Another candle

I had a birthday last week and celebrated in a quiet way. Renecito helped me blow out the candles on my birthday cake, as you can see here.

Radiation is progressing. I'm almost halfway through, and other than some weird acne on my back near the zap site, my skin is doing fine, now getting slathered twice a day with aloe, then with Eucerin. When I compare the side effects with chemo, radiation is a piece of cake. I saw Dr. Gillis for my weekly exam this morning and she was pleased with my progress. She can feel a definite diminution in the size of the node since we started radiation treatment. In fact, it's so small now, it's getting rather uncomfortable to have her dig around trying to find it each week. Very promising.

However, the fatigue is really bumming me out. It doesn't seem to matter if I get plenty of sleep and rest, I'm just tired from the time I get up, and other than the lunches I still go out for in the 'hood, and the small birthday outings recently, I mostly sit around and read and do crossword puzzles, and doze. I have managed to get three lino plates carved in the moments of energy (consequently my apartment is not white-glove clean), which is good, since tonight I have the open studio time at Somarts to print them. When I have energy to leave the apartment for something more stressful than lunch, I try to spend it on being with Della, because, though extremely exhausting, she is going through such an adorable phase right now that I hate to miss a moment of her cuteness.

Meg is visiting starting today, but staying at Robert's. Fortunately she is used to hanging out and being a lump with me, so I won't have to try to be more energetic than I feel. The fatigue can last for as long as two weeks after radiation treatment ends. Since I finish 5/15, I guess I can look forward to feeling normal again by Memorial Day if not before.

Put your tulips together...

I didn't have a new plate carved and ready for printing last night in time for the last session of "Luminous Linocut", as the class is called, so I used the studio time to do viscosity prints of my existing plates. This is the parrot tulip I carved on the first night of class. I'm going to miss the weekly routine of the print studio. Being there is both stimulating and soothing. We bring snacks and music to share with each other and we help each other print (when you do double drops, someone has to lift your paper for you while you slip out the monotype plate inked with the solid color and replace it with your inked lino plate). Everyone is very courteous and methodical, so we don't get much in each others' way and we don't misplace tools, don't create unnecessary messes, etc. Then we do cleanup together, which can take up to 30 minutes. Then, my favorite part, we sit down together at the clean work table and go through everything that was printed that night and discuss the various effects achieved and techniques used. It's extremely satisfying, on an artistic as well as on a social level.

My teacher, Katie, was very excited to have done shrinkydinks all Easter weekend with friends and family. (Last week I brought a bunch of the blank sheets to class for her.) She made me this tiny little representation of a linocut carving tool and my print from last week. :) I was very touched.


I'm well established in my new routine of daily radiation treatment. (6 down, 26 to go!) Using ZipCar has been very easy, and I haven't run into bad traffic. Unfortunately, I'm already feeling a little fatigued, and had to forgo some planned socializing over the weekend. The cold and rain we had here over the weekend certainly didn't help. It's a little easier to rouse myself now that we have sunshine again, and I've been trying to stick to my other new daily routine of lunching out and walking.

As it was Wednesday, I saw Dr. Gillis after my zap yesterday. Nothing much to report. She was unsurprised about the fatigue. My skin is normal so far, but she said to expect some redness by the end of next week. I'm prepared with unguents of aloe and such. So far, the axillary mass has not started growing again.

If you're interested, this is the routine for radiation: The receptionist at the front desk buzzes me in, and I go to the men's dressing room and change into a gown and put my clothes (top half only) into a locker. Then I sit and wait for a few minutes until one of my radiation therapists (either Ann or Barbette) comes and gets me and takes me to "Tahoe", as my particular radiation machine is called. Tahoe lives in its own huge room, with an l-shaped hallway and thick doors between it and the control room area where Barbette and Ann make it do its thing. I sit down on Tahoe's platform, untie my gown and lie down on the little sheet covered form they've arranged for me to maintain my position during the treatment. (If I were standing, it would look like I had my hand on my hip.) Either Ann or Barbette pulls my gown down below my waist and then they both use a light grid emitted by Tahoe over my torso to line me up, using those little tattoos I got. They tug on the sheet I'm lying on, tell me to relax my shoulders, say things like "And there I'm at 91" and "91 check" to each other. When they're happy with my position, they disappear down the hallway, and I hear the thick door close, and then Tahoe starts to whir and click and twirl, letting out with a sustained beep every so often as it zaps me. It positions itself at different degrees around my body for a series of 7 beeped zaps, and then it stops making noise and stops moving and Ann and Barbette come back and help me sit up and tie my gown back up for me, and one of them walks me back to the men's dressing room. On my best day so far, I was in and out in just about 10 minutes.

