2010 September | jlake.com

[cancer] The living dream of water

Had a random memory jump out at me today.

Surgical sedation and the post-op meds tend to induce a pretty thorough retrograde amnesia. I am certain this is a Very Good Thing. But every now and then something bobs to the surface. I remember, for example, trying to explain to the ICU nurse that she and I had just been moving the sofa in my hospital room around. (What sofa? Me?) I’m sure they hear a lot of that stuff.

So today I recalled some post-op point where I had not yet been permitted anything by mouth. Hydration was intravenous. And I was dying for a drink of water. I begged for some water, and they finally gave me one of those little cups of ice and a spoon. Someone, I can’t remember who, spooned the ice in. Somewhere in there, I got a sip of water.

Water, in my mouth, then, was like seeing God.

That sense of delight and amazement and revelation and humbling, all at once, came tumbling back today. So odd, how important some things become.

Tags: Cancer, health, Personal

Posted: 4:20 pm Thu September 30 2010 | Comments(2) |

[cancer|personal] Updatery of various sorts, miscellaneous and elsewise

As mentioned in this morning’s Link Salad, calendula_witch recaps the last couple of years. She’s covering the story of our relationship, cancer and her move to Oregon. Reading that, which I lived through every minute of with her, was sobering. We really have been through the shredder, she and I.

And the shredder got me yesterday. Had a very bad day emotionally. Retreated into some ancient, destructive behavior patterns commingling depression, passive-aggression and rank stupidity. Once again, calendula_witch and I made the save before day’s end, but damn this is hard. Somehow it’s gotten a lot harder right here at the end. The aforementioned prison riot syndrome.

One danger point is that this is not over. I haven’t yet beaten cancer, merely escaped this particular round of treatments due to some arrant good luck. Every single scan is a potential brick wall on the path of our ambitions for life, love, writing and relationship. I am really working hard on living in the now. The future is uncertain country.

calendula_witch has family coming to town this weekend, which means I do. (That is kind of a nice thing to say and think.) What with all the chemo visits and last June’s relocation, she’s gotten to know my family pretty well. My mom, dad, step-mom, sister and niece all live in Portland, most of them within a couple of miles of Nuevo Rancho Lake. Only my brother is far away. So calendula_witch has experienced the Lakes at full bore for a while. I have met the Witches before, but look forward very much to knowing them better.

In other news, I walked again this morning. And I kept a good, solid pace for the first time since last November, before the lung resectioning. Distance was nothing to shout about, a bit over a mile, but heart rate was up, breathing was deep, and I moved. With any luck, I’ll be fit to hike the Gorge trails soon. It’s almost the time of year where one doesn’t hike the mountain trails unless one is a serious winter sports die-hard, so I’ll have to wait til next spring for altitude.

Been a long time since I’ve been hiking.

Finally, in the proud parent department, I report that the_child joined her school’s track team two weeks ago. She is a hell of a sprinter, so of course they put her in a three-kilometer distance event. Kid’s never run for distance in her life. Yesterday was her first track meet, mixed-age girls her grade year and the year above. Her school’s four-person team all placed in the top 10 of a field of 50, including the_child her own self, who came in 10th competing against girls mostly older and more experienced than her. I am so very proud of her.

Life, maybe, is returning to normal.

Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Child, family, health, Personal, Portland

Posted: 5:52 am Thu September 30 2010 | Comments(1) |

[photos] New Zealand: Miscellaneous Vehicles, Ducks and Flowers

One last tranche of photos from New Zealand before I push off to the Australia photos.

A house-hauler. Literally a tow truck for houses. Not mobile homes. Used house lots are a fixture of New Zealand life, due to the island economy.

An old survivor on the house lot.

A very well-preserved Borgward at a garage in Otaki, NZ. I’d never seen one of these before.

The previously-shown classic Holden ute. One of my regrets was never getting a shot of the Holden ute police cars.

Another view of the funky old truck in Ngawi, NZ.

The State Limo, official ride of Our Gracious Hosts.

The bald eagle duck.

And some bonus flowers.

