Short message from “Now”

I can hear the collective groans thinking that this will be yet another post about my childhood.  I will give it a rest for a while.  Truly this is not easy to re-hash events from my youth again.  At least you can skip the entries that are of no interest. I have to relive not only what is in the post, but the other weird memories or just feelings associated with that time.  The majority of the “Then” posts were originally written more than ten years ago and I have tried not to re-read any of that since then. Putting them on this blog requires re-reading and editing.  It really is easier to read this than to do the editing to put the entries into this format.

Why is this hard right now? Well, there is just too much going on in my real life.  I find I do not have the room in my head for the thoughts that relieving my past has conjured.  Memory is the key.  I know what all these memories did to me the first time I wrote this stuff down.  Some of the memories were good.  Some were unpleasant but necessary for the person I became later (in the now). I fear I may find a door that I would rather not open right now.  I will get back to it when I can better sort out what matters and what I can skip.

Kindergarten

(I promise I will not tell about every year. . . )

At some point, I had to go to school.  It seems I remember watching my brother and sister getting ready for school in the past, so it was just accepted that this was the next stage of my life.  I walked with them.  They walked me to the door of my area which was separated from the rest of the school, and they went on.  I went in.  I do not remember a lot about what we did.  I remember show and tell, but I do not remember ever showing or telling anything. It would have been a bit boring for them I think to tell them I was related to kings, and Mayflower passengers, but I would have if I had known.  I remember playing with the other kids using what the teachers of that time thought were the things kids needed to help them learn to associate with others.  I remember playing outside, and the chain-link fence separating us from the big kids. I remember sitting against a wall in the sun, and eating my snack, usually pieces of apple my mom had cut up for me, surrounded by the others, all with whatever their moms thought was best for their snack-time. The apple pieces would be discolored a bit with age, but they were still good. There was a sewage treatment facility near enough that when the wind blew just hard enough, it would blow soap suds into the playground, like soft white tumbleweeds. I remember the air force base still being visible, but at a slightly different angle than from home. And at times, you could see the Nike missiles.

I guess for those under a certain age that must not make a lot of sense.  Anyone born after the mid to late ’60s only would be familiar with Nikes being the shoes they wear or want to wear. These were the kind of Nikes that used to be a part of our defense system- at least during the cold war.  As I grew older, I realized we were literally surrounded by these sites in the Bay Area at that time.  We could see one from my kindergarten playground, which must have been to the north near Hamilton Field. There is another one south of there, up on the hill between Santa Venetia and San Rafael. These bases were everywhere. I do remember seeing the missiles being raised for testing, or maybe they were just replacing older ones with the next new model that went further or did whatever they did a bit better. When we moved again as I was starting the first grade, the school I was in was adjacent to the main freeway in the area.  More Nikes.  This time, on flatbed trucks being hauled to the bases so other kids could watch them being raised or lowered. Thankfully, I never saw one fired off for any reason, although when I was old enough to know what they were but too young to appreciate the purpose, I wanted to see one go off.

Back in kindergarten, I began to learn about life in new ways.  It was not all fluffy white suds blowing into the schoolyard, or eating apples at snack time.  There was serious stuff going on; like rest time.  How weird is that?  To be expected to rest lying on a mat, or with your head down on a table. This is not the first time I had to do what I was told without knowing why, and it would not be the last. But, rest periods certainly did not last much beyond the first couple of years of schooling. I seem to remember being way past daily nap times at that point. Nowadays, it would be something I might see the value in doing.  Then, not so much.

I played house. I am not sure how often. But it is in there someplace that I did it. This was complete with the fake miniature house.  “I’ll be the mommy, you be the daddy.” How that came out I can only wonder. That memory is not there. Hopefully I would not have been emulating my father in any detailed way, or they would have thrown me out of school.  Probably, I just stood there and did what the mommy told me to do, and wondered if going to school would always be so weird.

Early memories and clever hints of future events

My mom did not drive, so she had to walk to the grocery store, and carry back the bags of groceries. Since I was the youngest, and not in school yet, she brought me along.  I rode in a wagon alone on the way over. On the way back, I had the company of a bag or two of groceries.  I thought of the wagon as being for me, but I think it was more for her.  At the time, I was happy just rolling along.  I remember there was a pickle barrel in the store.  I thought it must be full of pickles. Later, I was disappointed to find out that only a small part of it actually held any pickles. Not that I liked pickles, but I liked the idea of the pickle barrel being full of them. The store also had a butcher that cut the meat for you and ground the beef for hamburgers right while you watched.  I remember seeing all this.  At the time, it all seemed just the way it should be.

