Last week I had a CT scan and appointment with my oncologist at Hopkins. Good news - my tumor has shrunk slightly and there are no new ones, the four rounds of chemo in September and October seem to have been effective. The bad news is that he suggested that I do 8-12 more rounds, though he did recommend a 20% lower dose. But ugh, nevertheless.

So in the new tradition of shopping for a "yes", I went to see my local oncologist, Dr. Wadlow, who oversees my chemo treatments. Dr. Wadlow, as I have mentioned before is heir to Drs. Ben Casey and Kildaire in charisma and compassion, so I was hoping for a more palatable recommendation. And I got it; he suggested that I move to oral chemotherapy, with a daily dose of Xeloda, which is one of the four nasty concoctions that I've been taking in the previous chemo sessions. He is concerned that the Folfirinox (the acronym for all four drugs) treatments have been taking too much of a toll on my body in terms of neuropathy, bone marrow depletion, etc, not to mention making me a depressed and crabby old fart.

So, on Monday I will start with Xeloda. It has possible side effects, too: fatigue, mouth sores, hand irritation, and diarrhea, to name just a few. But still it should be much easier than Folfirinox. So, I am relieved and feeling positive about going forward. In fact I feel better today than I have since August. With luck the side effects will be minimal, and I can manage this indefinitely. Stay tuned, and a Happy Thanksgiving to you all! We have much to be thankful for.

Body Chemistry

A few weeks ago I started chemotherapy again for the second time, the first being in 2015 when I underwent twelve rounds to treat pancreatic cancer. It went about as I expected. During the 48 hours of infusions and the following two days, I felt heavily drugged and crushingly fatigued, and my stomach churned with nausea and diarrhea. I spent most of five days in bed. Since the fifth day I have gradually gotten better, though my energy level is still low and I continue to have stomach discomfort. I feel pretty good now, nine days since the infusions ended, so I was recovered enough to do it all again the following Monday. But chemotherapy certainly hasn’t gotten any easier this second time around.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the chemicals in our bodies this week, and coincidentally I read a couple of interesting articles that further stimulated my thoughts. I was trying to put all of it together into a coherent essay, but I’ve decided to not worry about coherency and just start writing.

About three days into chemo I started taking OxyContin again. I took Oxy throughout chemotherapy in my year of pancreatic cancer; the pancreatic tumors gave me a unique searing pain in my upper abdomen, and Oxy really helped with that as well as simply making me feel better. I found pretty quickly that if I missed a dose, not only was the pain more troubling, but also I felt headachy, lethargic and depressed. In other words, I became dependent on the drug pretty quickly. Back in 2015 I was concerned about how I would get off of it when the time came, but at that point I was a lot more focused on other things like whether I would be alive long enough to care. Eventually I was taking 30 milligrams a day, a relatively small dose. And about a month after surgery in the winter 2016, I was able to stop taking Oxy without too much difficulty, I just dealt with a few days of sleeping poorly and feeling irritable.

This time around I am not having any cancer-related pain, but I was feeling really drained and depressed   last week and experiencing the queasiness and cramping in my gut, so I tried Oxy anyway. I immediately felt much better; the gut clenching and nausea stopped, and I felt more alert and vital. So I’ve continued to take it, and it really helps, and I can feel the difference when it wears off. I still worry about becoming addicted, but let me tell you, when you feel lousy and depressed and you know there is a little white pill upstairs on the night table that will fix it, you don’t second guess for very long.

One of the things I noticed the first time I went through chemo was that the chemicals suppressed my testosterone, and I observed several interesting effects. Of course, I also thought I might be dying, so it’s not very clear what was causing what. But, I saw that I became a lot more emotional; I felt more affection toward the people around me and my world. I also felt more sadness, and I reacted more to events in the world. I stopped watching movies and TV shows, they affected me more and I couldn’t stop the images from flooding my brain. I also became more passive and agreeable, I couldn’t stand any sort of conflict. With my new passivity, I remember thinking on many occasions, why can’t we all just get along; there is so much to be grateful for, what is there to fight about?

As I have written before, the year of cancer was emotionally overwhelming. I go back and read my blogs and it brings me to tears still.

After surgery in January of 2016 I went through a period of depression, which I learned is almost a given after what I had gone through, so I tried taking Zoloft for a while to address it. I didn’t like it, I thought it made me duller and less energetic and it didn’t seem to help with my depression. My anti-depressants made me more depressed. I stopped after a few months.

Gradually I felt better, though I have still never regained the vitality of my old life. (Maybe being 60 has something to do with it too?) But by the time a year had rolled around, when I had fully recovered and stopped taking all of the narcotics, I also found that I was becoming more aggressive again. I became more competitive and argumentative; I found that I was getting more worked up at my daughter’s soccer games, and bickering more with my family. I could actually observe my personality changing.

One of the models that I have constructed over my life by which I try to make sense of human behavior is that I see men as always being in a state of balance between our competitive side and our belonging side. On the competitive side we are aggressive, driven creatures who are always trying to gain the upper hand on our peers and rivals; on the belonging side, we are loving, caring beings who are devoted to our families and friends and would even stake our lives to protect them.  It seems apparent that both sides have been necessary to support survival and growth of the human species; we are aggressive so that we can meet our desires to attract the most suitable mate and to grow and protect our families; and we are also social and cooperative so we can harness the power of tribes and communities and live together in harmony. I have come to see it as a yin-yang between wanting to love our brothers but still establish dominance over them. It is why we can go out on the rugby field and bash our heads together until the blood runs streaming down our necks, then go to a bar afterwards and stand on the tables, and sing together until the cops arrive (a most memorable day I experienced that helped me put the finishing touches on this model.) I’m sure it’s also why, among other things, women find us incomprehensible.

As for women, I believe they also have some of this yin-yang between competitiveness and caring, but perhaps less so than men. I don’t feel as confident in my model when it comes to women; I don’t really understand how women think and I never have and never will.

None of these ideas are new or surprising or original; I’m sure I’ve cobbled the together from a variety of sources. But it is a model that is very useful for me when I try to understand why we men do the things we do.

