700 (ANC 57%)
56,000 Your friends dad has HCL "oh that's the cool kind ... he thought i was crazy and i said no no no ... but now he's doing great. and he's in his 60s" "bullet" After nearly three months the Star is finally getting around to addressing the issue of my sick leave. Carol calls me and says to expect a phone call within the hour from Peggy Rush of human resources and Mary Lou Nolan. She tells me Peggy and Mary Lou will review the Star's sick leave procedures with me and that afterwards, "Mary Lou would like to speak with you alone." This is my cue, I surmise, that Mary Lou will call to discuss my sick leave more openly than we would in the presence of an HR person. They have me on speakerphone, which means they need to call me on the home phone and not the cell. They call back. Peggy is pleasant but she's got a script to read and so here we go: Am I familiar with the Family and Medical Leave Act? I am. Peggy then assures me, "It's the Star's policy to comply fully with the FMLA law ... We do understand you need to be on permanent leave ... we are designating your leave as FMLA leave effective today. ... Among other things we're going to be needing medical certification from your physician. ... For your information we need recertification from time to time. That's usually every 30 days based on your continuous need for time off. Now that's kind of the FMLA basics. "We understand you want to work part-time from your home, but we want you to know that you are under no obligation to do that." Okay, but then she says that if I decide to work part time from home, "it could impact your need for long-term disability benefits." Why? Because the leave needs to be longer than 180 days to qualify for LTD." While Peggy reads another of her reassuring disclaimers ("that may not be an issue, may never be an issue, but we want to make sure you are apprised of that"), I begin wondering what we call these 180 days. That gets answered next. "As you know, you have 180 days of short-term leave and as an exempt employee that means you have up to 130 days -- or 26 weeks -- of sick days. Which means you'll be paid 100%." Actually, Mary Lou has failed to inform me of even this provision. When I got sick, all she said was, "Don't worry about anything here." And I didn't. Besides, 130 or 180 days of sick leave is way more than I would need even in the most pessimistic scenario. Later, in relating this to Diane I use the term "worst-case" to describe the scenario; she reminds me that the worst case is that I come down with something else and get deathly ill. Well, okay, but I think I'd be ready to take LTD in that event, so it's a moot point. Peggy now reminds me that short-term disability "is subject, of course, to any medical certification the Star requests." Of course. Nobody has asked me for medical certification. Now they are. Peggy informs me, "You've already used up 39 days, or 8 weeks," of FMLA leave. Huh? I tell her no way, that next week will be the three-month anniversary of my diagnosis. Oops, says Peggy, who quickly recomputes and figures out I've used up 12 weeks, 59 days as of today. But even that is subject to amending. "Aaron," says Peggy, "our practice typically would not be to have people working part-time when they're off, but if you choose to work part-time from this time forward we'll credit your remaining short-term disability with any time you have worked ... Similarly if you're working from home, we'll credit your FMLA leave accordingly. An employee is guaranteed 60 days of FMLA leave entitlement." Since I get a discount for every day I work -- and that total is easily 10 days already, probably more -- I've barely used a third of my 130 days of short-term leave. Moreover, as long as I keep working part time, I will continue to accrue sick days at a very slow pace. As for the FMLA, that seems a moot point, as suggested by this explanation of the FMLA that I clipped from a Web site at the University of Colorado:
2. Substitution of Leave. Generally, Family and Medical Leave is unpaid. However, under the provisions of this section, a faculty/staff member may choose or may be required to substitute paid leave for unpaid Family and Medical Leave. a. Sick Leave. If the purpose of the leave is the serious health condition of the faculty or staff member, he/she will be required to substitute any accrued sick leave for unpaid Family and Medical Leave. The faculty or staff member may elect to substitute sick leave for unpaid leave to care for his/her spouse, son, daughter, or parent with a serious health condition. b. Vacation Leave. If the purpose of the leave is the serious health condition of the faculty or staff member, he/she will be required to substitute any accrued vacation leave for unpaid Family and Medical Leave. The faculty or staff member may elect to substitute vacation leave to care for her/his spouse, son, daughter, or parent with a serious health condition. c. Short-term Disability Leave. The Family and Medical Leave 12-week entitlement will run concurrently with any leave without pay taken while a faculty or staff member is receiving short-term disability benefits, including any waiting period.So what really matters is the amount of short-term leave I'm given, since it runs much longer than the FMLA leave provision -- and has the added benefit of being paid. Plus, assuming I don't use up my allotted leave by Nov. 13, 2001, or 12 months after my leave began, the slate is wiped clean. Mary Lou comes on the line to "reiterate that you're not required to work part time. But if you elect to work part-time, you'll continue until your part-time leave is expended." I think she's getting her terms mixed up, but I let it pass because I know she and I are going to speak later. She also tells me "I love to see you in print," and I know it comes from her heart. I remind her that working is part of my recovery and that in the past week I've practically been full-time. Later, MLN calls informs me hour and half meeting to figger out what hapens when i decide part-time. Turns out it could affect LTD. It is numerically possible that by working part time you could exhaust your fulltime STD and then not have to work 180 days continuously to reach LTD. So how the hell do we account for this? [weekly reports, and if I need to report I worked 5 days that week, so be it. i tell her to expect a lot of 4's with some 3's and 5's.] "Remember when we said we needed a med cert from your doctor? We need to have that before you can do any more work for the Star. And tell him u may need to do that as often as every 2 weeks. You need to be keeping records. But ask periodically. E-mail Carol weekly with my number of days worked each week. ***2/2/01 4 a.m. I woke up this morning unable to contain the steady trickle of new ideas into my head:
- I want to go to Columbia and sit in on a video journalism class.
- I want to tie a TV antenna to my roof and pull in distant signals from Columbia to Topeka. Observe them for what they tell me about the inculcation into effective broadcasting that every young college scrub goes through.
- I want to have a long talk with Ken Lindner about the news business.
- I want to know an angle that will help me cover TV news, even if that forces me to cultivate new relationships and discard old ones. Maybe Mike Sanders can be my gateway since he is now teaching at CMSU.
- I want to count all of the CBS affiliates around the country that have added "Survivor Extra" segments to their late news, and then write a story mocking these stations' local commitments to their communities. I will use their Web sites, taking note as well of the various local-oriented slogans they are using.
- I want to know what current techniques the top news consultants are recommending to their clients. Again, new sources would help -- though the techniques can't possibly be so opaque that a comparison of several hundred TV station Web sites couldn't uncover some major clues. Mike James could be helpful, too.
- I want to review "C.S.I." with an eye toward comparing it (unfavorably, in more than one way) to previous CBS whodunit hits "Murder She Wrote" and "Diagnosis Murder." I notice that the promos still show William Petersen holding that snake thing with a light at the end, a device that forensic specialists may in fact use in the field but not in the absurd overkill way it was used in the pilot of "C.S.I." to find toenail clippings on a bare floor in a bathroom -- something the human eye could've just as easily spotted. That is "high-tech" in the same way that Angela Lansbury was "high-tech" when she ditched her old manual typewriter for one of them fancy word processors.
And from our children, drenched as I say in a media culture of irony and sarcasm and the blatant manipulation of images, we are beginning to sense a chilling new response to this onslaught of falsity. The response is chilling not because it takes the form of anger or indignation over being lied to--would that it were so. No, it's chilling precisely in its cynical indifference to being had. Broadcasting--and I am talking here mainly about commercial broadcasting--has scored a fantastic triumph in the latter half of the 20th Century. It has successfully neutralized the value of literal truth, and thus the value of moral behavior that literal truth incessantly demands.(http://www.vema.together.com/retntalk.htm) What is driving me I think is the gnawing certainty that I have spent my life being reared by the mass media, so that I relate to the world in mass-media terms and do not have much confidence in being able to refute the mass media in my own tongue. The assurance that comes from reading a great deal of literature -- an assurance my wife innately possesses -- is denied to me. It could be, in fact, that my occasional flare-ups of unhappiness at work are less related to copy editors flattening my prose -- though they do do that -- than to a dissatisfaction I feel with where my writing is headed. I do not see it headed down the path of being mass media's co-conspirator, matching its stupidity with sarcasm and its occasional gem with over-the-top praise until the differences between critic and marketer are scarcely consequential enough to matter. But on the other hand, I do not see it headed down the path of liberated enlightenment, either. I feel stuck in the middle, as though I am not treading a clear-cut path at all, and instead am wandering through the woods of unfocused reflection and vague confusion. I took two classes from Garry Wills. I know he was trying to warn me against pop culture, mass media, all that. Only now -- like some long-ago transmission that has bounced off a celestial wall and been picked up by a high-powered radio telescope -- is the message finally coming to me. But what does it mean? I discern that there are new things to be said about television and its impact, in ways that can become part and parcel of what I do as a TV critic. My editor Carol told me just yesterday, "Whatever you can do that is critical of large corporations and their influence on the media, I'm all for it." There is a general distrust of the new media companies among my colleagues, and I think it's shared by the public. (By "new media companies" I mean ones grown to huge proportions as never before, not necessarily that they own chunks of cyberspace, though most do.) But articulating the sources of our concern is the challenge. Someone who is both informed on the inside and firmly contextualized on the outside is best equipped for that task. I think I can be that person. But first I think I need to divorce myself in an unprecedented way from the biases toward mass media that were shaped in me as a small child. There are perceptions of the world that come from mass media that I have not identified and must be prepared to if my writing is to make a difference. Making a difference -- not winning prizes or the accolades of my peers, or even security from my employers -- is the only reason to write. It is the only way I can find ultimate joy in writing for a living. Otherwise it's just pop art, and that's the kind of "art" the mind almost instantly wants to mitigate with quote marks. "bullet" So maybe I am not pointed ultimately toward Los Angeles or New York or Washington, as I had once thought. Perhaps I am pointed toward Minnesota after all. Perhaps I need refuge from television in order to write intelligently about it, the kind of refuge that comes from living in a part of the world I would devoutly love to live in. Virgil called Thursday, around noon. I was at the hospital and Diane missed the call, and she did not check for voice mail until the evening. The anguished message was that Dad is not doing well. Virgil had been up all night caring for him. He hadn't had a bowel movement in two days. He was unable to speak. He wet his bed three times in the night. "I think," V said in a weary voice I hadn't heard before, "we need to start thinking about who the pallbearers should be." I held Diane. She looked at me searchingly. "We knew this time was going to come ..." But still. She paused, looked deep inside me again. "I think it should be the grandsons. Steve, Tom, Danny, ... and Edward." By the time we are able to live in Minnesota, of course, Emil will be long gone. But we won't be living near Wykoff, I don't think. Probably in the Twin Cities, in either the cities of Mpls. or St. Paul. (The latter exerts a strong pull on Diane and me both for its more Catholic and historic feel.) "bullet" Great line from THE NEWSCASTERS: "Weather? Ah, we will give them a plethora of weather, more weather than they can possibly remember or repeat five minutes after having heard it." "bullet" Another line from Powers' book inspires me to write Nicholas Johnson, the former FCC commissioner:
Believe it or not, I am only now getting around to reading Ron Powers' pathbreaking book THE NEWSCASTERS, published in 1977. There is a line in there that I quote to you now: "To isolate a lucrative buying group from the total pool of American television viewers, and then to create programming that supposedly meets the specific tastes and interests (needs be damned!) of that group, is to discriminate against groups both 'above' and 'beneath' the target audience. In entertainment programming, this practice is merely unfair and counter to the intent of FCC licensing policy. In news programming, it is pernicious." I realize that people were a lot more serious 25 years ago about licensing and "the public interest" than they are now -- the broadcast lobby has done a lot to blunt the edges of communications law -- but still. The concept of demographics versus democracy had never occurred to me before. Do you think it is still a valid argument? Or, now that we are fully immersed in demographics, it would be impossible to indict television stations, let alone networks, for skewing their news programs at target groups? Or is it irrelevant now that four, five, even six stations in one market "do news"?Later that day, his reply comes:
Of course it's equally serious. More so. And, if I may be so bold, especially awful in print media. A colleague of mine does research on that subject."bullet" Virgil calls at 8:30 a.m., as I'm heading out the door to the hospital, to say Emil had a much better night, slept, had a BM, is speaking better. The sun is shining and it's a fine day for a drive down Rockhill Road. "bullet" At Baptist Medical Center, a very pleasant woman named Linda at admitting checks me in. When I arrive upstairs, I'm greeted by nurse Nancy Hodes, who as advertised is a real honey of a sweetie. Also no-nonsense, extremely efficient and a first-class talker. The outpatient lab she used to work out of is being renovated, so since October the outpatient oncology and infectious diseases patients have come to this wing of the third floor for their treatments. ***2/3/01 "Television means solitude while cinema means community." -- director Krzysztof Kieslowski ("Decalogue") "bullet" I post this to Echo's Writing conference, which I have recently joined:
