The Dais - Part 2 of 7

Dedicated to William Henry Anderson 1920-2012
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When she found herself again she was looking down, this time at Toto. Toto was looking back at her with his adorably large brown eyes. He was growling playfully through a mouthful of hay. Scarecrow was on her right, grimacing, biting a piece of cloth that was the material making up his lower lip. He was making a valiant effort to remain silent while leaning on a railing to support his weight on his remaining foot. Scarecrow was an amazing and talented man; but very quiet when he wasn't singing. He danced a lot, mostly when Toto was around. Dorothy realized she would have to help Scarecrow put his foot back together soon. First she would have to catch Toto to make him give up the hay.

She loved this scarecrow man. His name in her dream was Hunk. Hunk knew her father when they were young river drivers on the St. Johns river in Northern Maine. He told her this soon after he arrived on the farm. Dorothy was a fairly new resident at Uncle and Auntie's farm at the time Hunk arrived.

Hunk showed up one day smelling like whiskey, head hung low and wearing dirty overalls. He and Hick had obviously been travelling by foot for some time. Overall, Hunk was quite a nice, likable man, but Dorothy felt a deep sorrow in him that sometimes made her feel uneasy. He was an experienced worker. So even though Uncle Henry had no money, he hired him that summer. Times were tough. There wasn't much to do for a third hand on the farm. But, starting in late July, when the corn was chest-high, Uncle Henry put Hunk to work chasing crows away from the fields. Usually the crows weren't a problem until August, but he hired Hunk in July. With the drought going on 3 years, the crows were both thirsty and extra hungry. In the fall Hunk worked the scythe and packed hay. In the winter he worked in town somewhere fixing wagons, but he always bunked in the farm’s barn. The bunk house was only big enough for two men so all three of them, having become friends, decide to sleep in the barn up in the hay mow. Hunk didn't take care of himself much in the morning. He'd get up, crawl or fall down the hay loft ladder, grab some jerky for breakfast, and hit the fields before the crows arrived. He was a sight to behold running through the fields waving his arms, singing; hay still clinging to his crusty jeans and poking out of his shirt sleeves. Whatever he was doing was scaring the heck out of crows.

Dorothy remembered that on one of his first Saturdays in July, when the mid-day heat had the crows keeping to the shade of the Maple trees, Hunk had come by the house to talk to her. Dorothy got a real good look at him. Kind blue eyes, white and prematurely wrinkled skin, brownish nose, dark hair. Hunk wore a dark vest buttoning in his small patterned flannel shirt. Her favorite pattern was small checkers, like her frock. Hunk was wearing a medium brimmed farm hat that kept his longish hair in check. She thought he might be around 35 years old. Dorothy thought how ordinary he looked compared to her friend she was with now, the one she knew as Scarecrow. She wondered why she had such detailed dreams about a man so much like Scarecrow, and why her dreams were lifeless, dull, and colorless. Her real world here was cheerful, colorful, and fascinating. And yet the memory of what Hunk told her in the dream flooded now into her mind. The memory was irrepressible and she felt she was mindlessly dancing near the edge of a bottomless pit. She had no control to stop it. Speaking with unmovable rubber lips, Hunk told her that her father asked him to come to the farm to help her, Henry, and Marguerite. As they sat on two oak barrels next to the house, Hunk’s head was down and turned towards her. His eyes filled with tears as he spoke.

"Your Dad and I were best friends. We met while working for the St. Johns Timber company near Ft Kent, Maine. Me and Billy must have rode a thousand logs down to River Falls from Claire. We were river drivers, trying to keep the logs moving down river. Every single run many old trees would find a way to get themselves hung up on the river bank, stopping the whole darn float. Me, Billy and Sky, used our peavys to break the trees free so they'd go on their way. Billy was like my brother. We'd do everything together when not dancing on those rolling logs. The only way to stay alive was to learn to run, learn to dance on them trees. We helped each other, saved each others lives more than a few times. Me and Billy worked around 7 years on the river when we were just young men."

"One night in Fort Kent we were at a dance. We had taken an interest in dancing so we could meet girls. Well, to make a long story short, your Dad met Maddie. Madeliene Thibodeau was her full name. She was the most beautiful girl your Dad said he had ever seen. I could not agree with him only because I myself was dumbstruck by her beauty. I just said she was a fine looking girl. Well, you of all people should know how beautiful she really was."