One of the glib comments I make when I am describing this model to friends is that just about every bad thing that has ever happened to me has come from my competitive side, and just about every good thing has come from my cooperative side. True? I don’t know, but I have been thinking about it a lot. What if all the rotten stuff men do, cheating and fighting and raping and plundering and warring, all come from that competitive side and our need to be the alpha male? What if we could do away with it?

We seem to worship it in our culture. I remember thinking as a teenager, near the end of the hippie period, that we had moved on to an era when men had learned that being more “manly” was not the answer, that we were learning to make love, not war. That we had entered an era of enlightenment, where men would communicate more honestly and freely, and treat women as equals, and nurture living things instead of destroying them. Sadly, it seems to me that we instead moved in the opposite direction. Manhood today seems to be about body-building and six-pack abs and in-your-face tattoos, and buzz cuts. Not to mention that acquiring wealth and displaying it proudly has never been more in style. It’s pretty clear to me that the culture turned away from ideals of The Great Awakening of the 60’s, that today is all about becoming stronger, meaner, and more ruthless; and loving your brother is for wimps.

I’m sure there are many men who would hear my views with disgust: just more evidence of the pussification of America. I’m sure they would say it was the will of men that tamed the planet and shaped it to our needs. Where would society be without testosterone and the drive to be the alpha? Who would build things and innovate and create a culture of production and consumption? By God, we are men, this is our birthright! We build this world, with its great technology and its indulgences and the opportunities to satisfy our animal desires. Without men and our lust for greatness, what kind of world would it be?

What kind, indeed, I wonder. I am very concerned about the future of human beings on planet Earth. I believe the challenges that loom ahead of us are daunting: climate change, overpopulation and resource shortages, the threat of nuclear confrontation, the possibility of untreatable diseases and pandemics. All of these are, at their roots, driven by the animal instincts of men, for more power, more wealth, more indulgences, and more trophies of status. Our culture sneers at the notion of living in harmony with our environment; we believe we are too smart to be held back by the mere constraints of nature and that we can always innovate our way out of any problems we create along the way. And so we grow and consume at an ever more voracious rate, with world population nearing 8 billion, soon to be 10, soon to be 12 or 15 billion people, without a thought that this planet simply cannot support that many human beings. I am so concerned about the future for our children, and indeed, our entire species.

I didn’t really intend to go off on a rant about the end of civilization. This piece is supposed to be about how we are all really just big sacks of chemicals, and though we think we are creatures of free will and thought, changing that mix can change who we are. As I write this I am in now in the later stage of my two week chemo cycle; my stomach is churning like a garbage disposal full of gravel, I have a persistent throbbing headache, and when I close my eyes I feel like I’m on a gently rolling lake. Chemo-state reminds me most of one of those really special hangovers that come from mixing all three of the major alcohol groups, which I guess is fitting since chemotherapy is just another type of chemical poisoning, in my case with four different powerful drugs. I’m a very different person during chemotherapy: passive, jittery, depressed, and very anxious. If someone so much as raises his or her voice around me it throws me into a tailspin.

Perhaps the most difficult part of it all is the depression. The chemicals seem to have been formulated to produce a constant, penetrating state of depression. My chemo mind is hyperactive, and the thoughts that keep churning are sadness, worthlessness, frustration, regret, fear - a whole cornucopia of desperation. I know these thoughts are not “real”, that they are drug-induced and not responses to outside stimuli, so I feel like I should be able to will my way through them, to accept that this is just what the drugs do. But they are persistent, vicious little buggers.

When I was young and foolish I experimented with recreational drugs, including one I choose not to name. My first experience with it was an awesome, enlightening ride; I reached a state where I suddenly knew that human beings were truly beautiful and that I felt love for us all. I could see that most, if not all of us, had shielded our inner beauty under shells of cynicism and mistrust; but I could also see that we all have the capacity to shed those shells and express our inner perfection. I felt that we had a common connection, that we had evolved from a core organism that had shared it’s essence with us all. Of course I did eventually come down and I resumed seeing the people around me as I had always seen them before, but the most wonderful and profound thing was that I remembered what it felt like to see them as holy and beautiful. And I have never forgotten to this day that we are all essentially beautiful creatures who have the capacity for pure love and perfection, despite the shells that we build up around us.

Since then I have read many articles about this type of drug, and the accounts from people who have tried them seem to be overwhelmingly positive. So many of them report reaching a similar state of bliss, of it being one of the greatest experiences of their lives. Their accounts seem very similar to mine, that they felt an outpouring of love and a sense of oneness with people and the earth. More recently, I’ve read of research that shows these drugs have been very effective at treating profound depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome. These chemicals seem to have extraordinary potential for good.

I don’t know what else to say about that. We live in a culture where taking the drug I described is a federal crime, even smoking a joint is still illegal in most places. But drinking alcohol is heavily promoted, and opiates are so easily available that millions of Americans have crippling addictions. So we Americans don’t have an aversion to taking drugs, we just choose the ones that cause ruinous addiction and generate enormous profits over the ones that produce serenity and bliss. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we just put the stuff in the water, wouldn’t that be an interesting experiment?

Of course the most important way in which we acquire the chemicals in our bodies is by the foods we eat. I’m sure that most everyone understands now our food is less nutritious and full of lots more questionable stuff than the more natural plants and animals that our ancestors ate. In light of that, I was impressed and uplifted by this article about how The Netherlands is at the forefront of efforts to improve farm productivity and improve the quality of their output: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/. It’s nice that we are reaching widespread awareness about the importance of eating better, but efforts like these are still very few and far-between.

And, shortly after I read that one, I came upon this depressing piece about a new scourge that is impacting the nutritional value of our crops: http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511. Just one more effect of climate change that millions of Trump-supporting Americans can dismiss as a libtard plot to enrich those money-grubbing scientists (and Al Gore).

Finally, there was this disturbing article about the decline of insect populations in Germany: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/buzz-off-german-study-finds-dramatic-insect-decline/2017/10/19/6a087d40-b4c8-11e7-9b93-b97043e57a22_story.html?utm_term=.8c337edf1410. It doesn’t really fit with my theme of chemicals, but it is peripheral to a couple other things I touched on. And it does seem to be pretty important.

