HOW IS MY HEALTH? NOT BAD AND OTHER GOOD NEWS

Two subjects for this posting: First a status report on my health and second an exciting announcement.

First of all, how is my health? Another and better way to phrase that question is: How am I feeling? Answer: I am feeling very well, thank you, and I am as surprised as anyone that I can say that. The reader may recall from two postings ago that with the failure of my treatment with Velcade I was about to undergo a different chemotherapy treatment regimen, this time with a four-drug cocktail known as either “Cold Ice” or “Bold Ice.” (Sorry to report that I haven’t yet solved this acronym naming dilemma, that is, what acronym to use for the combination of Ifosfamide, Carboplatin, and Etoposide, also known as VP-16, and Rituxan.)

This four drug cocktail is administered round-the-clock in the hospital and in my case took place over three days. So far I have had two separate treatment sessions. When I call this treatment regimen a “four-drug cocktail,” I am taking certain liberties. I am thinking of only the chemicals that have the job of directly attacking the cancer—Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL), in my case. Chemicals in addition to the big four are infused in the hospital. These chemicals have the job of protecting the kidneys and preventing nausea, among other jobs.

In Chemotherapy, Kidneys Important

Protecting the kidneys is very important in Bold Ice (or Cold Ice) infusion. In an infusion procedure, it is the kidneys that have the job of removing the saline that is a component of chemotherapy solutions and leaving the chemicals in the body, specifically in the blood stream, that have the job of working on the cancer.

When I say that I am feeling well, I am commenting on the combination of attitude, energy level, and experiences of pain and discomfort that I think of as the measure in total of that sense of being alive that I am calling “the life force.” No, I am not feeling perfect, and certainly two separate three-day chemotherapy sessions in the hospital have had negative effects, one of which is quite obvious.

The amount of hair on my body including on the top of my head is drastically reduced. In addition, my experience with food is altered. Related to a change in food interests is the intermittent battling with feelings of nausea and digestion issues, none of which has been severe so far.

Bring on Baked Beans

Chinese food, for example, now has no taste for me, and I have lost my interest in it. I do hope that my tastes for these foods will return, as they used to be part of my regular diet. On the other hand, foods that I have previously had only a mild interest in have drastically increased in appeal. At the top of this list is baked beans. I now love this product including the low-fat type. For me, baked beans have become a very soothing food and even a nausea-quelling staple.

Most gratifying for me is the fact that my energy-level has so far been only mildly impacted by the chemotherapy. Though in the midst of intensive chemotherapy, I have been able to undertake two challenging publishing ventures, which I will report on at the end of this posting. In addition, I am pleased that ideas for new writing projects have been coming to me at a fairly rapid rate.

Here’s an important aside about chemotherapy. When you are undergoing chemotherapy, you are holding two contrary wishes in your head: One is that the chemo will not make you too sick. The other is that the chemo will make you sick enough to kill the cancer inside your body. You sure don’t want what I experienced back when I was being treated with Velcade. You don’t want the treatment to be a total failure.

Not Terminal

In summary, I do not feel in any respect that I am close to death, in other words that I am terminal. I feel very much alive and hopeful. That said, I need to comment on the fact that I am moving ever closer to the next big stage in my medical treatment, which is the bone marrow transplant.

The idea behind the bone marrow transplant is that the patient has his blood chemistry redone. The hope is that through this extreme life-risking process the impurities in the blood that allow the generation of cancerous lymphocytes, a disease known as lymphoma, will be eliminated. Back six years ago, that is, in 2002, I had my first bone marrow transplant.

Called Autologous

Back then I was my own donor, that is, the basic stem cells that were used to rebuild my blood system came from me. The technical term for this kind of bone marrow transplant is “autologous.” The stem cells taken from me were purified to the maximum extent possible and then cryogenically frozen for later infusion in me.

In an allegenic bone marrow transplant, the stem cells come from a donor other than yourself. In this type of bone marrow transplant, the patient has an even greater chance of receiving a completely clean infusion. On the other hand, the risks from an allegenic bone marrow transplant are far higher, especially for anyone over 60. (I am approaching 69.)