Dorothy remembered her. Long red hair like hers. Green bright eyes. Burned in memory of the inescapable dream. This person, dream person, was so real. But she knew the mother in her dream would not deliver her from the deepening despair and conflict she felt. The dream was full of details that mocked her now. A mother of flesh and blood; she could still see her face when she first opened her eyes to the world as a newborn. A short lifetime of memories lined up in front of her like so many summer rainbows, moving away after the rain, beckoning her to follow. Following her mother around the farm with her head no higher than mothers thigh, finally reaching somewhere she was leading in order to help her do something important. Running with her across the yard to catch a floating wisp, laughing uncontrollably at the mud that consumed her and painted her new dress. Walking to school with her, singing the rain song to try to bring rain for the fields. Somewhere over one of those rainbows was a drenching trying to reach the crops. When mother taught Dorothy the alphabet, she adopted endearing names for everyone other using letters. Mommy 'Em' and Dorothy Dee. Em sewed a red D on Dee's dresses. Mommy Em was truly beautiful and loving. Yet sadly, she had to watch the fragility of life slowly consume her. Dorothy could not bear to think about it and escaped. The later parts of these dreams suffocated her if she thought about them too much. Especially lately.

Hunk was still talking, "I am both happy and sad to tell you Dorothy, that from the day he met Maddie, your Dad and I didn't see each other much when we were not working. Billy spent most of his time with Maddie. I was happy for him because he was so happy with her. He talked about Maddie all the time. But I was sad because I felt like I was losing my best friend. He called on Maddie often at her folks home in Claire. Unlike me and Billy, she was educated,. Billy didn't think he was good enough for her." Hunk must have seen the sadness that slipped across Dorothy's face.

"There I go again, Dorothy. Making too much talk. Anyway, your Dad and Maddie got married and moved to Wisconsin a few short months later. She had an older brother there who promised to help Billy learn farming outside of Portage. The farm was near a big river where he could always find a new job if farming did not work out. I don't know how much you know about any of this Dorothy. Billy may not have told you anything about our friendship. He talked about you and Pike all the time in his many letters. I think Maddie actually penned the letters for him until three or four years ago." Pike. Dorothy dimly remembered now another part of the dream. Her younger brother. The older memories were many and happy, but a suffocating flood of emotions waited there too. She started to panic. She grabbed at the nearest thought to escape a great fall; she found Hunks voice. He was still talking to her.

"Billy said Maddie taught him how to read and write.", Hunk said solemnly. "Your Dad wrote me often over the last 11 years. He wrote to me last six months ago about poor Maddie. I was heart broken Dorothy. Your Dad saved my life so many times on the St. Johns, He was the brother I never had. So I promised him back in St. Francis that if he ever needed me, I would be there for him."

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The Dais - Part 1 of 7

Dedicated to William Henry Anderson 1920-2012
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This time, when she found herself, she was looking down at her shoes.  They were shiny red and now adorned, if not blanketed, with many strands of long reddish-brown hair. Alarmed by the vision, she spotted more hair between the fingers on her right hand.  She realized that she must have been stroking her hair for quite a spell. She kicked the hair from her shoes. Her neck was sore from supporting her head's position, turned to one side, left cheek to a cloudless sky, eyes down.  She observed the small, familiar reed picnic basket hanging from it's usual spot on the inside of her left elbow. Her arm was sore on that spot. The basket had been there for as long as she could remember, maybe 3 days. The basket was light at this time because it was empty. She did not know why she always carried it. Her thick wavy hair was getting rather thin on just the right side. Why didn't she ever switch the basket to her right arm? Many things in this instant were a great confusion to her.  She did not know why she stroked her hair or for how long. She could not recall actually stroking or watching it fall down to make the canopy over her shoes.  She felt little sense of time. She knew the darkness was still near, even after she had thought she had learned to understand and avoid it.