So that is my rambling piece on chemistry. I do wonder if we could change the world if we could somehow reformulate ourselves to be more caring, loving creatures. But I suspect that most people would think I’ve lost my mind. It’s quite likely that I have.

I’ll probably write something soon about what I consider to be my new reality, but for now I’ll just do a quick summary of the facts.

A couple of months ago they found a small tumor on my liver. My doctor recommended chemotherapy, and I completed my fourth round this week. Chemo hasn’t gotten any easier, I’ve been pretty miserable each round during the chemo weeks, though I’ve felt reasonably good during the recovery weeks, even playing golf several times. But overall, going through chemo again has been very challenging (putting it mildly).

Today I had a CT scan to see how I’ve progressed. The good news is the tumor has shrunk and there are no new ones, so my doctor felt it was as good as I could have hoped.

On the other hand, he described to me today that I need to stop thinking in terms of being cured of cancer. Pancreatic cancer, he explained, almost never goes away entirely. It almost always reoccurs, and is usually present even when undetectable. I have to start thinking about managing cancer instead of being cured, and it is likely that I will be receiving treatment intermittently for the rest of my life. So he is recommending that I continue with chemo for now, probably 8-12 more rounds. If I am fortunate, I may again have long periods where I don’t have to be in treatment, such as the 19 months I had between my surgery in 2016 and this reappearance.

He suggested that we cut back on the dosages of the four chemicals that I receive by 20%, which should make it significantly easier. He also said I can lengthen the time between treatments to 3 or even 4 weeks, which also is very good news; having 2 or 3 good weeks for every bad week will make a big difference for me.

So, it was quite an impactful day. It is, as I described, a new reality. But I still look forward to being around for a long time, and making the most of every day.

As always I love hearing from you, at rabraham1@cox.net or by text or Messenger. 

It Is Time to Stop Kneeling for the National Anthem

Let’s begin with remembering how this all got started. A San Francisco 49er quarterback of mixed racial heritage, Colin Kaepernick, felt that he could not in all good conscience pay homage to a country in which people of color were not being treated equally by the police and criminal justice system. In particular, he and many others were outraged by several incidents in which seemingly innocent young men were killed by over-anxious policemen. From all indications, his gesture of kneeling during the anthem was sincere, not calculated, and certainly not designed to bring him any sort of gain; in fact it has only brought him pain and financial loss.

Since then, the gesture of kneeling during the anthem has blown up and become yet another divisive issue in an America that becomes more divided by the day. Kneeling has taken on a much wider and less defined meaning, to where the noise has drowned out the original point.

Most importantly, the chance to come together to address an important issue, equal treatment of all Americans under the law, has actually been decreased because of the animosity generated by the protests. They have become counter-productive and self-defeating.

So, I propose the following solution.

First, stop kneeling during the anthem. It is alienating millions of NFL fans and customers, many of whom would step up to support the cause of equitable treatment under the law.

Second, find a way to continue to call attention to the issue. My suggestion: all players take a knee during the first two plays of each game. On the first play, Team A kicks off to Team B, and Team B runs it back for a touchdown. On the second play, the roles are reversed, and Team A scores a touchdown. On the third play, the game basically “starts” with the score 7-7. It may be far-fetched, but the idea is sound: do something dramatic that is not offensive to your constituency, but keeps the issue in the public eye.

Third, address the real issue. The NFL should start a fund to raise awareness of police, train them on how to more effectively manage their actions around people of color, and buy them more protective gear. The NFL is a multi-billion dollar business, and it would not be unreasonable to expect them to start a fund in the tens of millions of dollars. The League would also start a challenge campaign to ask fans to match their contributions. In other words, bring all NFL fans into the tent and do something positive to bring change.

This issue has become emblematic of so much of what is going on in America today. It seems that we would rather take sides and revel in our anger than seek common ground and work toward a solution. This one is not very difficult: why would anyone not support equal treatment of all Americans under the law? Maybe a plan like this could set a precedent for more opportunities where we could work as one nation.

Untitled Chapter

I’ve always taken pride that I am a logical person. You are a logical person, too, right? We take stock of the facts, assess them carefully, and make sound judgments and conclusions. That’s what educated, enlightened people do. But I didn’t do it when I had pancreatic cancer. The facts said that only one person in sixteen lives more than three years. I never bought into that; not long after I made it through my first chemotherapy session I began to believe that I could survive it, that I could be the one of the sixteen. Not because I was logical or rational, but because that’s what human beings do – we are natural optimists, we believe we are going to win, often in the face of daunting odds. And with a little luck, or maybe a lot of luck, and plenty of support and some degree of determination, I turned out to be right. So here I am 27 months after my diagnosis, still alive and sometimes kicking.

Not too long after surgery I became aware that the reoccurrence rate of cancer for pancreatic sufferers is pretty high. But I never bought into that either; I felt from the moment they told me ‘we got it all’ that I was done with it. It seemed to me to be karma, the rightful end to my story, that I faced down cancer and won. It was time for me to start chapter two and do something important with the rest of my life. And so when I went for quarterly check-ups and each time received the news that I was still cancer free, it just validated my sense that this is how it was meant to be and would always be.

But it appears that odds and probabilities are stubborn, and they don’t like to being sneered at. Last Friday my CT scan showed a shadow on my liver, about 8 millimeters small; ‘atypical, probably a cyst’, my doctor said, ‘but we will review it with the tumor board on Tuesday’. Which they did. And they concluded it isn’t probably a cyst; given my history and its appearance, it is likely cancerous. And, being that caution is the better part of valor, or something like that, the situation calls for immediate treatment.

In other words, it’s back. I’m “Cancer Guy” again. The foundation has shifted under my feet.

My take, which probably has some relationship with reality, is that the outlook is much brighter this time. The tumor is small, we caught it early; it is in a much better place, on my liver instead of my pancreas; the liver is the only organ that can re-generate, and it is more accessible to surgery; and we know that chemotherapy was very effective for me. I’m not in a state of panic like last time; I feel confident that we can handle this. It’s a setback, not a defeat.

