Them's the odds

I have my next medical appointment on June 1, with Dr. S, my GI doc. At that time, I should be well on my well to figuring out where I fit on the above chart. Right now, I'm in column 1, Local Stage. If we find that there is indeed a second tumor, I move to Column 3, Distant Stage.

I guess that's like being moved from the main stage at SXSW to a small tent, on a Monday afternoon, opening for say, Skillet Gilmore's side project. A truly distant stage.

The reality is that my chances of seeing Miley Cyrus's 21st birthday bash may be less than 50%. Who knows. At this point, my brother is - like a bible literalist - decrying all the recent medical tests and claims that his wife, the House of Cave Creek, believes that all my tests are wrong, and that the lung tumor was the only one.

This time I hope he's right.

Gearing up for round two ...

... in the never-ending fight against Tumor World Dominance.

It's weird to be ill. I'm loathe to say "seriously ill." Just because of all the types of tumors to get, I have a rare one, a barely understood one, a fringe cancer if you will.

And like many things that are bad for you, it's producing little in the way of primary symptoms.

Maybe my GI tract is a little more stressed than it should be. I do fatigue easily. But both things have been true for years.

So, this week, I go in for the complete GI tract scope, the full Monty. A colonoscopy and an endoscopy. Only Nina Hartley's ass gets more attention than mine.

After that, they should get a visual on this pernicious little creature, the tumor only revealed by the stealth octreotide scan. Which produced a shadow image, somewhere in GI tract, or maybe my kidney, or ... well, it's down there somewhere. Hiding out, not paying taxes, not reflecting on the social issues of the day. Just producing serotonin and chilling.

Did it metastasize to my lung? Or visa versa? No one is telling. The theory is that these are most common in the GI tract, therefore it probably started there. And so the one in my lung - God rest its tumorous soul - was the splinter tumor. Are there any more?

So the marker - aside from the CAT scan - that discovered all this was my bloodwork. I test positive for pertussis and Rheumatoid Factors. And not just a little. Like Billy Joel lately, I'm off the charts.

So the markers indicated that my immune system was churning out a protein responsive, usually, to RA and pertussis. Yet, being symptom free, the thinking is now that carcinoid tumors were playing ding dong ditch and shifting blame to those other diseases. Quite clever.

When they removed my first tumor [Ah, those were the days!], they expected that that would be the end of it. That my blood work would go back to normal. But no.

The markers did decrease. By about half. Leaving me still crazy high [normal RA factors are 30, mine were - pre-surgery, about 4,000, post-surgery, about 2.000. You do the math.

So I'm gearing up to be poked, prodded, sliced, diced, drugged, mugged and processed like a Honeybaked ham.

As long as they keep me in Versed and Diloted, we will be able to get through this.

Another day, another ...

tumor! Apparently, I have another carcinoid tumor, lurking in my digestive tract.

Which means lots more diagnostic work to find it. And more abdominal surgery. So strange to go through this. By the time I'm done, I will have more scars than Mickey Rourke.

But the hope is that this will be the end of it. But who knows? Cancer doesn't negotiate.

Burned by the Angry Mob

First, the photo is of a bumper sticker I saw earlier this evening. It made laugh so. I don't know what the reference is to, and I don't particularly want to know. I just like it.

This week has been eventful. First, I helped, assisted - one could say "caused" - our company's table tennis team to play measurably worse in the recent Corporate Games. The Corporate Games are a regional event, staged in these parts, and pitting company against company. So my fair corporation played against Baxter, Amgen, the County of Ventura, the Navy, and other companies. We played last Saturday at the Balboa School in Ventura, a depressing little place with the portrait of Ol' Smitty or some deceased former coach painted in acrylics on the wall. Eerie. And the field of play? Well, those tables were probably new about the time Ol' Smitty was still alive and dancing the mambo.

So I showed up, paddle in hand, prepared to do battle. With the best intentions. With goodwill in my heart. With the desire to compete and emerge victorious. Things went south from there.

The first thing I realized is that my presence on the men's singles team was probably not a good idea. The rules limited us to four players. And of the four players, I was the weakest. I was surprised and depressed to learn, on Saturday morning, while warming up, there was at least one other men's player who was significantly better than I was. So unless I won, and won big, I was blocking a better player.

So I played. I played Chad. Chad was big and imposing and bald and white. He looked like the lead singer from Midnight Oil. Chad beat me like an angry wind-up chimp beating a tambourine. Which is to say it required no consciousness on his part and was not particularly pleasant to watch. He was appropriately dismissive and disdainful while thanking me for a "good game". He was a bad liar.

So I prepared to call it a day, but I was called back before I could slink away. They wanted me to play doubles! Ah, I could redeem myself! So, paired up with Mabel, who had won a bronze in Women's Singles, I thought, well maybe I can hide behind her prodigious talent. That's what I thought. You know, I'll set them up, she'll knock them down.

Before we could even get deep into match one, we were behind. It was clear that we were behind because one of us wasn't very good. One of us was mediocre. That one was the non-Mabel portion of the team.

So Mabel, understandably, played harder. And in her effort to cover up the team's obvious weakness [namely, my play], Mabel made a lateral move. An impressive quick, cat-like lateral move. The problem with her lateral move was that its genius was lost on me. I failed to show my appreciation for her quickness by moving out of her way. So Mabel moved through a field of space that I partially occupied. While executing her lightning fast move, she tripped over my right foot, and went flying. And she landed badly on her wrist.

Now, I don't know for a fact that the wrist is broken. It may just be a bad sprain. I don't know. But I feel like it's broken, and that I broke it. It's a bad feeling. One could argue that she moved too aggressively, I suppose. But seeing her, on the ground, saying repeatedly "I'm done! I'm done!" I felt as if I had shot Hoss on Bonanza. Or backed over Bambi. Or punched Tom Hanks in the nose.

Now, I did go and get ice and an ice bag. And I did apologize. But really, what can you do? Not much. I sulked away and tried to find a silver lining. I tried to find some good takeaway. I am still looking.

The title of the post refers to the recent events surrounding my activity on Halos Heaven, the Angels blog. I posted a topic that, in essence, said that the Rally Monkey was tired and needed to be retired. That this idea was unpopular is an understatement. The mighty throng rose up and smited me. Of the 100+ fanposts, about 2 of them were in support of my humble proposition.

It's not that I hate the Rally Monkey. It's just that (a) the joke has gotten old, to paraphrase Morrissey, (b) it wasn't that good a joke to begin with, and (c) it's been copied to death. Can we not think of something new? Apparently not.