Random Observations for Monday, July 9, 2007

Without further ado, here's what's running around in my head this morning. Ahem.

• It's amazing how everything greens up after a good gullywasher. As Lileks mentioned, we got some rain yesterday. A lot of rain. I would wager the official measurement was close to two inches by the time it was all said and done in the early hours of the evening. Since the temperature had reached a whopping ninety-seven degrees on Saturday, and was already at eighty-three by nine a.m. yesterday, it was a given we were going to get pounded. That's just the way the weather works here in the Midwest: high pressure makes it hot, low pressure will, inevitably, start something with the high pressure, and BOOM goes the thunder and lightning. It will then cool off for a time, and then, because it's the Midwest and we're all about predictability, the whole process will start all over again. The thunderstorms were actually so bad yesterday that the husband, who is not easily spooked by electrically charged skies, unplugged all of the computers, lest they be chicken-fried by a surge of electricity.

  And, yes, for the record, our computers are plugged into surge protectors. Ironically enough, however, our televisions aren't. The husband did not go around unplugging those. Anyone want to make a guess which electrical appliances the husband rates higher on his scale of priorities?

• I've come to the conclusion that ovarian cancer has forced me to make a grand trade: my period for chemo.

  Neither one is a lot of fun, but at least with my period the joy arrived every twenty-eight days, instead of the twenty-one day cycle I'm on with chemo.

  If there is an upside to this trade, it means I no longer have to come up with monthly payola for the Playtex protection racket.

  Why the Justice Department wastes its time with organized crime instead of investigating---and prosecuting---the perpetrators in the Grand Tampon Price Gouging Conspiracy is beyond me. It's an open and shut case and one that will please over half the electorate if taken up. What administration could resist?

  My devoted male Cake Eater readers can stop cringing now. I'm done with talking about tampons for the time being, and given the circumstances, probably forever. Consider yourselves lucky.

• And speaking of what seems are my neverending trials of chemotherapy, I know, because the mailbag tells me so, that some of you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, are wondering how I'm doing with all of this. I'm fine, thank you for asking. I appreciate your concern, but honestly, I'm getting bored with all of this cancer nonsense, so I'm assuming some of you must be, as well. Hence, I've decided to stop bleating so much about it.

  That said, here's a quick update for the people who care. And if you don't, well, skip past this bit---and all the other bits---with my blessing. I understand. Really and truly I do.

  Anyway, I undergo my fifth treatment this coming Friday, the thirteenth. (No one---AND I MEAN NO ONE---should make any cracks about the date lest we tempt fate. I'm trying not to make any prophecies that have even the remotest chance of becoming self-fulfilling in this regard, and I expect you to make the same effort.) The treatments are, indeed, beginning to add up and I don't think I'm looking very much like the poster child for wellness during chemo that Dr. Academic believes me to be. I'm pale under my tan. (I never actually understood that description before. I do now.) I have big dark smudges under my eyes that never seem to go away. In other words, I'm beginning to look like I'm ill. Again. Only this time I've got the added joy of hair loss to accentuate the overall look. I suspect I look quite good in comparison to Dr. Academic's other patients, and which is why he goes on and on about how well I look, but compared to the average, healthy, human being, well, even if I wasn't as bald as an egg, you can definitely tell there's something off.

  I'm feeling pretty good this time around and that's due to a shot of this stuff. Two weeks ago today, two days after my fourth treatment, at Dr. Academic's "request," I went back down to his office to be shot up with this stuff, which is a white cell, or immune system, booster. The thing with chemo is that it kills as much of the good stuff you need to run your body as it does the bad stuff you don't want around. Apparently my white blood cell numbers after treatment three were a cause for concern and Dr. Academic prescribed me the Neulasta because, as he said, it would make me feel better. And it did. It just took a week to kick in. My energy levels are much higher than they were after the third cycle of chemo and I'm feeling pretty healthy on the whole.

  There are just two things that I'm not crazy about with this drug. First, somehow, I managed to contract a cold (in July, no less!) after I received this white cell booster, which makes me suspicious about just how my immune system was boosted. Second, do you have any idea how much this junk costs? Prepare to be shocked. $3100 for one shot---and that's with a thirteen percent discount. Now, I'm as much of a fan of the free market as you're going to find in the general population. I believe there should be market rewards for those who innovate, and it's obvious that Amgen has innovated in this case. Yet, am I alone in thinking that the fact they advertise for chemo patients to "ask their doctor" for this stuff, "right from the start," when it's most likely not needed, is a bit of overkill? I didn't receive it after my fourth treatment---out of a total of six. I suspect I'm not alone in this regard. Oncologists already make good use of this stuff when their patients need it---and anyone who's in the treatment room when the schedulers are doing their thing, and announce to all and sundry that so and so has to come in the next day for a shot of Neulasta, knows the same. There's no reason for Amgen to advertise this stuff in the first place, because, undoubtedly, they're already making money hand over fist, let alone instruct chemotherapy patients to ask for this very expensive injection because, ahem, there's nothing else on the market like it. There's no competitor that I know of. There's no generic equivalent, either. The only reason Amgen is advertising is to boost sales to keep the shareholders happy. That's fine for the time being, I suppose. But if Hillary, or any one of her Democratic cohorts, snaffles up the presidency next year, you can bet that Amgen will be held up as a case study in greed when the issue of universal healthcare is brought up. Because you know it will be if a Democrat becomes president, no matter whom that particular Democrat might be.

