Goodbye Dave

If you read this blog over the past year you probably might recall that I was a stem cell donor last February to a man with leukemia. I called him Dave. I did not know his real name owing to the privacy agreements we all had to sign on to, but I had to call him something. I had to because even though I did not know anything of his life, his family, what he believed in or disbelieved... I was invested in this stranger's well being. I found myself to be the unknown cheerleader wishing him strength and recovery from that disease.

I learned a little more than a week ago that my anonymous friend lost his battle. At first I was just stunned to hear that he was gone and then I began to think of who else was affected by his passing. I don't know if he had a wife and children. I imagined who might have been there to mourn his loss and hopefully celebrate the life he led. I wished that I could have stood quietly there in the background as his family bid him farewell.

I hoped that someday I could have met him, to take a private walk with him on a summer evening and thank him for allowing me to do the best thing I have ever done, to get to know this man who I called Dave. Rest well Dave. You will be remembered.

On the horizon

WASHINGTON — The United States and Iraq have agreed to seek "a general time horizon" for deeper reductions in American combat troops in Iraq despite President Bush's once-inflexible opposition to talking about deadlines and timetables.

ho·ri·zon /həˈraɪzən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[huh-rahy-zuhn]
–noun
1. the line or circle that forms the apparent boundary between earth and sky.
2. the limit or range of perception, knowledge, or the like.
3. Usually, horizons. the scope of a person's interest, education, understanding, etc.

Maybe this is the Bush administration's reluctantly offered gift of semantics to the McCain campaign. A new policy phrase, as meaningless as all the old policy phrases, but intelligently designed to offer anyone who still swallows their brand of lies some light at the end of the tunnel in the Iraq occupation. " He said they now have a horizon!, the troops will come home!" Sorry, ain't no such luck and I will prove it to you with this simple exercise.

1.Get in a boat or go out to the desert.
2. Locate the horizon.
3. Go there.

Now how long did it take you to get to the horizon? What do you mean you never got there? It was right in front of you, all you had to do was believe that the administration was telling you the truth and they have defined the apparent boundary between earth and sky using their superior range of perception and knowledge...or the like.

"My friends..."

John McCain is not my friend.

Catching up, spouting off

I haven't posted for a little while because things are changing rapidly here in black sheep land. Thanks to a job offer I could not refuse I packed up the car with as much crap as I could squeeze into t and headed down the east coast to Florida, the sunshine state, God's waiting room, where you can take you gun to work.

A few things I have thought about recently:
I could rant incessantly about Pope Benedict's newly polished image after his US visit but let me point out that he is still keeping the world's most notorious pedophile enabler safe and sound in a cushy basilica job in Rome and made sure Boston Bernie has the world's best "get out of jail free card", a Vatican diplomatic passport. I do not trust the Pope's miraculous change of heart, infallible or not.

John McCain makes me grit my teeth every time I hear him utter, "My friend...". Let us just hope that enough local election commissions de-certify the use of Diebold voting machines this time around. Give me a butterfly ballot any day.

More later.

Replacement post

I just finished a barn-burner, pissed off rant about a personal incident regarding my former employer and health care coverage. After reading it over, editing and spellchecking an editing some more I decided to just leave it unpublished for reasons that I will also keep to myself. I will however publish one, and only one line from the essay:

"Bah, Humbug!"

So in place of that acrimonious rant, a bad joke:

Two TV antennas got married. The ceremony was boring but the reception was great!

Yeah, I know. I liked the humbug line better myself.

Episode IV: a new beginning

Well, the force has a habit of listening to you when you least expect it to. I haven't posted anything in a while but that doesn't mean that nothing has been happening. Au contraire. For you loyal TV Black Sheep readers out there, yes, you, Mom... You might remember when I posted that my career was in the dumper. Well it was at that time but the universe got wind of that and sent me a candy-gram in the form of a new job offer complete with relocation in the Sunshine state. Yes folks, I am moving to Disney Nation, God's waiting room, the insect capital of the free world...Florida. I will be able to wear shorts and/or a wetsuit year round and choose any one of 100 special interest license plates to slap on my car. Now that's living! The new job is pretty darned good and I am looking forward to starting it in a few weeks. It is a TV engineering gig somewhat like my present but soon-to-be-former job with a couple of minor differences: 1.) The new company actually makes a profit, and 2.) Does not appear to be run by a clique of retarded, drunken baboons. I just wonder how long I can stay out of trouble at the new venue.