Straightening her head and looking up and to her left she saw something that melted the darkness.  There was this glistening light from dozens of silos, wrapping around her vision, each rising and expanding to its own height and girth.  Streaking from the ground the towers were of brilliant green, like miles of August corn husks, sometimes they touched each other to create a wonderfully warm and rich silo city and a feeling of intense belonging.  Each silo was different, yet very much the same.  They were familiar and she liked that, in her world of so many new and wondrous things. She came back to remembering the dream.  Until recently, the dream had always given her the most comfort. In it she remembered a vast country side of silos sliding across the landscape as she traveled in a very noisy and smelly train.  She was on her way to visit her uncle in the heartland.  She began to remember more about the time before the train and the darkness began to push in.  There was an unbearable emptiness.  She ran through tall rows of  corn with her younger brother, Pike. He was only a faded memory in her dream; not real, not here.  She remembered helping her father on the farm, her mother with the chores.  She remembered getting on the train in a place called Omaha with her Aunt and she started to cry.

As tears streamed out of the inside corners of her eyes, the very hairy man standing next to her all this time leaned over.  She felt his humid breath and his long whiskers reaching out, waving.  She took in the curly long amber hair adorned with a red bow, the thick eye brows pointing down to the bridge of his sharp nose. She leaned away from him with slight revulsion.  But he was no stranger. He had been with her for days and she remembered that she liked him a lot.  He was crying too. As he dabbed his eyes with the furry end of his pinned and rigid tail, the man sobbed a quiet message, "Stay with us Dorothy, we all love you. We don't want you to go." She noted that this was one of many strange occasions when she heard words directed at her from someone nearby but their lips did not move.  However, she recognized that the voice belonged to the man sobbing in front of her.  She met him only three days ago on the road to Emerald City. She also realized that she dreamt about another version of him.

Toto, who must have been quietly dozing behind her, was awakened when Lion, as Dorothy affectionately liked to call the hairy one, drew near. Before Dorothy could react, Toto snarled and leaped for Lions oddly shaped pug nose; his snout lips raised in preparation for a quick sinking of teeth. Her dog could really jump. Dorothy surprised herself with a quick reaction.  In a miracle moment, she reached out and snatched him back just before the ferocious puny teeth reached the man lion's face.  In the next instant she remembered why she carried the basket. With a quick, but gentle and well practiced move, she ushered the terrier into the basket and latched the lid.  She remembered why Lion always held the end of his tail in his hand when Toto was around.  Lion's tail was a tattered mess with multiple teeth marks.  For some reason, Toto never liked Lion. Dorothy started wondering when she last fed Toto.

In the reoccurring dream she knew Lion as Zeke, a worker at her Uncle Henry's farm.  Zeke was one of three farm hands. Dorothy remembered Uncle Henry explaining to her and Aunt Margaret that he met Zeke in town one day.  This was before Dorothy started living with them. Zeke had asked Uncle Henry for work.  He was a mess. Hungry and unshaven, he was the hairiest man Uncle Henry said he had ever met.  Uncle Henry said he took a liking to Zeke and offered him walk-on work at the farm - no strings attached, until the end of the summer.  That was three years before Dorothy arrived from Nebraska.  Dorothy liked Zeke because she made him feel safe, and he made her laugh. He also had a beautiful singing voice. One time he saved her when she slipped and fell into the pig pen. But she knew this was a dream.  Zeke's real name was Lion; she was pretty sure.  She wondered why she kept thinking about the silly dream. She spent more time remembering this dream than creating new dreams.  The problem was that she knew dreams were supposed to be created when sleeping.  But sleeping is only something she did in her dream, except once.  She remembered sleeping once.  It was in a very large field of flowers; maybe two days ago. Lion slept too but her other friends did not. She woke from that sleep because of some cute talking mice and from the cold brought on by a sudden snowfall.

The Uncle Henry dream man told her on one occasion about how he met the other two ranch hands that worked at his farm. Zeke reported to Henry one morning that two men had arrived from town the night before looking for food and shelter from the spring cold. Out of compassion, he let them stay through the night. Their names were Hick, and Hunk.  Hick and Hunk! Hunk had been traveling to Henry's farm and met Hick riding on a train to Topeka.  Both were looking for work. But Hunk was hoping to specifically find work at Henry's farm.  Times had been tough since the drought began two years back. Farmers were leaving fields fallow for lack of water.  The two of them were quite a mess and did not look much like any farm-hands Dorothy had seen in town.  Uncle Henry was quite used to tending his farm on his own but had a large pond that still had crop water. He took a shining to the two new men and decided to give them work for board but just until after the fall harvest. He could not afford to keep them through the following winter. Uncle Henry told them they would have to join Zeke and sleep in the barn. There was no place else to bed down.  He told Aunt Margaret and Dorothy that they were so grateful that Hunk did a curious little happy dance.