  That won't make for such great PR, my fine feathered pharmaceutical friends, and will make the case for socialized medicine, with many, many price controls on things like pharmaceuticals, all the more compelling. Ya might want to think about that before your next ad buy, Amgen.

• Here's an excellent Berry Pie recipe for y'all to try if you can find reasonably priced berries in your local supermarket or farmer's market. Very tasty and it has the Cake Eater Seal of Approval.

  The only thing I will add by way of instruction is to let the berries cool. And when I say cool, I mean "refrigerate for at least an hour after cooking" otherwise you'll end up with some highly edible berry slop in a pie crust.

  Yes, I learned this the hard way, why do you ask?

• I've been working my way through Simon Winchester's extensive catalog of works over the past several months, when I am capable of giving his writing the attention it deserves. (Anesthesia and chemotherapy not being great supporters of the skills of concentration.) I started with Krakatoa, and I enjoyed it so much, I moved on to The Sun Never Sets, which was published in the 1980's and is now published under the title Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire, which I really do think he should update simply because someone needs to go to St. Helena and see if the schoolkids slide down the railings of that massive staircase still. I moved on to A Crack in the Edge of the World and The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.

  Now, before I go further, I have to say that I really enjoy the way Winchester writes. He has an engaging style that informs but never condescends. He is never stingy with the information, either, and if he finds an interesting fact in his research, he'll share it with the reader in the footnotes. I've read some criticism that claims he digresses too much. That may be true, but his digressions are never boring, are most likely amusing in some fashion, and even if they don't add anything to the story he's laboring to tell, don't manage to take anything away from it, either. When it comes to his works that deal with natural disasters, like say, Krakatoa he gives you the overall picture of just what is going on with the geology, and he does so in a way that not only will you, the layman, understand, he does it in a way that you, too, can blather on at cocktail parties about plate tectonics and the Wallace Line using his examples. The thing is, your fellow cocktail partygoers will think you interesting if you use Winchester's examples. In the wrong hands, the geologic information his books contain could be very, very dry; in Winchester's, well, it's safe, for the most part. However, there is one book of his that is the exception that proves this rule. It is The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Geology and oy vey is it boring. Perhaps there's just not enough natural disaster in this book to make me want to labor through the portions on geology. I don't know. But I'm beginning to wonder if I'm ever, at almost halfway, going to actually get onto the story of William Smith and his map, instead of reading about the seemingly fascinating geology of Oxfordshire and Sussex, England. Bleh.

  I need a volcano to explode. And soon. Otherwise I'm giving up.

• I will be posting a picture of my bald self sometime in the near future. Just as soon as I gin up the courage up actually pose for one. I'm doing this now because my eyebrows are almost non-existent and I would like to do it before they go completely and I look like Mrs. Potato Head without the eyelashes and eyebrows.
• In a related aside, forget the diamonds. Eyebrow pencil really is the bald girl's best friend.

  Although, I will state this much: it's very easy to go too far with the pencil. The line is very easy to cross. (Ha Ha. Get it? I kill myself sometimes.) Some days you look good. Some days you look like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. And it's not always easy to know when you're ready for your close-up, if you take my meaning.

• Steve-O is pretty much right on with his review of Live Free or Die Hard. Except for the fact that he says you shouldn't go see it. You should. Just at matinee prices.

  It's John McClane, for fuck's sake. You have to go see it. Or the terrorists will win.

  That said, I thought it was pretty ridiculous that a fighter pilot would be stupid enough to place his very expensive jet underneath a crumbling freeway. Just. Not. Gonna. Happen. I also though casting this guy as the FBI Director in charge of rounding up hackers, was a HUUUUUUGE mistake, because he, apparently, graduated from the Shatner School of Acting. With honors. Good Christ, the man sucked big, honking boulders he was so bad. And the contrast was made even more obvious because the always excellent Zeljko Ivanek was, somehow, his subordinate and showed him up in every scene, even if he really didn't have all that much to do. Every time Zeljko was onscreen, he did his job and he did it superbly. Yet, his big blue eyes also seemed to be pleading with the audience, "Yes, I know this guy sucks. Yes, I know I should be playing his part. You are correct in assuming I would do a good job with it. Unfortunately, I have a mortgage payment, just like everyone else, so forgive me for taking the work where I can find it. I promise to do better next time."

  I felt badly for Ivanek by the time the movie was over. I felt embarrassed to be a fan of a franchise who wouldn't take the opportunity to drain his immeasurable talents to the last drop for the benefit of all.

  I also thought that most reviewers, including Steve-O, missed the delicious irony of Mac Guy playing a hacker---who never touched a Mac. Heh. At least they got that bit right. It never ceases to piss me off when they show hackers working on Macs. No No NO NO. It doesn't work that way. Least of all because you cannot freakin' right click with a Mac. Sheesh.

And that's it for now, my devoted Cake Eater Readers.