Ouch, this sure is getting old!

Or maybe it is just me. I still can bounce back, but I'm a little slower each time. I had a regular United Nations delegation medically dealing with me yesterday. One nurse was from Tailand, another from Indonesia,another from Puerto Rico, and another from, of all places,Sebago Lake, Maine. My anestigiologist (spelling leaves a lot to be desired but I'm still on drugs) was from Nigeria. My doctor has not told me where he is from, but it is clear he is an angel even though he looks like the walking dead and has no sense of humor. So, in three hours this magical crew cleaned out all the diseased tissue they could find in various parts within the depths of my torso. Most were identifiable(the glowing ones) and can be dealt with, but some they froze and are having checked further.Of course, another week to wonder. But I am doing ok. I did not stay in the hospital once I awoke fully and got them to unhook all those tubes and things. They said when I could walk alone to the bathroom, I could leave. So of course I did so post-haste. When you're drugged up, you don't feel a thing for awhile; so I took advantage of this fact. A cop friend came to pick me up in the Auxiliary Cop car. All very official so I didn't have to walk far, thank goodness. He brought a detective with him, and told me it was in case I had to be carried.You would have to see how much I have gained over the past 5 or 6 years to fully appreciate what a feat that would have been for even two of them. But he told another friend later on at the station house that it was in case they had to bust me out of the hospital. Good to have friends! So I am home and doing fine. Not very poetic or philosphical today, but just wanted any reader out there to know I will be writing real stuff here again soon; that is, when I can sit up more than 10 minutes at a time. It's a bitch getting old, but I'll take every second gratefully.

Enemy Sightings

Those techno-nerds in nuclear medicine discovered some activity---the cancer receptros did indeed capture the radioactive thingamajigs and lit up by the three dimension scans taken over several days. Must have just made their day. Not so for me, but then, it is better, I guess, to have an enemy sighting than to miss the insurgency and be cut down by surprise.
And so, Monday morning will be surgery. Get that shit out of me before it grows and becomes like the anti-friendly ET creature I experienced last summer. Who says history doesn't repeat itself? Now surviving in the city is quite similar. You do not always see what the threats may be;in fact, what you see probably isn't the problem,it's what you don't see. But you hone a real sensor type of ability, I believe. It's all in the gut. I get this sudden gut feeling like "oh, oh, watch out!" and that can't be ignored. When I have ignored it in the past, I have regretted it. That feeling maybe come from somewhere deep in the recesses of the brain, or maybe it just comes through a disturbance in the energy waves that surround us all the time. Or maybe this is all hocus pocus, and it really comes from some built-in survival sensors we all have. Actually, I don't really care where it comes from, I just respect that gut feeling. I trust my gut.
I get the same feeling in the mountains too. But it usually comes with a slight shiver. It really seems to be in the air and it alerts something inside of my gut. Maybe this is possible because the air is fairly clean compared to the air sludge of the city where it is difficult even for a mosquito to survive for any length of time. But the air in the mountains isn't as clean as it used to be. Now we are aware of all the sulfa and other metallic crud that blows all the way from the industries near the Great Lakes. That shit kills trees and pollutes the streams and lakes and thereby killing the fish, and basically filling us with mercury if we eat the fish. Humans are so damn destructive. When was the last time you heard of any living creature other than the two legged kind building something that destroys other life hundreds even thousands of miles away?
Here's a thought. Somewhere out there in space some intelligent form of life is doing a nuclear scan of the earth. The receptors glow and they probe deeper to discover the meaning. Ah, ha, the destructive cells are humanoids! Yeah, no surprise, they say. Let's zap them with a little chemo. That should prevent them from spreading.
So here I am in the city, pissed off a bit, scared a lot. And deep within the bowels of NYU Medical Hospital, the techno-nerds of nuclear medicine search for alien invasions within the human body of others. If it's a good day, they will find some. They sure succeeded in their quest inside of me, and in my gut area too. Humm, does that mean this little invasion will affect my fine honed gut feelings? Interesting concept, don't you think? Enough said.

white space

I feel as though I am living within the white space between what is happening now and what might happen a moment from now. It is a precarious position, to say the least. I always loved using white space in my poems---those pregnant pauses where so little is said and so much is implied. It's amazing how life just seems to stop between the onset of tests to reveal, or not, that which might be gnawing away at my insides thanks to the modern men and women of nuclear medicine. Why they have solutions for all sorts of things, and one of them is for adenocarcinoids. You see, you are injected with a radioactive solution that contains something or other that zips right through your entire body. As it journeys along, if carcinoid tumor cells are nearby, why they act like a magnet to capture the liposomething or another and pull it right in. Hence it glows thanks to the radioactivity and a dimensional scan of four hours for several days will pick it up.It is a long involved process of laying in wait without moving. And whammo, you have the little sucker located!

Now the point is, you, the patient, don't want the solutions' journey interrupted. You want the radioactivity to whip around for three days and leave without a trace, and wa-la, you are clean of cancer. But those nuclear scientists, although pleasant, and a few with a sense of humor, hope to find things that make them look in awe and wonder, huddle around the computer and say, "There, you see that. Isn't that amazing?" No, I am tired of being "amazing," of being "unique," of having a disease that makes it to the hit parade of medical conferences. Give me the anonymity of the city or the forest or anything, but this endless specialness and these unrestful moments within the white space of waiting to find out what, if anything, has been found and then eventually conveyed to the doctor who will eventally have an opportunity to tell you, the patient who is anything but.

As I await the outcome of these latest tests, I try to live within the white space. In this place, it is disasterous to look back, damn depressing actually, when you consider all the time and energy spent on survival. And if you look ahead, you might start thinking about the kayak that awaits you up north, the white pines that sing, and the rain on the metal roof that soothes. No, can't go there right now because if those nuclear geniuses found something that glows, you won't be going anywhere; instead, you will begin more treatments and/or surgery. No, don't want to set yourself up emotionally. So I live in the white space where I don't have to distance myself, protect myself, with the third person pronouns. It's spring like weather today. That should be enough for now. Think of myself as if I am resting within the pregnant pause of a poem, waiting for the rest of this stanza to reveal itself.