World Series Victory 2013

RED SOX WIN!

OK, so all those late nights watching baseball have paid off this year for Red Sox Nation. Just getting to the playoffs was great, as it has been all year as the Team picked up game clenching victories in the late innings as though the baseball gods had deemed them and given them the edge to victory. Last night the win seemed inevitable as the game started and the timely hits kept coming as they were suppose to, to give the Red Sox a victory not just for baseball, but for a region that saw in them a spirit of resilience that reflected how we want to be. And that is to pick ourselves up after a loss, or tragedy, and to come back Boston Strong and to not give up. For that, the Red Sox have validated those pedestrian wants for the home town (region) to win and to represent in the small way a sports team does, that striving for victory and not giving up is a victory in itself and it is an example around which we can CHEER!

"Make yourself resolute with the idea that you will win whenever you go into battle, and you can win even if it is not so realistic." Bushido Code

UPDATE: 1st scans after IL-2

Greetings.

Getting Ready for the Big Game

Just an update after seeing my Docs this Wed. TH, and Fri.

I had my first scan after treatment a week ago Monday and this Wed I met with my IL-2 Doc at BIDMC.

As expect no information upon which to base and further treatment or therapy.

Good news is that everything seems static, which means no growth or further metastasis that can be determined.

Bad news is that I have to wait another month to get another evaluation, upon which further treatment will be based.

So November Ho.........here I come.

Overall, feeling good and physical on TH indicates that I am the healthiest sick person in Maine and there-a-bouts.

Will write more soon, but busy in Maine and new manuscript demanding time....and the Red Sox are about to make history.

best to all, tim 

Silver Wizard Battles the Little Death Stars, or the need to take a piss

I had to go get my first scans yesterday after my initial treatment of IL-2 a month ago.


I was on the T (Boston's Metro). The Greenline is somewhat like an old trolley squeaking and knocking as it finds it way beneath Boston's history. We passed under where the terrorists had so recently exploded home made bombs to savage young and old alike, and for no reason other than through the twisted perversity of their own ambitions and faith. Fuck them and their kind.

I was joined by four intrepid travelers, maps in hand, trying to negotiate the city's plan. Well, at least one was the others sat back with smug expressions of tourists who somehow were above the day to day menagerie of this great city. It wasn't long before I became interested in one of the women in the group. She maintained this odd expression, something of a smile, smirk, or some self-satisfied expression that god had given her to live her days with as an outward expression of her vacant soul. God has a peculiar sense of humor.

Or may she was just an idiot, another joke from on-high.

Idiot Smiles

Dunno.

We all got off at the Fenway stop and the the four were left behind me as they tried to decipher in which direction they could find Fenway Park. The woman still looking an odd mix of village idiot or debutante.

I made my way to the hospital where I had my blood drawn. Piece of cake.

After, I had to go get a Cat-Scan in another building. The complex of hospitals in Boston is daunting and inspiring in the same light, just waiting for the government to screw up our health care. Think Amtrak or the Post Office with a gurney and a box of needles. Not hopeful in that area.

Anyway, the fellow giving the scan was surprised when I told him how many scans I have had (18 in five years), and will have over the coming months (4-6 within the next 6 months).

You get the picture, eh.

I told him that after a few more my dick will look like Luke Skywalker's Light-Saber, but if we can kill those tiny Death Stars in my torso, it will be a sacrifice well worth it.

I am no Luke Skywalker, but maybe Obi-wan-ka-nobe...I always wanted to be the wizard Gandalf, or the coolest of the Jedi Knights. The other rat like Jedi, well, no thanks, but Kenobi, well yeah baby.

Next, on the agenda was my MRI, even a wizard has to keep appointments.

I got in early and before I knew it I was inside the tube with the sounds of an African tin drum band pounding out the sounds that resembled what I imagine the sounds would be like if Robbie the Robot was fucking R2D2, or that other one, Catch me if you can CP3PO, or something like that. Lots of pounding, grinding, and whistles until finally the attendant said after about 45 minutes that my time was up. I asked him if he might like to rephrase that, because I am in no way feeling like my time is up. He laughed and then said that my tests were over with.

On the way back to Logan Airport, where I work, I sat wondering about the vunerable position patients find themselves. When I was in the hospital, it wasn't the big events that seemed an issue, I was just an involuntary spectator to those, it's the small things that make you feel helpless. Like not being able to pee when you want, or to get up and just stand beside your bed without a  series of alarms going off at the nursing stations, rousing a platoon of young Nurse Ratchets coming to help you get back into bed and to see just how strange you have become by the toxic soup you have consumed.