I am still awaiting some sort of word on the results of the stem cell transplant. I should hear something any day now. I can only hope that the little buggers are doing their job and making cancer-free blood cells in Dave's (not his real name) body. I hope you get to enjoy many years of long walks on summer nights too, Dave.

Charity begins in the third world

Fri Feb 15, 11:08 AM ET MANAGUA (Reuters)

Shirts and caps proclaiming the victory of the New England Patriots -- when the American football team actually lost the latest Super Bowl -- have ended up in the hands of poor Nicaraguan children. Hundreds of shirts and caps, which had been manufactured in advance to celebrate the Patriots' expected victory over the New York Giants, were handed over to children in the southern city of Diriamba. "The children are the winners," said Miriam Diaz, of World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization. World Vision has links with the National Football League, or NFL, and every year helps out poor children in Latin America and Africa with the unwanted "winners" shirts of the team that actually loses the Super Bowl. Winners' shirts and other garments are produced in advance so players and fans can put them on to celebrate immediately after the final whistle of the game. Garments of the losing team are obviously unwanted.

The Giants stunned the previously undefeated Patriots 17-14 in this year's Super Bowl.

Its a good thing they didn't print "19-0 Superbowl Champions" on spent fuel rods from the Seabrook nuke plant.

Postscript

It has been well over a month since I slept off off the side effects of the Neupogen and the long day in the transfusion center. I have since had the chance to put a few more things in perspective. I realized a universal truth that had always crawled around in the back of my head. If you haven't walked a mile in those shoes, you can't know the real truth. Almost all of the people who "get it" when the issue of bone marrow or stem cell donation is discussed are people whose lives have been affected in some way by cancer. Whether they themselves are survivors or a loved one has triumphed or succumbed to the disease. A branch of my extended family has had numerous battles with breast cancer. My father succumbed to cancer. Maybe for reasons such as those, when I was asked to become a stem cell donor there was no internal dialogue, no weighing the pros and cons. I just said, "yes."

From the beginning of this whole process there have been many people who have praised my decision and just a few others who just didn't get it. Someone even said to me, " You don't even know who you're donating too, I'd never do that!" I think of that now and feel terribly sad for that person. I hope that someday they get it.

My partner in all this, the recipient of my stem cells is doing well from the reports I hear. He has not rejected my cells and the doctors are waiting for signs of Chimerism, the appearance of cells bearing my own DNA signature alongside cells bearing the patients DNA within his blood. As I understand it, that's a good thing. I am looking forward to hearing more reports about his progress and hope for the day when I can shake his hand.

This is life

I just woke up and it is a grey, wet day down here next to the lake. I spent the whole day yesterday in the hospital hooked up to the apheresis machine and watched blood stream out of my left arm, through a complicated network of tubes and pumps and back into my right arm. As the pumps turned and clicked, my stem cells were being separated out by a centrifuge that hummed deep in the heart of the machine. The side effects of the Neupogen finally made themselves apparent. All my joints ached, especially my hips. I had a nasty headache and I was dizzy enough to walk into at least one wall. After six hours of trying to read a novel one-handed, trying to catch a nap and some idle chatting, I watched as the nurse and technicians carefully disconnected a plastic bag from the machine about half full of what looked like Campbell's cream of tomato soup and write some numbers on the label. The nurse placed it on the tray table in front of me, gently patted it and said to me in her beautiful Ukraine accent, " This is life."

For the first time since this journey began I really felt proud of what I had done. Until now I had tried to politely accept everyone's praise and hide my embarrasment because I hadn't really done anything, yet. But it is over now for me and that bag full of life is hanging over a machine in some other hospital transfusion center. That machine has a complicated network of tubes with another man's arms connected to them and my stem cells are making the journey to their new home. I can only hope that they work as hard in his body as they did in mine.

Go to work guys...I'm taking a nap.

The last mile

I started receiving the Neupogen injections yesterday. It is used primarily to stimulate the production of white blood cells within bone marrow. It will also stimulate the production of stem cells and set them free into my blood stream so an apheresis machine can spin them around and make them dizzy enough to make them want to jump into a plastic bag. If you're a medical professional reading this you have my apologies. I know that my explanations are the equivalent of baby talk but I never went to med school, barely passed any biology course and need to simplify all this down to a level where I can wrap my own head around all this. Speaking of medical professionals, the doctors, nurses, counselors and technicians who have guided me through this process have been so kind and loving that I get those little tears in the corner of my eyes when they aren't looking. (Please don't tell anyone!)

