack one’s way thru the swamp like Indiana Jones.

When in 1983 old Peter (junglee Peter!) discovered that he could swing from my arm he did so as if he was Indiana Jones!!!, yelling the eponymous yell as Peter (junglee Peter!) did so.

It’s official, and rather discouraging. Some possible internal fracturing may have been found as the cancer spreads. Studying how this works since more and more is learned and staging changes. Ignoring “life expectancy” estimates since these are so unscientific and I have done  what viatical things have needed to be done. 

Boots on the table with this thing, pain, since Dr. wants me not to disturb the others In this more communal society. TM (transcendental meditation) works. Even for a neophyte like me it works. But, of course, with medication.

But wait, more than a year with time for friends, money just enough, just enough, for the city? Things as always swell.

More later.

“What a Gift, a Window”

What a gift, a window.
Giving on to something unwilled
But magnificent in its own way,
Promising the more in its own way as the Flight to Egypt shows
Mary, with modest downcast eyes, led by
Joe.

Edward G. Nilges: Copyright 20 Oct 2013: Moral rights asserted

16 Oct 2013

Similar day to Tue Oct 15: painful, 20 minutes: 100 midrise steps, walking, 150 supine warmup w/w-o weights. Moderate pain.

Had to go to Queen Mary later for bone scan : more later. Weariness. I will post more extensively tomorrow.

The glorious-furious drive up the North Shore is memory key. Getting Eddie’s favorite foods, for he was Daddy’s Favorite well as well.

Death-tired, listening to Brahms.

15 Oct 2013

20 minutes: 100 midrise steps, walking, 150 supine warmup w/w-o weights. Moderate pain.

14 Oct 2013

First-thing 20 minute workout: 100 lowrise steps, 250 supine movements included some with weights.

Study of Johansen’s Ancient Philosophy moves apace and with profit into Roman philosophy which might well be summarized as Philosophy for Badasses with its emphasis on the backup role of women and the need for loyalty.

A day like a weekend for it’s a public holiday, this may have caused my “weekender” pain (10/10+) to explode earlier today altho now, with painkillahs at savage levels while earlier, “God’s vassals dropped and died” whilst the Sciatica river ran red with blood I prayed for and got surcease.

13 Oct 2013: An Opportunity to Teach

Last week, Dr. Cheung asked me to address three medical students/HKU undergraduates from my hospital bed concerning my cancer journey. HKU’s medical school is on the British model so there is no pre-med; undergrads are on a speeded-up track.

I had no time to prepare a formal outline but did a reasonable job all the same of coverage. I described my feelings of being very fit and healthy person and how they may have contrasted with a smoking habit that lasted until 2000 and a Nicorette/nicotine addiction that held on until 2012. I described managing the terror of the diagnosis result day fairly well through a spiritual practise.

I said that perhaps palliative care sounded less terrifying than it does to many because I had entered the cancer journey at a mostly palliative stage (IV/D1). I also described how highly addictive prescription drugs such as Fentanyl hold for me at this time little attraction since I’d always preferred booze. I do admit their usefulness as pain suppressants as the essence of civilisation which doesn’t allow even the Stranger to writhe in agony in the park (and doesn’t by default code him/her as an addict as a part of its lack of compassion).

It should be noted, however, that I didn’t make the last point in the above passage in my talk.

I thought of  the late Edward Said who lectured on English topics while being hospitalised for leukemia. These activities are very important for me at this time.

13 Oct 2013

First-thing workout at 6:04: 20 minutes included 150 supine movements with weights, walking, 100 midrise steps (steps in stairwell, not lowrise steps in ward), and 50 slow dancing with walking stick (the old soft shoe: acceptable pain accompanied this return to the OSS.)

Notes on  a Pain Episode

For unknown reason, on the last few weekends, especially Sundays, I have had intense bouts of direct and referred pain; I think it was last Sunday when I first crossed “the screaming barrier”, bothering the other patients.

However, today I was able to endure 10/10+ pain in my butt and was able to practise Acceptance instead of “exclaiming”:  for as Lovel admonishes Hastings i’th’old play (Richard III), “Come, come, dispatch; ’tis bootless to exclaim.”

Notes on the Incomprehensible War

Some heroes included Sgt. “Breathless”. The Kid said, gee, Sarge, it hurts to breathe”. Sgt. Breathless. eyes scanning the dark, said, “so don’t breathe.” So the Kid figured that that meant finding a way to breathe at  a low level, more through his skin almost. So the Kid did this, and survived.

There was also Sgt. Rock who kept firing with his ass shot off. When the position, still held by his men and a dead Sgt. Rock, was relieved, the commander of the relief troops collected his leather belt bitten clean thru because the Sarge was busy killing Cheeseballs whilst in pain. This gruesome artifact hangs today in the Incomprehensible Museum.

12 Oct 2013

20 minutes first thing (5:30 AM): 100 midrise steps in stairwell, walking. Went back to sleep, woke up realising that this is the real deal. Barring a miracle my lifespan may be measured in months, there will be much pain, and I have moved too far away to make it possible for most of my family, with kids and responsibilities of their own, to come see me.

I need to face this steadily. I hope to prolong my life since as my father was, I am “pro-life” in the good sense. I believe in women’s right to choose while I believe Dad was mostly opposed to abortion, but like my Dad I do believe that old people should be allowed to prolong their lives however they can, and like him, I believe that assisted suicide is evil.

It’s wrong in my view to loudly assault women’s rights to autonomy (“if men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament”) while throwing white men on the scrap heap in their fifties and blacks in their thirties or much earlier in the case of incarceration rates at insane levels.

I closely identify with my gay friends who have AIDS or are HIV positive:the frustration of their desire to stay alive and flourish. I mean, just when you think you’ve cut yourself a SLICE, the worm turns, you get some crazy spots or sweats and the Doctor says “the news is not good”.  Just when you think you’ve got it all, the big fat quivering SLICE, it’s all gone, the Enlightenment reversed and you find yourself, either in AIDS or what I have, you’re in the Seventeenth Century, a darkling plain of threats and fears.

To be “pro-life” in this sense is to be  pro your own life.