Carpe Diem

It looks like the beginning of a hard winter.

J has just commenced her first round of chemotherapy for her stage IV metastatic breast cancer. The side effects (fever, aching and loss of appetite) have already devastated her energy and, to a lesser extent, her spirit, and this is only the first day after the first treatment.

J lost her mother to the same disease at the relatively young age of 55. Her mother suffered through chemo, but unsuccessfully. She refused a second round, as I understand the story, and it is not difficult to see why.

One of the difficult transitions J has been facing is that of letting go of her expectations for life. We all, whether we acknowledge it or not, live a good portion of our lives in anticipation. And another big chunk is devoted to the past, whether rose-colored or not. Cancer of any type, however, or indeed any other life-altering disease, forces a change of perspective.

How one feels right now becomes the focus when pain is so omnipresent. One of the handout booklets from the oncology center cites cancer as somehow improving one's ability to live in the present, because to live in any other expectation is a waste of time and precious energy. I can vouch for this as a computer instructor in a public library. Most of the seniors I teach are very much focused on the present. They want to learn enough to be independent of all those people who are mostly younger than they are, because the young are impatient: they are future-focused.

As we progress towards our second babyhood, we once again become dependent on and appreciative of those around us who are our caregivers. As we grow dependent after a life of independence, we grieve our loss of control, our limitations. But each new day is ours, even if only in some small, inner way that is not necessarily obvious to those who care for us and about us.

And so it is with the will to live one day at a time that one "beats" cancer, even if it eventually wins.

My thumb is opposed to old saws

On September 14th, 2008, in the remnant of Hurricane Ike with peak gusts of 82 miles per hour in the Cincinnati area of Ohio, two large branches of our neighbor's 50-year-old sycamore came crashing down. The smaller one (about 5-8 inches in diameter) landed across the old wire fence, and the much larger one came down in their yard.

I took my pitiful electric chain saw next door once the weather cleared. Cutting and piling for a couple of hours, I managed to arrange a respectable pile of logs for their newly-built firepit. Then, I moved back to our side of what used to be the fence, and began cutting and limbing the remaining branches.

I got into a kind of rhythm at the job: pulling a branch over the wheelbarrow, lopping off a stove-length chunk, pulling the branch further, lopping off another length. The problem is, when you get into a rhythm with a chainsaw, even a pathetic, underpowered electric one, you become accident-prone.

In this case, I lopped off a limb and stopped the saw. The branch fell and the blade kicked up against the thumb of the left hand which was holding the main part of the branch. Electric saws don't stop instantly the way their bigger cousins do. So the slight remaining momentum of the chain caught the glove on my left thumb and shredded the heavy cotton.

Instantly I noticed a rather generous bloodstain welling up in the glove. When I tore it off, it appeared that a tooth on the chain had caught my thumbnail with sufficient impact to cut a triangular piece nearly out of it. It had lifted up, but was still attached. I immediately ran for the house, to get a band-aid, if not a tourniquet.

J met me and helped wash the wound. Knowing my sensitive nature, she prepared a drink of juice, all the while attempting to persuade me that I needed the services of the local emergency room. I demurred, because I felt that getting blood on the car upholstery would only hasten its rate of depreciation.

In time, the healing began. As at this writing, I still wear a band-aid over the area, simply because the nail has grown out to the point where the slightest catch, such as putting on a glove, results in a sharp reminder that all is not yet whole.

Some things I reflect on from this experience:

1) The body aggressively tries to heal whatever hurts it. And in most cases, it succeeds, although not without leaving some evidence of the struggle to survive, perhaps as an object lesson, or at the least, a warning.
2) As a rule of thumb, the price paid for inattention is one of the highest we can pay.
3) The inattentive are protected only by their good luck. One should not rely on this, but when it happens one must be grateful.
4) You can do something a thousand times, but the thousand and first may be the one that gets you.
5) Bleeding is a sign that something is probably wrong.
6) The empathy of a loving person is a powerful force for healing.

GPS: for the GyPSy in you

It wasn't the fascination with gadgetry that inspired me to buy a GPS receiver  this week. It was partly that I was itching to spend money on something to mark my 67th birthday coming up. It was even more due to my fear of getting lost, as we have many times when driving around Ohio. 

Some cities, like Cincinnati, are impenetrable via ordinary road maps. Even Google maps present difficulty when driving: you have a printout on the seat beside you (or on the lap of the seatmate beside you), and you give it your best shot, trying to squint at directions in a timely manner while blasting down a major highway, or through streets that you've never seen before.

The GPS, on the other hand, talks you through the entire hassle. Signals from four Global Positioning Satellites are constantly providing quadrangulation, so that the little car icon on the well-lit screen moves calmly down magenta avenues, and the voice of your choice warns you that you'll need to turn in a few moments. If you miss a turn, or take one that you like better, she says, "Recalibrating", and after a few seconds, directs you to the next possible route back to your original path.  And these are just the features we've tried so far.

However, there's a learning curve.

I had read the manual, and poked in the address of a Hallowe'en hafla that would be our destination for the evening. In passing, I would note that Google's directions always begin with an instruction to "turn north on ..... Street". This is a horrible way to commence a trip for someone other than a flock of birds, who, it is said, navigate by the position of the sun. By contrast, this GPS tells you which way to turn, and shows you the compass setting as well. Then, I handed the unit over to J.

I have blogged elsewhere about my spouse's ability to control the most complex of home electronics without reading the manual. She does it by experimentation. Hence, when it was time to go, she had seen everything worth seeing on the little box.

We started out fine, although Jill got a workout as we followed our normal route to the Interstate, rather than giving in to her insistence to take a more constricted one. She had probably been asked to give the shortest route, rather than the fastest, which, in traffic terms, can make a huge difference. 

As daylight disappeared, we found ourselves moving into a suburban area of 25 mph streets. When Jill announced that we had reached our destination, it was a dark urban wooded park. We turned into the parking area, and stopped to to reconnoitre. Shortly, a white Park Patrol car pulled up and we rolled down our windows.

"Do you need some help", queried the officer.

"Sure do", I explained. "We have this new GPS, and we're trying to get to ...."

"Oh, well, you'll figure it out", she said.

"I sure hope so", I replied.

"Just turn right at ......... and left at ........... and you'll be back on ........."

(I use dots here because whenever someone gives me directions, I retain them in my head for about 10 seconds, 15 on a good day.)

"Thanks for the help", I said.

"No problem: have a good evening."

I reprogrammed the destination, and ultimately, in spite of a detour around a bridge maintenance site, we arrived, safely, a mere 45 minutes late.

So the mystery remained. How did the destination get changed from the original to another one that bore little relation to reality? We may never know, but perhaps this time the "poke around until you find out" learning style of the partner may have manifested Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. 

The best points:

1. With Jill announcing everything in her accurate-to-20-foot self-assured manner, the coefficient of profanity is approaching zero. 
2. Gone is the nagging at the navigator (disagreements are now directed at a 3-by-5 inch screen). 
3. Directions are always given in a timely and complete fashion, such as by telling the driver what the next turn will be at least a block or two ahead of the need to make it, taking into account the actual speed of the vehicle. 
4. The presence of an accurate compass heading is reassuring. 
5. For the navigationally-challenged, saving a home location means that, like a prairie horse in a blizzard, you will always be able to find your way back.