But, it reaaaallly sucks!! I have to start chemo in about three weeks, and chemo, at least my chemo regimen, Folfirinox, is hard! Fatigue, migraines, dysentery, neuropathy… you don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want to tell it. I already know this story.

So how worried should I be? I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. Maybe chemo won’t work this time (I think it will). Maybe radiation and surgery won’t be successful (I find that highly unlikely). More troubling is the idea that this may keep happening, that I will continue to have reoccurrences. Or that the next time the cancer will be widespread and beyond reasonable treatment. I’m not buying that either. Of course I can’t completely ignore those possibilities, but I’m not worried, even if I should be. But I am really bummed out that I have to go through with this, and put my family through it again.

I was cancer free for 559 days, or thereabouts. It has not been an easy time, for many reasons. The hardest part has been not yet finding a new sense of purpose. But in other ways it has been the best period of my life; I have loved to eat more, and loved to play golf more, and loved to watch sports more, and loved to read more, and most of all, loved my family more, than I ever had before. Every day I have noticed extraordinary things in ordinary life that drifted past me before. There are lots of them.

Doing chemo again is going to be tough. But there is one part that is pretty cool: I get the strangest visions when I’m in a chemo session, as though experiencing the weirdest of all dreams but in a fully wakeful state. I can only remember one of them clearly from the last time… I’m watching a chorus of dozens of little owls, moving in unison to an owl director and singing a song I cannot hear; their identical little white owl faces moving this way and that, swaying with unheard music, and staring with their big brown owl eyes. And the owl director waves his batons with his wings, leading them to ever higher states of owl ecstasy. It was glorious.

I’m going to write them down this time.

PS If you would like to reply, and I like hearing from you, please use Messenger or email, not Facebook

Rick 2.0*

So it’s been about 17 months since I had surgery and became cancer-free. I’m still trying to understand what I went through, how I have changed, and who I am now. That all sounds awfully new-agey and self-indulgent, doesn’t it? I think it means that since I’m not working I have lots of time to think about cancer.

Most of the time I feel pretty lethargic, as though I just got out of bed. Except when I have just gotten out of bed, then I feel profoundly lethargic, like I just came out of hibernation. There are a couple of ways I address this: running or biking, which make me more alert but also tired; and caffeine, which makes me feel less lethargic but very edgy. In other words, when I consume caffeine I still struggle to focus on anything, but I struggle at a much higher rate of speed.

The downside of exercise and caffeine is that I feel worse later; I don’t seem to recover very well by sleeping. So, the next day I feel more lethargic, and I exercise more and drink more caffeine, and so on. Detect a problem here? About every 4^th day I just lie on the couch and play word games obsessively, and start the cycle over again the next day.

While I had cancer, I got older (so did you). But I’m in my 7^th decade now, so I’m sure I would be feeling the effects of age regardless of my health issues; everyone my age seems to have health issues. So, I don’t really know which problems I have as a result of cancer, and which are just from getting older.

Clearly my body chemistry is different now that I’m missing an organ or two, and it impacts how I feel. And I would probably feel better if I knew how to adjust it with meds and supplements. But I don’t think the doctors know what I should be doing, and nothing I have tried has been that effective. I have a friend who has a practice helping people recover from and avoid cancer through nutrition and supplements, and I will eventually get around to seeing if she can help me.

Here are some of the other ways I feel physically different than I used to:

• My stomach makes incredible digestive noises. It sounds like a garbage disposal full of chicken bones. It’s a little uncomfortable, but mostly just weird.

•  I can’t drink much alcohol. One is great, two is dicey, three is big trouble: hangover symptoms at midnight, racing pulse and hyperactive thoughts. This is unfortunate, beer and wine taste better than ever.

•  I sleep lightly and have wild dreams. I wish I could remember them, they are awesome. But as I said before, I don’t wake up feeling very refreshed, just groggy.

• I still have some numbness in my fingers, and a fair amount in my feet. They don’t hurt, but they get cold easily. Most of the time I don’t notice it.

• My nose runs. Sometimes when I am just sitting around doing nothing.

• I’m lightheaded, and I am clumsy (clumsier I guess would be more accurate). I’ve had a couple of ugly falls, usually by tripping over something; I don’t just randomly fall (yet). But in the past I would have just stepped over these things. (The worst one was when I was standing on a chair reaching something on the top shelf of the china cabinet. The chair shifted a little, and I fell into the glass panel of the door, shattering it into hundreds of tiny shards. Later that day I saw a couple of posts from the neighbors wondering about an explosion in the area.)

• I’m more emotional. I get upset easily. I don’t like watching dramas on TV or the movies, I can’t sleep afterwards and I retain the images for days. I lose my temper quicker. I cry at puppy videos and pictures of kids.

•  I seem to have the last song I have heard playing all the time in my head. If I hear an interesting phrase, it seems to play over and over in a loop until the next song or phrase.

Despite this stuff, I still feel good enough to be happy most of the time. I’m at my best when I’m exercising; I love golf more than ever. When I’m playing golf I never think about cancer. Cycling is great, too, though I’m even more not-fast than I used to be. And I’ve rediscovered running, if you can call a 12-minute pace running. But for many years my stomach hurt when I ran, and now it doesn’t since there’s not a big honking tumor in there. I can run 3-4 miles, as long as I have a whole afternoon to do it and two days to recover. It’s cool to enjoy running again.

Another great joy is food. I’m not content any more to just eat to not be hungry. I look forward to every meal, I go to the store and buy good stuff, and I appreciate every bite. I used to think foodies were silly snobs, but now I know they are most enlightened creatures. The year that food tasted like licking a flagpole was very discouraging, and I will never take the joys of eating for granted again. It’s a wonder I haven’t gained 50 lbs. since last January.