Zeke was an average looking middle aged man who wore a light grey reed hat. Sometimes he was so hairy that all you could see of his face was a small egg shaped area between his nose and his eyebrows.  His beard dove all the way down his neck, disappearing under the buttons of a charcoal shirt. Later, Uncle Henry told her Zeke was Amish earlier in his life.  Days after Zeke started work, he had shaved and looked very much like any other imaginary dream man Dorothy had ever met. Every now and again, Zeke would go unshaven for a couple weeks and his alter appearance would quickly return. Dorothy formed a deep friendship with Zeke and discovered his personality was not as menacing as his occasional scary looks. He was very timid of everything and everyone. He would never hurt a mouse. In fact, mice scared him. The day Zeke saved Dorothy from the pig pen he was so scared afterwards that she thought he was going to faint. Hunk and Hick came over to help him regain his composure.  She wondered why Zeke looked like a normal man in her dream when he did not look that way in real life.  The lion man standing next to her now on the dais had lots and lots more hair. Not only that but most of it was curled into thick coils. He sported a ribbon on the very top of his head.  Lion had very large pointy ears that were located farther up on his head than any man she had ever seen. His eyebrows were remarkable because they were also located much farther above his eyes than most anyone. After they started, his brows travelled well up his forehead before they thinned, almost reaching the ribbon. His large upper lip, situated below a strange brown, round nose, continued on well into his cheeks, which sported a very thick forest of straight whiskers.  Thus, his mouth and chin were set back and gave way underneath to a dense curly mess that one would be tempted to call a beard. Apart from the ribbon on his head, Lion wore no clothes. This was not a problem because, except for his paws, Lion had thick fur covering the rest of his body. She had never seen anyone like Lion. Dorothy knew that Lion was connected to the Zeke in her dream.
She felt a darkness creeping into her thoughts the more she thought about the dream. She realized that thinking about her dream was exhausting and confusing. She had to find a way to let it go.  As she fell deeply into a darkness, she was aware of others near Lion on the platform.


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The Heroes of Kaneohe

May 28, 2012, Memorial Day.

It was a chilly December morning. Seven a.m and the temperature was stuck in the low 70’s. Forty sailors stood for muster on the tarmac outside the main hangar. There were no real runways at Kaneohe Naval Air Force base yet since the only plane the sailors were servicing was the PBY Catalina “flying boat”. There were 36 of them spread around and their runway of choice was the calm area trailing behind steaming battleships. It was a typical Sunday morning for the sailors. Stand for muster, proclaim ‘Present’ when their names were called, then report to their duty station to fix or maintain the PBY’s. One of the sailors standing muster was a 21 year old Seaman First Class, or ‘E3’. He hailed from Fort Kent Maine, jumping from a short stint with the National Guard to the US Navy in the summer of 1940. His name was William Henry Anderson, son of a farmer and bridge construction laborer. He was a smart young man, achieving a co-valedictorian award upon graduation from high school. He tested well in the Navy so they put him to work as an aircraft mechanic. Up until December 7, 1941, aircraft repair work was pretty predictable and mundane for the sailors on the tarmac. Billy, as his friends called him, had no interest in politics and did not follow world events, even though there were many, many world events probably worth following at the time. He was barely 20 years old when he joined the Navy. Jobs were scarce in America and the Navy offered exciting travel, guaranteed paychecks, and a Hawaiian deployment. Without factoring in a major change in America’s peace status, a stint in the Navy seemed like a pretty sweet deal.