Regarding writer's block, it doesn't exist for newspaper writers -- but a peculiar form of procrastination does. It comes when you get an assignment you don't relish (happens to general-assignment reporters but not to me). It comes when you think up a story your editor loves but which starts to lose its glamor halfway through the research (happens to me occasionally). And it comes when you want to start the story but dread the process of getting everything on paper (happens to me ALL THE TIME). I think I would be an ideal rewrite man. I love to rewrite. Unfortunately, as it stands, I must write before I can rewrite, and by the time I get to doing what I love to do, I'm often playing beat the clock. This is a hard confession to make since I am considered one of my department's most productive scribes (or was, until I got sick). I realize that if I'm to improve as a writer I must become more disciplined about deadlines. It's not even a quantity-quality issue, though right now I am writing less often. Ultimately if I can train myself to knock out a first draft well before deadline, I can handle the same workload I'm accustomed to -- I'll just be happier with the results."bullet" Last night, Diane came up to relate a hilarious couple of phone calls from Laura Hockaday and Marjean Busby. Laura, who normally takes Diane on grocery expeditions every week, called to announce that she will be out of the country and so has asked Marjean to substitute for her. In March. Six weeks from now. That's hilarious in its own way, but there's more. A few minutes later, *Marjean* calls to say that Laura has asked her to substitute for her in taking Diane shopping in March. Furthermore, Marjean said that in talking with Laura she learned that we like a certain kind of decaffeinated mint tea. So Marjean is going to come by tomorrow and *bring* us some of that tea! Who quite knows where this is coming from, but then, who are we to refuse? We have a good laugh. Diane, however, is not sure Marjean knows that it's GREEN tea we like. But then Marjean comes by this morning -- I was upstairs, so Diane relates this after Marjean is gone -- and lo and behold she has brought three *different* brands of mint green tea! Lipton, Bigelow and CS. "I think," Diane says, "it just meant a great deal to them when you reached out to them when you were starting at the Star." Funny how you forget things you did, but she's probably right. I just don't keep a ledger of such things, so I simply assumed they were being kind to us and staying in touch at a time when we needed the friendship of others. "bullet" On the other end of the scale, at least right now, there's Karen Uhlenhuth, who, Diane reports, has twice tried to get Diane to go to Westport Prez and watch a screening of "The Decalogue" (see quote above), even though it is in Polish with subtitles that Diane cannot read. That's bad enough -- then Karen goes and makes matters worse by telling Diane, "Wow, then you're really missing out on a lot." What a dumbass thing to say. Diane suspects it's because Karen wants Diane to go out with her and her new boyfriend. "bullet" Scary quote from B&C: "In the future, you probably won't know where the commercial stops and the programs begin." -- TBWA president Bob Kuperman at a NATPE panel called "When the Advertiser Turns Producer." "bullet" I've been noodling with an idea for a book entitled GIVE IT BACK: A CALL FOR THE END OF COMMERCIAL TELEVISION. It argues that the commercial TV business has gotten so corrupted -- and cable TV become so viable -- that it no longer makes sense to offer free licenses to affiliates. At first this would appear to wound the independent TV station owners, since unlike the big boys they don't have equity stakes in cable. But the plan wouldn't be to abolish commercial TV, just FREE commercial TV. Broadcasters would be allowed to buy their licenses back, with preference going toward smaller (or even new) group owners. Rebates could be included for broadcasters who pay for network programming. In addition, each market in the U.S. would add a noncommercial station funded at up to $X million with the license fees. Only noncommercial operators could own them, they could never be sold to commercial operators, and the existing PBS operator in that market could not own them. The thinking here is that public-access cable failed because (a) it didn't reach the classes it was most aimed at, namely the poor, elderly and others who can't afford cable; and (b) they were run -- into the ground -- by feckless cable companies. Instead, what you do is make digital TV the new public-access channel. In exchange, you effectively de-regulate television: no ownership caps, no kidvid requirements, no equal time, no public affairs. My impetus for this is fueled every time I read some dumbass in the industry saying something like this: "We think the government should have no say in what we do for children. We think PBS does an excellent job, there are whole cable networks devoted to children, and with us it's now hit or miss." -- Madelyn Bonnot, senior VP/ops at Emmis Communications, B&C 1-29-01 "bullet" Along the dying FCC story front, I note this week's B&C also has a report that Sens. McCain, Hollings and Brownback have asked the FTC "for two more reports on whether entertainment companies are marketing violence to kids." One report is due this spring and one due in the fall "will take a deeper look at the same issues and ask the industry to provide more information." Links the senators' action to the new Surgeon General's report. So the story may not be dead after all. "bullet" Today was Achievement Saturday. I took all the recycling to the center, made a pan of lasagna, practiced tai chi twice and figured out how to use a newsreader again (after about a five-year hiatus). ***2/4/01 I bounce my idea for GIVE IT BACK off of Diane. She likes it. It will not be THE NEWSMAKERS 25 years later -- though clearly Ron Powers has given me some ideas for how to pursue reporting this book. I need to tell a story, or more likely, a number of stories. I need to conduct original interviews. Perhaps most important (and in service of telling good stories), I need to explain what is happening, the major players and the big problems in plain English that any reader will be able to understand. I want this to be a book, as the publicist might say, that "is for anyone who watches television." "bullet" I spend much of the day browsing Usenet. I haven't been there in years. Fortunately, the software (NewsWatcher) has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years, and now I can easily weed out a lot of messages I'd rather not look at. The rec.arts.tv group, in particular, could be a good source for me. I also post a few items to the writing conference on Echo, where I am slowly working my way through the topics, some of which go back one third of my lifetime (to early 1990). "bullet" Finances are going to be tight for another week. We are overspending again -- visits to the acupuncturist and high grocery bills were the chief culprits in January. And we haven't even shelled out for the Feb. mortgage or the KU Med bill. I'm holding that mortgage payment another week. It will be the last time I can do that, however; Fleet begins auto-debiting our account next month. I trust I haven't made a devil's deal but honestly, I am making enough money that we should be able to keep this account in check. "bullet" I gave Edward wrong directions to a men's store -- baffling, since I was sure one turned right on Quivira. No, said Ed, you turn left, at least off Shawnee Mission Pkwy. Odd. To Diane, he blamed me -- not for the miscue but because he sped back to the store at 47 mph in a 30 zone ... and got ticketed. Diane told him oh no you don't. In the future, however, she advises me to tell Ed to call for directions. In general she would like to get me out of the business of offering any advice or help to her kids, which of course is not only contrary to my nature but a double standard (would she ever want me to refuse to give help to her?). But of course, I shall comply. ***Mon, Feb 5, 2001 I was so rattled I could not supply even the information I had on hand. Pendergrass asked if I knew what dosages I was taking for my anti's. I didn't know. I was dragging along with me two three-ring binders that contained the dosages of two of the drugs, since they'd been prescribed originally by my KU doctors, but I completely forgot they were in there. The new antibiotic's Rx form was at the very front of the binder I'd been leafing through in the waiting room! "bullet" What to ask Keating: my white counts were at 900 when first put on proph anti's. How likely is that to cause suppression of immune system? At this point, would they do a second BMB? "bullet" Exhausted by the day's news and the fight to assert myself, I went to bed around 3:30 p.m. and fell into a deep, three-hour slumber. When I awoke, I found myself not very refreshed, and tried crawling into the safety of a new book -- more Ron Powers, this time his brilliant sequel about American sportscasting, SUPERTUBE. But Diane soon was downstairs, and although I initially welcomed her news -- she gave me a detailed description of her conversation with Steve Tyler, brother of Diane's low-vision friend Christine -- by 8 o'clock I couldn't take the every-few-minutes interruptions to my book-reading. "I'm sorry," I told Diane, "but I need to escape." And I came upstairs to this. Steve was interesting. "bullet" At night I can scarcely contain my gloom. I feel so confused -- about my present and my future. I read someone like Powers and feel, well, powerless as a writer to convey anything of import to anyone of substance. Zieman's "reporting not reviewing" comment continues to stick in my craw. ***Tue, Feb 6, 2001 Myrna says, "It'll be fun." Diane says having Myrna along will help defuse any tension that might arise during the trip. Sharon Hays has been a real help. She and Diane spoke three times today. She was impressed that we had gotten all our ducks in a row with them so quickly, that I was going to see the provider I wanted (her sister had to settle for another doc after being told the one she wanted to see had a six-month backlog) and that someone else would come along for the trip. "bullet" I exchange e-mail with Barbara Gaines at the "Late Show" who says as far as she knows, there are no plans to come out with a commemorative 20th anniversary book next winter for Dave. I write her back:
Well, if there is to be a book, it would seem to me that an official book would be the surest, swiftest route to publication. I can draw up a short proposal but basically the formula I envision is: 250 pages select show highlights x cheeky writing + color photographs + behind-the-scenes sidebars = feel-good book of the year. The only way to get the book out in time would require your help and that of other staffers. And anyway, the most promotable credit line is one that reads, "By the Staff of 'Late Show with David Letterman.'" "SNL" did a book at 20 and we all know how crappy that show was in 1995. It's not too late to plan Dave at 20. Your thoughts?She writes back:
Aaron - I think you should pitch your book idea to Jim Peterson and see what happens.That's what I wanted to hear. Peterson is the VP for program development at Worldwide Pants. From an Internet search I discern he was a driving force behind the "Live on Letterman" CD of a couple years back. In the meantime, my NBC source finds out that "SNL" sold somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 copies of its 20th-anniversary coffee-table book. I think leafing through Letterman's 20-year scrapbook will be at least as enjoyable as reliving all those old Eddie Murphy and Michael O'Donoghue sketches on "SNL." And Dave has at least one thing "SNL" doesn't: Top Ten lists. At night, I take Diane to her Forum class, not far from here in a strip mall in KCK. On the way back, I decide I'm going to secretly indulge myself: I enter the drive-thru at Mickey D's and order a large order of fries and a milk shake. Then I drive around while I listen to the radio and eat my snack. I discover two things on the way: one is that you can take Southwest Boulevard all the way to Roe Boulevard, which you then take to County Line Road and back to Rainbow Boulevard, completing a flat, five-mile loop that terminates at McDonald's. The other thing I learned is that I don't digest French fries and dairy products the way I used to. The drive proves to be more satisfying than the chow. y [ W ~ V" @ v $ . alsoListedIn % Arial WW LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial VV LAND win subject February 1-6 [ ~ X + * 7 < α G N b i α r | alsoListedIn L Arial . LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStories !TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComHomePagesbody *"Aaron Barnhart's Leukemia Diary" is here.ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial 0 LAND win subject This is a private diary. f ***Thu, Jan 4, 2001 ***Sat, Jan 6, 2001 Today I went on my first long walk. Diane and I had gone for half-mile walks around the neighborhood, but this was a brisk journey of at least a couple of miles, to and from the local branch of the public library to pick up a book I'd had on reserve. It felt good, especially with the sun blazing down on us. The sun had the added effect of melting all of the sidewalks on our route. Kansas Citians love to gripe about the subpar snow-clearing efforts on the city's streets, but I say they get what they deserve. People in other cities routinely scrape off their sidewalks after a snowfall. In fact, some cities require it or else homeowners can be ticketed. Not here. Of course, we transplanted northerners instinctively know to shovel the walks; the Judys next door somehow also acquired this habit despite the fact that they've lived their whole lives here. But nobody else seems to shovel. My newspaper has turned the lack of snow removal into something of a running City Hall scandal. Nonsense. The scandal is that residents don't clear off their sidewalks. The city was merely following their cue. ***Sun, Jan 7, 2001 - Steve in Siberia - another walk to the library - calling Hagstrom ***Mon, Jan 8, 2001 Finally, my contact from the Leukemia Society calls. His name is Lewis, he was diagnosed four years ago with hairy cell and his doctor ... is Mark Davidner. This is an unexpected bonus. Lewis did his treatment as an outpatient. He says Davidner is "very good" and that he's "very satisfied" with him as an onco. Lewis is not a man prone to laughing or anything demonstrative at all, it seems. But he's forthright enough. Even though he was in better shape than I was at diagnosis -- his was caught during routine blood work, and nothing was done for a year until it showed up on the biopsy -- Lewis says "it took me a couple of months before my counts came around." Lewis has had four BM biopsies! The first was to confirm the initial diagnosis after the blood work. It failed, so a year later, when his counts hadn't changed, they tried again and this time confirmed. He decided to go to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to get a second opinion -- and there they biopsied him, number three. Finally, two months after his treatment, Davidner biopsied him to confirm the CDA had worked. Why did Lewis go to Houston? "Davidner said he's treated a few cases but 'I don't see it that often, so if you'd like to go see a specialist' ... So I went to M.D. Anderson ... and he said Davidner was right. But that was four years ago, so I'm sure he's seen a lot of cases since then." I ask Lewis if I can call him back if I have other questions. Lewis would rather HE call ME, say, in a week or so, after I've seen Davidner. Even though I have his number on Caller ID (913-371-1157), I say fine. "bullet" The day goes by and we forget to go over to GH for the medical records. Doesn't matter anyway; when we get over there about 6 p.m., my file hasn't been pulled and most of the people have gone home. A woman in the department who's working late, and is about as wide as she is high, takes our name and says she'll get on it tomorrow morning. "This always happens," Diane says as we're leaving. "You can call them, send faxes, and they never have your record in time!" We went through this last year, in fact, when we fired GH the first time. - more on Steve in Siberia; Tom calls me "Doc" - Pepsi46's (Kaitlyn) letter - Tom and I trade more mail "bullet" Over breakfast Diane says to me: "That's what people don't understand. Even though you've been through the yucky experience of leukemia and being in the hospital, there's actually a lot of sweetness to it. I'll always remember our time in that private room." ***Tue, Jan 9, 2001 Last night I had a dream, and like many such dreams this one took place in a community vaguely resembling Billings, Montana, where I grew up. I arrive back home late one night after attending a television-related function (which in itself was a curious storyline to the dream). On walking into the small kitchen -- which reminded me more of the small kitchen of Diane's house on Dodge Avenue in Evanston -- I realize someone is trying to break into our house. They're using a small shaft that comes into our kitchen through the ceiling. I can only see the intruder's head as he struggles through the shaft as though pushing himself through an intestinal tract. The intruder means harm; he's got a sinister look on his face. Quickly, I grab a piece of wood, jam it into the intruder's mouth and give it a push upward. He retreats a little bit, but then begins forcing his way back down again. In desperation, I shove the piece of wood into his mouth and push it as hard as I can. It works -- too well. So much force did I apply that I wind up decapitating the intruder. With an extra push I'm able to eject everything -- head, body, and wood -- from the house. Then I call 911. I wander out of my house, distraught. But when the authorities arrive, they inform me that they've been after this guy for a few weeks. Seems he's been terrorizing the entire neighborhood. But I still feel rotten about killing him. Diane, who used to keep dream journals long ago, tells me my straight is actually pretty straightforward. The intruder, of course, is cancer. The kitchen has two functions: it is a safe, warm, inviting place in my memory, and it is currently the center of my recovery, where we spend a few hours every day preparing meals, juice drinks and tea, and where the vitamins and supplements meant to restore my body to wholeness are located. Any number of things could be my battering ram, which is my only defense against the cancer trying to writhe its way into my body. The rest of the dream is layered with multiple meanings and resonates with what Diane calls "primal feelings." Chief among those is fear. I can't say that I've felt afraid very often in the two months since being diagnosed. Philosophically, I can deal with the prospect of death, or permanent diminishment of my power as a result of this leukemia. But that's not what my unconscious is saying in this dream. It's worth thinking about. After all, if I were really so nonchalant about this illness, I wouldn't be switching oncologists and primary physicians and paying out of pocket to see an acupuncturist and possibly a nutritionist, would I? Then there's the guilt feeling after I've expunged the cancer. That's the second time I've dreamed about survivor's guilt, or seemed to. What's that about? Neither Diane nor I have a clue. Today we visited Thomas, the acupuncturist, who's recovered from whatever was ailing him last week and ready to see me. We're ready with questions, including some of the same questions we asked Chamberlain last week. ***Wed, Jan 10, 2001 It was Diane's turn to have the meaningful dream. She and I are on a beach, a deserted beach. "I should've known this was a dangerous place," she recalls. "It looked weird. There were a lot of signs along the way. It was this big beach area with all these sand dunes. Nobody was there. We were just looking for a place to make love. But we got past the place where all the trees and houses are. So then you wander into the water. You say, 'Hey, this is salty,' and then you get carried away by the current. And even though I'm terrified, I jump in after you! Every time I try to swim back to shore I can't. I call out to you, 'Aaron! Aaron!' And finally you call back and say you know