Yeah — and Another Thing!

Such an odd week — well, such an odd week-and-a-half. It’s been eight or ten days since I last wrote. I’m less embarrassed about the irregular publication itself than I am about its potential effect on readers. Apparently many of you, noticing a gap in the dates, wonder whether I have dropped dead or at least fallen into an irreversible state of decline. I suppose I should set up a graphical meter, an altimeter or healthometer for quick checks.

The medical news is pretty good. I have slight but unambiguous evidence of graft-versus-host disease (”GVHD” in the vernacular). This is the complication that has bedeviled transplants of all kinds. If you know it’s happening, you can control it, though this may mean that you control it for the rest of your life. In the case of an organ transplant, it’s just a bad thing. But in my case, there’s a silver lining because it demonstrates that the Donald’s stem cells are getting established and producing new T-cells that are taking over from my old, crappy T-cells.

Despite that silver lining — and by the way it is literally a lacy pattern of pearly-white that lines the inside of my mouth (too much? OK) — I’ve been having an anxious week. Anxiety is not something I understood from my own experience; I’m not normally a worrier. But anxiety is a byproduct of one of my pills and this chemical effect has let me see how I might approach my day if I were.

Each new decision turns back to find its tail and continues in several circles. Then the circle breaks into other, smaller circles, which themselves repeat the process at a smaller scale. Within minutes, they’re too small to understand but their buzz can’t be ignored. It’s impossible to think about them and impossible not to think about them. Nothing of critical importance gets done. Nevertheless, I’m busy. I’ve found something to do that has no consequences (though I can invent some) and I bury myself in it. In fact, I can even enjoy it, making a state of anxiety feel perfectly normal.

Nobody worries about nothing. There has to be at least some trigger worry. In my case it was returning my electronic ID card and office keys. For several weeks now we’ve all known that, if my treatment works, Karen and I will return to Vancouver, and if it doesn’t work, Karen and I will return to Vancouver. So my project role at the Iowa State capitol is nominal. This week, I thought it would only be good manners to return my keys. Funny how that makes you feel.

What’s even stranger is how possessing these bits of metal and plastic offers reassurance.

Thinking too much about graft and host, following the news about summary trials and deportations of illegal workers rounded up in Postville, Iowa, seeing the movie “The Visitor”, and turning in my beeper card, has got me confused about the sanctity of geographic and artificial spaces. I suppose, as bona fide members of the richest place on earth, we will soon carry national identification tags that make things go beep. First we will resent the implicit presumption that we cannot be trusted, then these bits of plastic will reassure us that we are who we think we are and deserve to be here.

Oh heck, how about some pictures? Here’s the beautiful place where I used to work.

Let’s start with Edwin Blashfield’s “Westward” in which “…the Pioneers [are] led by the spirits of Civilization and Enlightenment to the conquest by cultivation of the Great West.” Blashfield was an academic, conservative painter in the sense that he didn’t let any ambiguity get between his symbols and the presumptions of the time — 1905.

My cube wasn’t in the capitol — it was in an only slightly less impressive building across the street. Here’s my hall.

But I was always happy to have a reason to visit the capitol itself. Here’s the standard calendar shot.

I can’t resist a squircle for my friend Tom Magliery.

This dome isn’t quite as much fun as the dome of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore where Cosimo I de’ Medici decided to scare the beejasus out of us with The Last Judgement. Another time, another set of presumptions. So I chose the scarier of my two pictures, which is looking down. For the record, this dome’s interior is decorated with an Iowa blue sky, a Stars’n'Stripes, an eagle and the badge of the Grand Army of the Republic. Did you think it was over? I’m writing this on Memorial Day.

The great thing about working with legislation is the motivational posters. You don’t get any of that “Teamwork” nonsense — you know, the posters with the pictures of rock climbers and sailors on a black field with “Excellence!” in white underneath. No, you get the real thing. We should print it on the coffee cups.

Nice place we got here.

Looking for some way to leave lymphoma out of this week’s note my editor (the one in the back of my head) did what all editors do, he sent the photographer out for pictures of cute dogs and pretty girls.

I found myself walking the dark streets of downtown Des Moines on a Thursday night talking to a dog in French. “Frimas” is a Blue Picardy Spaniel or as he would say, if he could speak rather than simply listen to French, “un Epagneul Bleu de Picardie.” Linguists will point out that Frimas should probably have been taught to speak Picard, one of the unofficial but persistent languages of France, and to be walking the streets of Des Moines speaking French to this dog is actually even sillier than it looks. In my defense, to quote another icon of the region, Inspector Jacques Clouseau, “Thees ees not my dawg.”

And Frimas knows this. In fact, he is Jeffrey’s dog, but in practice, at least while he stays with us, he is Karen’s dog. Because Karen has the Dog Voice.

Bella, the downstairs dog is less obedient, but smaller — so it doesn’t seem to matter. She’s my dog most days while her owner is at work. I’m teaching her how to debug XSLT, so far without much success. And it’s not her fault.

Several friends showed up this week and persuaded me to turn on the comments. I had them off because I couldn’t deal with the spam, but I’ve clued in now and have turned them on after installing a filter. Thanks Bruce and Ruth for prodding me.