December 7, 1941, 7am, Kaneohe Naval Air Force base, Oahu, Hawaii

The sailors were standing muster when one of them first spotted the first Japanese Zeros headed their way from the North. There was initially disbelief, eye rubbing, and denial. The CO barked out some orders and they all ran to various defensive positions around the hangar. Billy ran into the hanger, unbolted a machine gun from a PBY, walked it over to a work table next to a window, clamped it into a vice, and started defending his country through the window. It was a hellacious attack. Virtually all the PBYs were demolished. 20 sailors died. But Billy, thank God, survived and lived to marry his future sweetheart, my mother, in 1951. Talking to me about what happened that day was not something Dad wanted to do until I was in my 30’s. A couple interesting tidbits shared by Dad about that December. First, all sailors were ordered to bring their Navy white uniforms to the mess hall. The uniforms were dumped into a huge vat of coffee in order to color them so they would provide some degree of camouflaging. Everyone was expecting the Japanese to invade as part of their plan. Sometime shortly after the attack, Billy was ordered on a detail to the bay to help paint some US plane parts to look like Japanese Zeros. The painted pieces were scattered in the bay where they were made part of a short video by a mainland movie director. The video bragged about all the Japanese planes that were shot down. The mainland public needed to hear such things, even if vastly exaggerated.

The Arizona Memorial

Dad was actually stationed on the USS California up until late November, 1941, just 2 weeks before the attack. The USS California was moored directly in front of the USS Arizona. You might say Billy lucked out to get transferred to Kaneohe 2 weeks before the attack. Both the Arizona and the California were sunk where they were moored. The California was salvaged and re-deployed. The Arizona remains underwater where it sank and is now the main attraction of the Arizona Memorial. 105 men were killed on the California, 1177 men died on the Arizona.

In 2001, on a business trip that spanned a weekend, I visited the Arizona Memorial, starting with the visitors center. In front of the visitors center is a short walk to an area facing the bay that has bronze plaques for every ship that suffered casualties that fateful day. Each plaque provides a list of names of the men who died on the vessel. I paused at the USS California plaque and read each name. I was pretty choked up, grateful that Dad was not on the California that day 60 years ago. After awhile I used my cell phone and called Billy. He answered. I told him where I was. He asked me to check some names for him. Dad came up with a dozen names of friends he had when he was stationed on the battleship. After 60 years... He remembered a dozen names of men he worked with and never saw again when he was redeployed to Kaneohe! That alone brought real tears to my eyes. Tears of joy soon followed when none of the names Billy asked about showed up on the bronze plaque of casualties. At least his friends survived the first battle of the war.

Later I visited a similar memorial area for all missing, unaccounted for, US submarines that served in WW2. I read the story on each plaque.

Sometimes its easy to forget how we got to where we are as a country. We’ve fought many battles, small and large, since the country was founded. Each an every war made us who we are. And there were always the legions of young men willing to protect America and it’s freedoms. They don't seem to want to get down into the weeds on every war and determine for themselves if this war or that war is just or unjust. To them, the point is moot. America comes first. Today is the day to recognize the ultimate sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of young men, all the way back to the US Civil war, who put their country above all else. We owe them a huge debt.

Jim

Rudy, July 10, 1999 - Feb 25, 2012

Rudy, the older and larger of our 2 Italian Greyhounds passed on Feb 25. Like his adopted younger brother who died 2 years earlier, Rudy had absolutely no complaints as his body wore out from various maladys. Rudy actually met the lower end range of life expectancy for the Italian Greyhound breed. It may have had something to do with the fact that I prepare fresh human food for him every day since Speedo died. I'll never know. It was grilled chick breast in 2010, then deli meats, hot dogs, you name it in 2011, until the end. He was spoiled to the core and he knew it. Even so, he wouldn't eat anything the last three days of his life. He just looked blankly at us and could only stumble around when he walked. But he never abandoned his house training and continued to go outside to perform his various doggy duties.

On the night of the 25th, after days without food and the only water was what I was able to squirt in his mouth, he just laid in his bed and looked blankly at us. I noticed his body was a few degrees colder than normal and sensed that there was too much suffering. I dripped a vet-prescribed .5cc of doggy Valium into his mouth so he could relax the labored breathing. Within one half hour, his breathing unexpectedly stopped altogether. I was devastated. Although the family had been saying goodbye to Rudy for a few weeks, I was the only one home at the time so Cathie, Dylan and Maddie were not able to be with him when he died. We all miss him.