where you are by reading" -- she laughs at the transparent meaning of what she's about to say -- "these numbers in the sky. So finally we get to this blockade and there are all these people there and we don't speak the language and there are all these strange customs. Finally we see Ronnie and Sharon (Ronnie's her cousin, Sharon his wife, fun-loving Minnesotans who travel a lot), who say, 'You should've gone to San Francisco!' We agree, but we tell them we are just trying to get back to where we were, since we left our bicycles on shore. But all the other people say there's no regular transportation back there. Then you say slyly, 'Oh, but you can always get back there for a price.' And finally someone says $200, and though that's a lot of money, you put on a grim face and say OK." Despite its storyline, Diane and I agree this is a very positive dream. For one thing, when faced with the crisis of the ocean current, Diane was pleased to see she jumped right in and pursued me. It was also good to see Ron and Sharon -- representing our happy side -- in the dream. The strange customs, Diane decides, are those of General Hospital. The bicycles we left on shore were our normal lives (in most Americans' dreams, Diane says, the place of bikes is usually taken by automobiles). And the current could've been the leukemia or could've been Gen Hospital. The numbers that provided our celestial navigation, obviously, were the blood counts. "bullet" So with that as prologue, today is the day we go to see Mark Davidner. We're off to a great start when, while sitting in the lobby filling out the new patient questionnaire, I realize I've left the medical records from General Hospital at home. I've brought both three-ring binders containing every sheet of paper handed to me at GH, as well as tons of leukemia-related stuff I'd printed out from the Internet. But no medical records. Diane is ready to kill me. But she has been advised by other Davidner patients that he is a busy man and is perpetually running late. It's 12:50 and our appointment is scheduled for 1. Diane is willing to drive home and get the records. Driving is something her eyes usually don't allow her to do, but though it's a sunny day, I wouldn't hear of it. We'll be back by 1:30 and by then Davidner should be ready for us. Sure enough, we return in time to finish filling out forms, wait 10 more minutes, then are escorted into an exam room to have my vitals taken and then into Davidner's office. "He likes to see patients in his office the first time," the assistant explains. We walk in to an office, no larger than 12 by 15, where Davidner is at the desk. He looks up from his reading (my file) and extends a hand. He's big around the middle, with somewhat wild and thinning white hair on top. He's wearing a white smock. On the wall behind him are several family pictures: Davidner, his wife and five grown daughters. "You'll excuse me for not getting up," he says, "but I'm lazy." He smiles easily, though not too broadly. After we're seated, he looks at me, then makes a joke. "Funny, you don't LOOK hairy," he says. The smile widens. I tell him, yeah, and chemotherapy didn't make my hair fall out either, so there's two myths shot to hell. He then returns to my file and continues reading it in silence. Another doctor might have botched the joke and further unnerved us with his silence. Davidner, though, is instantly disarming. I feel like a welcome guest. Suddenly he looks up, an astonished expression on his face. "Your father has hairy cell leukemia?" Ayup, I say, diagnosed two months prior to my diagnosis. The look of wonder on Davidner's face suggests to me that he skipped over this detail the first time he read my letter. Later, he asks me what I do for a living and is surprised to hear of Diane's breast cancer -- details contained in my letter. I decide that years of reading lab reports and medical journals have trained his eye to focus only on the essential data of that moment. We review the other medication I took during my hospitalization and the rashes that resulted. I mention that one of his patients, Lewis, had told me Davidner had told him that his rash was the result of the chemo. Yes, says Davidner, but he wouldn't have given me Allopurinol. Allopurinol! this is the first time any doctor has indicted that drug, which I took during chemotherapy, as the possible culprit in my skin reactions. Davidner goes beyond "possible." He's almost certain it was Allopurinol that made me break out. (Sure enough, that night I learn on the Internet that Allopurinol causes severe skin reactions that in extreme cases can be fatal; that the effects of the drug can be felt two to six weeks after beginning therapy; and that it should've been discontinued at the first appearance of rashes.) Davidner believes the danger of uric acid buildup would've been lower for me than the danger of triggering a reaction. At the time, the doctors concluded that the antibiotic I was receiving, the penicillin-based Zosyn, was the likely culprit. There is a mystical Zen-like quality to Davidner as he reads through my file. He is warm and humorous, but not gregarious. He doesn't say any more than is necessary. But what really charms us is that he begins answering our questions before we can even ask them. We want to know how many hairy-cell patients he has seen. When Lewis became his patient four years ago, Davidner had confided to him that he hadn't seen that many and urged him to seek a second opinion at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, arguably the most experienced hairy cell leukemia outfit in the country. But before we get a chance to ask, Davidner tells us. He's seen six. I'm number seven. Not only that, he tells us how many of his patients have relapsed -- two. Both of those patients had presented the first time around with big spleens, as I did. One of the relapses had to have his spleen removed, the other didn't. But both, Davidner says, are doing "incredibly well." Davidner also tells us that during the last year of his hematology fellowship at the University of Utah in 1974, he studied hairy cell leukemia, which back then was still called by its more arcane medical name and was nearly always treated by spleen removal. We review my case in an informal, unstructured way, he asking me questions and listening to me carry on with long, opinionated answers. He's sharing some not so good news with me, yet the mood in the room is unabashedly upbeat. I'm thrilled to see someone thoughtfully reviewing my case instead of seeming to react to it. "You can write the next six months off," Davidner says. My immune system has been severely compromised by the leukemia and chemotherapy and will take that long to recover. "In fact," he adds, "if we were do some sophisticated technical work 12 months out, we'll still find your immune system screwed up." We tell him we are fine with this. "Your white blood count is 500, and if 45 percent of that is neutrophils, then that's 250. My bottom line is 250 on neutrophils." At General Hospital, the bottom line was 100. We review what steps we've been taking to reduce my exposure to infection. Davidner believes the flu season hasn't even hit Kansas City yet. Therefore, no crowds. "If you want to be with people," he says, "be with them outside." And remember that everything I handle, "including that doorknob" -- he points to his office door -- is a potential contaminant. So either wear rubber gloves wherever I go or buy some waterless soap. He looks over the chart I created showing the progress of my blood counts. When I mention the drop in platelets -- which had caused such clucking and concern among the GH doctors -- Davidner says something that stops both of us in our tracks. "The platelets are the last to come up," he says. LAST? We'd been told they were the FIRST to come up. The drug literature said this, the GH doctors insisted on this, and that was why everyone was concerned when they turned down again after I'd started with Chinese herbs. "Because they're more toxic," Davidner says. Davidner then tells us he has a few questions about my case. First, should he prescribe Procrit to start boosting my red blood cell production? (Procrit, he explains, works with the hormone the kidney manufactures when the body becomes anemic. It takes 6-8 weeks to work but might ultimately reduce the number of transfusions I need.) Second, what should be done to boost my white count? With Alluporin the likely villain in my November rashes, it's entirely possible that Neupogen was falsely accused and didn't contribute to my itch at all. "There's one way to know," Davidner says in a what-can-we-lose tone that I find instantly appealing. "Go back on it." The question is whether Leukine might not be a more suitable alternative. "We're told Leukine is a little bit better because it works in the bone marrow and stimulates your immune system," he says. "Neupogen stimulates the release of granulocytes from the bone marrow and stimulates the release of white blood cells in the case of an infection." Finally, platelets. This is a tough call, he says, because the stimulating factor on the market, Neumega, is hard on the system. He's not interested in using it. But when I ask him if he'd rather transfuse, he says no. Given the choice between transfusing platelets and Neumega, he'd prescribe the drug. (When I look it up later, the only side effects for Neumega I can find are "fluid retention." Davidner must know something the manufacturer doesn't.) These aren't questions Davidner is asking us, though. They're questions he plans to bring up tonight in a conference call with Dr. Michael Keating at M.D. Anderson in Houston. Diane asks about Dr. Saven at the Scripps Clinic. "Saven worked under Keating," Davidner replies. So then, the matter that proved so contentious at General Hospital -- with Dr. Powell practically having a conniption over the idea he would consult an outside specialist on my case -- is a non-issue here. Davidner will consult with Keating, quite possibly the world's foremost specialist in hairy cell leukemia, regarding my case. He tells me to call him at 9:30 tomorrow morning to find out what he learned. He continues to browse my file while Diane and I exchange glances. We can't believe our ears. Without my asking them, the man has answered two of the five questions I had lined up for him: Where am I in the recovery phase? and do you think it a good idea to talk with Saven or another outside specialist? It gets better. He looks up from the file and asks, "Why did they make you stop the herbal therapy?" Your guess is as good as ours, I say. Davidner furrows his brow. "It can only help. He's not going to do anything crazy." Then Davidner offers an aside. "Acute promyelocytic leukemia is a form of AML that, if the Chinese didn't discover that Vitamin A sends 95 percent of patients into remission, we wouldn't treat," he says. "And for the remaining five percent they use, get this, arsenic. Now the FDA has approved it for use. Arsenic!" (It's true. Here's a wire story about the discovery:) http://cigna.syndication.thehealthnetwork.com/InHealth/newsbasicdisplay.asp?docid=1140&adtag=cancer Davidner then thinks of another question he ought to run by Keating: whether I should be taking antibiotics, given my low white count. (Again, something the knuckleheads at General Hospital never addressed in their rush to get me re-biopsied.) There are three options: Bactrum, a sulfur derivative that fights off bacterial infections (in lieu of neutrophils) and a certain parasitic infection; Diflucan, an antifungal that I had been on, and then taken off after I broke out in a rash; and Zoverax, commonly used in treating STDs, because I'll be more susceptive to Herpes simplex. My spleen shrinkage, he says, is "spectacular." "I've treated six patients with 2-3CDA," he says. (Why he calls it two THREE c-d-a is a mystery to us.) Of those six, two have relapsed. "And there's a third I suspect, but he won't let me do a bone marrow biopsy." He smiles and says they have a "gentleman's agreement" about this. Then he says that in his experience, it takes EIGHT WEEKS before "things start to peak from the effects of this drug." Eight weeks! The blinders finally start to lift. Now it all makes sense. As involved as the leukemia was, my body is still responding to the chemotherapy. There's no reason to expect my blood counts to be going up. The wonder is that they didn't go down further. This confirms everything we've suspected but could never get the doctors at General Hostile to take an interest in. There is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing awry with the treatment. Time for us to ask him questions. First and foremost on my list is how he would work with the acupuncturist and GP at Sastun Center in coordinating my care. "I just want to know what it is they're giving you," he says. "And if I were to make a significant change in your treatment, I would call them and let them know." Good enough. I ask him about the PICC line in my arm. "Why do you need that in?" he says. It only increases the risk of infection. And besides, he notes, "you have such great veins." The subject of the PICC is another topic that never came up at GH (although, to be honest, I felt as long as Marilyn was tending to it my chance of infection was low). How to proceed with labs? Davidner says he'll take them right here in a few minutes. Diane asks about the role nutrition plays in my recovery. "Not as much as a role as with other types of cancer," he says, adding, "It should be directed at improving the quality of the immune system." He also puts in a good word for psychoneuroimmunology, or the study of the relationship between behavior and health. Here's an example that involves nutrition and AIDS patients: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8970278&dopt=Abstract And with that, he says, "Why don't you follow me?" He leads us to an empty exam room. (There is a certain absent-mindedness to his style. He tells us we can leave our things in his office, but later brings them in behind us. Surely he knew we weren't coming back.) I'm going to get my blood drawn, and the lab results will be ready in five or ten minutes. Amazing! General Hospital was a short walk from our house, yet it could take an hour or longer to learn our lab results. Thus the one remaining advantage of GH vanishes. As Davidner turns to go, a folded $50 bill falls out of him onto the floor. He doesn't see it until I say, "Doctor, that fifty on the floor is yours." Davidner bends over awkwardly, like a man with a bad back, and barely plucks the bill off the ground. "Thank you," he says. "Actually, it belongs to my wife. She just lent it to me." And with another grin he's out the door. The same assistant who took my vitals comes in to draw blood. I offer my PICC line. She stops. "I can't work with that," she says. Of course. She's not a nurse. Now I have a choice. I can gather up my possessions and move to the infusion room and hope for a nurse and be around a lot of people -- something Davidner had just gotten done warning me against -- or I could have her stick me. It's a no-brainer. She compliments me on my great veins, picks one out, torniquets, sticks and draws. Five minutes later, Davidner comes back into the room and starts reciting my lab results. Platelets: 57, up. Hemoglobin, 8.9, technically up but probably quite a ways down from my post-transfusion high. White count: 700, up. He'll give me the neutrophil count tomorrow. As we ready ourselves to go, I realize I have one last question for Davidner. This one's from the gut. "I've been reading about myelofibrosis," I say, "probably more than I should have." Davidner senses my fear and looks me right in the eye. "You do not have myelofibrosis, you never will have myelofibrosis. I looked at your red blood cells and they don't show myelofibrosis." It has been a wonderful, healing appointment, but Davidner's courageous reply to my last question produces an emotional swell. I want to hug him. Diane feels the same way. As we leave the building, we're practically giddy with relief and joy. Diane stops in the lobby pharmacy for a candy bar while I call my editor with the good and bad news. (The bad news is that I can forget about going anywhere on business, let alone into the office, until mid-year.) On our way home, Diane calls the infusion room at General Hospital to cancel my appointment for the next day. When the nurse asks why we're cancelling Diane gleefully responds, "We're firing you!" Yet for me the ecstasy of escaping GH's lair is mixed with feelings of outrage and resentment at how shabbily the doctors there treated me. A couple of weeks ago, I worked up in my head this speech -- one I never intended to give but which gave me enormous satisfaction while thinking it up. I wrote a few lines of it on paper: "So you see, Doctor, there is potential for corruption in every church -- even the Church of the Randomized Clinical Trial. You know why? Because the Vatican, I mean the FDA, can't monitor the behavior of every parish, and because the clinical system is still run by fallible humans who manage to sully even the most antiseptic environment with their agendas, which can range from something as grandiose as securing a multimilliondollar grant from the NIH to something as petty as shutting up a patient who asks too many goddam questions." Not that I ever intended to give that speech or have it published, but the fact I would even waste my time on it gives weight to the old adage against pissing off people who buy their ink by the barrel. "bullet" Diane makes several phone calls to recount the events of the day. I run out of gas, as is to be expected, and turn in at 9 p.m. Before I go to bed, I say a rosary and with tears in my eyes, thank God for bringing Mark Davidner into my life. "Table of Contents" f [ W ~ 46 T T $ . alsoListedIn % Arial 55 LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody uZctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial 44 LAND win subject January 1-10 [ X ***1/11/01 Diane has dreams about dancing. I wake up at 4 a.m., unable to sleep. My emotions still have me keyed up. I go upstairs and work on the diary. At 9:30 a.m. I call Davidner. His secretary takes the