Hoped for a Cure

Back in 2002 I hoped that the bone marrow transplant would cure me of lymphoma. What it did was give me five years of remission from the disease, but alas it was not a cure.

If and only if I am in remission from my latest chemotherapy—and that can only be determined in a CAT scan—I will go through a round of injections to build up the stem cells in my blood. My blood will be drawn so that the technicians can get at my stem cells, which will then be purified and preserved through a deep freezing or cryogenic process. What is left of the blood chemistry generation system that remains in me, most of which is centered in the hip bone, by the way, will then be killed.

Tense Time: Blood Chemistry Regeneration

The process of growing a new blood chemistry generation system in me will begin with the thawing of my purified stem cells and their infusion back into my body. Then comes the tense time when I and the medical staff wait for the reinfused stem cells to take up home in my hip bone and to regrow a new blood chemistry generation system. The whole process will take no less than seven weeks, and then there is the recuperation and recovery time, an indeterminate period.

I will be coming back to this subject of the bone marrow in subsequent postings, and so let me now switch to my big news, my “exciting announcement.” I have now signed a contract with Xlibris, an on-demand publishing service, for two books. My hope is that the first of these books will be available in about a month. The Xlibris bookstore is at the following address: http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore.

Announcing: Murdoch McLoon

The first book is a sea adventure called “Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, An Epic For Our Time.” The second book is called “City Above The Sea.” Both books are poetry. “Murdoch McLoon is a story poem, and both are illustrated featuring the work of talented illustrator Lisa Marie Brennan. Look for more information on both books in these pages and on my general website: http://www.sasaftwrites.com. It is anticipated that both books will have their own websites and will be offered through the Xlibris bookstore as well as Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders and other online outlets.

I will be providing more information on these two books in subsequent postings. Thanks for tuning in to Mind Check. Look for another posting in about two weeks.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft

AN EARLY ENCOUNTER WITH AN AGGRESSIVE MEMBER OF THE OPPOSITE SEX

Last night I watched a fine documentary film called “Tony Bennett, The Music Never Ends.” This enjoyable piece of work, made by the director and actor Clint Eastwood, is a good overview of the life of Tony Bennett, born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, who also is a very accomplished painter.

Tony Bennett will be 82 years old this year, and he still keeps up a very demanding performance schedule. To say that I am envious of Tony Bennett’s continuing success as an artist in two different forms and his apparent good health at an advanced age is indisputable. One of the things Bennett says in the film, which really touched me, is—and I am reconstructing this quote from memory— “I am very happy with the way my life has turned out.” Tony Bennett, a man also very involved with the civil rights movements in this country; Tony Bennett, a very impressive human being.

Reviewing One’s Life

How many of us can say that we are very happy with the way our lives have turned out? I find that I spend a lot of time reviewing my life these days and thinking of the ways my life could have turned out differently—and yes, in some respects, better. It’s an exercise that my mind forces me into, in part because of my age, my circumstances, that is, health, and the fact that I am very analytical and very curious, traits that I think go along with my being a writer.

One of the conclusions I have come to is that the decisions that we make during our early years have everything to do with the person we are during our later years. A related conclusion is that even the slightest change in a decision, especially during the early years, will result in a major change in the outcome of a life. When I look, for example, at decisions I made as regards women, these conclusions become vivid in my mind.

Decision Means Turning Point

A clarification is very important before I go much further with this discussion. I am using the word “decision” to mean turning points in my life resulting from choices that I made. Seen from the distance of time these decisions or choices look really large, but at the time the decisions were made, many of them did not appear so monumental.

Part of this clarification has to deal with the nature of the word “decision” itself. Many times the decisions we make appear to be made for us and are the result of pressures coming from our families and others important in our lives. Many times the decisions are coming from very deep seated sources fundamental to our psychological makeup, and we can‘t be certain of their origins.