I remember a birthday at this house and a Christmas. The birthday is very vague.  I got model race car that my father had to put together. That was always fun. He did not have much patience for things that required instructions. Christmas became famous as the one where we almost caught Santa in a Santa trap.  The trap looked like a typical bear trap, but it was made of plastic.  We set it into the fire grate in our fireplace, where Santa would be sure to step when he came down the chimney.  In the morning, we went out to see the gifts, and there was a note from Santa scolding us for almost catching him. We knew it had to be real because there was a ripped scrap of red material caught in the jaws of the trap.  He must not have been too mad since he left us presents anyway.  Not that I remember what that consisted of at this point.  My parents could be creative, and fun once in a while. They just did not always know how to show that side of themselves to us.

Much later on, before their divorce, but after mine, they were living back in Utah.  For some reason, they got the idea in their heads that we all would be coming out to see them for Christmas.  They decorated the house like they used to, for our upcoming visit. They even got out some of our old childhood toys they were saving for their grandchildren and wrapped them to put under the tree.  The problem is that none of us knew this was going on.  I think my brother and sister were at least financially able to have made the trip if they had planned to, and could get the time off.  I had the time off because I was not employed at the time, but I had no way to get there. No money to do a bus or train, and no car in condition to make the trip.  Thinking about them going to the trouble of decorating for this visit they assumed at least one of us would make, is a bit sad.  But, that is how things went sometimes.  All of those toys they had saved and carted around had been intended for their grandchildren.  All of that was eventually either given to others or lost later on along with the home movies and a substantial collection of slides and other pictures of all of us growing up.  All of it was gone; so much for boring my future kids with old pictures of daddy growing up.  Not that I have kids, but if I did . . .  As a result of this I do not have much from this part of my life to show anyone who is now important to me.

A job not wanted, revisited- Part two

Sunday, May 24, 2020

I woke up that morning and turned to face her as usual. She was wide awake.

“I didn’t want to wake you up, but I haven’t slept all night. I need you to take me to the hospital. Now . . .”

If you knew my wife, you would know that this was a major deal. She did not take hospital or doctor visits lightly, and to tell me that she needed to go to the hospital, now, was a serious matter.

I don’t remember if I even asked what was going on at that point. It was “Now.” The explanation would follow. I remember telling her only one thing, “You should have woken me.”

She had trouble getting her shoes on that morning. I had to help her. She also had trouble getting her legs into my car. She later admitted to me that she had been trying to hide the fact that she had pain in her lower legs. So, it wasn’t just the delay in diagnosing that was against her. Even knowing the things to do or avoid in her condition, she still hid important details from me.

A pulmonary embolism is a big deal, but it can be treated. We were assured that this one was small enough that it should only require a few days in the hospital, with a prescription for blood thinner, treatment could be finished at home.

A couple of days into her hospitalization, the routine morning blood test caught that she had had a severe drop of red cells overnight. This was remedied by the infusion of two units of blood.

A CT scan later that day showed no major issue that could explain the blood loss. I don’t remember if anyone officially explained this loss to us. My thought now is that it was caused by capillary leak syndrome, which could also explain the cough she had for months.

Capillary leak syndrome is not generally thought to be associated with the type of cancer she had and isn’t generally thought to be associated with the types of chemotherapy she received over the years. But there was one common factor in all of this that I realized could be a suspect in this case. Each one of her chemotherapy rounds ended with a shot of a drug to jumpstart her white blood cell production to boost her immune system which is severely depleted following any chemotherapy.  

It was a commercial I saw on television for Neulasta. I recognized the name of the drug being advertised and listened to the possible side effects. This drug was linked to capillary leak syndrome.

Later that night, her pulmonary specialist called me to update her prognosis. He also told me of a conversation with her cancer doctor who had told him that her “numbers” following her first chemotherapy against lymphoma were not good and that he thought there was a chance the lymphoma had gone to her brain, which would require a spinal tap to verify. The bottom line was that they could not continue to treat her for the blood clot and that the odds were against being able to continue lymphoma treatment either, especially now that her embolism could not be treated.

After I hung up from that call, I cried.  

I cried and then I screamed. And I cried some more. It was not to be a night for sleep.