call, informs me Davidner is with patients -- naturally -- and takes my number. Diane and I both know it will be hours before he calls back. It's a cloudy day, and that and Davidner's non-call-back (and, to be fair, our spirit-lifting appointment from Wednesday) help take the wind out of me. Finally, toward day's end I realize I don't have to just sit by the phone like a lonelyheart. I call and ask to speak with a nurse at Davidner's clinic. Bingo. I get one named Teresa, who says she'll get on Davidner's case and call me back first thing tomorrow. ***1/12/01 Sure enough, Teresa has gotten all my ducks in a row. I'll be coming in for weekly labs starting Wednesday; she gives me the go-ahead to attend a tai chi class, also starting Wednesday; and she calls the home health care service to authorize the pulling of my PICC line today. As the skies cleared this morning, so did my disposition. Marilyn comes over to close out my case. It's a lovely day and I greet her outside. On our way upstairs she notes how this picks up her day. I ask what she means by that. She says, "Well, you can't tell anyone this ..." and proceeds to explain how the home health-care agency called her on the carpet that morning for spending too much time with patients. Her supervisor, who is new, told her she's a good nurse -- I should hope the word EXEMPLARY would spring to her mind -- but she added, "You're not a social worker. You're there to get in and get out." Apparently nurses these days are not supposed to lend a sympathetic ear, offer to help out their 85-year-old home-bound patients with Medicare hassles. That would be so ... Nineties. Marilyn has been with the home-healthcare agency eight years. After 30 years as a nurse, she prefers the flexibility of working with an outsourcer, and she likes this company more than the other home-healthcare groups in town. I would think any boss would feel lucky to have her. But this new one, she says, "wants her own people in there" and made the mistake of hiring a new nurse despite the office not having enough business to justify the new nurse ... and Marilyn. "bullet" Patrick Dobson calls. As he predicted, he has flown the coop of Pitch Weekly, which I guess it would be all too easy to call Bitch Weekly except for the fact that C.J. Janovy truly is ruining the place by all internal and external appearances. Where he's wound up, though, is surprising -- Andrews McMeel Publishing, working for none other than Allan Stark, the senior editor and former Kansas City Star reporter to whom I pitched BUTV a couple of years ago. Nothing came of it, but I was glad for the connection. I'm really glad for it now, since Patrick and Allan were brainstorming a "Sopranos" book idea and both men immediately thought of me. First, though, I have to catch Patrick up on my situation. Last we talked was October; he was planning to interview me for the zine he publishes with some friends. That fell through, then I fell ill. Patrick's a good soul and such a genuine neo-hippie type (he ends every phone call with "Peace" and always sounds just slightly stoned in conversation) that I wonder what he's doing in a corporate enviro like Andrews McMeel. Patrick's been watching a lot of "Sopranos" on videotape lately. "There's a lot of -- put it this way, it's the first TV you couldn't stop watching," he says. Yet the charm of the show is that much of what's in the script is regular everyday talk. So here's the idea: The World According to Tony Soprano. Organize it along the lines of a business self-improvement book, e.g., Who Moved My Cheese? (I suggest as a title "Who Moved My %*&@#! Ziti?") Have short chapters with a sober-sounding title page, "Meeting Your Goals," followed by out-of-context quotes from the show. Sounds great. I love the idea and want to do it. I pitch myself to Patrick. Third season, it's too late to get something out for. But fourth season, no problem, we'll have lots of lead time (and one more season's worth of quotage to plumb). I tell him the big issue will be permissions -- and secrecy. We don't want Warner Books getting the idea for this, too. Patrick says he'll make inquiries; he just wants to make sure I'm on board and that I want to do it. "bullet" I watch ESPN Classic in the evening. They've got a one-hour biography of Walter Payton, the former Chicago football great who passed away a couple of years ago after his liver failed and he couldn't get a transplant. Of course, ESPN plays out the last few months of Walter's life with all the subtlety of the death scene from "La Boheme." Still, I find myself in tears as the beloved, doomed running back plays out the final chapter with uncommon dignity and courage. The show ends and we go to commercial -- yet I am still weeping. In fact, the tears burn hotter and come stronger than they did before. This is unlike me. It is as though in Walter Payton I have found a surrogate for all the tears I've failed to shed for myself. Finally, the tears ebb and my chest stops heaving and I think to myself, "What was that all about?" ***1/14/01 Diane's gone for the evening with some other women. I'm feeling kind of blah, so it looks like one of those nights when I can claim to be doing some field reconnaissance work. In other words, sit around and watch TV. At 6:15, toward the end of the football game, I'm on the loveseat, leaning on one elbow, when I realize my head feels hot to the touch. I think little of it ... and before long am thinking a lot about it. After dinner, I go upstairs and take my temperature: 99.8 degrees. Well, I think, maybe my temperature was raised by eating hot food. But then I remember that my head was feeling hot before dinner. I am supposed to contact my doctor if my temperature goes above 100. This will mean checking myself into the ER and pumping antibiotics and who knows what else into me. I may even become sick in a way I have not experienced sick before. The thought makes me nervous, more nervous than I think I should be. By 7:30 I'm saying Hail Marys and begging God to bring my temperature down. I'm also shaking with either fear or the rapid onset of chills. (Am I becoming a hypochondriac?) At 7:45 I decide I won't take this lying down. I get up off the loveseat and anxiously gobble down 3,000 milligrams of Ester-C (this in addition to the 3,000 milligrams of Ester-C I normally take each day). I chase down the vitamins with three cloves of garlic. Then I go upstairs and flush myself with the Neti Pot. For those of you who may be wondering what a Neti Pot is, you are obviously not aficionados of Dave Barry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for our sister paper, the Miami Herald. Recently, Dave had a little fun at the expense of the Nori Pot, which is like the Neti Pot except that it costs about five times as much. And truth be told, the Nori/Neti Pot is a pretty easy device to ridicule. The way it works is: You fill the pot, a small ceramic vessel shaped like Aladdin's lamp, with warm tap water. Then you add a very small amount, but more than a pinch, of non-iodized salt. Then you put your head in the sink, tilt it one direction at 90 degrees, insert the spout of the Neti Pot into one nostril and pour the salty solution through, so that it runs out the other nostril. By the way, if you add just the wrong amount of salt, either too little or too much -- and it seems like I always do -- the effect will be someone shoving a red-hot tuning fork up your nose so that you feel it in your eye sockets. Now why in the world would anybody put themselves through this? Because many infections start in the nasal passages, your body's most wide-open port of entry for germs. And you have to admit, anything that makes your nostrils feel like they're on fire is doing something to combat sickness, which is exactly the psychological boost I need at this hour. I need to feel I'm doing something to lower my temperature. I keep taking my temperature. Now the thermometer is toying with me. First it says I'm approaching 100; then it drops to 98 something; then back up to the high 99's. At 8:50 p.m. Steve Irwin turns to the camera and shrieks, "This is the hoy-light of my ca-rear!" He's handling an Eastern diamondback snake. Steve Irwin is always acting as though this very moment is the hoy-light of his ca-rear. (Personally, I thought that FedEx advertisement -- in which he eagerly lampoons his thrill-seeking Aussie persona -- was the highlight of his career. After watching it another six or seven dozen times, I'm not so sure anymore.) At 9:30 p.m. Anne calls from Chicago to talk to her mom and, bless her, see how I'm doing. I tell her I'm scared and start to cry. Is it the fact that I'm alone? That I've been such a good boy up until now and that all that's about to change? That I could handle being bent over with disease the first time -- being groggy and all, it hardly even felt like I was the one getting sick -- but being alert and in my right mind and getting sick a second time was much too much? 9:45. I take my temperature again. It's back to 98.6 degrees. But wait. This thermometer never tells me my temperature is 98.6. It's always lowballing me: 97.9, 98.1, readings like that. Probably having something to do with the fact that it's actually a rectal thermometer and I'm using it in my mouth instead. (Hm, did I remember to wash it after the last use? Ha ha, that's a little joke for my readers there. I don't think this has been stuck in anybody's rectum since Anne was in preschool.) At 10:15 Anne calls back. She and Curtis were talking about me, and they got to wondering whether I had a contact at the hospital in case I needed to be admitted. How sweet! I tell Anne that in my panic I already looked up the procedure for reporting an after-hours emergency, as well as re-reading the entire sheet, "Notify your physician if you develop any of the following signs/symptoms." At that moment I remember something somebody said ten years ago when I was living with 13 other people in a communal household in Evanston, Illinois. There were a few younger people like myself in the house, but mostly older adults from the Mennonite church I belonged to who had made common cause in the 1970s and '80s and were still living together. The head of this household, who was also an elder at the church, was caring for his father, who was in the final stages of Parkinson's Disease, and his mother, who in addition to being very frail was pretty far gone with dementia. Most nights after supper -- which the entire household managed to take together at 6 p.m. -- I would be in the kitchen washing dishes when I would hear the approaching foot-scrapes of Grandma Belser, shuffling across the kitchen floor, making her way to the half staircase that led down from the kitchen to the back door. She would grip the handrail and slowly manuever her way down the three steps, throw the bolt on the back door, and then will herself back up the three steps and shuffle out to her recliner in the front room. It should be pointed out that Grandma Belser never consulted with anybody about this -- she scarcely said much beyond three or four words and wasn't very comprehensible when she did -- and was not doing anybody any favors bolting the back door, since the household was a center of church life and activity and even at night the first floor often resembled a comedic stage play, with people constantly passing in and out of various doors, including the back one. But Grandma Belser lived her whole life in rural eastern Pennsylvania before moving here, and through her long decline she never seemed to forget she was living a third of a mile from the Chicago city line. As her daughter-in-law would often observe after one of these door-latching incidents, "Fear is an amazing motivator, isn't it?" I tell Anne, "Fear is an amazing motivator." When Diane returns home at 11, I tell her everything, we take my temperature two more times to make sure it's stuck on normal, and the crisis passes. ***1/15/01 David Johnson comes by to advise us on our medical bills. He is a friend from our church days in Evanston, and now is attending the same parish church in mid-Kansas City where Diane and I became Catholics two years ago. I'm not sure what the odds are of this longtime Mennonite deciding to switch to Catholicism after moving to the same city as we, but I will say this: He's not a stalker. In fact, he's married, in his mid- to late 40's, a meticulous bookkeeper and as solid and guileless a person as I've ever known. Actually, the bills situation doesn't appear to be that difficult. We spent my entire co-pay allowance for 2000 in just five days -- or rather, five nights as an inpatient, at $200 a night -- and then added to that were a handful of $20 co-pays for practitioner visits, which for some reason are not counted toward the $1,000 annual maximum. In theory I could have had 50 practitioner visits last year and paid another $1,000. ***1/17/01 Davidner calls. The lab results are in on my erythropoietin level. It's above 1,000, he says, which means there's no need for me to be taking Procrit. "Your body will have to do it by itself," he says. I add that that's a good thing, and he strongly agrees. He sounds bouncier on the phone than he did on Monday. We discuss where I should get my blood drawn and where I should go for a transfusion. Davidner has no preference, although he adds, "As long as it's not out on 39th Street," and then he laughs and laughs. "So much for humor," he says. In my endless quest for things to boost my immune system, I arrive at an elementary school gym in the Northland. Diane and I have come here for the first of 10 sessions in a Tai Chi class Diane found out about through the Westport Allen Center. For $45 per person we will learn the 24 steps of a "short" tai chi routine. After checking with a nurse at Davidner's office, I go with a face mask. It's an older school, but very clean. The gym has 20-foot ceilings -- perfect for keeping air circulating. The floors look like they've been scrubbed to an inch of their life. It is brightly lit with flourescent lamps that buzz. I stop off in the boys' room, where a janitor is cleaning up the place. His name is Paul, he's about 6 feet tall, balding, with mournful eyes and a gentle manner. While I'm washing up, he asks if his keeping the windows open is "too cold" for me. He points at my mask. This is not a question I would normally expect to hear from a janitor, and I realize that Paul is probably mentally impaired. "Slow," you might say. So I explain to him that I've just had chemotherapy and the mask is to keep away germs. "My uncle had prostate cancer," Paul says. "They gave him a drug that worked real well. Is that what you had?" I explain no, I had a form of leukemia, but that the drug they gave me for it worked real well, too. I'm on my way out the door when Paul says, "Prayer helps." I turn around and look at him. "Prayer helps," he says again. "Yes, it does," I say. "It's a big part of our regimen." Not exactly the truth, but true enough. Our instructor, Kathleen Coulter, is about 5-6, blond, looks to be in her late 40's, wears rimless spectacles and comfortable clothes. She looks more like a suburban mom than what she really is, a Chinese herbalist. She teaches tai chi at 6 and a yoga class at 7:15. About 20 of us are assembled when she begins speaking, although more arrive up until 6:30. "This will be the last time any of you are sitting," she advises us. "From now on you'll be standing, learning the steps." Kathleen explains that there are various forms of tai chi and different lengths. The form we are learning is "short," 24 steps, and some of those steps are repetitions of steps we've already learned (i.e., we're not learning 24 different movements). The "medium" form is 48 steps and the "long" form 108 steps. If we go at regular speed, we will be able to do the 24 steps in about five minutes. But the longer it takes you to do them, the better workout you get. Kathleen explains some of the benefits of tai chi, though she really doesn't explain to people what "chi" is. You can infer, however, that it's a good thing, particularly when it's "grounded." When she says that our daily activities usually leave our chi un-grounded -- "if you have a lot of kids, or even one kid, and you're running around, it's hard to stay grounded" -- heads nod in assent. Earlier in the day, Dr. Murray said that while we don't know for sure that it helps bone marrow, we know tai chi strengthens the muscles around the bones as well as the bones, and you'd think that would help the marrow, too. There's half an hour of overview of what tai chi is and how the class will be run. Kathleen urges us, "Please don't buy a book." Or a video, since tai chi involves a lot of turning around and it will be impossible to view the TV screen most of the time. Don't eat before class. "Come even if you're not feeling good, unless you feel you're contagious," she says. "You'll be amazed how much better you feel after." Kathleen puts special emphasis on daily practice, preferably with a "practice partner" like a spouse or someone else in the class -- at one point she has all the people who came alone raise their hands and she matches them up geographically ("Anyone else live in Gladstone?"). She also confesses that she learned the value of practice the hard way: "I took this class four times before I started to practice." However, there's one time she says we shouldn't practice -- during electrical storms. "Tai chi generates a lot of electricity and it can make you a lightning rod, even indoors," she warns us. Then she tells the story of the time she and a class were practicing tai chi in a high school in Chicago during a thunderstorm. While they were practicing, a bolt of lightning hit the school and knocked out all the power in a five-mile radius. So there. Kathleen also advises us to dress in layers, as we may find ourselves getting warmer while the session goes on. Bring a second pair of shoes on wet nights, so we don't get the gym floor slippery. Bow under the arch of the doorway when you enter and when you leave each night. And one more thing: "Don't be surprised if you feel the need to go to the bathroom ... and then you find you can't." With all that out of the way, Kathleen proceeds to show us the 24-step