Speedo, July 10, 2000 - January 24, 2010

Speedo, one of our 2 Italian Greyhounds passed away in his sleep early Sunday morning.
We are reminded of him all the time now when we are at home, and he is not. He was a lap dog, more comfortable in our laps than anywhere else. He was always there at the door to to meet any of us when we got home, and he'd try to climb us when we sat down in order to playfully lick at our ears. We got Rudy, the other hound, about a year after we got Speedo. We're all hoping Rudy adjusts well to his new life without his friend and tormentor. One of Speedo's favorite pranks was to start barking in Rudy's face until Rudy started howling back. Eventually, they would bark in sequence, one, then the other, for minutes until they tired. Speedo seemed like the brighter, more spirited dog.

It was really hard to see Speedo's lifeless body lying on his dog bed Sunday morning at 7. He first appeared to be sleeping, but normally he would be up, or at least move his head to look up at me. As I stood in the doorway to the lower bathroom where the dogs slept, I rubbed my eyes to better focus on his form. His chest was not moving. Rudy was not lying in his familiar place next to Speedo. He was not even in the room. I crossed to the outside door, opened it, poked my head out and shouted for Rudy. He came running from the corner of the yard. When he got close to the house he dovetailed over to the back door, did not seem to want to come to me at the side door. Later on, I walked to the corner of the yard and found a small cleared area in the leaves where it looked like Rudy spent some time sleeping in the cold morning air. Hours before, Rudy must have sensed what happened to Speedo. He was afraid.
Speedo had a vet visit last Tuesday. Dr. Meyers was not hopeful. Speedo had been developing several health problems over the past 3 years. Italian Greyhounds do not have a long lifespan. But it amazed me how the spark and spirit of life animated that little dogs body. Like all animals, his body is the result of perfect creator engineering. Billions of of atoms, molecules, structures, chemicals reactions, come together to animate a small, nervous sack of bones and fur. For all the perfect engineering, the animal was not a machine. It was a unique spark that animated Speedo. It caused him to connect to us in ways that could never be engineered or constructed from the elements. That's my opinion. The spark, the spirit that animated Speedo has moved on, that's all. He died on his own terms. We actually thought we'd have to take him in to be euthanized on Friday. But he seemed to be doing well, not in pain by the end of the week. He still met us at the door with the gyrating tail. He still had an apatite. But he was breathing quite hard. The vet gave us some doggy valium to relax his muscles and not concentrate on the tempest going on inside. Saturday night, while sitting on the couch watching the Vikings self destruct, Speedo sat by my side and kept looking at me with his cute brown eyes. He visited with all of us in turn that night, I think. He knew he had to go. He left on his own terms. We were really glad for his nine and a half year visit with us.

Day +730 TWO YEARS

The suspense for me officially ends today.
Thanx to statistics on post stem cell transplantation outcomes, if I kick off from here on out it will not be because of 'transplant complications'. My odds of living to a normal old age are better than 95%.

Today is the day, 2 years ago that I laid in a hospital bed overlooking the beautiful Torrey Pines golf course, dying; poisoned by chemicals dreamed up by some creative geniuses sitting months before in their cubicles in some silicon valley think tank, clicking furiously on their mice to make new and strange combinations of hexogonal carbon-based chains on their CAD/CAM computer software. The jet from Baltimore had arrived the night before spewing ozone-killing gases from its engines, yet carrying various joy-giving very-late Christmas gifts as well as a life-giving small igloo cooler marked 'Biohazard'.
The poisoning had worked to perfection. Because I was a good and well-behaved patient, the hospital staff had decided to postpone my impending exit by administering daily transfusions of bodily fluids one normally doesnt give a second thought about. The poisoning produced no pain, just a deep, deep queezy feeling and dreams of an increasingly bizarre nature. The dreams were becoming less and less an activity associated with sleeping. I'll be writing more about that one day soon.
On this day in 2008 I was to witness some rare events. It started in the early afternoon. First, I was visited by 2 head nurses at the same time. Even one head nurse was a rarity in my room. They brought in a large round bag with an orange colored concoction. This was the first round bag to be hung from my chemo-tree. Every other bag had been rectangular with round edges. Those bags always came in round around the middle but left the room flat in the middle, empty. The orange bag was round and full. It was like a big orange donut. As I watched in stupefied wonderment, the nurses commenced a procedure between themselves that I instinctively knew would be very very bad to interrupt. For instance, a joke to them about orange donuts, and I'm not here today writing this hoo-ha. The nurses read the copious text on each bag to each other, saying "check" this and "correct" that. I drifted off for what seemed hours, woke up to the head-head nurse asking me "Are you James Anderson, birth date October 4, 1954?" I almost said, "Yes, but I know for a fact there is another James Anderson with the same birth date in this hospital." I really dont know why I think such things at the most inopportune times. The orange fluid in the bag seemed to be glowing. "Yes", I said, "I am one and the same person."
As Tiger Woods warmed up his clubs for the Buick Open on the golf course outside my window, and the afternoon sun shown brightly through the January afternoon mist, a concoction of Steve Ever's blood and stem cells was strapped onto my chemo tree and the pump adjusted to 200ml per hour. The thin plastic tube between the bag and the port on my chest turned neon orange. From a slow death, to a quick poisoning to an unimaginable antidote; in fifteen minutes, the mad path my life been taking had come to this fork. The orange bag was empty. I could once again take some control over my future.
On this day Steve flew home to Pensacola from Baltimore. I entered into a twilight zone. A zone of of waiting, of dreams, of existing; waiting for deliverance, hoping and praying for the next 2 years to be kind.

