Well, shit

My doctor recently called to tell me he had an astrocytoma, but it was bilateral and was involving his corpus callous,.  His balance was shot, so falling was a constant worry.

He was doing okay, but I reckon his reduced mobility led to the development of clots, one of which found its way to his lung, and a couple mornings ago, he died.  He was really an exceptional physician, and I'll miss him a lot.  He was patient, kind, comprehensive.  When I was diagnosed with my cancer, he spent a lot of time in the evening schooling himself on gliomas and following my case.

I was very flattered he called to talk to me about it, and I got to visit him several times before he died.  I think he had become more my friend who happened also to be my doctor than the reverse.  He was a bit of a renaissance man: interested in art and philosophy as well as medicine.  He was well-known around the community.

He was one of 3 physicians I've known (and I've known more than a few) who made me feel that he was treating me, not just my illness.  He would sit and chat and ask me about pretty much everything going on with me.  I got to meet his wife, a perfectly wonderful woman, and I can't stop thinking about her and what she must be feeling.  I'll call her tomorrow and see how she's getting on.  They had a fairly large group of friends, so I can know that at least she won't be alone any more than usual, for the most part.

But it's so damned odd, and sad, that my doc would come down the the same sort of rare cancer that I had, and remarkably touching that he reached out to me for support.  I hope I gave him some.  He called me his "hero" because the cancer didn't get me.  And in the end, it only got him indirectly.

It's a great loss, personally as well as collectively and professionally.

Well, hell.

so now, it's over 3 years, and so far, still no cancer.  I'm alive twice as long as they forecast (or endcast?), and it's strange.

I'm technically "cured," but 30 months of chemotherapy isn't nothing.  It changes you.  My energy level is crazy, sometimes okay, sometimes I can hardly get up stairs.  If I go out with friends to a noisy restauarant, it's physically taxing -- the next day I'm likely to run a big energy debt, a hangover from noise and trying to talk loudly.

Other thing is memory.  Short-term memory is shot (I have to write everything down), and I have some lacunae for things is knew long ago.  It's weird.

Biggest pain in the ass is that I spend most of my time looking for things.  That gets tiresome.  Seems like every time I go to get something from one room, I get distracted and forget why.  Then when I go back to where I came from, I recall what I went after the first time.  Sometimes it seems that I have to do everything twice, and that turns out to be especially frustrating for the spouse.  She has been such a rock, I really hate to put her through more crap.

So, on the one hand, I'm doing far better than I've a right to.

But if you know a cancer survivor, don't expect him or her to be the same person that he or she was before the cancer.  The treatments leave lasting effects.  One person I read said chemo-brain is like wearing a hat of fog.  I'm trying to resurrect some of what I learned when studying philosophy, and man, is it tough to remember things.  But I keep trying!

A year.

well, I'm officially Cancer-free after a year.

On the one hand, this is pretty astonishing, and I really like not having Cancer.  I still have some memory issues, but in the main, I'm my same old fucked-up self.

But I'm a little more scared than usual.  13 months is about what folks with astrocytoma get.  I've had 12.  That gives me pause and makes me want to spend a little more time thinking about how I want this to go down.

From what I've read, the end of this is pretty ugly.  Not sure I want to wade through it, and I'm damned sure I don't want Erin dragged through it.

I can likely get home hospice (if I hang on another year I'm eligible for Medicare, and they do hospice).  But still. It means diapers and IVs for nutrition, and just generally not being me.

I don't want that.  When I'm no longer me--when I can't converse, when I can't make morbid jokes about death--I'm not sure I'd rather not just go to sleep and discover if there's something on the other side of this life.

I'll be horribly sad to leave Erin.  I'll be horribly sad to leave my family, friends and colleagues -- as much a shit as I am, there are people out there who will be sad when I die.

But. I'm going to die.  Maybe not too soon, but sooner than I'd like.

I want to go paris again. I want to go on long bike rides on lonely gravel roads amid cornfields and cows. ("Hello, ladies!" I always say to them.)

I want to teach another class or two.  If my life has had any enduring meaning, it is through my students. They amaze me, frustrate me, but mostly they humble me with their hard work, their concern and affection, and their trust in me.

I mean that and feel it profoundly: I am humbled by my students.  They have been the most amazing groups of young adults, ever.  So they will be what remains of me when I go.

I couldn't ask for a better legacy.  Some hate me, but lots of them are glad I had a chance to teach them some stuff.