Martin from Dublin pointed out that there was nothing here to show my domestic side, that I wash the dishes. In fact, I’m less energetic about dishes than I should be, though I try to keep up. It’s easier when I have company in the kitchen. Sasha, on the right, drove all the way from Lawrence, Kansas, to help out. Karen, on the left, has been wielding the big spoon. We drank too much coffee and got all sentimental about Vancouver and Dublin.

Update

Penny asked, in a comment, about that odd thing I’m holding. Penny is the best editor I never deserved and despite her early experience with me, persisted in her magazine publishing career. It’s a colander that I’ve photographed in such a way that you can’t see the holes. Then it occurred to me that it’s a metal colander — something we don’t see much anymore. So here’s a better picture, along with my other favorite metal implements.

These have been around Karen’s kitchen, in Vancouver, Harrisburg and now Des Moines, for a few years, and she let’s me use them, as Mark Twain might have remarked, “As long as you use them in my kitchen.” In fact, she junked my Teflon-coated skillet — which gives me an excuse to include a shot that I just like.

This is romaine lettuce, olive oiled, garliced, and ready for a suntan under the broiler. Like any good religion, mine comes with dietary restrictions. “Don’t eat your greens!” is what the doctor says. They’re very risky business because they grow in dirt, and that you don’t know where that dirt has been. One defense is triple washing, which may be effective. The other is broiling, which may be effective and is certainly tasty.

I’ll bet that on Friday nights you can still see those police chase programs that show “real footage” shot from the dashboard of a police cruiser while some hapless local delinquent pushes his ‘97 Grand Prix to the limit, hopping over the railroad tracks, nipping the corner off a suburban lawn, winging a lumbering dump truck, swiveling through a strip mall parking lot.

They always end in disaster — otherwise, TV wouldn’t be doing its job. But you know that’s not true. You know that somewhere on the shelves are the tapes you’ll never see, the ones where he just got lucky, just got away, just disappeared. You know those tapes exist because you know that if you were in the driver’s seat, you would have missed that concrete pole, ripped through the fence and you would have tracked across that open field like a crop duster then headed for Utah. You know it could happen!

This comes back to mind as I wait for my Tuesday appointment. I need a little distraction because one of the problems with life-threatening diseases is that you meet a lot of sick people. Fortunately, most of the people in the waiting room can be quickly and comfortably placed in the “not me” category. Nice women who have breast cancer. (I don’t have breasts.) Kids with big, blue eyes and bald noggins. (How can this happen to a kid? — I’m not a kid.) Black guys. (My DNA isn’t black … is it?) Old gentlemen who wear blue veteran’s caps and sit quietly in their wheelchairs looking as if they would rather just forget the whole thing. (But, I’m not old.) Then you see a guy from your local league. Without hair he looks pretty similar, and he too is dressed in his “I usually wear a tie” casuals. As I have, he has delegated authority to a partner, but has retained final say. He and I talk easily to strangers because that’s what we’ve done for thirty years. We have laugh wrinkles in the corners of our eyes and, under the present circumstances, we’ve relaxed a little and sometimes skip the morning shave.

Neither of us has to say so, because we already know that inside we clench our steering wheels and our right foot jumps from gas to brakes to gas. Our Grand Prix lunches through the red lights and sways across the double line. The police lights flash in our mirrors and every moment threatens a glass-splintering finale. We nod and smile. So far so good.

But the show runs only half and hour and somebody’s got to get caught. “John Turnbull?” I nod to the nurse across the room. “Date of birth, John?”

“Still the single relevant date,” I think to myself.

We’re here to learn about my chimerism levels — how much of my blood is my crappy old stuff and how much is newly-minted from my brother Donald’s stem cells. The new stuff will cure my lymphoma. The crappy old stuff will let it spread like rust on a junker’s front fender. My early chimerism counts took me from a high of fifteen to a low of five. Not good numbers and not a good direction. We’re not sure what to expect when Doctor Julie knocks on the consulting room door and enters.

My blood chimerism is fifty per cent. At least, that’s what it was a week ago when the blood was taken and there’s no reason to assume it’s declined. That definitely sounds good to me, but so far there’s been nothing definitive about this disease. “Your T-Cell counts are still low.”

This is unsettling; I hadn’t realized there were two ways to count, and the T-Cells are still hanging around at only five per cent. Doctor Julie is … sanguine. She reduces the anti-rejection dose and mentions that she will be away next week. That’s good news — nothing awful can happen when Doctor Julie is away.

The uncertainty is weighing on us. Each week reveals an unlikely, but crucial detail. Annoyed, I say to Karen on the way out, “Another ambiguous week,” realizing then how much I prefer it to certainty.

My friend with the laugh wrinkles has had a different kind of consultation. He’s run out of ambiguity. His lymphoma is supposed to be simple kind, but isn’t. Transplant didn’t make it. He’s beyond the chemical fix. He’s dusting along a dirt road, leading a parade of flashing lights and there’s a road block at the next concession where the cops are reaching for their guns. He’s looking across that field.