Steve has had good things happening in his life the last couple years; new kind and caring people, new job advancements, new responsibilities. We keep in touch often. I am very happy about this and think he deserves all good things for what he has done for me and my family. Apparently he was able to grow back the stem cells he so graciously gave me 2 years ago today. Stem cells are like love. You can give some of yours away to someone in need and it will grow back thicker than before. Wait, that makes stem cells more like hair.

Our little bit of Colorado

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

My health is still improving. I had my second baby bout with some bug or bugs in October and November. The sore throat lasted much longer than normal for me, probably due to my immune system still being in training.
Cat, Maddie and Dylan doing well too, all ready for the holiday vacation.

Last Thursday I had my most recent appointment with Doctor Jeffrey Andrey at Scripps Clinic. I had blood samples drawn on Wednesday. All systems are go. All blood counts are in the normal range with the exception of my Ferritin levels. All those blood transfusions loaded my system up with iron, the core element in hemoglobin. My Ferritin is still above normal, so I will start another 3 phlebotomies started in January. Each unit withdrawn will lower my Ferritin level. By April I should be in the normal range. My next appointment with Dr. Andrey is in May.

On January 9, 2010 I will pass a statistical milestone. The long term prognosis for 2 year stem cell survivors is very, very, very good. The graft took perfectly and I've twice been able to fight off common bugs that plague our everyday lives. But I must be respectful of the fates. I don't want to go overboard and jinx my upcoming birthday by presenting too rosy of an outlook.

Meanwhile, the 'treat' for my blog readers in this post will better be appreciated by those live in the North San Diego area. We have a wonderful scenic canyon here called Penasquitos Canyon. Hiking from I15 to I5 is a beautiful 5 mile, gently rolling, under the oaks and sycamores jaunt. In the middle of the hike is a small waterfall. It is the turn-back point for many hikers and runners who don't want to complete the entire 5 miles. San Diego does not get much rain. So our little waterfall does not make a big show. In fact, you can easily tip toe across the stream above the fall without getting your feet wet. In the summer, some of the flow is fed by a small spring a couple miles east, where the old ranch house still stands. The ranch house used to be the center of the Penasquitos cattle ranch around 90 years ago. But I'm afraid most of the water coming down the canyon in the summer is from urban runoff. The canyon is rimmed with houses built during the last 30 years. Many people over water their yards and have leaks in their irrigation system. Even so, there are places in the canyon where kids still throw their fishing lines.
I always wanted to see the canyon waterfall when it really was a waterfall and not just a bunch of gigantic rocks jutting out of the ground. So, a week ago Sunday morning I grabbed Cathie and the camera and hiked to the fall. It had rained heavy the night before. You can click on these images to see much larger versions.

I see indications by the shore that the river was a foot or 2 higher earlier in the morning.



You would definitely not want to tiptoe across this stream.


Not much, but it's our little bit of Colorado in North San Diego.


I'm going to go back for a visit after a REALLY big rain!



The wild torrents of Penasquitos Canyon.



Bye until next year,
Jim