short routine. The whole room goes quiet as she silently rehearses the steps. It takes about four minutes. Even though there is nothing dramatic about her presentation (indeed, she's speeding it up) and the routine appears nothing more than a sequence of undulating arm motions with the occasional high-arching bow step, there is a sort of beauty to it. The whole room is rapt, and when she finishes, a couple of people start to clap. Then she calls out to "Bruce," a fellow who looks like just another student. He's 40-something, with black hair, tan complexion, wearing a blue denim shirt with the tail hanging out, black pants, white socks and Vans. Bruce is going to show us two other styles of tai chi, the Wu and the Chin. The Wu is very compact; he hardly moves at all during the demonstration. But the Chin is powerful and aggressive. At one point Bruce stomps once on the floor with his right foot, startling the silent spectators. One person gasps. Questions? asks Kathleen. Someone asks for the benefits of tai chi to be repeated. Kathleen defers to Bruce, who repeats much of what she said. At one point he says, "I don't want to get New Age-y on you, but ..." Finally, it's our turn. We will learn the first two steps tonight. We get in two chorus lines stretching the length of the gym. Kathleen insists on moving around so everyone can see her; this forces us, in turn, to rearrange ourselves on several occasions so that Diane has the best view possible without looking ridiculous. After class, I don't know why we don't think to tell Kathleen to stay put. "bullet" I am impressed by the growth of the fingernail on my right thumb. I decide I will make a concerted effort to grow out my nails -- and for the first time in my life, keep them out. Anne recently succeeded in doing this for the first time, "and now I don't even think of biting them," she says. Maybe the trick is to get them to stay out long enough that they harden and that will remove the temptation to bite. ***1/18/01 Midway through writing Wednesday's diary entry, I go online and find a tai chi Web page that explaoins the 24-step short (or "simplified") form we're doing. I spend the next hour and a half translating the page from broken English and sucky Microsoft FrontPage formatting into something coherent. My plan is to put it up on my Geocities Web page (currently unused) and give out the URL to others in the class. Nell Smetko writes from Evanston: I dictate a recipe for chili for Diane. New procedure for testing blood. ***1/19/01 Good news. Counts are up slightly. Marilyn the nurse calls. Even though I am discharged from her care, she is still checking in on me. Whether this means she is overly conscientious or just fond of me, I'm not sure. Either way, it is a short conversation because I am tired and don't know what to say to her other than the hole in my arm where the PICC line used to be has healed nicely. ***Sat, Jan 20, 2001 My day in the hospital. The temperature is below 10 degrees as I pilot the car, solo, to Baptist Medical Center for the first time. They're expecting me at 8 a.m. for a blood transfusion. Perhaps that is too generous. They're expecting me to show up at 8 a.m., wait around four hours, then get a blood transfusion. Naturally the grand plan is not revealed to me. "Table of Contents" X \ X ~ B <` $ . alsoListedIn % Arial LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ސctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial LAND win subject January 11-20 \ ,N ***Sun, Jan 21, 2001 [ WEEKLY READINGS ] We're going on a drive. We're going to Johnson County and the Shawnee Mission Park, a huge wooded area that used to be in the middle of nowhere but is now surrounded on three sides by development. I take a thermos of tea and we go. It's a sunny, crisp day. But warm, like a second autumn. Many of the trees still have leaves on them, and they've turned several flavors of brown and yellow. They're beautiful in their own way. We drive 10 or 15 miles down Shawnee Mission Parkway, right to about where a turnoff should be. But where to go is a little unclear. This is the portion of the Rand McNally map where the square box is with the map legend and other information that at the moment is less useful to us than had it been obscuring the street grid. Needless to say, we are at the county's edge. Finally we exit on a street that continues south of the Rand McNally map legend box, and find ourselves on a bumpy, turning 30 mph road. This is the side of the park that hasn't been developed. As we realize when we come up to a railroad crossing that has no crossing markers whatsoever. And it's a busy one, too. Just for kicks, I drive up the hill to the crossing and park the car for a minute, 10 feet from a 100-car freight train. it wasn't even this bad in Montana. Then we wind our way down to 83rd street, which bends and becomes 87th street, and we enter the park. We pull up to the first parking area and discover we've stumbled onto Johnson County's biggest off-leash dog area. We stop to take in the scene -- the lot is full and fun-loving mutts are everywhere -- before continuing down the drive. Shawnee Mission Park has a giant lake in the middle. Mill Creek appears to be a feeder, and there's a small dam on the western edge of the lake. There are picnic shelters, hiking paths, a hike-and-bike trail, a boat ramp and surprisingly scenic vistas everywhere. We stop at the next picnic shelter. There's a three-mile walking path down to lake's edge. We take it. We can look through the barren trees and see the lake. It must be heavenly in the summertime. I am walking full speed, full of new blood, breathing unsullied air. Gosh, this is good. About half a mile into the walk I notice a side path that appears to go down an incline to the water's edge. Though there's some ice on the ground, I pull Diane along and we sidestep carefully down there. I'm loving it. Diane's a little cautious, which is good. She urges me not to get any closer to the water, which I don't. I look across the lake and see, at the edge of the off-leash area, dogs and their owners goofing off on the frozen lake. We both think they're nuts. I may be having a good time on my own terms, but even I know my limits. ***Mon, Jan 22, 2001 Getting busy, it is. I pre-empted a story I was planning to write today for a quick, one-day rewrite of something I'd already put on the Web site. My editor still isn't thrilled about getting items that have already been put online. She has yet to grasp the importance of having a scratch pad on the Web for stories that may or may not make it into print (mostly not). ***Tue, Jan 23, 2001 Woke up in the middle of the night. Diane has no pregesterone left and is fidgeting around in bed. Finally I get up, hack online for an hour then turn in. next thing I know it's 9 a.m., we've missed the telephone repairman's doorbell ring, and I feel like crap. And now, the definition of crap. Crap is when you feel you're expending twice the energy to do simple tasks like, say, lifting your eyebrows. Crap is when you droop even in the presence of your one welcome visitor of the day -- Don LePore, who has come to serve us communion. nice to see him, but i can't hardly raise my head to look at him. i have no trouble gazing up out of the window, however. it's gorgeous. when they leave, i take a picture of the altar that features the shocking blue sky and sea-spongey barren treetops on the horizon. Crap is when you sit down on the loveseat with a bowl of Cheerios and -- without any provocation -- your bowl dumps itself in your lap. This happened to me twice today, and by "this" I mean something that demonstrates my utter impotence to control simple situations. The other time I was trying to open the bottom drawer of the dishwasher when something was caught in the silverware tray. This happens from time to time, because the silverware tray is broken and occasionally items slip through and impede the path of the drawer. But it seemed so much more frustrating this time and finally, in anger, I grabbed the silverware tray by its handle and yanked it with all my might, sending dirty spoons flying across the room. I thought I found them all, and then an hour later noticed a large crud-encrusted spoon sitting in the recycling bin. Between that and the half hour I spent cleaning up my Cheerios mess, I expended a lot of valuable energy. Crap is when you cannot concentrate on any task, including driving a car, but simply do your best to stay in your lane and not tailgate. It is like there is another hand guiding the wheel, someone else's leg at the pedals. You are there, present for every action, but it's like you're supervising autonomous members of your committee of limbs. And the sense of exhaustion is constant. it is as though you are a bellows and someone is sitting on you. everything is a great exertion. zombie. tired. and then, for a while, it breaks. you go to tai chi class, sweat, learn a couple of new steps, come out feeling more focused, more present. you go to the store, pick up some items for dinner, get to the register, realize you have no wallet, no $$$ between you and, even though a very nice young man behind you is OFFERING to pay if we will just give him our information -- what is this, Mayberry? -- you say no thanks, and you storm off for home pissed at yourself. plus the wife is annoyed at you. but then the anger does something. it gets you charged up. you are present. for the first time all day, your body is not detached from you. you put in a couple of good hours. you make dinner -- veggie burgers, crinkle cut fries, wedges of apple -- and it all comes out good. very good. but by 10 o'clock the tide goes back out. wayyy out. you are crap again. and looking forward to a good night's sleep. "bullet" Meanwhile my idea for developing a story about the new-look Federal Communications Commission is going nowhere. Originally I had wanted to write something about the potential clash between President Bush and religious conservatives over the level of violence in the media. I had a not-very-productive talk with Steve Paul about it a week ago, and then talked with Carol and seemed to have her sold on it. (Well, the way she put it was, "I know you can be very persuasive, Aaron," which wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the story idea, just an acknowledgement that anything I put my head to will probably turn out all right.) But now as I flesh out the argument, all I have are a series of interesting but unconnected thoughts: * How likely that Bush will pack the Supreme Court? Not very, despite the insistence of raving special interest groups. But how likely he can pack the FCC? Very -- and soon. Michael Powell has (as expected) been picked as the new chairman, and one GOP and one Dem commissioner expected to leave soon (Tristiani, who threatened to hold up AOL-TW deal one last time). * Media violence is just the tip of the potential for conflict; as consolidation continues, the number of diverse voices will continue to decline; conservatives can't be happy with that; soon it will be like the Super Bowl -- 2,000 reporters chasing three stories. * Billy Tauzin and Cliff Stearns are now running the telecom show; one industry rag said FCC will be "prime proving ground" for Bushology * Surgeon General's opening salvo at Bushology last week denounces media violence (and he'll be around until 2002) * Billy Baldwin (who does not share his brother Alec's appetite for fire) allowed on CNN on Saturday as how there is "too much" media violence. But when Jeff Greenfield pins him on Gore-Lieberman crit of Hollywood, Baldwin sez "it should be looked at as a *youth* violence issue" and that any blue-chip panel looking at media violence should have cops, educators and parents on it. Baldwin is head of the Creative Coalition. * And what about John McCain? (he gave a B&C interview last year) It has the makings of an interesting story -- for a trade magazine. But it's too soft for me to sink my teeth into as yet. In an attempt to get some traction on the story, I phone up the Lichters' firm, the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, and speak to Dan Amundson, the Center's director of research, who authored the influential study "Merchandising Mayhem" last year. (The FTC picked up on its findings that the movie industry was lax in protecting underage kids from adult movies and promos for adult movies.) Amundson says the problem is that we're a long ways from getting ANYONE currently in D.C. to admit there's much of a problem. What happens is that invariably someone says, "I grew up watching these shows, and look at me, I've never done anything violent ..." There are activists, of course, but they're not all that together. Some want to push for more gov't regulation, others don't, there are left-right tensions. It's not like the anti-smoking crusades, where the public health risk was obvious and various factions could unify behind the youth-at-risk issue. It took Columbine to move media violence to the White House level. "Remember," Amundson says, "these initiatives have been proposed for over 40 years." But as long as activists themselves continue to debate the harms, continue to question whether it really is a public health issue, expect the debate to stall. Amundson does say "I'm intrigued, though, to see how this plays out in the GOP," as the neo-Victorian types find themselves at odds with the party's hard-headed pro-growth types. But even if there are differences between the more genteel Republicans and the Bushites, will people see them? "Or will they not be such distinct schools of thought?" Lynne Cheney may be the wildcard here. But as violent crime rates continue to decline, it will take the steam out of any attempt to regulate violent media. Sen. Brownback could conceivably take up the issue with Powell, but not anytime soon. "This issue always moves to the back burner when other more pressing issues come up," says Amundson. "Especially the first year" of the administration. True, true. ***Fri, Jan 26, 2001 Blood counts are flat. My Hb is 9.0 which means it will be 8.0 or lower next week and I will need yet another transfusion. WBC is 900, same as it was last week, and the percentage that's neutrophils (49%) is a little lower than last week (53%). Platelet count, which we've been advised is highly volatile, stands at 62,000, down from last week's 68,000. Nurse Teresa told me today, ``We had them run the tests a second time'' because they wanted to confirm the results. I guess they're concerned. But honestly, I'm not. "Table of Contents" ,N \ X ~ np $ . alsoListedIn % Arial oo LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody 9ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial nn LAND win subject January 21-26 \ ] ***Sun, Jan 28, 2001 ***Mon, Jan 29, 2001 At about noon Carol calls. She is standing next to a copy editor who is looking over my SURVIVOR: OUTBACK review. Carol tells me that this editor, who is proofreading the page on which my story appears, has a problem with a reference I made to a "tent" that one of the teams was putting up. The editor recalls it being a "shelter." I offer to cue up the tape. Carol is, typically, impatient. She offers that we could just trim to sentence to read "Debb and Mike got into it," without saying over what. I find this unacceptable. So I cue up the tape. Sure enough, someone uses the word "shelter." But here is what I see: I see wooden poles, about six feet high, being staked. Atop the poles I see a big piece of green canvas being stretched. That to me is a tent. Particularly in the context of the graf I wrote, which reads: << By contrast, ``Outback'' was about as frolicky as a girls' gymnastics meet. Within minutes of arriving at camp, Debb Eaton, a hard-headed corrections officer from New Hampshire, got into it with teammate Michael Skupin, a balding alpha male, over how to put up a tent. >> "Shelter" may be the word that is used on the show, but I still think "tent" works better. In the context in which it's used, the word is more whimsical, tarter, sharper. Also, we're under no obligation to use the official words for anything. For example, during the first run of Survivor we frequently used "weekly blackball session" instead of "tribal council" because people grasped the concept of blackballing easier. But I only thought of making these objections long after the phone call. At the time the only objection I can raise is: "When you put up a number of posts and then sling a canvas top over those poles, I think you can call that a tent. Six of one, half a dozen of the other." But when I play back the scene in question off my tape, someone says "shelter" and Carol grabs onto it. "I heard someone say 'shelter,'" says Carol, as though that seals the deal. It does not, but I feel defensive and helpless. A proofreader -- who has saved my bacon on numerous occasions in the past, including most notably the time during my first six months on the job when I very nearly outed broadcaster Linda Ellerbee -- was concerned enough about my use of the word "tent" to call in my editor. She saw the episode and could swear it was a "shelter." Now I've played the tape proving it. Who am I to stand in the way? Afterward, this bothers me, though I'm not sure why. It will bother me more tomorrow. ***Tue, Jan 30, 2001 Tuesday's FYI section features my review of Sunday's "Survivor: Outback" premiere. I turn to read the paragraph that had been edited at the last minute the day before. It now reads as follows: << By contrast, ``Outback'' was about as relaxed as a girls' gymnastics meet. Within minutes of arriving at camp, Debb Eaton, a hard-headed corrections officer from New Hampshire, got into it with teammate Michael Skupin, a balding alpha male, over how to put up a shelter. >> Now I notice another change: The word "frolicky" has been replaced by the word "relaxed." This was done without my consent. "Relaxed" is a terrible word choice, made by somebody who was plainly uncomfortable with my use of the unfamiliar "frolicky." I don't know what steams me more -- that they would make the change without asking or that they would make such an awful substitution. Either way, I'm hacked. Making matters worse, I watch the tape of Monday night's "Late Show" after