What I hope I taught them, more than anything, is a respect and love of learning.

That's something you can carry all your life: curiosity.  I hope they do. And I hope that they also have the tools to know how to answer the questions that they will encounter.

Teaching is the coolest job there is.  Grading papers gets old, especially when it dawns on you that you've be correcting the same errors for 25 years.  But you get to leave something enduring.

And I tell you: the reaction of my students to my illness has been nothing short of flabbergasting.  (is that a word?)  I have been completely blown away by their concern, their generosity, their care.

I always had a sense that i got close to my students, that they knew I cared about them beyond what happened in the classroom.  But this has -- far beyond my wildest imagination -- showed me how much I have mattered in their lives.

I'm sad I only got to work with them for a few years.  I wish it could have been a decade or more.  They are amazing.  You ask them to try, they try.  You give them something that will stretch them, and they reach for it and get it.

I'm amazed.

So, I can die knowing there will be a little piece of me living on -- if my students have students, I trust they will know what my students knew.  I have some former students who are now "Dr."  I couldn't be more proud.

Wow.  This is ramble and unfocused.  But then, so am I!

So, I think I figured something out.

Most of this week and last I have been sad, which is a big contrast from the past.  I've been trying to understand why.

I think I know: I have more or less suddenly realized that my life has gone from one of optimism and wild future opportunities to one with a deadline, and those opportunities are gone.

Sobering to realize that you have far more past than future.

I still have some time, I think, given that my cancer has not recurred in over 7 months, but still -- I'm 57 going on 58, and there are relatively few opportunities for one nearing 60.  I figure I can still pick up the occasional class without jeopardizing my disability benefits, and that will allow me a chance to make some difference in the world, still, before I go.

And every class you teach, no matter how many times you've done that material, is an adventure.

Young people are amazing.  Though I have no kids of my own, I feel as though hundreds -- even thousands -- of parents have lent me their children for a few years, and without seeming vain, I think I have made a mark on many of them.  In a good way.  Fundamentally I think I'm a good person, and being the clasroom with me several times a week for years willl probably have a good influence.

And I so adore them.They keep me young, keep me thinking forward, keep me thinking of the future and not only the past.

So I do believe I will need to get in the classroom from time to time, just to stay alive and fresh an optimistic.  As long as I can do a good job (and fear of not being able to do a good job was the reason I opted to retire), I'd like to keep doing it.

But for now, I should go to bed.  Tomorrow is lawn chores, and i'll need all the energy I can muster.

Ciao!

Well, hell: the melancholies.

So, the last few days I have been feeling melancholy, and today I figured out what it is.  I have been thinking a lot about when I was young, and thinking about that for some reason really makes me feel sad.  Not sure what it is.  I am sort of stuck thinking of my 15-year-old self, and wow does it make me sad to think about that kid.  The idea of dying sooner rather than later seems sadder when I think of that kid.

I don't know if it's the idea that whatever opportunity that lost is really, honestly, now going to be gone.  I don't know if it's regret over things I didn't do (although I don't feel regret for things that I did, in the main). Some of it,  I think, is realizing that there are people that I miss from that time that I am never going to see again, and some of them were pretty important to me -- and I guess, in some ways, still are.  I wish I could find some of them before it's all over, but don't know how.

It's a pretty profound ache, and I do not like it.  Maybe when you go along living your life you never stop to think about the people that you will never see again -- it always seems there's a chance you will.  But not now.  :/

I'm sure some of this is also coming from the fact that I haven't been feeling very well for a couple of weeks.  I go visit the doc in a week or so, so that will be good.

Tomorrow is my big sister's birthday.  She has some right frontal lobe damage from a tumor resection back in 1987.  I hope I can get down to see some family this summer.

Anyway, I should try to sleep.

And another thing....

Not only do i worry about the loss of income, but this loss is coming on top of several thousand bucks in out-of-pocket medical bills.

Pooh.

Most of the places have been good about letting us pay a little at a time, but when you add them all up, its still quite a bit of loot to pay out every month.

Sigh.  Wish we could have gotten a single-payer system. (And so does my doctor...)

To Disability or not to disability.... that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler -- or something like that. (And obtw, Shakespeare was beyond brilliant.)

So, we are working on the decision about whether I should go on permanent disability.