The physical changes are significant, but the mental and emotional effects of going through cancer are more impactful and puzzling. I view everything now through a lens of having had cancer, as though this act of my life is being filmed through a filter. I have very clear memories of the events and the images of cancer, but the way I felt through it all has been converted to words; remembering being scared or overwhelmed or depressed is nothing like being scared and overwhelmed and depressed. The Year of Having Cancer has become like it happened to someone else, or I watched it on TV, or maybe I didn’t have “real” cancer, just kind of a JV version. It seems like I should try to hold onto those feelings, that they are too important to let go, but they are gone. I get teary when I read my blog account of events, and can’t believe it was me.

Another strange dynamic is not being the center of attention any more. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the attention I got while I was sick, the texts, emails, visits, cards, and words of sympathy. It seems really perverse to say that I miss it considering the price that it required, and it makes me creepy vain to have those thoughts. I feel like my friends are thinking, “OK, you’re not going to die soon, so we don’t really have to be in touch all the time”; I know this is unfair, I would be the same way. And often I feel compelled to tell new people I meet about my cancer, which I don’t really understand and don’t like; does it comes from wanting to inspire people, or just get more attention? I’m sure some of my golfing partners aren’t convinced that I just shanked my 7-iron into the lake because I’m a cancer victim.

The biggest challenge I am facing is what to do with the rest of my life. I don’t want a regular full-time job; I have neither the energy nor the patience to deal with that. But I don’t have a clear sense of what I want to do on a part-time or volunteer basis. And most significantly, I have not been able to get unstuck and start looking into it. I’m intimidated by the range of possibilities and the ways the world has changed; I’m feeling insecure about my age and my abilities; and I don’t know if I can handle being rejected. So, it’s a lot easier to say, well, I don’t feel that great today (which I don’t), so I’ll think about it tomorrow. It’s especially easy to do that now that it’s golf season.

I’ve been considering just retiring and doing recreational stuff full time. But the reality is that doing nothing makes me feel bad about myself. There’s a powerful voice in my head that says I am in the prime of my life, and that I ought to be doing something worthwhile. I find that I’m in agreement with that voice (as I probably should be since it’s mine).

I think it’s also important that I get out of the house and be around people and stop dwelling on being a cancer victim and not feeling perfect. I enjoy being around people, most people, as long as they are not knuckleheads. I miss the kids I used to teach (though I don’t miss teaching them. Except the few that seemed to enjoy learning; this is why I don’t really want to go back to teaching, most of them have very little interest in learning any math – and why would they?) But I’m sure it would be good for me to be around more people than just the septuagenarian Koreans at the golf courses and the check-out clerks at Harris-Teeter.

All of the above, I wrote two weeks ago. Since then a couple of things have happened: first, I stopped taking two of my meds. I stopped anti-depressants because they were making me depressed, and I stopped blood pressure meds because I wanted to. As a result, I feel more alert and happier, though I’m sometimes a little lightheaded (OK, dizzy). And I sleep better. So, it’s a trade-off, but I think I like this state better.

Second, my dad passed away after a long illness. I really haven’t felt very sad yet, it was expected for a long time, and it’s a relief to me that he is no longer suffering. Also, I think I have a different attitude toward death since my illness; I’m sure I’m still as terrified about dying as anyone else, but now I just don’t think about it. And I feel defiant, like “Screw you, death! I like being here too much to waste my time with you.” But I am beginning to be visited by memories of my dad at random unexpected moments, and I find myself smiling or gasping or tearing up. I guess that’s going to happen for the rest of my life, I will miss him a great deal.

So I feel ready to find a new calling for the new Rick. I’ve come to think that it is important for people, that is, me, to be doing something that they feel is worthwhile, and I have run out of excuses. Well, I guess I will always have an excuse, but I’m tired of listening to me use it.

I wasn’t sure how to finish this piece, but now I am. Yesterday I ran in a “Purple Stride” 5K race to raise money to fight pancreatic cancer. There were about 3000 people estimated to be at the event. At one point they asked the survivors of PC to come up on stage, and 12 of us walked up. That’s right, 12. That speaks louder than anything I could ever put into words.

God bless us all!

*Thanks, Frank Hightower, for the title!

Bob Abraham, My Dad

My father, Robert Abraham, was born on May 12, 1928 in New York, NY. His family moved soon thereafter to Woodmere, NY. Woodmere is one of the Five Towns on Long Island, a group of villages on the south shore that, I as I understand it, was the quintessential nouveau riche Jewish community. Bob was the first of two children that Henry (NMN) Abraham would father with the former Karoline Simon. His sister Virginia (Ginger) would arrive two years later, and a half-brother, David, ten years after that.

Henry was born in New Orleans in 1899, the son of Morris and the grandson of Henry. The elder Henry was a German immigrant who became an eminent leader in the business community, one of the most important financiers and entrepreneurs in New Orleans as it became the center of the world cotton trade. Henry had has hands in many enterprises, including a cotton processing plant and a cotton trading company, as well as a partnership with the Lehman family in New York that later became the Lehman Brothers investment bank. He is prominently mentioned in histories of New Orleans, noted as being one of America’s millionaires in an 1870’s compilation.

Henry died just after the turn of the century, and Morris took over many of his business interests. Over the next ten years he proceeded to lose most if not all of what his father had accumulated. I’ve heard two explanations: Henry’s (Bob’s father), in which he explained that Morris speculated very heavily on cotton prices just before The Great War, and lost his fortune when the government instituted price controls; and my dad’s, which described him as a heavy drinker and gambler. From the little research I have done, the second explanation appears more likely; my brother is still digging into the story. At any rate, Henry had to miss out on college and go to work to support himself and his family.

There are many gaps in my knowledge, but I know that he landed in New York and became an insurance agent. For almost all of his career he ran the Woodmere Insurance where he sold and serviced Chubb Insurance Policies to the increasingly affluent, mostly Jewish families in the area.

In 1926 he married Karoline Simon. He once described her to me as “not a beautiful woman, but very handsome”. From her pictures she appears to be rather short and stocky, with a bit of a snub nose and a bob-cut. I think Henry was a bit uncharitable; she was pleasant to look at, and projected an amiable, no-nonsense demeanor. She is best known to my generation as an excellent golfer; she was once Woodmere Country Club Champion.

