As
those who’ve taken time to read my latest book, My Lifetime of Weird Coincidences, know, weeks, months, sometimes
years can pass by without anything noteworthy or “reportable” springing up in
the way of strange or possibly “paranormal” happenings. But now, several weeks after publication of
the book, I finally do have something interesting and new to point out and report.
A
few days ago snippets of the musical Oklahoma
began playing themselves out in my head.
There was no discernible reason for it, really. I simply found musical
quotes from the production or related to it occasionally playing out in my
mind. The snippets would always be
brief, and then my mind would go on to other things, by which I mean that other
seemingly useless snippets of random thoughts about this, that or the other
would start up and take the place of the musical. Two
things are noteworthy here. One, I
realize this is considered to be one of the great musicals of all time, but as
a general rule I am not a huge fan of musicals, so there is no obvious reason
why my mind would come to or dwell on this subject or this particular production. Second, not all the Oklahoma related material
playing out in my mind was directly from the movie. In fact, many of the scenes had nothing directly
to do with the movie at all, which I’ve seen but not in many years. For instance, one of the “snippets” was an
incident recalled from many years ago when a friend of mine thought it would be
the height of hilarity to wake me one morning during a visit to his family’s lake
lodge by putting the track “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” on the stereo at full
volume. I’ve never forgotten that, and now here I was, replaying
that scene over in my mind several mornings in a row. Then there’s the scene in
the movie When Harry Met Sally where
the two of them sing one of the numbers (“The Surry with the Fringe on Top”)
via an electronics store karaoke machine, and then get busted when Harry’s
ex-wife walks in with her new husband. Earlier
this week that scene, too, began playing out on my mental movie screen for no
obvious reason.
But
then just recently the reason became apparent.
It turns out, the movie is marking a major anniversary milestone (it’s
60th). It also turns out that
significant parts of the movie were shot here in Southern Arizona, for which
the University of Arizona built what amounts to a mobile corn field. And how do I know all this? Because the
Arizona Daily Star just ran a major feature about the anniversary, touting the fact that the parks and
rec department is running a screening of the movie today at its Green Valley
facility. Now, keep in mind I have seen
no other publicity items related to this movie anywhere until the Star piece came out. There was nothing external to place it on my
mental agenda. It simply popped up in my
mind completely on its own.
That
said, I’m sure skeptics would say that I must have seen something somewhere
about the movie, and had filed the information away in my subconscious, waiting
to be acted on by conscious processes. Is that what happened? You can buy that “rational” explanation if
you want, but there are other possibilities, such as the one that might have
been offered by early 20th Century scientist Carl Jung, as discussed in my book. Jung gave these phenomena a name (“synchronicity”)
but did not try to explain how these strange coincidences happened. He did,
however, declare that they do happen and that they have human
significance. What that significance
might be in this case, I have not a clue, except that it is making me think
about this blog again, and caused me to take action on it, resulting in today’s
entry.
I
spent several hours yesterday and the day before re-reading the blog of my late
colleague Warren Elly, who, like me, had metastatic abdominal cancer and decided to write about it. One of the questions that’s arising and keeps
on nagging me is the question of how often I should contribute to mine. Warren wrote on his almost every day except
toward the end, when he suddenly tapered off.
There was no explanation, really, for the decrease, but it was clear
that fatigue was setting in and making life more difficult for him. But people did seem to hang on every word. And then his voice suddenly ceased.
By
contrast I have not been contributing every day, and when I do write, I often touch on topics other than my terminal cancer. I think I've come to the conclusion that I should write about the medical aspects more often because people do seem interested in that. I'll make sure to make some medical reference in the blog title when I do. But even a medically-oriented entry may touch on other subjects from time to time, as this one does.
I’ve
been doing pretty well with pain and fatigue but last night was not a good
night. Sometimes pain will set up across
my lower back and when that happens it’s hard to shake. Like Warren, I have two “brands” or styles of
painkillers. One is a time-released
Oxycontin, which is supposed to make sure some pain fighting meds are in my
system at all times on the theory that once a given pain set fires up, it’s if
not dealt with immediately then it’s going to be much harder to knock down
later, which I believe is totally true.
The other pain meds are shorter lasting but quicker acting Dilaudid
tabs, which I am supposed to take on a certain schedule, and I do. But what happens if I’ve had both the
long-acting and the short acting doses and the pain has not gone away? That happened last night, and it led to a
long night. There is no obvious reason
why the pain would gang up on me in this manner but it did.
You
may recall, the last time this happened, my nurse decided to arrange for an in-house
visit to adjust my meds—“titrate” them
is one word they used. I suppose that is
something we could do again. Most of the
additional relief I’m needing is coming at night and I am allowed to increase
my dose on my own, which I did last night.
Additional medication of this type is called a “prn” dose—“pain relief as needed.” And it does help. But I’d be lying if I were to say that I didn’t
find the need to increase my dose in this manner troubling.
Fatigue
is also getting the better of me lately.
I’ll wake up just purely without the energy or drive to be able to do
what it was I wanted to do. The most
recent project along those lines was incredibly simple—just have Deborah drive
me down to the barber for a quick cut (scraggly hair lost to chemo has begun to
come back in) and then a quick grocery run.
Both about did me in from pain, fatigue and being winded. I had to go sit down in Starbucks and wait
for her to finish the grocery run. If
you follow the logic here I’ll be needing a wheelchair sooner or later—and believe me, that is not something I’ll
welcome.
At
present I still do have sufficient energy to hit the keyboard and type this
blog. As long as I can do that, I’ll
continue to contribute. Don’t
necessarily panic if you don’t see something every day, though. To save up the energy needed to write this
blog today I wound up sleeping until 2:00 PM in the afternoon—scandalous. This is the “little old lady” scenario that’s
been planted in my mind by hospice advertisements—not by mine, I’m happy to say
(Casa de la Luz does not advertise as far as I can tell). But the last hospice commercial I saw
featured a hospice nurse hanging out beside a little old lady dressed all in
white linen looking dreamily out a window framed with white lace curtains—the implication
being that she was waiting for a peaceful passing that the hospice nurse was
going to help expedite somehow. Well, I
don’t know if sleeping until 2:00 PM in the afternoon advances me in that
direction or not, but it’s certainly something I have not done in ages, and I
did wake up pain free and with better energy.
I remain troubled by the fact that it certainly is not normal, and I
worry about what lies ahead.
Last
thing before I wrap up today’s entry—I got
a visitor on Friday who was very welcome.
She brought me a couple of donuts from Dunkin’s—which I had been
craving. We had a very nice chat and it
was great to get up on the news and find out what is happening with her and our
mutual friends. I brought her up to date
on everything I just wrote you, and if she thought I’m a nut she was kind
enough not to say so. Friends like that
are always welcome, especially bearing food gifts!
May God bless you and may you always be reminded of the wonderful things in your life to be cherished and held close to your heart, as I now am. Every day is a gift.
###
Blessings with you and Deborah. Thinking about you in Oklahoma FC.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is much appreciated in Tucson!
ReplyDelete