I remembered an excerpt from a book that described the Battle of the Chosin Res, during the Korean War. The Army and the Marines were savaged by hundreds of thousands of Chinese in a surprise attack as the US military was pushing through the mountains of northern Korea. In a lull reporters were allowed into the middle of the battle scene where they were still surrounded by the Chinese, many wounded who had been through the hell of battle in the snow and cold lay in a line waiting to be evacuated. One female reporter, true story, was working the line trying to get information. She knelt down next to a wounded soldier and with great sympathy asked what she could do for him.


He was bundled in his military gear as well as extra coats and blankets, he looked up at her and said, "Well, if you can figure a way to get three inches of dick out of six inches of pants and jacket so that I can take a piss, that'd be a start."

It always comes down to the small things, those basic functions, and when those are gone we begin to really feel the misery of our vunerably.

I remember a fellow I worked with at an airport in Maine. Small airport compared to the big city airports I am familiar with now. He was older than I, and looked like he had never been off the farm, but to buy feed  for his livestock. Anyway, life had now deemed that he lift and tout bags for the airlines. Nice guy, buy he had a strange habit.

One day when I was entering the men's room, Lester (useful name) was standing at the urinal. He normally wore bib overalls and had many other winter garments on, as bundled as were the GIs at the Chosin Res. He had removed most of them and dropped his overalls to the floor exposing his backside in all it's pale glory.

I said, Lester, wow, what's up buddy, why don't you have your pants on.

He didn't seem to think anything was the matter and just shrugged.

Well, at home we have a three holer, two for my wife and I and a smaller one for the child. We don't think anything about it.

I told him that while he was a fine cut of a man, seeing the cleavage that split his rear was something he might want to keep between himself, his wife, and the wooden splintered settee of his outhouse.

Strange thing, he never did. Those of us who used the men's room many times found ourself confronted with the pale complexion of Lester' backside as he stood pissing into his porcelain friend hanging on the wall in our restroom.

I wonder how he is doing. I also wonder how the smug or simple folk like the ones I had seen on the T react to that inevitable day when the doctor says you have a cancer or a something something illness. Does it really matter which one. Well, maybe eventually it does, but in the short term, it's the shock of something new in your life over which it will determine some control, or until it kills you.

In the mean time I am becoming the Silver Wizard with powers that I hope will extend to my ability to find a urinal when I need to.

So, fuck you to the little Death Stars that try to end our time and interrupt my toilette.

Yes, let me say it again.....

Fuck you little Death Stars.........

2013 Maine Fall Colors and other things the Government can't control, yet!

Locke Mills, Maine

Greetings from Maine....... 

Just thought I would post some pics of something more pleasant than my health story, which may just have a happy fuckin' ending.

My mother is here in Maine and just celebrated her 83rd birthday with us. We had the opportunity and a great day to take a drive to see and enjoy the autumn colors in north western Maine, Grafton Notch State Park.

Fortunately it is a state park so the National Guard were deployed at the National Parks we have in the state to keep soft minded peasants like ourselves from entering and enjoying the natural wonder of our state.


Go State Parks!

So barring any online censorship from the OMB (Office of Management and Budget, the folks that control the funding for such mundane stuff as paying for national parks and staffing, world wide) I am posting these pictures with the understanding that the Black Helio's of our government may at any time start hovering over my home and photographing me every-time I walk my dawg.

By the way, the OMB are also the folks responsible for closure of military cemeteries around the world, the first time this has happened even though we have had 18 other Government shutdowns. I only hope they get it right this time and stay shutdown. The OMB should be changed to ONB (the Office of Nuisance and Boobs).

Anyway, feeling better and trying to stay away from the TV, because I understand that the Black Helio's use the TV as a honing device, especially if you have FOX news on. That's a dead give away. And, really, how can anyone watch Sean Hannity, he's almost as annoying as Chris Matthews.

Enjoy the pictures and then read a good book. Click on any of the pictures here and they will take you to the photo album on zenfolio where there are 54 images of leaves, light, and rock. Click on Slideshow and take a minute to relax and enjoy the natural wonder.

Fields and view on the approach to Grafton Notch State Park.