the following is brought to you by dexamethasone, medicine's new creativity enhancing wonder drug

I want a new drug

One that don't make you pay

One that don't keep me up all night

One that don't make me sleep all day.

I want a new drug

That'll keep me alive

Where I'm not sucking Ricola, so I can't taste the e coli.

One that won't make me nervous

And Dexamethasone blue

One that makes me feel like before I got the news

That you can-cervive but you can't refuse.

I want a new drug

One that makes me feel good

Where you don't have to lose your hair

Where you don't lose your taste for food.

I want a new drug

One with no side effects

Where you don't want to blog too much

And you still feel like having sex.

One that's more copacetic, one that's more diuretic

One that's sympathetic, needs no anaesthetic

Not so damn emetic.

I want a new drug...that doesn't make me feel like a slug...don't want to have to wear a rug...tired of feeling like I just got mugged...

*necessary vocabulary:

dexamethasone is a steroid that is given IV before the Yondelis to help with nausea and taken in blue pill form for five days after; just one of its many applications...

neulasta keeps one's neutrophil (a type of white blood cell) count high enough to continue treatment much the way the Salk polio vaccine worked - by presenting the immune system with a neutralized form of e coli. better living though toxins...I was working on a verse that contained that drug name (one that won't make me fast...one that cures me faster...) but I let it go.

ricola is a swiss cough drop, with commercials featuring long alpine horns, Sound of Music backdrops, and people yodeling "Riii-colaaaa". I'm trying to yodel "Yoooon-deliiis" but haven't got it yet. ("I love to go on Yondelis, it makes me feel so wack...and as I go, I love to sing, my pump strapped to my back...)

emetic means nausea inducing. diuretic is left as an exercise for the reader.

final note...I came across this verse while researching "The Happy Wanderer:

Oh, may I go a-wandering
Until the day I die!
Oh, may I always laugh and sing,
Beneath God's clear blue sky!

so am I letting down the side if I don't write here

because I'm continuing my life instead?

doing a lot of home studio work for artists old and older, so much so that they are new to my studio. projects are headed for deadlines; new projects are being talked about, maybe (no one knows) started.

the last ReJuveniles at the Little Bear was Saturday after chemo Monday. it was hard. maybe not the hardest one ever, but my energy credit card had severe limits. the day after, I slept a lot and didn't have a taste for doing much.

but it was almost like the bad chemo stuff had been compressed into those two days. as if pushing it had pushed the drugs through. I felt a little popped back in Monday, and have felt pretty good to just about me since.

I've been improving small things at the house, in the studio. I realize I am making things better as a token of my limited ability to make myself better. but I also realize I feel like doing it, which is a good sign...and that I've always been obsessed with making things better. "plussing", as Walt Disney called it.

perhaps I am still somewhere in touch with childhood fear that things will never get better, and that I couldn't stand it if that were true.

but I am getting better. healing. beating the odds, staying with the evens.

I think anyone who masters the use of perspective will never have a need for denial.

yes, we're all in the same boat, and it's the Titanic. but...it could be worse. it could be raining. we know it's sinking, but we don't know for sure it will sink. and if it does...we don't know for sure we won't survive. and if we don't...well, these have been good days, out on a cruise ship vacation, and life goes on, and there's a baby born somewhere...

my father used to tell this joke:

go to the Grand Canyon. you have to see it.

but if you go, don't park right at the edge. and if you do park right at the edge, don't get out of the car.

if you get out, just make sure you don't go stand right at the lip of the canyon.

but if you do stand right on the lip, just make sure you don't bend over. if you bend over, whatever you do, don't lose your balance. and if you lose your balance a little, it's ok as long as you don't fall.

but if you do happen to fall, look to the left. the view is amazing!!!

I'm more afraid of the scan I'll have in three weeks than the last one I had. I think I had a lot of perspective for that one, a lot of armor, nothing to expect or protect.

now I want to stay lucky. impossibly lucky.

perspective is: stabilization would be nothing to sneeze at. we would have took that deal in a heartbeat before.

and...I'm having very good days. breathing deeper. really involved with, upset about, having the experience of participating in the ups and downs of musical and personal life in closer to the way I used to, the way people do. 93 is closed?? and I'm already late for practice...

not, how many more practices do I get?

though every twenty year old occasionally asks the same question. every 60 year old, more so.

but they and I have no answer. that's perspective. and so there's just the one practice.

there's no need at all for denial - "we're not sinking...everything is fiiine" if the art of perspective is mastered. perspective is denial.

every damn round of every damn drug is different from what any doctor damn says, and different from every other damn round.

this removes from me the possibility of expecting instead of living. we keep our eyes open, and surf the waves as they come, and make all plans with asterisks.

it's just not any damn different than any damn other day I've ever had.

I've always thought contracts were silly.

"no, I contracted this job for $500 and now you're so pleased with my work, you want to give me $1,000...I'm a man of my word, and here's the contract, and you aren't allowed to do that, and if you try, I'll sue!"

if I had my way, every promise anyone ever makes to me, every agreement would end with the automatic coda: "...or something better."

but, then, I always thought the true meaning of "responsible" was "response-able"...able to respond to the other person, to new needs and blessings, to the reality of change in life. "no, I didn't make the gig on time because I saw a car accident and had to give care til the paramedics came."

I think I got fired from a band once because I would say, let's plan on it, but I wouldn't say, I will be there. I told the leader, you're so afraid you might need a sub for me at some gig, but now you'll have a sub for me at every gig.

none for me, thanks. better stuff comes from working with people than working with pieces of paper. people kid themselves that writing something down removes their human vulnerability to change.

that's not perspective. that's denial.

I like to keep track of imaginary coupons instead.

this artist gives me tremendous room to work, to follow my instincts on her project, and it just makes me put a lot of $10 hours in finding something she'll really love.

this one thing I did just bugs her.

I love it.

but she has coupons. she almost never asks for me to change much. the artist gets to ask for anything, and in the end I want them to be happy...but over and above that, I don't even need to bid very high about this one thing she doesn't like.

she has coupons.

this guy wants me there two and a half hours before the gig. it makes him feel more secure.

it's not necessary. it won't help anything. I could use that time shooting up or something.

but he's done a batch of unnecessary things to accommodate me over time. he pays the band even when he ends up behind on the gig.

he has books of unused coupons. I'll be there.

I'm not one for obligation. and I don't ever want anyone to do anything for me out of obligation. "I don't want to do this for you, but I have to, so here it is."

ptui.

I've gotten some "fuck you" relationship gifts in the past. I don't throw them away. but they'll always be, like, "so there!"

I don't need to get, or give, any more.

we are born with something in our solar plexus, speaking to our heart, that tells us who we are, what we love, and what glows on our horizon. coincidentally, the same list also tells us how we can be of the best use to the world, and how we can be happiest.

we also have nagging internal voices, which we are not born with but create, which constantly push us to choose things so as to cut our losses.

my belief is that we are meant to follow the things that draw us, call to us, pull us, and resist the things, internal and external, that push us.

for a copy of tonight's sermon, write to Hour of Decision, radio city music hall, new york, new york, 10022. send a self addressed, stamped envelope, and we'll send it back to you. you can't beat that offer.

life sentence

got the results of the first scan in the Yondelis study back today, when I went in for chemo.

a seemingly unprecipitated outbreak of good news.

Dr. Elias, who I have speculated to have some asian in his heritage, is typically inscrutable. but today I couldn't help but feel he was rather pleased with himself, and his baby, the study drug.

now, he hasn't looked at the scans on his computer, so comparison isn't completely apples to apples. but going by what he does see, and what he called a well done radiology report, one of the tumors in my shoulder may have grown a little.

the rest, he said, shrank a little. maybe half a centimeter.

I had seen in an online report that the threshold for a cancer being "stabilized" is considered 25% growth. if it grows by 25% or less, it is considered "stable".

kind of different from, say, a business.

I asked Dr. Elias very specifically what the criterion is in his study. he said 20%.

so...my tumors could grow 20% every six weeks, the amount of time between scans, and still be considered stable.

yow.

but, as Joey says in Friends, it's a moo point. like the opinion of a cow. it just doesn't matter.

today, as of this scan, we are talking shrinkage.

am I even entitled to use the word............healing?

odds and probabilities...predictions...point to another spring. another summer. another fall. a 60th birthday. another Christmas.

lisa wept. I was shaky.

our last good news was getting into this study. but for a good status report from a doctor's office visit...I have to go back some years. both of us experienced how tightly we have been braced, for how long.

and some relief of that.

last October, I feel like I got a death sentence. 11.4 months from now, October 7, 2011, the median dictates I'll be gone.

today I feel like I got a life sentence. as in, however it happens, it ain't gonna happen that way.

and what I had better plan on for October 7, 2011 is one mighty celebratory party.

I still don't believe in predictions. but one would be a fool to totally ignore indications.

we're having steak tonight, to celebrate! we still know nothing...

except that we know this drug worked against what I have this time.

not, well, it didn't do much, but after awhile it might. not, we need to look for treatment plan Z-flat.

no. it worked.

we can't rule out that it may stop working, the cancer adapt, my body not be able to take it, blah blah.

but

we

can

rule

out

that

it

doesn't

work.

huge.

of course, what that means is that this space will probably be able to be used for a number of further Spiderman reports. there's a downside to everything, as received knowledge has it.

but I'm going to have to get my shit together, and live.

Happy New Year, all!

and...good praying. nice work. thanks.