someone tips me that Debb Eaton had an interesting exchange with David Letterman. While listening to it, I hear her say something in passing at first doesn't register with me. Then suddenly I hit the rewind. What did she say? She said "tent." As in the structure where she spent the night in the outback with her fellow contestants. So now "tent" is no longer just a word I prefer to "shelter" -- it's a word that someone who is actually on the SHOW prefers to "tent." If this were a cartoon, tufts of steam would be coming out of my ears. Finally, I leave you dear diary with this: When you attend an outdoor reception, say at a wedding, and you walk out on the green and the caterer has erected a structure consisting of several poles supporting a canvas overlay, what do you call that structure? Do you call it a "shelter"? Or a tent? I rest my case. "bullet" At Sastun, I'm initially led into a room right next to the Chinese pharmacy, nothing more than a walk-through pantry space with several hundred bottles on the shelves. But a couple of minutes later Si comes in to tell me I'll be moving to Joseph's office. His office? Sure enough, there is a big recliner in his office with a familiar teal sheet draped over it. Joseph will be giving me acupuncture here. I guess there's an overflow. I look around his office, which is adorned with items from the Far East. On the far wall is a knickknack case with a glass door featuring ceramic icons; near the door, and greeting everyone who enters, is a bronze of a Chinese warrior on a hand-carved wooden stand. Two fingers on the warrior's left hand are pointed upward; there's a huge spear in the right hand. Above Joseph's desk are half a dozen photographs of his beloved horsies (he lives on a horse farm). Cindy enters. Doesn't she have her own office? "We spend almost no time in our offices because we're so busy," she says, which is supposed to explain it. For Americans, these two are awfully good at giving inscrutable answers to straightforward questions. She's going to give me new herbs. "These herbs I'm giving you go at it harder," she says, referring to the platelets and red cells. Usually they are dispensed as a powder but she's out, so she's going to give me capsules instead for now. I get fewer needles than before -- eight, not including heart/mind needles stuck in my hayed -- but boy, can I feel them up and down the telegraph. The chair only makes matters worse; it's not nearly as relaxing as the table. For one thing, my arches aren't that great, left foot especially, and after a few minutes it really gets uncomfortable down there. It felt like someone was playing tug-of-war and pulling on my left ankle for 45 minutes. For another, my right arm was not on the arm rest before Cindy inserted a needle into the forearm. When I went to move the right arm, two inches at most, I couldn't. An electrical jolt shot through me. I was stuck. So she removed the pin, let me seat that arm, and then inserted a new one. When I go to pay, the receptionist is out, so Joseph is doing it. I see a bottle of powder. No capsules. "Cindy told me she was giving me capsules of something because she was out of the powder," say I. Joseph shrugs. He looks over my Rx. "Wow," he says. "She's really going after your platelets and your red cells." Yes, I know that. The capsules? Joseph assures me I have everything I need. When I get home, there's a message on my voicemail. It's Joseph. Could I come back to the office? Cindy had some capsules she also wanted to give me. Maybe they're not inscrutable. Maybe they're just dense sometimes. "bullet" I wait all day for Carol to call me back to go over my Sunday Arts piece. She never does. "bullet" Diane needs a ride to one of her follow-up meetings of the Landmark Forum. Everyone must be zer by 7 p.m. on ze button. So at 6:45 we make the short drive over to Rainbow Extension (the actual name of the street). Along the way I remember something Cindy had said about keeping the juicing "in moderation." I relay Cindy's quote to Diane, not realizing what kind of alarms it will set off. Diane freaks out. "What do you mean?" she demands to know. "What does she mean by 'moderation'? Does she mean I'm hurting you with these juices?" I don't know, I say. She starts to cry. She's really upset. She thinks Cindy is calling her entire dietary regime for me into question. I tell her not to get carried away, I promise to call and email Jane Murray when I get home. She won't be consoled, though. I apologize for telling her this just before a three-hour session at Landmark. On the way home I leave voice mail for Dr. Murray to check her email for a message from me. When I get home I write: << Here's the deal. Today at my appt. with Cindy, she said that she and Joseph had been looking over my regimen and thought I might be "overdoing the juicing." She said my color was not great and this could be a sign my spleen was working too hard. Is expending too much effort digesting. << When I asked Cindy for some counsel, she just said that Chinese medicine calls for all things in moderation. She also doesn't like the "raw" aspect of juicing (as opposed to "cooked"). << Well, I'm not the one preparing my food. Diane is. And when I relayed Cindy's counsel to Diane she got pretty upset. She doesn't want to do anything to harm me and she needs some more specific answers than "moderation." I thought maybe you could help. << As you know, Diane makes one green drink a day for me. It works out to about 12 ounces. The Champion juicer expels a lot of pulp that doesn't make it into the drink. So I question how hard that juice is really making my digestive system work. The daily drink tends to include 1 carrot, 1 leaf/stem kale, 1 leaf/stem collard green, 1/2 beet and 4 oz. pineapple per serving. << My color isn't that hot. My feet are kinda pale, even slightly yellowy under a certain light. On the other hand, my Hb is probably around 8 right now. Anyway, we need some advice on what, if anything, to do with my diet. Please reply to this email ASAP or call me 816-678-5946. Thanks! >> I feel terrible for misgauging the situation. I don't eat the soup Diane has begun to thaw for me. When Diane returns home around 10:40 I am watching TV, waiting for her. Mostly I've spent the night goofing off, dubbing the Super Bowl onto tape, listening to the .wav file of the Steve Dahl radio show from Chicago that a longtime reader of mine burned onto CD's and mailed me. But once she arrives home I find that she isn't any less anxious than before and that her anxiety is wearing me out. I go to bed. She takes offense. She thinks I am trying to muffle her. I tell her I just feel bad for telling her so casually and for underestimating the reaction she would have to hearing this. She feels for me. I tell her when she gets anxious over things like this, it stresses me out, which is true. She calms down for a moment. Then, she predicts that Cindy and Joseph will want to change my diet. Chinese medicine prescribes a macrobiotic diet, she warns me. No cold or raw foods. Everything warm and cooked. The whole diet may have to change. I tell her she doesn't know that for sure until Murray calls or writes us back. Oh, no, says Diane -- she's been around the block with this before. With her friend Anya in Chicago. Etc. etc. I can't take it anymore. I roll over, but I can't sleep. Diane says some comforting words to me before she dozes off. And she reminds me that the stress she is going through because of something the acupuncturist says is no less toxic than the stress she knows I am feeling because of the way Carol has handled me this week. She's right, of course, but that doesn't keep me from roiling there in bed, while my wife sleeps, practicing the outraged speech I would love to make to Carol -- but won't. ***Wed, Jan 31, 2001 I have been in a grim mood all day. I stayed under the covers long after I'd woken up. Waited until Diane came back. We talked at length. She, of course, was feeling much better about the diet situation -- as she always does in the mornings whenever something is upsetting her the night before. But I can't seem to shake my unhappiness with Carol, my editor. At about 8:30 a.m., while I'm still in bed, Carol calls on the cell phone. She's going into a 9 o'clock meeting where the agenda is to brainstorm some approaches for section coverage in the new year. The coverage, Carol informs me, will emphasize three things: timely, even "urgent" reporting; "consumer" focus; and "pop culture." I offer as how I'm moving away from writing about the business side of TV. Carol says she's calling me up to brainstorm with me; my coverage, as far as she's concerned, meets the coverage planks just fine. So I toss off a couple of ideas there lying flat on my back in bed, about three-quarters awake. First I remind her that radio meets all those criteria and we don't, in my opinion, cover it enough. Then, more or less thinking out loud, I mention that food stories could be more nutrition and diet oriented because, Lord knows, it seems people are always tinkering with new foods and ways of eating them. (Wonder where my inspiration for this idea comes from?) Carol likes this a lot. She says she read somewhere once that stories about diet were the No. 1 story readers were interested in, "and we don't run enough of them." I tell her FYI could stand to "think out of the box" -- yes, I really use that beat-to-death business cliche on her -- in a number of areas that we tend to assign to beat writers and then forget about: food, fashion, travel, go on down the list. Carol tells me a committee is forming with what sounds like half the FYI department to meet weekly and brainstorm stories based on these three coverage goals. Is there time for me to bring up what I want to talk about? There is not. Carol says she must get ready for her 9 o'clock -- I note to myself that it isn't even 8:40 yet -- and she must go. But it's Wednesday, she didn't call at all yesterday, so I decide to tell her now about my story idea for the XFL review for Sunday's sports section. She says she'll have to run it by Mary Lou. Meaning there's going to be a problem. I ask her what happened to my Sunday Arts story on "Hallmark." She informs me she had to "lop off the top" of my review because quite unexpectedly she received a third article tying in with the Hallmark Hall of Fame anniversary, from Bob Butler, who relates the time he was 12 years old and his mom plunked him in front of the TV and said, "Watch this." It was the HHOF production of "The Tempest." She says Butler wrote "really a good piece" but before she can explain what happened to mine, she's gone. Later in the morning she calls again. What's happened to my piece is that it's no longer on the cover. Butler's commentary has bumped it. She reads me the revised version and sure enough, the first three paragraphs are gone because they overlap with Butler's and Trussell's stories. So I've gone from proposing the spread, when I could've had the cover to myself, to being on the jump page. I tell her I'll call her back if I can improve on her change. But my heart is no longer in the review. I noodle with a rewrite for a few minutes, then give up. I don't call her back. "bullet" I want to be able to keep a diary easily. The BBEdit approach -- one long document file -- is getting a tad unwieldy. In theory I could do it using the marker command and so forth, but I like the idea of a database structure, where the days are organized at the top level and each day has its own file-within-the-file. I find two programs at Info-Mac that seem to be what I want. Of the two, I find this one, Simple Diary, is easy to use, has the right look, feel and functionality -- including an automatic password prompt -- and at $15 seems a steal. It's not perfect, and I am not enamored with the erratic cursor placement when I switch from day to day. But for $15 it'll definitely do. "bullet" Don LePore comes by shortly after noon to serve communion. He also brings along a version of the Nicene Creed that a controversial nun adapted for the people he was serving when he was in Africa. Instead of just saying that on the third day Jesus rose again, it says that the hyenas did not dig up his grave. And other emendations. Don tells us that the Bishop of Pittsburg, Kan., has forbidden his parishioners from attending a talk by this nun when she comes to town. Or maybe I am confusing the author of the prayer with Sr. Joan Chittester, because Sister Anne asked Sunday to borrow Diane's PC so she could write a letter of protest to whoever wasn't allowing people to see Sr. Joan speak. At any rate, there sure are some uptight bishops around these parts. "bullet" Over lunch with Diane -- where I eat the burnt-tasting black-eyed pea soup our friends the Wickmans made for us last month when they heard we wouldn't be able to make their annual New Year's Day open house -- Diane helps me find the right words to deal with my quandary at work. I should tell Carol that I am feeling isolated. That here I am in my quarantine and things are going on without my involvement, consent or input (except of course when Carol needs input for her meetings, but I won't bring that up). That stories of mine are being altered without my permission, and because of the urgency of the telephone, when I am consulted I am thrust into a defensive posture, where I must think quickly to save an edit from being made, whereas the norm when I am there in person is to consult with me, have me look at the graf and then say aye or nay to the change. "bullet" E-mail today from Bill Kurtis. I had asked his assistant Joan Dry what, if anything, was up with KIND radio. Since I interviewed Bill a year and a half ago in Chicago, he's been trying to get his hands on that station. Now, with the owner (Nelson Rupard, who trained him in radio) deceased, he and a group of investors are making their move: << It hasn't quite happened yet but we're expecting some action within a few weeks. ... We're building new studios in downtown Independence, Kansas and preparing to increase the power of KIND FM to 25,000 watts which should give us a much bigger reach over Southeast Kansas. KIND AM is not on the air currently but we expect to be up by March 21. It's quite an adventure because we're literally re-building the station from the ground up. Nelson Rupard had moved all activity to a tiny transmitter building to hold down expenses. So, we have to set up all new equipment, studios, office space AND transmitters. And that includes tightening guy wires that haven't been touched in 30 years. << But the town is excited. My general manager is Patti McCormick, a veteran of the L.A. television scene who moved to Independence several years ago with her producer-husband, Hoite Caston. It also was a return to the midwest hometown to raise the kids. And just to complete the story, he and I worked at KIND in those formative early years. Both of us were in high school. >> Bill used the word "story" twice in his reply, which means he either anticipated I would want to write about it -- as I'd hinted before -- or he wanted me to write even an bigger story than I'd planned. Actually, escaping to the Flint Hills in late winter/early spring sounds wonderful right about now. I tell him that if I can get my immune count back up by then, he can expect to see Diane and me in beautiful downtown Independence. He writes back and says great. He also advises me, << I hope things are going well with you. And now that you're working out of your house, make sure not to watch too much daytime TV. That often prolongs an illness. >> "bullet" At 2 o'clock I received a reply from Dr. Murray: << As we discussed the other day, I am not a big fan of excessive juicing (some people juice everyhting all day long. ) I think the one green drink is fine - even good - for you. I just would emphasize whole foods as much as possible. Joseph & Cindy feel that warmed foods are important for cancer patients, rather than a lot of raw, cold foods. They worry about excessive stress on the spleen, not really the intestines. So - steamed vegetables, warmed juices, soups are very good for one in your recovery phase. Hope that helps! >> I print it out, go downstairs and read it to Diane. "Yes," she says, "that helps immensely. And didn't I tell you that was exactly what I said she'd say about (Joseph and Cindy)?" She's right. But Murray's approach is not ideological. She's adopted some of the precepts of Chinese/macrobiotic nutrition but doesn't discourage us from having raw foods in moderation. Now Diane is emotionally prepared to make adjustments. Not that there are many to make: She already serves me three hot meals a day. "If anything, I would cut out the breakfast drink," she says. I agree. Though not for herself -- Diane needs the soy and should keep fixing the smoothies. I'll keep taking the oatmeal, which is a whole food. "bullet" A packet of back issues of Dwell magazine arrives from Karrie Jacobs. Each copy has been bookmarked with a Post-It on the page containing the column I would be writing. It's called "The Society Page" and it's basically one page of text and one page of art. My online pal Marisa Bowe writes about living as a trendy underemployed SoHo bohemian before, during and after the Silicon Alley dot-com boom. Another author writes about living all his days in a 950 SF tract house in Lakewood, Calif. In an e-mail, Karrie explained she is on a full-employment program for Echoids and I'm next. She thought it would be good for me to write about life in quarantine. I agree. "bullet" After tai chi class, Diane made me a meal the acupuncturist would be proud of -- a burrito using ground turkey and all-warmed-up fresh ingredients, a bowl of soup from scratch, and baked apples with warmed-up rice milk. Delicious. I am out of gas. "bullet" But I do stay up to watch TV while Diane cleans up. A rerun of "The West Wing" produces yet another dumbass conflagration that is a blatant attempt to move the story alone. C.J. and a retiring general nearly come to blows over the general's stated intention to leave office, but first talking to all the Sunday morning talk shows about the country's lack of military preparedness. "Ring and run," C.J. calls it. The two have a heated exchange that includes a gratuitously sexist remark by the general -- always a sure sign the conversation will soon end badly for him. Sure enough, C.J. shoots him down by calmly noting that the general is wearing a medal for valor that she knows he did not earn. And she promises to make sure the media ask other servicemen what they think of the general wearing this undeserved medal in photo ops with them. Later in the episode, yet another manufactured moment as two overly hostile Democratic lawyers send the White House's token GOP counsel a bouquet of wilted flowers that say BITCH. This conveniently allows Sam to storm over to the lawyers' office, WH counsel in tow (John Larroquette), and have them fired. Other shows, including "Law & Order," require a certain minimum of plausibility to their dramas. Not "West Wing," a show I'd like to enjoy more -- and usually watch when it's on and I'm watching TV -- but can't quite bring myself to embrace. On "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart announces who his guests are going to be. First he says James van der Beek of "Dawson's Creek" will be on the show. No response from the studio audience. Then he says "Daily Show" regular Lewis Black will deliver a commentary later in the show. Crowd cheers wildly. I'm not certain which, but this either means (a) that the studio audience was full of young males, who eschew WB soaps but love a grouchy comic or (b) James van der Beek is a stick of gum that's lost its flavor. ] \ X ~ ר ר $ . alsoListedIn % Arial LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody hhctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial LAND win subject January 27-31 \ %K ***Fri, Dec 1, 2000 The American Hematology Association (or whatever it's called) is holding its annual convention, so I'll have a different doctor looking at me today. He's Barry Skikne, a South African. Today will be the first and last time he lays eyes on me. Skikne actually comes recommended by Diane's breast surgeon, who can't think of any other hematologist she would recommend. If this were a private practice, of course, I could ask for Skikne to see me exclusively. But that's not the way things run in large teaching hospitals. Too bad, because Bodensteiner already strikes me as a jackass, and I have the distinct impression I'm going to see a lot of him. Outpatient care is a lot less critical than inpatient, and something tells me his fellow hematologists keep him marginalized here for just that reason. It appears the nursing staff is starting to warm to me. The redhead went ahead and paged Dr. Wiley without my even asking her. Her name, I learn, is Martha, one of my favorites. My counts come back quickly: Hb at 8.1, white blood count 900, neutrophil count 380 (not bad), and most encouraging, my platelet count has risen to 32,000. Wiley was right -- my platelets are going up first. I've been feeling sleepy-headed during the day, and would probably benefit from a transfusion. Alas, we're not quite at the 8.0 threshold, so they're going to have me come back Monday for my fillup. Dr. Elia is also working the infusion room. It's the first time I've seen her since she had one of her students come in and interview me. She looks me over, then she and I and Diane have a lively conversation about the virtues of living in midtown Kansas City. Both she and the lead nurse, Christie, comment on the socks I'm wearing, the ones Anne sent. Skikne comes in. He's personable enough, and polite, though he has that doctor tendency to look through you rather than at you. His mind is processing my case and something else at the same time, I fear. Yet somehow I'm assured by his straightforwardness and his quick responses. His mind is quite good, and on at least one matter he'll later be proven dead accurate. Skikne tells me that with my level of involvement, I can expect to be less than full speed for three months. Three months! This is news. When I was first admitted to the hospital Dr. Cook was telling me I was looking at two to three weeks' recovery, four at the max. Skikne says the key is how deeply my bone marrow was scarred. This is the first time anyone has told me that bone marrow can scar. I wish I knew what marrow looked like. Skikne says no one's sure whether the scarring occurs because of all the leukemic cells that are packed into the marrow, or because of the chemotherapy that blasts them out of there. Either way, it takes time for the scars to heal and for the marrow to get back to full production. However, he said there's no reason I wouldn't be able to work part-time in a few weeks. But I may be neutropenic longer than I expected to. Skikne also decides to extend my Neupogen therapy another couple of days. Later, Diane notes that every time we pick up a new order from the pharmacy, it costs us another $10 in co-pays. Whereas if they'd just prescribe 10 doses at the outset, we'd be out $10 instead of $30. (It's only some time later that we discover we're getting off easy -- Neupogen retails for around $300 per 300 mcg bottle.) Later in the afternoon, Diane returns to the hospital to pick up the Neupogen from the pharmacy. The place is chronically packed with patients waiting for their orders and despite the advanced computer system, interminable delays always seem to set in. Today's holdup is a doozy. The clerk spends 15 minutes looking for our prescription. Can't find it anywhere. Finally she emerges from the back holding my order. She says to Diane, "You didn't tell me there was a 'd' in your name." Diane: "There isn't a D in my name." "Are you sure?" A couple things come to mind: (a) What kind of retarded computer makes you type in the customer's entire name before matching a prescription? Wouldn't the letters B-A-R-N be sufficiently precise to satisfy most computers? If you have to go further than that, isn't it faster doing everything by hand? (b) Do hospital patients routinely forget how to spell their names? Does the clerk see a lot of people with dyslexia? Who suffered blunt traumas to the head? Or are so hopped up on painkillers they can't even finish a simple sentence? Who are these people that haunt our poor overworked teaching hospital pharmacy clerk? Or (c) is it that this job pays such a lousy wage that it only attracts people too stupid to know how to use a computerized pharmacy system? What's more, the woman tells Diane she only has nine vials of Neupogen in stock. We're supposed to get ten. That's not what we heard. We assume the pharmacy clerk is off her nut. But then I page Wiley, who calls me back from home -- I hear kids in the background -- and it turns out that after Skikne left the room, he conferred with Elia and Wiley and decided I should have a lot longer regimen of Neupogen because my white counts are so low. There's something unsettling about a doctor who changes his prescription on you after he's left the room. ***Sat, Dec 2, 2000 This morning I'm going online again to get intimate with 2-CDA. I soon discover that the British prefer another, somewhat more established chemotherapy called Pentostatin over 2-CDA (which also goes by the name of Leustatin). Pentostatin has been around longer and is thought to be less harmful on the system than 2-CDA. Of course, you also have to take it longer -- for up to six months -- and the remission rate isn't nearly as high as for 2-CDA. Since 2-CDA only came onto the market in 1993, and clinical trials only go back about five years before that, and there are so few hairy cell patients as it is, there have been precious few studies on the relapse rates of patients after five years. Consequently, though you will find some literature out on the Internet claiming that a five-year remission constitutes a "cure," wiser minds know better. In fact, the National Cancer Institute says, "While some patients remain disease-free 6 years after treatment with these purine analogues [a category that includes both Pentostatin and Leustatin], no patient has been followed long enough to assess cure." Later in the morning, I call Anne to thank her for her CARE package from The Gap. I get Curtis instead, and we talk about acupuncture, since I know he's starting to study it. He thinks it could be very effective in treating the side effects of 2-CDA. Then he brings up a couple more ancient Chinese therapies I hadn't thought about. There's tai chi, that slow-moving form of early morning exercise you see older people doing in New York; and something called Qi Gong which I've never heard of, but which Diane thrills to immediately when I mention it to her. Alas, that evening I go online and look up all three and it appears Qi Gong is out of the question. Too harsh. It's actually contraindicated for people with leukemia. Tai chi, however, is so mild that even the conservative PDRNet has nothing bad to say about it. And neither, surprisingly, does it say anything about acupuncture. Diane also has me look up therapeutic touch, which to my surprise has nothing to do with touching at all. Diane and I have the same questions about acupuncture. (1) Is it sterile? (We are good Germans, after all.) and (2) Should someone with a platelet count as low as mine be getting stuck with needles? She's going to call the acupuncturist at the Sastun Center, where she's begun to see Dr. Murray, the center's founder, as her primary care doc. Meanwhile, the itching continues. As is its wont, it burns the most when I am trying to sleep. Whatever part of my body is pressed against the bed -- and is thus conducting the most heat -- that's the one sure to itch the wildest. The itching is driving me mad. Twice in the middle of the night I have to get up and apply cold compresses to my chest, back and head. ***Sun, Dec 3, 2000 What a great day! I'm full of energy now. I celebrate the bright, crisp morning by going out to the garage and fetching a big armload of wood. I make a fire and whip up a batch of wild rice pancakes. Diane talks to a friend who recommends somebody to us for therapeutic touch. She's retiree who is a practitioner-teacher of TT in Kansas City. A very sweet woman with a lot of Catholic connections. Her first appointment she does free of charge, then afterward she can continue coming by for a free-will offering. By evening, my mood goes south as I continue to scratch, scratch, scratch. That night Diane notices a few scattered red bumps on my head -- probably cause by all the scratching. I found more bumps in the center of my chest, right where the itching was particularly intense. Finally I call Wiley at 9:45 p.m. and ask him what's up. Is it the new antibiotic? He doesn't think so, seeing as how it's probably out of my system by now. He said he might prescribe a topical treatment on Monday. He can't give me a steroid, which would really block the itching, since they make me even less immune than I already am. He suggests I take two more Benadryls, which I do, once again to no effect. They don't even make me sleepy anymore. "December 11-20" | "Table of Contents" %K \ X ~ ǶƱ $ . alsoListedIn % Arial ȶ LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial Ƕ LAND win subject December 1-10 \ ***Tue, Dec 26, 2000 This would be a day I spent wishing I could sleep through. I awoke at 7:30 a.m. so that we could arrive at the infusion room at 8:30 and beat the crowd. But even though I'd gotten to bed by 10 the night before, I wanted desperately to turn over and sleep some more. Later in the day, between my two dreadful appointment, I caught another 90-minute nap that I wished had been twice as long. Anne joins Diane and me as we trudge through the snow to the infusion room. There we are greeted by a rent-a-nurse named Rudy, who turned out to be much nice and more conscientious than Christie, the nurse he was filling in for. Once I was settled in and my blood had been drawn, the two women skipped off to breakfast. When my counts came in, they were down. Thanks to the poor information and negative conditioning of the doctors, I felt deflated by the numbers: 8.0 Hb, 600 WBC (63% ANC), and 33,000 Pl. January, the mostly useless heme resident ("a complete sieve," Diane complained later, "just listening, saying nothing that was helpful; she sucked") did pass along a morsel that would later show beyond a doubt that the doctors here were manipulative. She said that Dr. Bodensteiner was "not worried" about my counts, ] Y ~ $ . alsoListedIn % Arial ض LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial LAND win subject December 21-31 ] ***Wednesday, November 22, 2000 This was the day I began keeping a diary on the computer. You might say it was a rash decision. I began writing it as a distraction, to take my mind off a drug rash -- a raging pink fire that started in the middle of the night, beginning at my elbows, then working up my shoulders and now, ablaze on the entire upper half of my body. Ironically, though my doctors had warned the chemotherapy might produce nausea, vomiting, fatigue, opportunistic infections, and the like, no one counted on my reacting to the antibiotics meant to ward off a possible chemo-induced infection. And of course, no one imagined the reaction would produce a rash so savage that I'd be screaming to be whipsawed through some giant shoe brush that could scratch me everywhere all at once. Here's a photograph of "me and my rash". (Warning: Not for the faint of stomach!) ***11/27/00 P.J. Bednarski, the executive editor of Broadcasting & Cable, and the man who got me my monthly column at Electronic Media when he was editor there, put a very nice brief into this week's issue about my condition: http://www.findarticles.com/m0BCA/48_130/67315376/p1/article.jhtml Brian Bracco, the former news director at KMBC here, reads it and immediately sends over a plant -- not really what an immunosuppressed person needs -- and, more importantly, his best wishes. ***Tuesday, November 28, 2000 - we see Cook at clinic, complain about Christie and the infusion room - LabOne draws my blood a ] ~ .Ʊ> Y N $ . alsoListedIn % Arial .. LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial .. LAND win subject Part 3: Outpatient a ~ Cư z$ ! ( < C b L V alsoListedIn % Arial CC LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ,PUT THIS SOMEWHERE: Though rare, hairy cell is one of the most treatable of the blood-related cancers, thanks to cladribine or 2-CdA. This remarkably effective chemotherapy produces complete remission in as many as 80 percent of cases after just a single 7-day infusion. PUT THIS IN PART 2, MONDAY 11/13: Mine measured 25 cm the day I began chemotherapy. A normal spleen measures about 11 cm. "Part 3: Outpatient" | "Table of Contents"ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial CC LAND win subject Part 2: Chemotherapy Arrived in my mailbox at work, an e-mail header: SAY GOODBYE TO THE DAILY COMMUTE! Too late for that. In fact, it has been ... "bullet" Diane is crushed. She comes upstairs with the news that nurse Teresa has left my blood counts on the answering machine. They are: Hemoglobin 7.9
WBC 400
Platelets 62,000 The 7.9 Hb count means I will need a transfusion Friday after all. The white count of 400 is the lowest it's been since Christmas. Now Diane is really worried. She's on the edge of tears. "I'm sorry," she says. "I just thought your counts would be higher this week. Your color is much better." Pause. She looks up, smiles and says, "It makes the story more interesting, right?" Then she says, "Fuck the interesting story." I call Nurse Teresa, who left a message on my cell phone, too. "I was wonderin' where were ya?" she says goodnaturedly. She's just the kind of person I can ask anything of. Teresa says she's already spoken to Dr. Davis, yet another oncologist in Davidner's practice, and Davis sees no problem with my low counts so long as I stay protected. He would continue me on all three of my anti's and no, he would not recommend Neupogen or any other white-cell growth factor right now. I ask Teresa if it's possible to get in touch with Davidner, because it seems what he had told me is a little bit at odds with what Davis and Pendergrass are advising. "I've only spoken to his wife so far," Teresa says. "I send him faxes and then he sends them back." After I hang up, Diane and I confer. We were under the impression that Davidner wanted to try the growth factor in February if my counts did not go up in January. It would be nice to hear directly from him what he thinks. I call Teresa back. I tell her I'd like her to ask Davidner about the growth factor, and while she's at it, ask him if he thinks the antibiotics may be suppressing my white count. "bullet" I get e-mail from Jim Croegaert:
Sunday, Feb. 11, was designated as World Day of Prayer for the Sick by the Holy Father (or "Popey," as Carol H's mother affectionately calls him) and he was celebrating a special Mass in Sydney, at the cathedral, which we visited while there. At our hospital, we celebrated it yesterday, indluding a noon Mass in our chapel, and I just want you to know you were especially in my prayers at the Mass and the Eucharist."bullet" 3 p.m. and still no word from Teresa. So I call her back. She's spoken, again, to Mrs. Davidner, who is acting as some of emissary between Dr. Davidner and the world, which tells me he's laid up and would rather not talk on the phone. Davidner has affirmed the other two doctors' advice. "Look, Teresa, I know I'm in a funny position here because you know I'm going to Houston to see Dr. Keating .. "Don't worry, I won't let anything happen to ya, sweetie," she says. Teresa tells me she's had a lot of patients with blood counts like mine "and they've all pulled through." Diane is feeling better. But she asks, "Where's the chocolate?" From its secret hiding place, I reveal the big white-chocolate "Happy Valentine's Day" heart sent to me as part of some TV gimmick. It breaks neatly in half and we each have one side of the heart. "Nothing that chocolate can't cure," says Diane. Nothing like two lovers sharing a symbolic heart. Hey, it's cheaper than going out for dinner. V R ~ W< w $ . alsoListedIn % Arial WW LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial WW LAND win subject 2/15/01 V * & ~ 9 #Y #Y alsoListedIn % Arial 99 LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody Laura Clark, the news director of the local NBC affiliate, called.