The potential side effects of the Neupogen have not manifested yet. I haven't grown a third eye in the back of my head and I don't feel any compulsion to go out and buy a really sharp axe. So again, I feel embarrased when I get praise for doing this. This whole process dating back to early November has been a cakewalk for me and all I am doing here is supplying some raw material.

The real praise goes to all those people who really work hard at this and ultimately to the one person who really is the bravest of all here, The anonymous guy I call Dave, the leukemia patient who is doing me the honor of accepting the stem cells I am offering.

WWJD

In less than a week I will have donated stem cells at a big hospital in a major American city. Within a day those same cells will be transplanted into someone who needs them to survive. In fact as I write this blog entry, that person has started the necessary procedures that will culminate in receiving my stem cells. The clock is running and the point of no return was yesterday.

I don't have any delusions that I am a hero or that I am saving someones life. The medical professionals involved are the real heroes. I'm just supplying some raw materials. I have been the recipient of a lot of praise that I feel is somewhat undeserved since all I am doing is getting some pretty big needles shoved into my arms and being uncomfortable for a few days. I'll get a few days off from work and all the ice cream I can eat. It isn't like donating a kidney or something. Everything I am offering will grow back in a couple weeks.

I am not a religious or even spiritual person. I don't pray to any deity, in fact I am dubious as to whether god exists in any form. I do know one thing. Jesus, if he did exist, mortal or divine, would do the same thing.

P.S. SNARK ALERT I was going to post an unflattering picture of Rush Limbaugh and write that I would reserve the right to ask for my stem cells back if I learned that they went to him. But... Jesus would not do that and besides the picture of Limbaugh just creeped me out.

A post for no other reason than posting.

I guess it's time to just list some of what has transpired in my so called life over the past year. I'm posting them for no other reason than to look back at them and ask myself, "Why the hell did I post that crap?"

First, My career is stuck to a glue board in the basement corner. It has pretty much stopped struggling and sits waiting for someone to bash it's brains in with something heavy. To say that I have made some strategic errors along the way would be akin to being nominated for the Golden Globe in the category of "duh!". 2008 is going to be a year of cutting my losses and hitting the reset button. On the other hand, being selected as a stem cell donor (coming up in less than 2 weeks) has been a much needed emotional boost and has done wonders for my self image. I haven't looked forward to being this uncomfortable in years. Someone close to me said that in the end, the gates to heaven would be wide open for me. Makes me wish I believed that those gates existed.

I lost a friend recently, actually I lost that friend a while ago but I'm just not very observant. Another reason to hit the reset button. Let me see...DABDA, yeah dabda. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. I am somewhere along that timeline, much closer to acceptance I think. Yeah, Acceptance with a side of anger, hold the depression and I'll take that to go.

On the plus side, I did get to re-find a friend from 30+ years ago, another one of the high school hallway invisibles, a friend who always accepted me, warts and all. I am looking forward to talking about more than 3 decades of adventures and broken hearts.

My 2008 resolutions:

-Remember old friends fondly.

-Make smarter decisions.

-Consider myself first but don't fail to give something back.

-Never vote Republican... or Democrat. Nowadays independent is no bargain either.

-Wear a sweater around the house instead of cranking up the heat.

-Rub the dog's belly and let the parrot fall asleep on my shoulder at least once a week.

-Hit the gym more often than I...Oh who the fuck am I kidding!

Waiting patiently

The timing seems to have been just right. The stem cell collection has been put off for a couple weeks since the patient (Dave, not his real name) is going through some other medical treatments that I assume would better prepare him for the transplant. The timing was right since I am just getting over one of those nasty, annoying January colds. My voice has been so raspy for the past week that I thought of auditioning for one of those movie trailer voice-over gigs.


I keep trying to get a perspective on this thing and try to imagine if I was the one who was in need of a marrow or stem cell transplant. Who knows, maybe someday I will be in need but it isn't today. After going through the most comprehensive health evaluation I have ever experienced including x-rays, an EKG, a CT scan and enough blood work to last the rest of my life, I can safely state that I am very healthy...at least physically anyway. So for the first time I have started to think about what happens after they collect (harvest?) my stem cells and transplant them. Is there anything else I could do that would make a difference?

So I wait patiently, drink lots of water and not so much beer. I keep away from aspirin or any other OTC drugs and hit the gym almost as often as I really need to.