In 1932, Karoline had a blood vessel burst in her face, and she unceremoniously died. Bob was four, Ginger two. Now that I have raised three children, I am dumbfounded when I consider the impact that it must have had on my father and my aunt to lose their mother at such a desperately dependent age. I know that human beings are more resilient than we often believe and many who lose a mother go on to have happy, well-adjusted lives, but it is difficult for me to fathom it. Her sudden death and void she left behind would go on to impact the lives of her descendants for generations.

Two years later Henry married Doris Isaacs, who became Dad’s stepmother. Doris took over caring for the children, but apparently did not readily bond to her two step-children. It also did not help that his father was not a nurturing sort; he was the typical patriarchal type of his generation. My dad never talked about his relationship with his father, but I knew Henry well enough in later years to know that he would not have been a man to offer much emotional support to a child, let alone one who had lost his mother in infancy. He was loud, outspoken, belligerent, and he liked to drink. He was not particularly lovable. So the absence of their birth mother continued to have an impact on the children.

Bob grew up as a shy, insecure little guy. Certainly his emotional development was stunted by the absence of his mother. It became a family joke over the years that in many ways Bob always remained four years old; he was awkward, stunningly impulsive, and juvenile in his enthusiasms and frustrations; throughout his life he asked child-like questions and then often asked them again a few minutes later. I can only imagine what his childhood must have been like without his birth mother.

He would only describe it as not very happy. He really would not talk about it, but when you asked a second time he would say that all of the other kids were smart and sharp and aggressive, and he wasn’t. In a culture where it was expected that a young man would be a doctor or lawyer or banker, and to not be was akin to being a panhandler, he was not in the game. He had a few childhood friends, but he never spoke much about hobbies or other activities. I can’t recall a single happy memory he ever cited about his childhood.

There was one part of growing up that he did enjoy: summer camps in the Adirondacks, which he attended every year. While he never talked about that much, either, he would say that he liked camp and he became interested in wildlife. He learned the names of birds and trees and developed the interest that would become his passion later in life. He also claimed to be the best swimmer in the camp, and he remained an effortless swimmer throughout his life. His growing love of nature led to his choice of a career: he wanted to work for The Forest Service.

So he decided to go to college and study Forestry. He would prove to have quite a tumultuous college career. He started at Paul Smith’s College, a nature-oriented liberal arts school in the Adirondacks near Harrietstown and Upper St. Regis. His father missed him terribly, so he only stayed a semester and then went back home. The next year he tried Syracuse University, but he struggled academically and again only lasted a semester. His next stop was Boise St. College in Idaho. That didn’t go so well either, he once told me he was bullied when he was there, as a short insecure Jewish kid from Long Island in Idaho.

About this time, his sister who was attending Richmond Professional Institute set him up on a blind date with her friend’s sister, a nice Jewish girl from Richmond, Doris Tatarsky. One thing led to another, and in 1950 they got married at age 22.

He and Doris eventually landed in Southwest Virginia, where he continued his studies at VPI, a small agricultural and engineering school on the edge of Appalachia, and she attended Radford College. He went on to earn his Forestry degree there when they agreed to waive his requirement to pass Organic Chemistry; the department said he might not be able to pass Organic, but knew more about birds than the professors. 

While he attended VPI he worked part-time at the local newspaper.

He lasted in The Forest Service for about three years. He served stints in Mt. Shasta, California and then Grants Pass, Oregon. During this period they had a son, David, in 1953. But Bob was prone to getting lost in the woods, and with an infant at home, he struggled with the 10 days on/4 days off schedule. And he and Doris missed the support they might be receiving from their families. So, he left the Forest Service and they decided to move back to Richmond. A few months later while visiting a friend back in the Blacksburg area he discovered that his previous employer at the newspaper was interested in hiring him. So they moved back to Southwest Virginia, settling in Christiansburg.

A few months later he had an opportunity to buy the job-printing business that accompanied the newspaper operation. He took the offer, and started Christiansburg Printing Company, where he did small jobs for local business, like printing brochures, handbooks, manuals, menus, and so on. He would go on to do this for nearly forty years.

Bob and Doris, like many married couples, were in many ways opposites. Doris was mature, independent, self-confident, and capable. Bob was child-like, needy, and impulsive. Doris was serious and practical. Bob was impulsive and emotional. Doris was social and effusive. Bob was halting and awkward, though he did enjoy being around people. Both were bright; Doris was a teacher, and she could sew, and knit, and make things, and take on any sort of challenge. Bob was probably ADD and could not focus on things, but he had a remarkable vocabulary and a formidable memory. His impulsiveness and clumsiness drove her crazy; his shyness was not a problem, she filled the gaps in conversations.

Over the years more kids came along. Michael, in 1954; Ricky (me) in 1956; and finally a girl, Karen, in 1961. The kids brought issues, as kids always do, each raising the stress level in the household by another order of magnitude. All of the children were lively and demanding, and it was a boisterous household. It was probably a fairly typical family, each of us happy and unhappy in our own ways, they were the only ways that we knew.

Running a printing business was not necessarily a role for which he was well suited; the printing business required skill with machinery, analytical ability with job design and costing, and the people skills to manage customers and employees. Bob was reasonably competent with the analytical piece, and capable with managing customers and workers. But it’s hard to imagine how he ever managed to deal with the machinery. He swore a lot, and stomped his feet, and threw lots of ruined paper, and became good friends with the journeyman press repair people. He had the wrong temperament to be a skilled machine operator, but somehow he was able to produce the jobs, and build a successful business. He never made a whole lot of money, but our family never had a need that went unmet. And Bob cared a great deal about his employees, many of whom were with him for twenty years or more. He derived great fulfillment from running a successful business, and was very proud to be honored several times by the local Chamber of Commerce.

Bob was an enthusiastic and devoted father. Though he had never played sports, he loved that we were passionately involved. He played with us in the neighborhood, and later coached our baseball and basketball teams – though he knew nothing about the sports. He attended every game we played, and especially loved watching me play football and basketball in high school. I took for granted that he never missed a game; I once told a friend that he knew nothing about coaching baseball, and he replied, “But he is always here”. Left unsaid was that most of the other dads were not.