As usual, more at the Flickr sets here, here and here.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: cars, flowers, nature, New Zealand, Photos, Travel

Posted: 5:38 am Thu September 30 2010 | Comments(5) |

[photos] Your Thursday moment of zen

Your Thursday moment of zen.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: cars, Photos, Portland, zen

Posted: 5:35 am Thu September 30 2010 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad sings over and over and over and over again now

calendula_witch recaps the last couple of years — The story of our relationship, cancer and her move to Oregon.

Don’t forget the new caption contest [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Terry Pratchett: ‘I’m open to joy. But I’m also more cynical’ — Discworld’s creator on his new novel, living with Alzheimer’s – and why he should be allowed to decide when to end it all. Sigh. And a bit close to home. (Thanks to tillyjane.)

Multiculturalism for Steampunk — An idea whose time has long come. (Thanks to jaborwhalky.)

SETI: The Red Giant Factor — Centauri Dreams on the tie-in between stellar evolution, interstellar propulsion and SETI. One thing I wonder about with these sorts of deep time speculations is how early intelligent life could have evolved in our galaxy, given the need for a Population I solar system in order to provide heavier elements.

A Finding on Malaria Comes From Humble Origins — Malaria and gorilla poop. (Thanks to Dad.)

Likely Losses of House Seats in Midwest Stir Partisan Feuds — Remember Rep. Bachmann telling people not to fill out their census forms, until it was pointed out to her that could imperil her Congressional seat? It’s hard to stick to your principles when you’re a total loon.

Why Are Conservatives Targeting Muslims? And Why Now? — Conservatives can do without a god, but they can’t get through the day without a devil. Their entire model of reality revolves around the existence of an existential enemy who’s out to annihilate them. Take that focal point away, and their whole worldview collapses into incoherence. This need is so central to their thinking that if there are no actual enemies around, they’ll go to considerable lengths to make some (or just make some up). (Thanks to lt260.)

Tea & Crackers — How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster. A long article from Rolling Stone about the Tea Party movement. Rather deeply slanted snark (admittedly towards my own biases) but I still found it interesting and entertaining. (Thanks again to lt260.)

Proof that the Tea Party and GOP base are the same thing — Data from a leading Republican pollster. Also, this just in, water is wet.

Every single Republican Senate hopeful is against climate change action — The facts are biased against them, but that’s never slowed the GOP for a moment.

?otD: Would you like to meet a spaceman who’s got it going on?

9/30/2010
Writing time yesterday: 30 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 7.0 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 233.6
Yesterday’s chemo/post-op stress index: 4/10 (post-op pain, fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: The Exile Kiss by George Alec Effinger

Tags: Calendula, Contests, Culture, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Science, steampunk, Writing

Posted: 5:31 am Thu September 30 2010 | Comments(0) |

[contests] The Sky That Wraps caption contest

Author copies of The Sky That Wraps have arrived. This is of course my gorgeous new short fiction collection from the delightful Subterranean Press. You can order it here, should you be so inclined.

The Sky That Wraps by Jay Lake

But we all know what author copies mean — a giveaway via caption contest! So I hereby declare another one of those suckers, based on a photo from the recent New Zealand trip. Your challenge is to write a caption that answers the question “Why is this man laughing so hard?”

First prize will be a personalized, signed copy of the book, additional prizes to be awarded at my discretion. Usual rules apply. I’ll collect captions in comments here (at both jlake.com and jaylake.livejournal.com) until I get bored with it, then build a voting poll. Please try to limit the length of your entries or they may become truncated in the poll code.

This work by Shannon Page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Books, Calendula, Contests, Funny, New Zealand, Photos, Sky

Posted: 5:53 am Wed September 29 2010 | Comments(17) |

[travel] Open dinner in San Francisco on Saturday, 10/16

I have a Day Jobbe commitment in San Francisco from 10/17 through 10/20, so I’ll be flying in 10/16. Among other things, I plan to attend Writers With Drinks that evening, featuring the mighty Ken Scholes. I’ll be having (an early) dinner at Espertento, the tapas bar at 3295 22nd St near WWD, with me planning to arrive at 5 pm.

Please let me know if you think you’ll attend, so I know how big a table to aim for. I may also be free for dinner one or two other nights before I leave, but I am not sure yet, and will probably manage those by arrangement. However, if you’re jonesing to see me while I’m in SF, let me know and we might be able to arrange.