Lunches so far this week:
Starbelly - crab salad (duh)
Chilango - duck flautas and a surprisingly complementary merlot
Monk's Kettle - really good burger and fries and a nice bitter Rye IPA

ZAP!

Radiation treatments have begun! According to my appointment slip, they were just supposed to do a verification x-ray today, but it turned out they were starting treatment as well. I am scheduled for a total of 32 treatments, ending on Friday, May 14th.

Tomorrow and most of next week, my appointments are all either 8:15 or 8:30 (!!!!). After that, it's 9:00 every day. So much for my requested window of 10-12. I may have to deal with some rush hour traffic, but it's such a short leg of the freeway, that I doubt it will delay me much.

I have already made my ZipCar reservations for each of my treatments. I'll be driving the same car (a Scion TC) every time.

The print in the photo is my latest exercise for my linoleum printing class. One more class session next week, and then an open studio session on 4/21 and I'm done for awhile. I didn't sign up for the next block of six class sessions, since I don't know whether I'm going to be fatigued or not from radiation. But I definitely want to do a lot more in this medium. And I'd definitely like to work some more with Katie Gilmartin. She's a great teacher.

Home Again, home again

This is the view from Donald's bedroom in Manhattan (looking east from Amsterdam). Notice the twin towers of the San Remo apartment building (where Stephen Sondheim lived as a boy) on the right, and just to the left of center, the plant leaf seems to point to the tower of the Carlyle Hotel. On the extreme left you see one of the turrets of the Natural History Museum.

This was one of my most enjoyable visits to New York ever. It was without a doubt the spendiest, between my shopping for clothes in the meatpacking district and having dinner at Jean-Georges (where my niece Alison and I were both cruised by Martha Stewart), and flying first class on Virgin America. However, I didn't do my usual theater-going marathon. The trip was planned around the date of the 80th birthday concert for Sondheim (it was great!), but I didn't have advance tickets for anything else. Near the end of the week, Donald and I decided to use some of the discount coupons he gets by belonging to the Theater Development Fund for tickets to "Next Fall" and "A Behanding in Spokane". We quite enjoyed both plays.

A great discovery this trip was a new gelato store in Donald's neighborhood: Grom. It was as good as any gelato I had in Italy and I tried to eat it at every opportunity.

With all the nice weather, we did a lot of walking and I think I might have lost a little weight despite the gelato and the expensive French food. Guess I'll have to eat a lot of lunches out to gain those pounds back. No problem.

I came home to annoyed, but affectionate cats, and a big pile of mail.

Tomorrow I go to the radiation oncologist again for a pre-radiation CT scan and to get tattooed (just little pin dots) so they know how to position the radiation beamer thingy when I go for treatments, which I assume will commence next week.

Here's to the ladies who lunch

I've gone clothes-shopping almost every day this week. I am so not a shopping person, but I feel very deserving of expensive and modish garments these days, so I've persisted in my quest for wardrobe amelioration.

At the beginning of the week, I decided that since I was entering the demimonde of the almost-extinct lady-who-lunches, I should, in fact, lunch to round out the experience. Shopping and lunching really is an enjoyable lifestyle, I've found.

One unfortunate aspect of dining alone is that it leaves one at the mercy of the conversations taking place nearby. When I was lunching at Nieman-Marcus, I tried to shut out the mundane blather of the two ladies at the next table (using email, how fun Netflix is to use, what to order on the menu that wouldn't drip on their Ann Taylor suits, etc) , but my ears couldn't help but perk up when I heard one say to the other, "Do you like sex?".

"Oh, I used to, but I haven't gone there for years."

Gone there? That seemed a rather hip locution for someone of her age and class. When I glanced over, they were both looking out the window across Union Square to the building housing Saks Fifth Avenue. I went back to shutting them out and reading my New Yorker.