A Steel Pier Adventure

Let me take the case of a young woman I will call Alice who I met while working on Steel Pier in Atlantic City. It was the summer of 1955, and I was 16 years old, as was she, I think. Starting in the summer of 1953 and for the following four summers I worked for the refreshment stands of Steel Pier, an entertainment complex started by George Hamid and extending half mile out into the ocean at the Boardwalk and Virginia Avenue. For most of my four summers on the pier I was a stock boy doing jobs like emptying trash cans, sweeping the floor and keeping the counters supplied with orange and grape drink, which I and the other stock boys mixed in hidden ice houses on the pier, and with hot dogs, hamburgers, and ice cream.

Working behind the counters and attending to the customers were young women, also teenagers. Some of these young women attended the local public high school, as did I, but a number of them attended the local catholic high school and some of them commuted from the mainland and attended mainland high schools. It was thus an opportunity for teenagers who might not otherwise meet to get to know each other. Alice lived on the mainland. She was a pretty and intelligent young woman, and I enjoyed talking to her. She was also well endowed and as it turned out much more aggressive physically than I was used to.

Encounter in a Stock Room

I enjoyed talking to Alice, but it soon became apparent that she had another kind of relationship in mind. First she arranged for me to see her changing from her street clothes into her uniform with another of the counter girls in an area that doubled as an additional stock room. By simply opening a door when I knocked—which is the procedure that we stock boys were supposed to follow— Alice surprised me by letting me in and thus allowing me to see her in her bra, and she allowed me a long enough look that I had no doubt how well endowed she was. Second, a day later she came after me in one of one of the areas where we stock boys kept the ice and where we mixed orange and grape drinks.

That a girl could be that aggressive was entirely alien to me, and I rejected her. Not only did I reject her, but I lectured her on her behavior. A day later I carried the lecture even further. Accosting her on an outer deck that was used by some of the Steel Pier performers for periods of off stage relaxation, I said to her in an angry voice, as best I can remember, “We’re not the same religion, and I don’t see how any relationship between us could ever work out.” The poor girl was so chagrined by these multiple verbal onslaughts from me that she quit her job that day, and I never saw her again.

Such a Prig

Over the years I have frequently thought about the Alice episode in my life and with a variety of conflicted emotions. “How could I have been such a prig?” I have frequently asked myself. “How could I have been so cruel to her?” Given how my life turned out, my lecture on the differences in religion is especially absurd. Then I think about the squandered sexual opportunity. I was obviously not blind to her considerable physical appeal. Why then did I spurn her?

Was this then a case of her being the aggressor and my inability to deal with any situation in which I was not in control? I do have to admit that it would be a long time before I could be comfortable with any situation with a woman in which I did not feel I was in control. As a result I passed up many another opportunity for sexual experience after Alice during my early years. Then too there are the issues of class, issues I hate to admit but I’m afraid they were there. Despite her intelligence, I saw her as a poor girl, as an underprivileged girl; I saw myself as better than her economically. When it came to Alice, was I a snob? I’m afraid so.

Fear of Entrapment

Related is the fear of entrapment, even at the age of 16. I saw myself as college-bound. I saw pretty, well-endowed Alice as a possible trap, as someone who could get pregnant and keep me from realizing my college dreams. Yes, that fear was at work as well. And finally there was just plain fear of the opposite sex. I was a heterosexual male all right, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid of women. This fear took the form of being afraid of women’s bodies.

In a future posting I may face head on this fear of the opposite sex, but I am not ready to do that now. The reader will have to accept as a given this fact about me.

Complexity of Sex Drive

Where am I going with this discussion other than to reveal a fact about my early life and how my mind worked when I was younger? One important fact is how important sex was and is, as both a positive and negative force, but how complex our feelings about the subject are. Is the sex drive ever a pure emotion disconnected from other considerations? Probably not.

I do hope life turned out okay for Alice. I do hope she didn’t waste too much mental energy dwelling on the mean stock boy who spurned her advances on Steel Pier the summer of 1955.

To see a sampling of the other writing of Stephen Alan Saft, also known as S.A. Saft, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft