My beloved pilgrim,
I just left a rambling telephone message on your answering machine. You're likely out earning a living -- what a notion!
It just occurred to moi that, given your proclivity for working ridiculous hours -- entirely by choice and love of the pursuit of green, snort! -- you may not have been rabidly checking your incoming emails. Having a life and all.
So I wanted you to know that our favorite professor encountered big changes and may have brushed shoulders with a bit of luck and a person of optimism this past Wednesday. As I am becoming a basket case every Tuesday evening, and something resembling an Orca-sized New York street vendor pretzel during Wednesday's official time stamp... only to dissolve like an Orca-sized New York City street vendor pretzel left out in LA's Macarthur's Park and its famous rain.
Are you still there? Good, because I'm pretty sure I was able to shake off any doped-up readers who decided to read on, after being so thoroughly discouraged from that endeavor -- my Beloved Freaks!
MacArthur's Park is melting in the darkAll the sweet green icing flowing downSomeone left the cake out in the rainI don't think that I can take it'Cause it took so long to bake itAnd I'll never have the recipe againOh, noOne day, when we meet to discuss all of the many things over which we've been mutually blessed to marvel, we can discuss Jimmy Webb's (and Richard Harris') contribution to the culture.*
Honest to Goodness, though, I hope we can hoist something cold and frothy, first, and examine our mutual navel lint before diving into such depths. Two fools in a pool...
The Good Prof, weak and limping along in a fog of pain and confusion, was released from the care of the Bone Dood, and handed over to a hematologist oncologist. Unfortunately, and this sums up the charm of the Bone Dood and his massive "Institute" quite well -- not a criticism; just what we all know is true at large, excellent medical joints -- GB was given no clue as to why he was now being sent to a frigging Blood Cancer Doc, but resigned that the tumor in his shoulder, the tumors in his lungs, and the as yet unidentified LUMPS in his pedagogical ass all logically added up to a burning need for a Blood Doctor. Oy!
When last we left GB, he was being led down the corridor to a Radiation Oncologist who was gonna "debulk" -- a new verb favorite -- the shoulder tumor to provide him with pain relief.
Odd, but Bone Dood's dawdling in making that step happen proved to be, well, something a smart musculoskeletal oncologist might do, as hurtful as it seemed to moi.
Because Blood Cancer Doc deals often, and well, with persons diagnosed with [don't click on this next link without a cat in the lap and whiskey in a glass] metastatic renal cell carcinoma -- which, despite being located in spots far afield from the kidneys, are still "renal cell carcinomas."
Wanting a euphemism for "kidney(s)" -- and who does not? -- I discovered that "the biblical Hebrew equivalent of the English idiom heart and mind, is כּליות ולב -- i.e. kidneys." This will prove useful in future coded messages, eh?
Blood Cancer Doc was warm, thorough, optimistic, and ready with a plan. No radiation, no surgeries, but an immediate, time-sensitive (duh!) application to a clinical trial. Forty pages of information for this pained, tired jokester of an Educator to cull through, decipher, and to which he will dedicate 14 months of his life, IF accepted.
Turns out that had our Intrepid Teacher undergone *any* radiation, or treatment, really, of any kind, he would have been ineligible for the clinical trial, or would have had to delay starting. IF he's accepted.
That news should be had around next... you guessed it! Wednesday! Regardless of the response, the friendly, warm, optimistic Blood Cancer Doc is prepared to begin chemotherapy next week. Either way, he promises it will reduce the pain.
In the interim, he will be kept busy as a bee with testing. The application and attendant clinical reports also require that the pathology/histology report not be older than 21 days, else our underemployed-overworked loved one will have to undergo another deep biopsy under general anesthesia.
True to form, his major complaint remains... the famed ASS (good luck decoding that acronym, my Intrepid Readership!).
I love him so. You love him so. And all three of us still love bad jokes, excellent thought, the sound of rushing rivers, and wild, wild beauty. No code needed.
Smooches Galore. I love you so...
The old grey donkey,
Eeyore, stood by himself
in a thistly corner of the Forest,
his front feet well apart,
his head on one side,
and thought about things.
Sometimes he thought
sadly to himself, Why?
and sometimes he thought,Wherefore?
and sometimes he thought,
Inasmuch as which?
and sometimes
he didn't quite know
what he was thinking about.
--A.A. Milne
Winnie-the-Pooh
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| Hebrew text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, from Psalm 145 |
* "MacArthur Park" is a song by Jimmy Webb, originally composed as part of an intended cantata. Webb initially brought the entire cantata to The Association, but the group rejected it.[1] Richard Harris was the first to record the song, in 1968; it was subsequentlycovered by numerous artists. Among the best-known covers are Donna Summer's disco arrangement from 1978 and Waylon Jennings's version recorded in 1969 and his recording of the song from 1976. Maynard Ferguson,[2] Stan Kenton[3] and Woody Herman all performed big-band jazz arrangements.
While it was a commercially successful song multiple times after it was released, "MacArthur Park" used flowery lyrics and metaphors (most famously, love being likened to a cake left out in the rain) that were considered by media such as the Los Angeles Times to be "polarizing" and "loopy".[4]
Since its original release, the song became associated with the NBC, most notably with the late Johnny Carson. Harris sang the song in the final episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1992.
© 2013 L. Ryan
Great news - I hope the trial works out!
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