WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

Where have I been?   Here, all the time.  I have to admit that I have had a dip in my drive.  All my life I have had highs and lows, and lately I have had a low.   

Part of the reason, I think is that I have spent some significant time with doctors.  They are not very warm and fuzzy characters as most of you might know.  The most interesting element of my opinion of them is that the older I get, the cloudier their behavior seems to get.  Besides, the older I get the more conscious I become about the length of my wick.  The candle is still bright, but the floor is getting closer to the top.  But, thank God, the flame is still bright.

Talking about God.  I've been talking a lot to Him lately.  He has a way of inserting Himself into my thought process, mostly when my head is comfortably nestled in my nightime pillow.  It is at this time too that Mama Mary sits quietly by and inserts a spirit of calm and comfort into the "conversation."  I see her eyes peering into mine, although mine are shut.  I kid you not!

Here I am after a CT Scan, with contrast.  That included some weid chemicalsmin my veins.  I was supposed to  have a hot flash after the filling of te vein with this poison, but nothing happened.  Maybe I'm a tin soldier or something. 

Here is the anticipated path I'm looking at for the next 5 months:

a. Bi-lateral of drainage tubes in my kidneys, Nov 6

b. Chemo therapy for at least 4 months.

c. Excision of the cancerous growth connecting my bladder and my prostate.

Ya gotta admit, ain't never a dull moment in this Covid-19 World!  All of this just before the month when we connect to the dearly departed.  

THE "BIG 'C' " -- CANCER or COVID ?

"Live every day to its fullest.    After all, you only die once!"

Hey, have you ever been told by your doctor that you have cancer?  It's a fairly strange feeling.  I and you have been told by any number of relatives, friends and relatives that they have Cancer.  I had an uncle who was an "original" as we used to say in my youth because that is not usually a compliment in our vernacular.  But...he was a very interesting character.  A collector of hand guns and coins...and a connoisseur of both.  

One Saturday, at a picnic in our back yard, uncle Phil, that was his name, in his deepest, most serious voice announced that he had been told that he had the "Big C."  I knew that this was serious but I couldn't fathom why he had not just said "cancer."  It just went over my young head and flew by my early adolescent self and I turned to devouring frankforters.  He lived quite a long time after that.  He did die from cancer, but at my age I did not follow the case.

For those of you who knew Phil, his youngest child (Tony), is sitting in a Veteran's home waiting for the sunset.

Since then I have had to eliminate frankforters and hamburgers from my diet.  But Cancer?  Yeah, I'm looking into it.  I hope it doesn'r exacebate my gouty toes!  I have come quite familiar with the news.  A lot of it comes to me over the Internet, e.g. "I won't be writing much anymore, I've been told that I have stage 4 cancer."  Thank you.  Most often I come to know about it when suddenly the emails stop.  I give it a week or so...Hmmm, "lemme see."  Yup, no answer,  RIP.

So now, after all that, I have to say that I have a cancer that is very rare.  Hey, if you're going to have something, it might as well drive you to the science sources, right?  The doctors are scrambling to figure out what to do about it.  I don't blame them, neither do I.  I have to say that it is not very pleasant to talk about it because it is one of those X-Rated attacks that make life very interesting but less pleasant than it was before.  So far it is still more interesting than challenging for me.  Plus, there is good news about it all ... The discomforts and inconveniences, pain and such are minimal (so far) and  --  the doc is a man.

Covid-19?  That's the 21st century big "C" but I'm leaving it for someone else.  I prefer to look forward to being bald (Chemo, you know) than needing a machine to breathe.  I think that I can handle more face to wash better than needing a machine to breathe.  

I'll keep you up-to-date.  

JOBS? YEAH I'VE HAD A FEW

 

That's the one, way on your right.

The other day I was talking to my son, the first of the two.  He has been out of work for a couple months now and is job hunting and considering his options going forward.  Since then I have been thinking of the ways that I have found to earn my keep, or even just my privilege to come home day after day with an idea of where I would be and what I would do on the morrow. 

Starting in the Summer vacation after grade 6, (1949) this my gainful effort biography:

1. Washing floors for aged ladies (3).  First ever engagement.              

2. Opening up a clogged sluice ditch for an auto body shop owner.      

3. Week-end shoeshiner                                                                          

4. Two summers on tobacco farms.                                                       

5. Worked for a construction company. (Under the table)                      

6. Worked in a comic book printing company. (Parts of 4 years 'til 1958)

Preparation for ministerial career and service in the ministry.  Then, in 1977, I left the active ministry and started to live in the "real world."

7. Short stint in start-up placement agency.                                            

8. Human resources career begins. (1977)  I had some hiccups:   

Fired x 2    --   Lay-off, Co-Failed  x2

So:   

a:  Interior painter, some employment, some contract                            

b: Telephone answering service operator                                                

c:  Amway practitioner                                                                            

d:  Melaleuca practitioner                                                                        

e:  Lecturer in Church supported Theology                                            

f:   Many stints (5) as a security guard                                                    

g:  Airport shuttle van driver (4 times)                                                    

h:  Medical transport (non-emergency) transport van driver

I can't let you go without mentioning the several years that I spent as a pilgrimage organizer, mostly to the Holy Land and occasionally to the site of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to two cowherds in the French Alps at La Salette.

With a past like that, I don't deserve any tears at my funeral.