Instead, I emailed a good friend who I had been sharing my wife’s updates with, and later, reading her response to this particular update, I cried some more.  

In the end it was over very quickly.

She did make it home again, at least long enough to see our cat one last time and for me to clean up her hair which had become matted during her hospital stay. I remember that her hair was the thing she was most worried about regarding her chemo treatments. She wasn’t concerned about the chemo. She didn’t want to lose her hair.

She fell that first morning back home and ended up in the hospital again. I tried to lessen the impact of her fall but was not successful. After a few days at the acute care hospital, she was transferred to a rehab hospital. The plan now was to get her strong enough that she could maneuverer around the house with minimal risk to herself. And just maybe her cancer doctor had a plan to check into possible lymphoma in her brain.

She worked at doing her rehab for a while and seemed to be in better spirits. But the pulmonary embolism was impacting her blood oxygen levels and making her heart race to unsustainable levels. On top of that, the lymph nodes in her neck were getting larger.

And the amount of time she was lucid was diminishing daily.

In those times she was lucid enough to recognize me and talk briefly, she told me she was sorry I had to do so much now, and that she couldn’t help me anymore. I held her hand and tried to smile as I told her not to worry, that I would be OK. I saw recognition in her eyes that she understood what I was saying. I hoped that I would have more time to get into this, but she was already dropping back into that less aware state. Maybe later . . . Later came around 2 am the next morning.  

She was gone.

A job not wanted, revisited- Part one

Sunday, May 24, 2020

I have put writing this post off long enough.

In early 2013 my wife had successfully finished her last round of chemotherapy for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. We were told that she should not worry about CLL even though her mother had died from this. No, we were told that CLL would not kill her.

And, technically, that was correct.

In the end, it was a combination of things.

In the summer of 2018, she told me the lymph node in the side of her neck was growing in size again, much faster than it had previously. And that it felt different to her, this time. We called her doctor. He said not to worry, that her numbers were good last time, and just keep an eye on it.

Keeping an eye on it was easy enough to do at the rate it was growing.

We called again to ask for an earlier appointment. No, her doctor didn’t feel it was necessary. The appointment was only a couple of weeks off at this point, it should be OK.

We got a second opinion from her Ear, Nose, Throat specialist. He measured the lymph node and sent his report to her cancer doctor. Still the appointment was not moved.

We got a third opinion from the ER doctor at the very hospital that was home to the cancer center. The ER doctor spoke to the cancer doctor, and he told us that they had agreed to move the appointment up and to call the office Monday morning.

Sometime over the weekend, he changed his mind. The appointment would not be rescheduled.

This became rather important as it turned out later.

The morning of the appointment had finally arrived. November 8, 2018.

The morning appeared bright and sunny until we went out to my car to start the drive to the clinic. The details of this particular day are out there for anyone to look at, so I won’t go into those now. I will just say that we never got to the appointment.

And, because most of the town where the cancer clinic was located ended up incinerated that day, by the time her doctor had relocated elsewhere and was taking patients again, a couple of months had elapsed. Even when they were taking patients again, it took another couple of months for the new diagnoses to be made.

This made it around 4-5 months from the time she noticed the enlarged lymph node that felt different from other times, to Lymphoma being diagnosed. I admit that this one fact still bothers me after all this time. Her doctor had been the one to emphasize the importance of communication about any changes in her lymph nodes or other related issues, and he ignored them when they were brought up. My therapist suggests that it is important to let this go. The early diagnose of cancer is key to a better treatment outcome, but it may not have made a difference in this case. And even if it had, it can’t be changed, now.

And considering my wife’s other issues, this probably is correct.    

She started the preparation for her new rounds of chemotherapy. We were assured this new diagnose was a good thing since they could cure lymphoma. We were told there was an 80% chance of a cure, and with the addition of stem cell infusion after the cancer was in remission, she would have new bone marrow to go with it. She never got there.

Halfway through the pause between first and second treatment, this plan for beating lymphoma ran into a snag.  

See- A job not wanted, revisited- Part two

Not a job wanted

The alarm clock is beeping.  You were right, this month it really is darker than last.  The reason for the alarm waking us up so early one week each month is never far from either of us. Particularly for you.  It is time to start the next cycle.

We dress, do a quick breakfast, and try to make things as “usual” as any other day.  But I know how hard it is for you to think of anything being “usual” anymore.

