Somatic Adventures #1

Somatic Adventures in the Realm of Things Falling Apart

“You gotta pay dues.”  –Lenny Bruce

We all gotta pay dues. Or maybe real hard-core SOBs have found a way to make the rest of us pay their dues for them. That would be good in a way because it would prove that there is no Divine Justice. I’m not sure why it is good not to believe in Divine Justice, but I feel it so.

The trouble with dues is that there is a sense of fairness, of moral rectitude, hanging about.  “You owe. You owe for the flesh.”

We all owe. That is, there are COSMIC DUES. We all owe for those, and there is no justice about it. Well, except in my case, where, the preacher might say, I’m getting my just desserts. And that’s shameful too.

Of course, there is always the possibility that it is the shame that is causing the dis-ease. You can see the possibilities of following that line of thought. Loopy. “I’m sick because I’m ashamed to be sick.” QUIET, MIND! Take that garbage to the out house. Anyway, be easy with shame. Or be shameful with ease. Or, be shamed easily.

“I trifle thus with his despair to cure it.”

And shame is the most distinctly human of emotions. Mammals are an emotional class, but humans have developed it the most. No other mammal blushes, they say. We are naked. We feel shame. Shame is that which allows us to live together.

And then there are those without shame, the shameless. They are like a cancer within the fabric of society.

Buddhism teaches: “It’s my fault.”  And if I didn’t cause it by my actions in this life, I caused it by my actions in a past life. Yes. Go on and snort, Ms. Smartypants-who-knows-better, snort all the way to the bank. Boundless compassion surrounds you anyway.

I’m wandering. It’s a shameful matter. It’s shameful to be sick. It’s shameful to have cancer. It’s shameful to talk about it. It’s also gauche. Oh well. And it’s shameful because I’m actually pretty healthy.

Every cancer is serious, but some are more serious than others. I have friends facing cancer in ferociously more challenging ways. But they are not writers, and even if they were, they are too sick to write. It’s hospital visits, chemo treatments that are like drinking as much poison as you can without actually dying. Bone marrow stuff. High mortality/poor prognosis stuff.

So, writing about something like liver cancer seems a little indulgent. Like writing about prostate cancer. Which is what occupied me last year, and was why I had to cancel my talks in England and at the Oregon Country Fair, and other places. There will be more about that. Prostate cancer does kill men. A lot of men, actually. It killed my uncle. Every male in my family has had prostate cancer: uncles, brothers, the lot. I had the last prostate in the family, actually. But all things pass quickly away, the Buddha reminds us.

Thought of that last night at the theater. Standing behind an older, white-haired man at the urinal. And standing. And standing. And standing. Felt like saying, “You know, you have that thing taken out you’ll be able to pee like a teenager.”

I used to try to warn people not to stand behind me. “BPE: benign prostate enlargement.” Mine they could have used for the first pitch at the world series. “Don’t get in line behind me if you are in a hurry.” Then it was the ten minute dribble. Painful, too. But, year after year, no sign of cancer, and “everything else” worked just fine. So we just kept watch and I’d get up six or seven times during the night, sit down, and have a painful dribble. Orgasms, though, were pretty intense: the constriction, I think, like the nine knots to heaven or a finger in the anus.

But all good things must end.

##
My first liver cancer treatment was called TACE. That is, “trans-arterial chemo embolism.” As I understand it, the liver, like the pituitary and the testes, is fed by two blood supplies, one venous and one arterial. Most of the healthy liver uses the venous supply, but cancerous liver cells are fed almost entirely by arterial supply. So they feed a catheter up through an artery in the groin, somehow get it to the right place in the liver, inject some poppy seed oil, and then some poison. The poppy seed oil binds to the poison and keeps it concentrated locally, rather than dispersing though-out the body. Kind of cool. Then as the coup de grace they clamp off the artery and, in effect, smother the cancer to death. All sounded win/win.

In my case, as it turned out, they used little beads instead of the poppy seed oil. Committee decision. The beads, about a tenth of a millimeter to a third of a millimeter, dissolve over the course of a week. I asked the doctor, “Are you still going to do that thing and clamp off the artery and strangle the little guy in his crib?” There was a long silence. “I don’t usually think of medical procedures in those terms,” he said, “but yes.”

They had given me Versed and a little fentanyl but I was able to see the scan of my arteries, clearly and in color, on the screen by the gurney. The doctors were at a fork in the road and were discussing which way to go. “I think we should turn left here.” “Do you think we can find a Starbucks going that way?” “I don’t know, but if we take the right fork we could end up in the boonies.” Or something like that. But it’s hard to remember things through Versed. Pleasant though it be, it’s not really a great drug for a writer. At least not a writer of my school.

#
Then there was recovery, which is never fun, and a night in the hospital, which is never fun. But the staff were great, as accommodating as circumstances permitted. I wasn’t well enough to read, it was pretty impossible to sleep, and the least offensive program I could find on the TV feed was “Pawn Shop Stars.” I think it was called “History.” I was up and about, in a three-quarters kind of way, the next day. I didn’t feel sharp enough to write, but somehow I managed to finish a painting.

#
They had warned me that I might feel some effect from having to absorb all the necrotic liver tissue. “Minor though.” Well, yes, compared to what I hear of conventional systemic chemo treatment. Mostly I’ve been feeling like I’m going through withdrawal. I mean opiate withdrawal, kicking. Not the really intense part, but, say, the third day part where you are up and about and can’t really stay in bed but still feel shitty, still flu-like and a little achy and mostly depressed and totally at a loss as to how you will face the ruins of your life and all you want is to get high. Sound familiar? No? Good, it’s easier to just imagine.

So, feeling like a mild case of withdrawal. And then 60s music that I can’t get out of my head, (and not the good stuff either), and memories of my little room on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. So I thought: “Wow, I’m having somatic memories. The chemo treatment, poisoning and strangling that cancer, suffocating it, and as it dies it is remembering its birth, when I infected myself with Hep C. Wow.”

There in that little room. She was some street-waif junkie. She said she needed to borrow my outfit. She had blond hair and blue eyes and she was so fucked up that she kept missing her vein. There was blood around on the sheets and stuff and I finally had to do her myself. It was hard to find a spot that wasn’t too scarred to push through. Maybe I fucked her. I can’t remember. When she left she stole all my money.

Yes, and now this cancer is dying, being garroted, and in its last flash of life it remembers the moment of its birth. I told Laura that I was feeling a bit like I was going through withdrawal.

“Ah,” she said, “they said at the hospital that you might feel a little fluish.”

“Oh.”

Which does not disprove the “somatic memory” story, actually. Or not completely.

Otherwise my shoulder is sore. Very sore, actually. And I think that is the liver cells dying. Either that or I just pulled my shoulder. But when I had the biopsy done I could feel the needle going into my liver, except I felt it in my right shoulder. This is a known effect and the pre-operative literature warned that such might occur. The nerve involved has a name, but I can’t remember it.

#
Also slightly weepy. No big deal, I get like that. But man, what was I thinking, going to see King Lear? We went to see the National Theater Live production at a local cinema, Sam Mendes directing, Simon Russell Beale playing Lear. I was a sopping sponge before the first scene was over.

I don’t like everything that Mendes did with the play, it had some clear weaknesses, but Beale’s performance was superb. And the scene of Lear and Gloucester on the beach at Dover was the best I can remember. But gee, I’m used to crying at movies and plays, but like this I could have a cathartic experience just seeing a flower wilt and drop a petal.

It’s just so sad. There is so much pain in the world.