I worry about two things. One is financial: it will mean a fairly massive cut in income, and thus a pretty substantial change in our lives. Things that we had planned -- or hoped -- to do, especially travel, are going to have to  get dropped.  And thereare other, smaller lifestyle changes that we will have to accomodate.  I find a lot of that scary.  For the past few years i have had the luxury of -- for the first time in my adult life -- not having to fret about money.  We haven't lived extravagantly, by any means.  But neither have we had to worry. Now, i think that worry will come back.

The second thing is whether or not I can develop enough discipline to do some substantive writing.  I've never been a good self-starter, and unless (or until) I can find a project that really energizes me, I'm not sure how well I'll do if left to my own devices.  I have some writing projects I want to work on, and I really want to continue with the ITM stuff and spend more time with those people (which would be something that would get me out of the house and make sure that I'm taking care of myself and not just sitting at home wanting to drink or something like that).

So, the quandary: do I go on disability, lose my identity as a teacher, and become something else?  I've certainly known lots of people who cobble together lives out of this and that, and don't have a career per se, but just do enough to get by.

Part of me likes the thought of that: just doing what we need to do to get by.  We don't need to be extravagant; we don't need a housekeeper.  I can probably cut wood with a friend and by helping him, get wood for free.  If I am home and can keep a fire going in the stove all day, we don't really use much propane or electricity at all for heat.  The summer will be interesting because I hate being too hot and sticky.  But I can adjust.  And hell, I may be in a bad way come summertime -- which means I will like the heat and not want to be cold.

So, lots to think about.  Being not poor, but at the same time, being forced to think about consumption a little more than we have in a few years.  Reduce our carbon footprint.  Live a little more simply.  Not buy so many toys.  I have lots of toys.

I can also try to pick up a class.  I can talk to the disability insurance people about how much I am allowed to earn without losing my benefits.  I really don't think I can go back and do my old job well, but that's not to say that I can't do something.  The real thing I don't want to do is grade papers.

My doc said that when poeple get this diagnosis, they can often have a choice about whether they want to spend their remaining time doing things they want, or things that they don't want to do.

There's something compassionate about how the SS administration treats people who are going on disability and have a terminal diagnosis: it is almost as though they have decided that they should not force people to continue to do work that they may not like or may not and so they give you a few years of doing what it is that you want -- or not doing what you do not want.

For me, I love to teach.  I love to talk about brains and how they work, I love to challenge kids to think about what makes people do what they do and not let the students rely on intuition or "common sense" (which is, it must be said, not all that common).  I love to teach about how science works and why we use it as a guide to what works and what doesn't work.

But man, if I could do all of the above and never grade another paper, I would be happy -- as my dad would say -- as a pig in shit.  Grading is pure drugery.  Working with students to make their writing better, or make their research better, is awesome, and I would love to keep doing that -- unforch, that usually comes along with grading papers.  Ack.

I could probably modify my classes so that I don't spend so much time grading and instead conference with students, talk to them about how to make their work better, and let them do the hard work of editing and revising.

I have done a lot of that in the last few years: I leave them alone to work either singly or in small groups, then meet with them and give them verbal feedback about how they're doing and what they've done.  They seem to be learning.  And I love it when they learn.

That's something that really turns my crank: watching kids get it.  There's nothing like seeing a kid in a classroom light up because all of a sudden they understand something they've not gotten, but have been trying to get.  And POW, when they get it, it's like the whole world changed.  I love that.

The sad part is that in my regular classes, as soon as they get one thing, I give them something new, and it's like the POW but from the other direction.

But by the end of my class, I have a group of the most methodologically sophisticated undergraduates there are.  I'm proud of that.

But we need to have something for students who don't want to go to grad school.  Right now we do grad-school-prep.  We do it exceedingly well.  But not all students want to do grad school.

So how do we acommodate both, the grad-school-bound, and those who just happen to like psych?  I have considered two tracks, but (without in any way taking anything from our students), I know that almost all would opt for the easier track, and then expect to get into a grad program (because that's what you have to do if you want to use psych, esp as a therapist or counselor -- which pretty much they all do.

(I thought I did, too, but they decided that talking to depressed people only made me depressed, also...  So I became an experimental psychologist and started doing research on brains that are not distressed.)

Okay, I'm going to stop this now because I had to take a pain pill earlier and have no idea if this is making any sense at all.  (I have had some pretty bad headaches lately, and that worries me....  Damn cancer.  Bastard.)

So, more anon!