He and Mom were also committed that we would have the whole gamut of world-expanding experiences. We went to two World’s Fairs. We went to Cooperstown and The Everglades and Grandfather Mountain and Nags Head and Niagara Falls and New York City and camping trips and beaches and museums. My brothers were active in the Boy Scouts, and we owned a cabin on Claytor Lake for a while. All of these trips were punctuated with both crises and triumphs, and they yielded indelible memories.

Bob was not very adept at sharing fatherly life-lessons or wisdom he had gained; he surely had no role model from his own childhood. But he set examples by the way he lived. He was insistent that character was independent of race, or color, or class; he said that he had known good people and bad people in all walks of life. He stood out as a supporter of the local Negro community (the words of the times); I remember, among other things, he nominated a colored man for the Kiwanis Club (he was not accepted). I don’t recall other details, but the colored families knew that Bob was their friend. Recently one of my classmates who is now a college president told me that Bob was one of the first community members to promote real equality for the Negroes in our schools and businesses and clubs. They all knew who he was and that he would stand up for them.

In fact, being a small town, just about everyone knew each other. Most of the more prominent families belonged to the local country club, and many were on the city council and the local boards and the service clubs. Bob was not, though he did enjoy being in Kiwanis. He and Doris had good friends, George and Mildred Gerberich in particular, and they had some social outlets. They sometimes went to bridge parties and Cotillion Club dances, where twice a year they would leave the house with a fifth of liquor in a brown bag and come home with it still above the label. For the most part, the demands of parenting did not allow for many other interests.

Being Jewish was not a major factor in our lives, to me more of a minor annoyance like a pebble in my shoe. We did go to Sunday school in Roanoke, which I hated, and we did all have Bar Mitzvahs, which provided for raucous reunions with Aunt Ginger and the cousins. I did not experience any real prejudice, though it always remained something that marked us different from the normal kids. Bob was largely indifferent to his Jewishness; the Jewish men in Roanoke seemed to see him as an odd bird, perhaps due to his complete lack of the trademark Jewish condition (ambition). I often thought of our family, the Jews of Christiansburg as being, as Wilt Chamberlain once described himself, a population segment of one.

In my teenage years Bob experienced significant health problems. He had a series of problems with kidney stones, and was often in great pain as he tried to pass them. Sometimes he had to go to the hospital so they could explode them. He was diagnosed with parathyroid problems, and had two surgeries to remove his parathyroid. He also had an operation on his side, I don’t recall why. I later came to believe that all of these problems may have stemmed from his years of cavalier handling of the powerful solvents he used to clean his printing presses. But who knows? I was not very good at supporting him during this period; I hated the hospital, and refused to visit him. I still carry some guilt about that time.

Of course there were so many, many other experiences that we all shared. My memories revisit me at random and unexpected times: him teaching me to drive (“pretend there’s an egg between your foot and the pedal”); or trying to impart his love of fishing; and hours of playing ball in the front yard. Getting lost at The World’s Fair. Going to the hospital with a broken arm. Raising two litters of puppies. So many memories! Being a father was Bob’s greatest joy. We took him for granted; the importance of having a real father to a child can only be measured by knowing a child who did not have one.

Inevitably we grew up and moved on. And Bob moved into his greatest era: retirement. Another family joke is that Bob may not have been that good at working, but he was world-class at retirement; he passed on the printing business to Michael and took up his new life with great enthusiasm. He began fishing regularly, and spent hours on the New River and at Claytor Lake. He took up scuba diving, and with his new friends Tom and Diane took many trips to the Caribbean, Belize, and even the Great Barrier Reef. He became an avid photographer, especially of wildlife; he took thousands of shots of sea creatures, birds, and the minks and muskrats he saw on the river. He was thrilled with his new digital toys, his cameras, computers, and printers. He may not have been a skilled photographer, but he succeeded by brute force, producing an extensive library of exquisite photos by taking tens of thousands of shots. He loved to send them to the local newspaper, which, to his delight, often printed them. His outdoor life brought him great joy; surely these were his happiest years.

He and Doris no longer had the stresses of raising children, and they settled comfortably into their new life. They took trips to many places, including Israel, Iceland, and Australia, to name just a few. They played more bridge, and joined more clubs and political groups. They loved traveling to visit their seven grandchildren. They seemed more relaxed and contented, and seemingly closer in spirit and temperament.

In his late sixties, Bob was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was treated with radiation, and this became an afterthought. However, it would come back to haunt him two decades later.

As he aged through his sixties and seventies and eighties, he gradually became less capable and curtailed some of his hobbies. He fished less, and would not go out on the river alone. He stopped scuba diving as the trips became too much for him. He turned increasingly to walking and taking pictures, sometimes in the woods and eventually the paved path along the New River. But this was a gradual process over twenty wonderful years, and his love of nature and photography only grew stronger. It was a great day if he got a good shot of an interesting bird; it was a wasted one if he didn’t. He was just as impulsive and child-like and filled with wonder as ever; his friends loved him for his enthusiasm. Every great picture Bob took was, for him, the first one.

Two years ago at age 87, Bob began a precipitous decline. His bladder began to fail due to damage from the radiation treatment twenty years prior. He began to have regular urinary tract infections, which gave him high fevers and landed him in the hospital. The strong antibiotics they gave him quelled the infections, but they gave him severe stomach pains and suppressed his appetite. He was in and out of the hospital every couple of months; when he was in the hospital he grew increasingly despondent and depressed. Eventually his kidneys began to fail, and he had tubes put into them to bypass his bladder altogether, requiring him to have urine collection bags. But still the infections continued, and so did the stays in the hospital. Being bed-ridden caused his spine and nerves to deteriorate, and he began to have significant pain in his back and buttocks. His prostate cancer also returned, which may have been the primary cause of his spinal pain. It was a dreadful period for him; he endured hour after hour after hour in the hospital feeling miserable, and knowing he would have to go back again a few weeks later. Eventually the pain and misery began to dominate his life, and he lost his will to live; he decided he would not to go back to the hospital again. The pain continued to worsen, and hospice care greatly increased his medication, until he was often incoherent.

