Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Time for me to change things up.

As I pointed out in my last blog entry, I've got a lot of stuff to do and I may be running out of time to do it. I don't necessarily think I'm about to die just because I've got cancer, but I have to treat it as a possibility until someone tells me otherwise.

So far my doctor has been loathe to bear bad news. He is handing me off to another doctor though, one who specializes in cancer in the sinus cavities. He's at the Sylvester Cancer Center at the University of Miami. My first appointment with him is Thursday, Oct. 4th. I am not wildly optimistic.

Optimism is not in my nature. This is why I suck so much at working the so-called Law of Attraction. Some of you will remember that I am trying to attract $749 million. So far I have received something like $87.50. I've got a ways to go.

From now on this blog will cease to be personal anecdotes and rants about politics and religion. I am going to concentrate on art and fiction here. I have a lot of works in progress, but I never seem to finish anything.

From now on I will be posting about my progress in this arena and including occasional excerpts from my work. You should help me out by commenting and making suggestions.

Eventually I will redo my tabs so that I can segregate the photography and graphic arts content from the fiction.

I don't suppose for a minute that I will be able to give up politics and religion cold turkey. When I am overcome by passion or anger or disbelief I will post about it on my other blog, Letters to Nineveh, which is way more aptly titled for such content anyway.

To get things started I submit a prototype graphic that combines a poem I wrote over a background that I photographed. I originally envisioned a series of these called Poemography. This ought at least to give you some idea how my mind works...or doesn't.

TRUDGING THROUGH THE GRAND MAL FUNK

The Thinker: too much on his mind

So my doctor, the one who told me on Thursday that I have cancer, was supposed to call me on Friday to tell me how bad it is. He was waiting for an additional report from the pathologists. He didn't call.

I didn't call him either, which is what I imagine any normal person would do under the circumstances—call the guy and find out. I don't want to find out. Ignorance of these matters is as blissful as it gets. I'm already imagining the worst I can. Why would I want to find out it's worse still?

Meanwhile, I'm exhausted all the time. Much of this is due I suppose to the fact that I just had surgery. I keep telling myself that it was endoscopic, outpatient surgery, and shouldn't be that big a deal. My doctor keeps reminding me that I was really sick when I first came to see him so I shouldn't expect my recovery to be a simple thing. Bolstering this view is the fact that, after two weeks, I'm still hosing saline solutions up into my head and blowing alien life forms out several times a day.

On the other hand, it may be depression that's making me tired. I was actually feeling better for a few days. I had more energy. I was staying up for longer periods of time. I'd weaned off the pain meds. I was busy conceptualizing a new series of artworks featuring tubas of all things, and feeling a renewed sense of excitement about that as well as writing. Then I found out about the cancer.

Now I'm suspended between feelings of not wanting to be in bed and not wanting to be walking around as if nothing's the matter. I spend a lot of time also suspended between really dark thoughts and trying to manage a bucket list that contains not one item that I can afford. My fault really. I mean I didn't have to load the list up with Lamborghinis, waterfront properties, exotic vacations, and a stable of Triple Crown contenders. What the hell was I thinking?

I'm going to have to trudge through this grand mal funk. I don't really have a choice. I figure it will take a couple of days. That's all it took the last time a doctor told me I had cancer. I've got prior experience, so I ought to be better at this process than some poor schmuck who just found out he's got cancer for the first time. Experience counts for more in living than it does in the current job market where, apparently, it just means you didn't have the good sense to move on when you had the chance.

I've done this cancer thing before. I intend to survive cancer however many times I have to in order to die from old age. Fortunately I'm already pretty old so I think I've got a legitimate shot.

In any event, it's a shot I have to take. I've got stuff to do. The tubas are not going to photograph themselves. Nubile young women are not going to come knocking on my door to ask would I mind very much taking their pictures with gigantic wind instruments.

The several books I have in various stages of completion are not going to finish themselves, even though the characters in them seem determined to do stuff that I haven't asked them to do. The characters may be free agents, but in my experience they just won't write anything down. They certainly don't make my life as an author very easy.

Now that I'm jobless, retired, and mostly idle, I don't have any time left over to be sick and dying. I'm just too busy. It's not easy to save up for a Lamborghini when you don't have any income. You've got to stay focused.

WHERE LESS IS LESS

So yesterday I felt great. I even posted a tweet that it was the first day since my sinus surgery that I felt better than I did before the surgery, which was proof enough to me that the surgery did some good.

Today I went to the doctor for a follow-up. He had the pathology report finally. Turns out they found some cancer cells in among the other gunk they scraped out of my head. I was afraid that might be the case, but was hoping for the best. Still hoping for the best. It's hard to get satisfactory resolution any more. Everything wants to drag on forever.

Too bad really, since now I'm in a race with the Romney/Ryan campaign and the Republicans to get as much done as possible before they overturn ObamaCare and take my pre-existing condition insurance coverage, which I pay for btw, away from me. I tell you Romney/Ryan, or as I like to call them, Voldemort/Vader, will never be mistaken for compassionate conservatives...whatever that means.