The cats do not understand why it is still dark as I let them in for their breakfast. ‘The humans must be nuts,’ they must think. They eat, but things do not seem right to them either.  They are up early, but they still cannot go outside until it gets a bit brighter.

They clearly do not understand us.

Driving up the hill again almost seems like a commute. But this is not a job either of us would have wanted. This will be the fifth round. After this week there will only be one more round to go. By that time, it should really be dark during the drive to the clinic.

This next round will also be the last one for sure.  And after that? Only time will tell.  No one knows what will happen.  All I know is that without this treatment you might not be here now.  As hard as it is for you to go through this, it seems to be helping.  It is hard for you to believe that though, as we drive up to the clinic this early in the morning.  You have to still get through this week’s treatment before we get to the last round next month. You will make it to the last one though.  I was not always sure of that.

Getting older . . .

I will be the first to admit this. I am getting old.  I see it and feel it every day.  This is not so bad really.  I know it is inevitable and irreversible.  I appear older than I actually am chronologically. Thinking back, this has always been the case.  My voice deepened earlier than most other boys.  I grew a beard earlier than most in my class.  Appearing older than my age actually had some advantages back then.

When I was eighteen I had a sixteen year old girlfriend. When we could afford it, we liked to go to The Magic Pan in Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco.  We would order a dinner of crepes and a nice glass or two of white wine.  I guess she appeared older than she was also.  I did not abuse this ability to drink under age without being “carded.”  In fact I only did it a time or two with this one girlfriend. Maybe that time in the 1970’s was just a bit more relaxed as far as restaurants checking people’s driver’s licenses to see if you were legal drinking age.

Now, nearing 60, my one time red beard is close to white: OK, it is white.  I still look older than I am and older than I feel most of the time.  (But I have to admit that I am starting to feel as old as I look.)

Recently I was out shopping for household groceries.  I was in the checkout line of a natural food store in town.  This nice looking younger woman cashier was running the register.  We chatted a bit as she entered my purchases into the system. She told me the total and I ran my card to pay for it. Something about this seemed off.  My total was less than what I had been predicting in my head. Outside, I quickly dug out the receipt.  The entries looked right.  Then I saw it.  Down at the bottom of the receipt, I saw the words, “Senior discount applied- You saved this much money.”  What? Senior discount?  She thinks I am a senior?

This was traumatic at first.  Sure, I must be close to their senior discount criteria, and I know I have always looked older than I am. But do I look that old?  My inner youth screams in agony.

Now when I go to that store, I try to remember which one of the cashiers thinks I am old enough that I would qualify for their senior discount.  It is not much, but I find I want that discount.  But I must be getting old. I can’t even remember which one of them gave me the discount, and that was only a few weeks ago.

Earliest Memories

The earliest event that I am pretty sure I remember happening in my own life, is when I would have been around 4 years old.  I remember being taken out of our house, and being put into a boat.  The water around us was brown. The boat was yellow with a black trim. I could see the tops of fences that were still above water.  As a family, we had been flooded out of our home in an area that flooding was no longer supposed to happen.  My family always figured that this was not a real memory of mine, but a construction based on having heard stories about the flood in later years.  I wonder about that because they do not remember the details I remember.  They remember me as being upset that I could not stay in the house and play in the water with a toy boat.  I wonder if it was possible for me to construct the part about being taken out to safety, why would I not construct a memory about the wanting to stay and play in the water, an event I know that they told me about.  Memory is a funny thing.

Shortly after that flood, we moved.  This, I remember, and I am sure of it.  I remember being in a dirty beat up pick-up truck.  We are driving along on a road that is not yet paved.  It is smooth, but dirt none the less.  There are houses on either side.  We stop at one.  I do not remember that I knew what was going on yet, but that house was the next one my family moved into in an area called Santa Venetia, in Marin County California.  I have seen pictures of this later, but they were in black and white. My memories are in color.  The houses were newly built. No lawns in front. No trees.  The street was not only not paved, but it stopped just down from our house, blocked by a barrier.