As I write this he is on his deathbed. He has been non-responsive for three days. He is on massive amounts of morphine, but he appears to be resting comfortably. We talk to him and hold him, and hope that he hears us. We will all be relieved when his suffering comes to an end, it won’t be very long.

How does one measure the value of a life? If it’s by career success, or wealth gained, or accolades earned, Bob’s was unremarkable. But if it’s by living with honesty, and integrity, and respect for people of all origins, Bob will be judged much more kindly. If it’s by being a loving father, a devoted husband, a man who was always there for his family and his community, he will be near the top of the list. And finally, if it’s by being a truly authentic person, a man who lived without an ounce of pretense or guile or rancor, who found great joy in nature and people of all walks of life, Bob was a real champion. Bob may have remained child-like for all of his long lifetime, but he was surely God’s child. We all loved him and will miss him dearly. Good-bye, Dad.

Stuff I Read Last Year

I had the great fortune to have lots of time to read books in 2016. So, in the tradition of other eminent authorities like The New York Times, Amazon, and MAD Magazine, I thought it was incumbent upon me to publish my “Best of 2016”. Also, I felt like writing another blog post and I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Way back last January I read Before The Fall, which I thought was very well written, somewhat intriguing, and very apropos in regard to the contemporary media environment. I gave it CCCC. (Aren’t those icons pathetic? I’m still using Windows 2007.)

There are few things I love more than comic novels; heating pads, maybe, or a big sloppy kiss from my dog. I read a couple of good ones (comic novels) this year: Everybody’s Fool (CCCC¹/₂C) and Kitchens of the Great Midwest (CCCC¹/₂C). Kitchens is a send-up of food snobbery; the chapter about bars is a classic. Fool is a sort-of sequel to Nobody’s Fool, both by Richard Russo, one of my favorite writers. Both Fools are a hoot, and I recommend these books highly if you’re seeking a chuckle or two.

(Random interjection: my two favorite comic novels are It Won’t Always Be This Great, and The Financial Lives of the Poets {don’t be put off by the title, it’s awesome}. I find few joys in life as fulfilling as funny books).

I read lots of crime/mystery/suspense novels last year. The best one was The Trespasser, by Tana French, a wonderful writer; I gave it CCCC. I also liked Michael Connelly’s latest, whatever it’s called; I read all of his books. Laura Lippman’s latest was also good. My new favorite writer in this genre is Michael Robotham, and his book about the guy who escapes prison the day before his sentence was up was excellent. I gave these an aggregate of CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC; I’ll let you figure out how to allocate them.

Still in the crime category, I read a noir book from around 1950 called Hell Hath No Fury that I really liked. You get 10 points if you can define “noir” adequately without cheating. I gave it CCCC¹/₃C. I started to read a Raymond Chandler but it was too clichéd for this cynic.

Last, and probably least, I liked Harlan Coben’s new book. Harlan Coben is like Fig Newtons: tasty, familiar, and you can’t stop until you’ve eaten the whole sleeve; CCCC.

I read lots of other thrillers, but they were mostly forgettable. Maybe they were wholly forgettable, since I can't remember them. I did not read any Lee Child/Jack Reacher books; they ruined it when they agreed to cast Tom Cruise as Reacher in the movies. Ugh.

Sort of still in that crime category was a delightfully twisted little book called You Will Know Me about a gymnastics team. A treat for young and old alike, I gave it CCCC¹/₂C.

If you like dysfunctional families, and who doesn’t, The Nest was good fun (CCCC). Also in the dysfunctional family vein, The Sport of Kings was quite a remarkable book. It reminded me of a trip to a great art gallery, or perhaps watching a foreign movie without translations: I felt like I was missing a lot of the best stuff, but it was an exhilarating ride anyway. I'll give it CCCC¹/₂C

Highly acclaimed works I started but discarded included The Homecoming, The Nix, and LaRose. I actually liked LaRose, I’m not sure why I quit reading it. Maybe The Caps were playing or something. I’ll probably take it up again.

A couple of books I read back-to-back that turned out to be companion pieces about women were My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, and This is Your Life Harriet (Somebody) by Jonathan Evison. I love Elizabeth Strout’s books, and I like Evison a lot, too. CCCC¹/₂C and CCC¹/₂C, respectively.  And, both authors have previous books that are even better, read them all!

About the same time I was reading Homecoming I read Barkskins, which was fun since both were about immigrants to The New World around the 18^th century. I finished Barkskins, mostly just to be able to say I finished it. (No rating.) Not sure why I bother to mention it here.

I listened to The Vegetarian on tape. If You Will Know Me was twisted, The Vegetarian was twisted-on-steroids. I know it was profound, but I have no idea why; I gave it no rating, and I only mention it here because it won The Man Booker Prize, and I’m quite the book snob.

The Thicket was gory and sadistic, but also cute and charming. I liked it; CCC¹/₂C. Reminded me of another underrated book that I liked: The Sisters Brothers. If you liked the movie Hell or High Water, you might like these books.

Dodgers was pretty good. It’s his first book, and he’s from Northern Virginia, so you should read it. CCC¹/₂C. Allison liked it too, and since we sort of refuse to like the same books, that’s a rare endorsement.

Last week I actually read a non-fiction book, Thank You For Being Late. It’s supposed to an optimist’s look at the future, but I thought it was terrifying. Of course, I think getting out of bed is terrifying. (Isn’t it?) Anyway, it’s good book, I gave it CCCC¹/₂C.

OK, so here’s the grand finale. The two best books I read last year I actually read in the last two weeks, which of course was not last year. However, they were both ingenious, beautifully written, funny, wise, entertaining, and in many ways astonishing; two of the best novels I have ever read. Both by very accomplished authors, and in my mind, their greatest works. Both about brilliant, iconoclastic men; and again, in a sense, companion works. And so, the winners are, for best books of 2016…

Moonglow, by Michael Chabon

A Doubters Almanac, by Ethan Canin

They won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved them. And after all, this is all about me. Though I hope I gave you some ideas of things you might like. Feel free to contact me if you would like more recommendations or details. Happy reading!