Notes from the Dog Watch

Chemo--round two

Tuesday was my second round of chemotherapy--four hours at the clinic, and then the diffusion pump for 46 hours. The clinic was busy, no doubt because of the holiday the day previous.

As per the first round, the noticeable impacts were delayed until I got home. The fatigue set in pretty slowly, coming to full force around just about quitting time Wednesday. By the time I got home, the only thing I wanted to do was sleep--which is why this is being written at 0100hrs. instead of some rational hour. My insomnia lost the battle around 1730, but I rarely sleep more than six hours at a stretch anymore, so the Dog Watch and I are familiar.

The nausea is mild right now. Finally figured out that my prescription for Lorazepram couldn't have been sent electronically: because the medication is a controlled substance (low doses reduce nausea, while higher doses remove anxiety). The hard-copy the doctor had handed me two weeks ago was the actual script that I needed to pick it up.

The neuropathy is stronger this time, and it is manifesting in my throat; when I drink something cold, I experience mild pain and constriction in my throat, just above the adam's apple. I would describe it as swallowing dull thumb-tacks, but it's a bit milder than that. I'm trying to stick to warm and room-temperature beverages for now. Makes taking my meds in the morning a little tough, but I manage.

Currently reading (or, trying to read) two books: Book in a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Victoria Lynn Schmidt, and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray. Ms. Schmidt includes an interesting chapter on goals, with a very useful (at least, to me it seems quite useful) motivational exercise which is to visualize one's life from it's far end--old age--and think about what one would feel not written the novel that you want to write now, and to use the emotional impact to help drive one to write the novel. I have seen this same exercise used elsewhere, and the idea of using that future pain to motivate oneself away from a course that leads to it. The trouble for me is holding onto the memory of that future pain, of remembering just how bad it will be if I don't make serious alterations to my life in the here and now. Laziness settles in very quick. So, sometimes, sudden, radical changes are needed to force me onto a new course of action, to jar me out of my complacency and get my as moving.

I think I'm about due for a radical change.

"They can have any color they want...

....so long as it's black." ~Henry Ford

I'm sorry for anybody offended by the following, but...

Remember When Motherhood Wasn't Controversial?

Parker probably figured the news would be non-controversial, given that the fresh-faced Los Angeles Sparks forward and Olympic gold medalist is happily married to Sacramento Kings forward Shelden Williams. Both earn more than enough to support a family: Parker alone reaps millions on and off the court as one of the most celebrated women athletes in the world.

But Parker’s pregnancy was not greeted with the same approval and tolerance that many of today’s child-bearing sexagenarians and single mothers by choice enjoy when they form their families. Instead, Parker was blasted by fans and pundits for becoming a mother at age 22. Critics bemoaned her selfishness in putting maternal ambitions ahead of her team’s 2009 season prospects. Others lamented her foolishness for starting a family when she should be living a strings-free existence oriented around her glamorous career.

What the fuck?

Who the hell tells a woman that she has to put her career ahead of her family? I mean, this is a married woman, who is--along with her husband--financially well off, with a home of her own; this is not Nadya Suleman by a long shot. Yet, she's getting shit for putting her "maternal ambitions ahead of her team’s 2009 season prospects."?

I thought that one of points of feminism was that women should have the choice to pursue a career or be a mother or any other thing they wanted--when did that change?

“My whole career has been trying to please people in basketball,” Parker, a 22-year-old newlywed, said Friday in a telephone interview. “Now it’s time to please myself.” She added, “For me, family has always come first.”...

W.N.B.A. Commissioner Donna Orender said her initial reaction to Parker’s pregnancy was a quiet sigh of resignation. Then she thought of all the women in the more traditional workplace struggling with the issue of when or if to start a family, and she realized that Parker’s pregnancy provided a perfect modeling moment.

What the fuck?

Words of Power, and the Ensorcellment of Minds

Mike Hume, editor of spiked!, has written a very timely article on the new free speech wars--timely in that there is currently a clash over the use of a word between two of my LiveJournal friends.

The following quote is very telling:

Now it seems that words themselves can be seen as inherently evil, regardless of context. This looks more like a modern version of the Middle Ages when people believed there were ‘words of power’ that, whether uttered as a prayer, a spell or a curse, could themselves alter real lives and situations.

Words of Power are dangerous things; they remove our free will, because they train us to react by reflex rather than through conscious thought. They dis-empower, because they create "automatic victims", people who are victims without their knowledge but with their volition. They do violence to language, because they steal context and meaning from our speech. Worst of all, they destroy trust, for we place those who use such words in the category of Outsider, while at the same time we demonstrate our autocratic impulse--obey, or be punished.

To create Words of Power is to ensorcell one's own mind. It took centuries to break ourselves from such self-enslavement; it is a shame than we have fallen so easily in so short a time. We are becoming peasants again, and most cannot see anything wrong with that.

If I should ever call myself an intellectual, may the Earth swallow me up!

I have never been comfortable with the idea of being an intellectual (as opposed to being intellectual; the latter is, in my mind, synonymous with cerebral, to which I confess my guilt), predominantly because I associate the word with the concept of the Ivory Tower--isolated and inexperienced in the realities of the world, blind to one's own short-comings. Yet, from time to time, I have to wonder if being an intellectual is a thing to be avoided, and my discomfort the product of my middle-class origins; a prejudice that I indulge solely for appearances sake.

I find the following from John C. Wright to be piercing in its clarity:

A central conceit of any intellectual condescension toward the lives and philosophies of the world is that the intellectual alone is clear-eyed enough to see the falsehoods that have deceived the common man. An intellectual is defined by this one characteristic: he is a man who thinks he is smarter than all his neighbors, instructors, and forefathers, and sees through all their sacred beliefs as contemptible falsehoods. The leitmotif of all intellectualism is contempt.

Contempt--a function of pride. Pride is the most dangerous sin of all--for it most readily leads to the Fall.

No wonder Socrates spurned praise, and admitted to knowing only that he was an ignorant man--it was a far safer course for his soul.

I, Cyborg

A bit sore this morning; I underwent surgery on Friday. For the record, I would much rather be knocked out than undergo "conscious sedation" again--I had a near panic attack when the surgeon touched my neck. Not pleasant.

I am now the recipient of a single-line power port in the upper right area of my chest--about an inch under my right collarbone. The port is a titanium disk, with a catheter running up and into my jugular vein. This is to allow easier access for the administration of my chemo meds--once I start the 5FU and Oxaplatin (sp?), my veins (not very accessible to begin with) will shrink.

I am now a cyborg. Where is Sarah Connor?