"Harris Faulkner, former anchor at WDAF-TV, may return to Kansas City replacing Tracy Townsend as the main 6 and 10 p.m. anchor. Harris reportedly hates the Twin Cities where she is the 9 p.m. anchor. There are a number of folks at KCTV who are jockeying for the position. They include Carolyn Long, Krista Klaus and a new reporter/anchor whose name I can't remember."ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial 99 LAND win subject 2/16/01 * 6 A cloudy day, a cloudy head. After whisking through the weekend, paying our bills, doing a full review of our financial accounts and generally making myself useful, I fall into a deep funk today. Unlike last Monday, the cause is not emotional exhaustion. My body just cannot rouse itself all day. Making matters worse, I hear bad news practically from the get-go. In particular, I am horrified by the graphic description of a robbery that happened less than a mile east of here just off Valentine Road, in which a woman scraping off her car was taken at gunpoint into her house, where two other adults were, and the three of them led around the house, room by room, while he robbed them of their possessions. Even now it is impossible to keep down my emotions at this. Then word came later in the morning that Chris, Ed's girlfriend, may have lupus. At lunch, Diane reported that the cats had finished off what little of her mother's Christmas cactus they hadn't already chewed through -- a symbolic loss and perhaps minor compared with the other two pieces of bad news, but in its own way painful to hear. Robert Trussell calls to give me a heads-up that I might expect to finally write my XFL commentary. Brian McTavish and Hearne Christopher went to an XFL game in Memphis just for the heck of it but now Brian would like to write a first-person account. I ask Trussell if Carol Powers is still off. No, he says, she's here today. In fact, the story was her idea and she suggested I call you. Later in the day -- after I leave a terse "ARE YOU THERE?" message on her voice mail -- I finally do hear from Carol, who has not spoken to me since early Thursday, even though I had a question about which story to write next and for what deadline. She says somewhat lamely that since the skedlines I submitted were fine, she saw no reason to call me back. And, as usual, she says it's been nuts around work "in ways I can't even describe." Well, then. A journalist who can't describe things. Meanwhile I have the opposite problem: five stories lined up, ready to write, and until Monday night I don't know which one to write next. Not that I would've exactly stormed ahead and written, given how blah I felt all Monday. Laura Clark from NBC 41 calls. I had wanted to know what was up with Harold Fisher, who had been brought in to co-anchor the 6 p.m. news with Elizabeth Alex as well as reporter duties. One rumor the newsies were passing around said Fisher was worn out from trying to file reports and get back to the studio for the early newscast every night. Laura said that Harold simply wanted to be closer to his family and decided to return to Baltimore. He left in mid-January and, the last Laura heard, "he was inches away from a job" out there. As for the rumored work problem, Laura dismissed it, saying that Harold's workload was "not unusual" and that it happens "all across the country." Kansas City, too -- she cited Kris Ketz, the KMBC newsman who files a report nearly every day while managing to co-anchor the 5 p.m. report as well. Laura also says the station's 10 p.m. newscast is having its best February ever. When I brought up the fact that NBC 41 is once again having a sweeps month watch-and-win sweepstakes, she pointed out that her station also just had its best January ever, without any financial incentives being promised the viewers that month. (So why not drop the watch-and-wins and save 20 grand?) The difference between January and February -- and Laura was careful to emphasize that the sweeps weren't even half over -- but if the sweep were to end today the difference between January (no watch-and-win) and February would be less than half a ratings point. And NBC41 would slide into third place overall and second in demographics. When I began covering TV four years ago, NBC41 was the weakest NBC affiliate in the country and, despite NBC's formidable prime-time lineup, could not hang onto even half of the viewers after network programming ended each night at 10. Now the station is retaining 75 percent of its prime-time lead-in. And its once-pathetic early-morning newscast has tripled its ratings from 0.7 to 2.1 in less than a year after management decided it could no longer compete head-to-head with its rivals' more established full-service newscasts. From 6 to 7 a.m. NBC41's newscast is an almost continuous flow of weather and traffic reports with some news headlines. Laura says she can "practically identify the day when ratings went up," after several weeks of fine-tuning the format and the arrival of a new producer and on-air reporter. This in turn has helped bolster "Today" show ratings. It's been seven years since KSHB became NBC41, after Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the New World affiliate -- mostly CBS affiliations but in Kansas City WDAF-TV, which had been an NBC stalwart since the AT&T transcontinental line arrived here in 1952. They've been seven wrenching years for employees and managers of nearly all the stations involved. After switching to Fox, WDAF found itself more than doubling the amount of time it spent doing local news, just to fill the huge vacuum left by NBC's departure. KSHB, meanwhile, also had to increase its news presence, simply because it was a longtime indie before becoming a Fox, and had padded most of its schedule with movies and syndicated shows. It's funny: WDAF dominated Kansas City for two decades, and KSHB was one of the most powerful and innovative independent stations in the land during the 1970s and '80s. Now they are pitted against each other in a battle for third place overall (though WDAF does much better in demographics thanks to Fox). Still, things seem to be settling down at both stations, and with word out of Detroit that CBS-owned WWJ, Channel 62 -- which the network had to scramble to purchase after losing its longtime affiliate in the New World fiasco -- is finally going to get its own newscast. But here's the punchline: It's going to be produced by the local UPN affiliate. The story: http://www.freep.com/cgi-bin/entertaintease.pl?/entertainment/tvandradio/wkbd15_20010215.htm Some dweeb from TV Guide calls me on the home number. Seems he looked me up because he saw on my Website that I was looking for someone who had heard the Top Ten List that CBS had told David Letterman to strike from his broadcast the week before -- after he had read it. (The list was "Top Ten Reasons To Sue CBS," a play on "Survivor" contestant Stacey Stillman's recent lawsuit against the network.) My TV Guide caller wanted to know if I'd gotten the list. Why can't he send email like everyone else? Then he proceeds to tell me something that he says I can't use, strictly off the record. By this point I'm so annoyed at him trying to bogart my reporting that I start taking notes. He tells me he was a researcher at NBC in the mid-1990s and was first-hand witness to the decision to use 6 V R ~ 2 0 $ . alsoListedIn % Arial LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody BctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial LAND win subject 2/12/01 V I know everybody complains about product placements in the movies and on hip, happening TV shows (remember that WB show "Young Americans" that was completely underwritten by Coke?). But have you ever checked out those syndicated home-improvement shows that you can find on your local network affiliate every Saturday mornings? Good gravy train, everything on those shows is a product placement. Here's laminated veneer lumber from International Paper, and acrylic wall tile from Hy-Lite and bathroom fixtures from Kohler, a mini-fridge by Whirlpool ... what is this, the end credits for "Password"? The worst offender here may be "Bob Vila's Home Again", a non-stop parade of brand names. It's hard enough translating the relentlessly technical talk that home builders love throwing around -- we also have to remember which company supplied what parts. But here's what they don't tell you: Does any other company besides International Paper make laminated veneer lumber roof supports? If not, why mention them, since the boys down at Home Depot are going to steer us toward them anyway? And if more than one company makes, say, hydronic heating units, why did the homeowner choose the ones made by Advanced Environmental Systems? It may all be on the up and up, but I still came away feeling that the spectacle of seeing a house rebirthed was marred by having to listen to a litany of consumerism. V R ~ ff $ . alsoListedIn % Arial ff LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody 5ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial ff LAND win subject 2/17/01 V The books are starting to pile up around the house, as once again I find my reach exceeding my grasp. But for the first time in approximately forever, my reading pace is actually keeping up with my acquisitions pace. Book report time: COMMON GROUND, J. Anthony Lukas, 1986. Despite winning a Pulitzer, and despite some fine reporting that obviously merited journalism's highest prize, this 650-page Homeric take on the Boston busing crisis of the mid-1970s becomes, by page 300, a monotonous bowl of oatmeal. Lukas doesn't just paint a scene, he doesn't even stop at the tableau, he paints the whole goddam gymnasium every time someone leads a new demonstration or hands down a decision or slugs a member of another ethnic group. What's worse, the narrative lacks gallop or urgency; it's just one depressing vignette of intractable racial strife after the next. That's not to say that Lukas, who died in 1997, did not perform a valuable documentary service to future historians, did not do promothean amounts of research and interviewing to compile this story -- it's just that after a while, it all gets to be too much. Lukas, perhaps sensing this, tried to keep his story to just three families: the Divers, upper-class do-gooders who move into a rough neighborhood on the edge of Boston's ghetto; the McGoffs, a matriarchy in hardscrabble Irish Catholic Charlestown, whose citizens systematically repelled integration with a ferocity that would be heroic if it weren't so disturbing; and the Twymons, another matriarchy, this one led by a black single mother in Roxbury. The chapter titles were models of simplicity: "Diver," "McGoff," "Twymon," "Diver," "Twymon," "McGoff," "Diver," etc. And yet even these attempts to circumscribe the story fail, because Lukas can't help introducing more and more and more characters who know the Divers, know the McGoffs, know the Twymon, and it seems as though Lukas cannot abide introducing new characters into his tale without giving their full and complete American genealogies, invariably beginning in the old country 200 years prior and advancing, one fortresslike paragraph after the next, into the Seventies. Exhaustive and exhausting, the literary equivalent of a 28-part newspaper series. (Come to think of it, those win Pulitzers, too.) SURVIVOR: TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR FIGHT AGAINST CANCER, Laura Landro, 1998. An expansion of the author's 1996 account of her battle with leukemia that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, where she works as an entertainment senior editor. The title is not completely misleading -- unfortunately, a TV show by the same name has creeped into the public consciousness since the book came out -- but much of this story is about her bone marrow transplant to combat CML, of which 5,100 cases per year are reported (compared with a little under 200,000 new cases apiece for prostate and breast cancer). Still, this is a tightly written first-person account aimed at a general audience, and it has at its heart a provocative thesis that will hopefully make cancer patients think twice about their treatment. Landro is a hard-driving, high-flying woman with an important job in New York and lot of resources at her disposal. For example, she flies around the country checking out cancer centers, much as an anxious suburban parent might take her high schooler to visit top colleges. On another occasion, Landro and her boyfriend take an impulse weekend trip to Europe. But the most memorable trip she takes is into the shadow of the valley of death, as she endures the agony and suffering of an early-1990s bone marrow transplant, as harrowing and aggressive a cancer treatment as any on the planet. Through it all, she and her mother -- a nurse who spends much of the ordeal by her side -- document every step of her treatment. The result is a story of survivorship that transcends class or category. If you don't see a message about surviving your cancer in Survivor, you aren't paying attention. Speaking as a leukemia patient married to a breast cancer survivor, what I found most valuable about Survivor was Landro's exemplary model as a cancer consumer. Time and again, she is presented with options she does not like -- and, instead of accepting them, she goes looking for new options. She questions the approach of a world-renowned cancer facility; objects to the overly antiseptic environment of another; and says "eh" to another before finally deciding on the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle, some 3,000 miles from home. Forget the mileage, the sheer expense involved in setting up one's family in a faraway city -- what Landro did in carefully choosing the best treatment for herself is something every cancer patient must do. No more "follow the doctor." That is what I mean by being a cancer consumer. My wife and I have each had to change care providers after what each of us considered to be an unacceptable lapse in judgment or treatment. And as America's managed-care health system becomes more unwieldy by the day, I think more and more cancer patients will find themselves doing the same. Finally, Landro's closing words of advice, borne out by hard experience, are ones every cancer patient would do well to take: "Find the best cancer center for treatment ... Be prepared to do battle if the approved provider is one that doesn't have the best record of treating your particular disease ... You can accomplish a lot in a phone consult ... Most of the key cancer centers have their own Web sites ... Don't be afraid to delve into the more scientific resources available to you." And perhaps her best advice, one that many cancer patients have resisted over the years to their great sorrow, is this: "When it's time for your chemotherapy, radiation and transplant, hope for the best, be prepared for the worst, and try to take the attitude that you can handle whatever comes at you." And as enlightened oncologists will tell you, patients like that come through cancer treatment a lot better than those who say "Doc, my life is in your hands." ON WRITING, Stephen King, 2000. What a great read by the master of mass fiction. King recounts his life and career in a fast-moving, brutally self-honest tome, then switches gears about halfway through and offers aspiring fiction writers what would seem to be a useful primer to the craft. I say it "would seem to be" such because I've never written fiction. King opens the second half with a paean to Strunk and White, the Calvinists of writing instruction, and for a moment there I thought hoo boy. But then King gets more specific about fiction -- using idiom, developing characters, creating a productive work routine, editing a draft, and a chapter on finding an agent that will warm every aspiring young writer's heart (his message: you can find a good one, and it's not as hard as you think). The book concludes with a postscript recounting King's own horror story, when a careless driver ran over him on a highway near King's house in Maine. V R ~ y} ͙ ͙ $ . alsoListedIn % Arial zz LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody >6ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial yy LAND win subject 2/18/01 V So I post this message to manilasites support:
I am absolutely appalled at the way I am being treated by manilasites. A worse advertisement for Userland Frontier I cannot imagine. Let me walk you through my morning: 1. For reasons unrelated, I must re-install the software on my iMac. 2. I go to my site, tvbarn.manilasites.com, which I am keeping private for now. 3. I get the EditorsOnly error message. IE 5 cleared out my cookies when I reinstalled it. 4. So, I go to login using my email: aaron@tvbarn.com 5. MANILASITES HAS NEVER HEARD OF ME. I get the "aaron@tvbarn.com is not in the database" error. 6. Panicking, I come here to support. Again, I am asked to login. 7. THIS TIME, however, the login server knows who I am and mails me my password. 8. I login successfully -- hence this message I am composing -- and head over to tvbarn.manilasites.com once again. 9. AND ONCE AGAIN, MANILASITES GIVES ME THE EDITORSONLY ERROR. I have had exactly the same experience over at Bryan Bell's Weblogger, where I am building another private site. And then to come back to this message board and find that nobody has replied to what I thought was a pretty straightforward plea for help on Friday ... when I was unable to login from my iBook. Well, now I can't get to my site from anywhere. I have been composing heavily on this site and was looking forward to getting more work done on it today. Now I am absolutely stuck. As thrilled as I was to discover Manila, I am angry and frustrated at having it shut me out -- and no one, no one I can contact for help. Thanks for nothing, UserLand.Within five minutes, it's been deleted. No thanks to them, I finally do figure out a way to sneak into the site and login (through the prefs page). So far as I can tell this is completely undocumented and, indeed, not even deemed trouble worthy of shooting by the wizards of UserLand. Or maybe they're too occupied deleting dissident posts. "bull" It's a beautiful day, sunny and 55, so I take a walk that turns into a journey -- down State Line to 45th, over to Wyoming, back again, mostly on an incline. I begin dragging at the top of the inclines, and by the time I get home I'm exhausted. I plop down for a nap that lasts more than an hour. Edward comes over. He's looking good, but feels crummy. After seeing a chiropractor three times a week for several weeks, he tried playing tennis and killed his serving arm. There's no improvement. He said he's probably giving up tennis -- too bad, since he just spent $400 to have the same racquet as Andre Agassi -- and he's giving up chiropracty as well. On a more positive note, his girlfriend Chris is feeling much better after getting some medications to treat her lupus. Ed got her a book, a complete guide to lupus, for Valentine's Day, which makes us both laugh. But it was sweet of him. He goes upstairs and tries to figure out with Diane how to open an IRA that he can trade futures out of. Diane makes a superb meal out of salmon, cooked just right, soft steamy baked potatoes, basil carrots and the night's special treat -- freshly creamed spinach. People who eat out are missing out. V R ~ ǁA ]k $ . alsoListedIn % Arial ǂǂ LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody \5ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial ǁǁ LAND win subject 2/19/01 V p l V AuAw 7 9 bits .GIFfGIF89a o ! , @X ;f DL:\static\manilasites\images\tvbarnManilaSitesCom\blackbullet001.gifheightmimeType image/gifshortcut bullurl Uhttp://static.userland.com/manilasites/images/tvbarnManilaSitesCom/blackbullet001.gifwidth p l h AtAx ] # * ] 3 = alsoListedIn & Arial AuAu LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComPicturesbody ctReads ctRevisionsimage kM inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial AtAt LAND win subject bull l ] Y ~ h3h5 S ! " S + 5 alsoListedIn % Arial h4h4 LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody placeholderctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial h3h3 LAND win subject 2/20/01 ] J Tom Roche sent me this year-old interview with Harry Shearer. There's a story here waiting to be written next time I want to write about THE SIMPSONS:
PLUME: Speaking of being well-recognized by name, how did the Simpsons gig come SHEARER: Matt (Groening) and I had met by chance at a newsstand in Hollywood in the mid-80's, and I think he introduced himself to me and said he was a fan of the radio show. He used to write a column, in addition to doing the comic strip, which was supposed to be a music review column... And he did everything but review records. I really liked it, so we just sort of exchanged compliments. Then years later, I got a call from his office and his then-partner Sam Simon asking me if I wanted to be part of this animated show, and I said, "Nahhh... Sounds like a lot of trouble." They said, "No no no! It'd be really, like, and hour a week. Really!" So we were both wrong. PLUME: What's the average time commitment for it? SHEARER: About half-a-day on Monday and Thursday morning and some other time during the week to do repairs and fixes on shows that are about to air... So it's parts of three days a week. PLUME: When you were initially hired on, was it with the fact that you would be doing multiple voices already in mind? SHEARER: Yeah, I think that's what they had in mind - that they'd get a lot of work out of me. PLUME: What would you say is the most difficult part of doing the show? SHEARER: For me, I guess it's retaining the joy of doing it despite the continued signals from the network that we're not that appreciated. PLUME: Signals as far as... SHEARER: Basically, we're the most successful show in the history of that network, we're the most successful animated show in the history of American television - we're one of the most successful television shows, period - and you don't really feel that way, day-to-day, there. PLUME: Is it largely, you think, a matter of "out of sight, out of mind" since you're not on camera, as it were? SHEARER: No, I think it's largely the company's way of doing business. It's just an attitude. PLUME: You certainly sent some signals to the network a couple of years ago with the walk-out... SHEARER: It wasn't a walk-out... Our contract was up. We weren't walking out of anything. It was just that our contract was up, and we were having negotiations about the new contract. PLUME: Were you surprised by the network's open advertisements to replace you all? SHEARER: No... It fit in with their general attitude. That's what I mean. PLUME: Were you surprised by the solidarity of the voice-acting community when they said, "We're not going to touch that... Those are their roles."? SHEARER: I was very surprised and delighted and heartened and amazed by that. I thought that was remarkable and admirable and should have gotten more attention than it did. I mean, I didn't even know about it at the time. I heard about it later. I just thought it was amazing, and something that I never read about - nobody wrote about that. I thought that was a remarkable, remarkable thing - especially in this business. PLUME: Especially in voice-acting, where people are always desperate for a job... SHEARER: Yeah! I mean, there's no way to describe how... PLUME: I mean, here's a network saying, "Here's one of our top-rated shows and we need replacement talent..." And the community said, "No." SHEARER: There's no way to describe how remarkable I thought that was. I sent a couple of personal messages to people that I knew had done that. It's amazing. PLUME: And I would think it sent a few shockwaves through the network, who probably don't get stood up to that often... SHEARER: Yeah, I guess. I guess. PLUME: How much life do you see left in the show? SHEARER: Substantial. PLUME: Do you see it continuing on for many years to come? SHEARER: I don't know about many, but I think it's probably going to go on for a while yet. PLUME: How do you still make it exciting for yourself? SHEARER: If you enjoy performing, then it's fun to perform... It doesn't take a trick. As far as the longevity of the show, if Fox wants an audience to come sample a show that they're trying to get established, the best place in the universe to do that is Sunday at 8:30 - following The Simpsons. It's helped King Of The Hill, it's helped Futurama, and it's helped several other shows establish themselves by being in that slot. I do believe - and I may be a little off on my numbers, but I don't think I am - that the most successful show to follow The Simpsons in that time slot has been The Simpsons... