Tag Archive for 'madison'

I drove up to Madison last week to spend a few days with my brother and his wife. I ate their food, watched their TV and hogged the affection of their cat. I played a game with their cat, where I would sit on the couch with my computer, acting busy, and the cat would walk onto my face, shakily claw it’s way down my torso, and sit it’s butt on the “Send” key (or a similar key I wouldn’t want him to press with his butt). Actually, this game wasn’t fun for me. But the cat seemed desperate to play, and I figured I was a guest and all…

I came back to Illinois to catch a game of Pinocle with my Grandma and her friends at her retirement community. The ladies that play this game are very sweet, but they’ll bid you into the ground and steal your lunch money if you try to set them. (For those of you who don’t know the game, Pinocle is a game played with a minimum or three old ladies and a funny deck of cards, where you bet to see who has a gambling problem, then you try to “set” that person to prove to them that they are a poor decision-maker. The youngest person always has to eat a lot of cookies.)

There’s a mechanism in the human brain that makes you enjoy life in moderation, but cancer broke mine, so Saturday I went to Great America. It was half-price day, which meant that you’d have to also be half-insane to go, as the number of people in the small park was bound to exceed the population of Nevada. Nevertheless, the weather was crisp and sunny, and the rides were great (by which I mean they did not break while I was on them). The food, however, must have been made many moons ago by a sadist with a penchant for obesity. That was about as close to “Orange Chicken” as I am to Peking.

Great America has instituted a thing called the Fast Lane. For $15 you can buy 4 tickets that will allow you to go straight to the front of the line on (almost) any 4 rides you want to go on. One of two things will end up happening with this. Poor people will still have to wait in line, and rich people will never have to “associate” themselves with the squalor of those peasants waiting in the real line. Or, everybody will end up buying Fast Lane tickets and there will not be any regular line anymore, at which point they will need to create another level of line. Perhaps you could pay $50 and they’d blow you out of a cannon into Lake Michigan and put you out of your misery altogether. Either way, it’s an interesting mix of capitalism and classism that is touted as convenience.

Anyway, the day was an oppressive study in the sociology of crowds, but having, of course, purchased my Fast Lane tickets (hell yes I did), I didn’t wait long for any rides. As we left the park, I saw that the scrolling park marquee read, “Park crowded, please visit another day.” This is theme park speak for “ALL YE WHO ENTER MUST SUFFER! THE END TIMES ARE AMONG US! SAVE YOURSELVES!”

My fun was over by this morning. I woke up and dragged my feet getting to the hospital. They put me in the corner lazy-boy and hooked up the machine. It’s starting to get very routine. I think my body has adjusted to the steroids, so I don’t feel as antsy when I get them. The Benedryl knocks me out still, and I having an ever increasing disgust for the taste of the drugs. I was annoyed that I couldn’t steady my eyes on my reading after having the Benedryl. Out of obstinance I tried to fight the sleep, but it didn’t work.

There were less people in the Cancer Center this Monday. That means the regulars are either done with chemo, changed the day of their treatments for any number of reasons, or they are dead.

I weighed in at 182 lbs today. I started chemo at 149 lbs. Before cancer I was a constant 180 lbs. This session marks the half-way point in my scheduled chemotherapy treatments. Let’s hope the second half of treatment doesn’t beef me up like the first half has.

I’m working gigs all week. Like I said at the beginning, I’m going to keep playing as long as I’m standing. Cancer can’t beat me.