On the other side of the barrier, was open space stretching all the way to Hamilton Air Force Base. The field was largely unexplored by me in my short time at that house. I remember being in it to fly kites, and just a short distance to explore the things a kid of 5-6 would want to explore.  But, frankly, I am not sure I would have wanted to go much further.  Maybe this was due to my lack of understanding about distances.  That Air Force Base I know now was at least seven miles away. It has since been closed. At the time though, it was very active, and I think I was afraid of getting too close to it- like a five year old kid could walk seven miles through a field, and wander into a sealed off military area. The bigger kids in the area went out there further. But, I knew I was not old enough to go where they went, yet. So, I watched the planes doing touch and go landing practice, not knowing what that was at the time. It was just fun to watch them take off, fly around, and land again. I listened to the jet engines roaring in the distance. Why would you want to be closer anyway?  It sounded like they were already too close. Pilots would fly from the airbase over our neighborhood providing endless hours of fun for a kid. Sometimes they would waggle their wings making us think they were waving to us. I would wave back.  I doubt they saw me.  

Who I am and where I came from

If you do an internet search on my name, you will get many returns of various listings for people who share the name with me.  Some may even be related to me. There is an actor, a writer, a photographer, a painter, an equestrian specialist, a bass player for a jazz quintet: and many others, all sharing my name. I am not any of those people, but I could have done some of the things they have done in their lives.  I have done nothing special, yet. Well, not special in any way that would have caused anyone to know who I am.  If you look deeply enough in a Google search, you might find me; it appears I have at least one promising result returned for the SETI @ Home project. You probably know that they are searching for some indication of non-natural radio signals out in the rest of the cosmos.  This was the first use of a project utilizing millions of individual computers connected by the internet to receive small data packets and transmit the findings back for further analysis after running a program to process the data. I also have a few hits on an internet hybrid car group. No cure for a disease. No million dollar lottery win that was then given to charity, yet anyway.  I am no one in particular.  But, it occurs to me, that even though you do not know me, I still have a story.

I was born towards the end of what has become known as “the baby-boomer” generation. It was the cold war. The words “Under God” had just been added to the Pledge of Allegiance. There was a Communist under every bed. No doubt Soviet Nukes were targeting every major city in the United States, perhaps even where I now live. And we, no doubt, had just as many – or more- targeting them: I know there was a ballistic missile silo near here, but it was decommissioned before coming on-line. Of course, at that point, I knew nothing about any of those things that were a part of what would become my early life.

There were some in my family long ago who were of note.  Evidently, my genealogy goes back to the first Plantagenet King; King Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and before that to William the Conqueror.  Hey, I do not know for sure. It is in the book of my family roots that was researched by my great Aunt, who had done other similar projects before this.  She sounds very convinced that evidence found in her research to this link is real, and I do not think that she would have stretched anything just to make it better reading for the few people who have the book. But, even if this part is not true, I am directly related to settlers in the New England area around 15 years after the Mayflower landed.  The head of the family at that time was a minister (although not ordained). The early settlers needed a minister and ordained ones were scarce, so they accepted him. He was granted some acreage in that is now Hingham, Massachusetts.  A part of that land bears his name, and is still shown in local history books.  He was a mover and shaker of the early life in America. He went on to be an early settler in the community of Marblehead, Mass., was a minister in the Old North Church there, and involved with community issues.

That same book shows that I am related to one of the original Mayflower passengers, and signer of the Mayflower Compact, Thomas Rogers.  Although this is interesting if you are in my family, I am not sure what real value there is in this fact.  At the time any of these facts could have done me some good for early school times; things like “Show and Tell,” or just as possible report topics for school projects. I did not know anything about it then.  All it is good for now would be for acceptance in the Mayflower Society, which charges a yearly membership to maintain that status.  I am not sure what else it is good for. They do give you an official plaque showing you are the real thing, after they verify the lineage that you research and send to them.  Maybe they have a secret handshake too.  The information on the internet is a bit sketchy about the reasons you might have to join. Knowing it is true is good enough for me.

My father’s namesake was the first of the early New England ancestors to leave the area. Because he had a bad leg from polio, as the story goes, his family knew he would not make it as a farmer, so he was encouraged to cultivate his mind, and attended high school, something that very few in that day could afford to do. He became a teacher, and moved to the Illinois area where he met his future wife, my link to the Mayflower.  She was an older daughter in the family he was staying with. The family had invited him in, hoping that having a teacher living in the house would be a good influence on the children. He married the daughter, and moved to Iowa, being among the first settlers to take advantage of President Lincoln loosening the homestead laws.  They went by covered wagon.  I mention this for a couple of reasons.  He is the ancestor that my father was named after. And he is the one I most resemble of the few pictures that exist of my early ancestors.