Today I had to take something back to Bloomingdales that I bought yesterday when I was too tired to assess its fit appropriately. I ventured out in the rain and accomplished the exchange quickly, then took the subway back to Hayes Valley and shopped some more there. I made some extremely unnecessary but entirely satisfying purchases at Nomads, then walked toward the subway. After trying to hold my umbrella and walk in such a way as to keep my "Big Brown Bag" from Bloomingdales dry for a couple of blocks, I found myself in front of Absinthe. The prospect of a solitary French meal while seated on a red velvet banquette, surrounded by a warm, lush, art nouveau interior was too cozy and too decadent to resist. I went in and had the most delightful lunch with a nice big glass of Syrah.

The rain had not let up by the time I finished lunch, but I was ever-so-slightly tiddly and warmed from within, so I really didn't care.

Here are the places I've lunched this past week. I had Rene and Della as companions on Monday and Thursday, otherwise, I was alone:

Starbelly (that crab salad I can't get enough of)
Wexler's (brisket banh-mi - very good)
The Rotunda at Nieman-Marcus (lobster club sandwich, a classic)
Out the Door at Westfield Mall (imperial rolls, chicken clay pot, bbq pork on vermicelli)
Absinthe (caesar salad with fresh white anchovies, croque monsieur)

Printing hands are happy hands

I started my linoleum block printing class last week. Tonight was my second class, and I spent most of the time printing this image of my cat Violet. I had carved it over the past week (it's based on a photo that my friend Donald took years ago) so I could spend tonight's valuable studio time just printing it. I think linocut is going to be a new addiction for me. I'm anxious to do more.

I'm trying to cram as much fun and interest into these few weeks before radiation starts. I don't expect to feel bad from radiation, but it will be a daily chore. I've joined Zip Car, a car sharing service, so I'll be able to drive myself to and from my radiation treatments.

I know many of my readers would like to know more about my cancer. It's not a topic that I enjoy discussing very much, but here's what I know: my cancer is a fairly rare type called "Merkel cell" or "neuroendocrine cell" carcinoma. There are only about 1500 cases diagnosed each year in the US. Merkel cells and neuroendocrine cells refer to the same cell type. These aid touch receptors in the skin, but Merkel cells exist throughout the body, especially in the lymph system. Generally, this type of cancer is first noticed on the skin, but in my case it was not noticed until it had metastasized, so its primary origin is unknown. (Believe me, at my age and with my skin type, I have a dermatologist go over me from head to toe each year, so you think we would have seen it, but it apparently is often mistaken for some other skin condition, and sometimes remains undetected even when a suspected lesion is biopsied.) If you want to know more about this cancer, there is a ton of information here. If you read up, you'll understand why it is so important to me to enjoy myself now, while I feel good.

Today was a lovely day, apart from my printing class. I started out with lunch at Nieman Marcus in the Rotunda restaurant (cucumber martini and a lobster club sandwich) and then went shopping in every designer sportswear department of every big store downtown. I didn't buy anything at those stores, as it turns out, but it was an important exercise for me, since I don't really keep abreast of current fashions. It gave me an idea of what was out there this season (and the subway ride gave me time to evaluate which of those trends were ridiculous for a 52-year-old man to consider wearing). I came home rather discouraged that I hadn't bought anything, but decided to stop in at Rollo, a men's clothing store just a couple of blocks from my apartment. I ended up buying everything I needed there. :)

I leave for NYC on Sunday night. I'm very excited to fly first class for the first time.

From this to this

It's hard to believe that yesterday morning I was sitting on our terrace looking out at Banderas Bay, and now, 24 hours and a rather annoying airport experience later, I'm looking at the wet schoolyard of Everett Middle School.

What a lovely trip, and how I needed it. The temperature was about 80 every day. We spent most of every day at the beach, usually at the Beach House on Los Muertos, where Marco, Esther, Jerry and Roberto saw to our every need (towels, iced tea, blackberry daquiris, beers, cheeseburgers, salads, moving our seats to more shade, etc) with great care. One day Robert rented a car and drove us to Sayulita, north of PV, around the other side of Punta de Mita, which you can see jutting into the bay from the right side of the first pic.

Robert, Marjeanne and I have been good traveling companions to each other for nigh on to 20 years now, and this trip continued our convivial tradition. We did crossword puzzles together, cut up, explored the town, soaked in our private dipping pool, made fun of each other's bad Spanish, ate, drank and laughed (a lot). Like I said, I really needed it, and I'm eternally grateful to both of them for giving me such a week of fun.

I'm equally grateful to my friend Astra, who conquered Junie's recalcitrance and made sure both cats got their meds, leaving me free to enjoy myself in the sun.

In a couple of weeks, my little town shoes will be straying to the city that never sleeps.