I'm rolling now, my first ever blog comments. I'll start with apologies because this could go in any number of directions. I'm already into my first edit, having gotten started down quite a ways before I came back and read the title. Mo is old friend Maury Simpson, who during our running days was seriously fond of the band, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Luckyman is a great song that I happened to be listening to on the online radio station, KSWD 100.3 from LA. And I'm also a very lucky man, so I thought I'd use it. Yes, I'm high again, having just returned home from my position as Official CCS Girls' Volleyball Championships Announcer. Actually, I've just returned from my laboratory....heheheheh, err, smoke room/office. I'm also thinking a better blog title might be; "reflections while I'm stoned".
It was the qtr. finals for 8 schools, 4 matches. 10:30 until about 6:30, a very long day for my feeble brain. Oh yeah, in case you haven't figured it out yet, this is going to be about me, and I don't know yet if anyone is ever going to see this, but like my friend David Frock likes to say, and hear me say, "I don't really give a shit"....hahah...thanks, Dave.
Oh yeah, I'm also a cancer survivor. Forgive the boredom you may experience while reading this. 12/5/05, daughter Michelle's JV basketball game that night in Gilroy and I'm the team scorekeeper. I wake up later thinking I'd fainted. I'd thought briefly of trying to shorten this, but then figured, WTF? I'll write any goddamned thing I want here and consider it typing practice if I feel like it......hahaha.
So I woke to the phone call from Betty, asking if I'd picked up Michelle from school. I'm a bit dazed, but hell, I'd just been awakened from a SEIZURE induced loss of consciousness. It felt like a good, deep sleep. But looking back, not metaphorically, there was a skull sized pool of deep red blood on my pillow. I don't think I could have done a better thing than to lie down and put pressure on the cut, and that is just completely sheer luck because I have never had recall of that event. Retracing the blood line to the next room, I theorized that I'd stood too fast and fainted, and after all the cardio checks that month, we concluded that my heart had nothing to do with that episode. I drove sophomore 15 yr. old Michelle to our friends', Denise and Neal near Watsonville airport, as their Cristina was on the team, too. Neal drove us to Gilroy and Betty met us there. A number of friends expressed their concern that I'd somehow fainted and cut the back of my head. As near as I recall, I woke Michelle from her nap to get ready to go, and to put a bandaid on it for me after I'd cleaned it up a bit. Betty and I went to the hospital in Gilroy. Name escapes me at the moment, (some time ago and now I think it's St. Louise). They stapled the cut, did a catscan, believed my theory on the fainting thing, and advised me to see a cardiologist. I learn it's not my heart, but New Years' Eve, we're upstairs getting ready to go to Stief's party, and I ask Betty if she hears anything, like helicopters. I knew it wasn't a helicopter, but that was the closest description I could give to what I was feeling, like a slow wump wump wump and the light rhythmically dimming. I wasn't tripping, and it didn't feel at all good. I lied down, and the noise slowly went away. I'm convinced that was a Petite Mal Seizure. Then January 2nd, my first trip of the rainy morning is a 3:30 pick up in Bonny Doon. I'd been there before, but for some reason the client was nervous about me getting there. (at that crazy hour in that crazy weather and she was flying to China, maybe?) Anyway, we met on the road just down from her house, but that was weird. I got her there, no problem, came back for next clients, and I think I had a trip to SJ, before the magic trip beginning in Soquel, going back to SFO. We didn't get there. Doing 70 mph northbound on 280 at about Woodside Rd., I went Grand Mal Seizure. A lovely family on their way to a vacation in Hawaii, the dad up front with me somehow gets control of the vehicle and I wake up in an Ambulance on the way to Stanford, being told I'd had a seizure, and I put the pieces together that back on December 5th when I'd cut my head, I'd also had a seizure. The advice from Stanford is to see a neurologist and get an MRI, but they also comment that St. Louise, the Gilroy hospital did a catscan and should have seen something. End of that story. I'm a very lucky man and that is nothing worth pursuing. Also, end of this portion of my story, as I'm getting tired and am ready to start playing a little Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. It's a very simple life when you're told you'll never work again, will collect disability to help with the bills, and oh by the way, you're going to start playing a lot of free golf and smoke cannabis every day. Try to enjoy your life.
I'll likely be the only one reading by now, and have missed another one......that train of thought that just left the station..... I remember using that stupid line originally on one of those great trips I took back to Cambridge with my brothers, going to watch my son play football at, and also for, MIT. That was all after the seizures, tumor, chemo, radiation bullshit. No, I don't think that's right. He was a freshman in the fall of 05 and we went back to watch a couple of games that year. The tumor was that January, and we didn't go back again until fall of 06, when I was having seemingly more trouble maintaining train of thought. They said following the brain surgery, and probably somehow combined with the chemo and radiation, that there would be behavioral modification and cognitive impairment. I have to agree. Sorry about the behavioral modification, friends. Goodnight.
And now I have Cannabis. I tell you folks, this stuff is truly a sacrament. I had a 3rd seizure June of 08, yeah, two and a half years after the tumor resection surgery, but also13 months after I'd passed the date they told me was my median life expectancy, based on my diagnosis, as confirmed by biopsy u......this was over an hour ago that I became sidetracked and edited text above. Yes, the tumor biopsy confirmed the GBM grade 4 Astrocytoma that equates with the 16 month median life expectancy I'd been given. I don't mind repeating that, having gone way beyond that number, and one more time, smoking that cannabis that keeps me going, and gets me only a little bit crazy. And as I like to remind myself, but it's a good crazy.