Tags: California, Food, Travel, work

Posted: 5:45 am Wed September 29 2010 | Comments(2) |

[cancer] Sleep, emotions, healing and life

Slept last night without drug intervention for the first time since the surgery. (Well, other than Tylenol.) As of this writing I’ve gone about 36 hours without any Dilaudid, so things look good for this being the post-op kick. I hate hate hate taking opiates. They mess up everything from my digestion to my cognition. But I do sleep well on them. All that being said, I’m not going to Be a Hero — if the surgery site pain acts up today, I’ll take what I need.

Anent same, slept pretty crappy. Took a long time to fall asleep, and I woke up oddly early. In part this is due to my mind racing and stumbling over a lot of difficult emotional terrain right now, including my own version of calendula_witch’s prison riot syndrome. We’re struggling to find our way back into normal life. Which is utterly unsurprising, of course. Life hasn’t been “normal” for us since about April, 2009 when the metastasis was first detected. More than half the span of our relationship has either been in the shadow or under the bootheel of metastatic colon cancer and its treatment processes. Now is a time where we must be exceptionally strong, smart, loving and patient to find our way into living, at least for a while, without the menage-a-trois of she, me and cancer.

It’s not easy.

On the plus side, I actually got dressed and walked this morning for the first time in :: mumble :: mumble :: In part, this was for the sheer joy of being outside. (It’s very pleasant here in the pre-dawn autumnal air.) In part, this is because Nuevo Rancho Lake reeks of gasoline at the moment due to a carburetor leak in the Volvo, which expressed itself with vigor yesterday upon my friend J— starting the motor with the car in the garage. I’m selling him the car, as it has become painfully obvious I’ll never get back to my long-abandoned hobby of being a gearhead. I’m okay with that, but I’m not so pleased with the odiferous air here that resulted from this decision. It also made using the stationary bike impractical unless I want to irrigate my lungs with petroleum aerosols.

Walking was good. I’m not supposed to drive for a few days yet, though kicking the opiates makes that a lot more likely, given the whole “do not operate heavy machinery” thing. I did drive the mile to the store yesterday, simply because there was no one to do it for me, and that exhausted me. So I’m not quite there.

As to the healing, I still distinguish three channels of pain (or at least sensation) — the surgical wound healing, which is what the Dilaudid was addressing and what has been most compromising both my sleep and my mobility; the liver regeneration; and the GI issues.

At this point while I am still in considerable discomfort from the incisions, the wound healing has progressed to where I can sleep in my natural positions, and I can now move normally along most axes and ranges of motion, albeit a bit slowly in some cases. Which is to say, I can get in and out of a chair, or walk up and down stairs.

As for the liver regeneration, I was told to expect the liver surgery recovery to be uncomfortable and exhausting as my body works to rebuild the excised liver tissue. But with the memories of later-stage chemo still vivid, this is not anywhere nearly so difficult to tolerate. I won’t say it’s easy, but given my standards, it’s just another day inside my body.

GI issues are finally down to a dull roar. Still not swell, but at the “bad day” level of difficulty rather than last week’s “go to the hospital” level of difficulty. And I have to say, without indulging in overly tasteless commentary, that my time in the hospital addressing this GI problem was sufficiently unpleasant in sufficiently numerous ways as to provide me with a powerful incentive not to undergo that set of treatments again if humanly possible.

So, life goes on no matter what. I’m not even sure what I’ll do with myself when the day comes a week or two or three from now when I wake up feeling truly normal and whole for the first time in the past eighteen months. Cry a little maybe, then get up and write, most likely.

Tags: Calendula, Cancer, cars, health, Personal

Posted: 5:33 am Wed September 29 2010 | Comments(2) |

[photos] New Zealand: Wellington

I didn’t do as much tourism photography as I might have around Wellington. Many of our trips were incidental, not photosafaris, so I missed a lot of things I might have caught. It’s a terribly charming place, putting me somewhat in mind of a smaller, cleaner, less urban version of San Francisco. I was struck by the beauty of the area, and by how pleasant so many of the people were.

Looking out at the city from the street just above the home of Our Gracious Hosts.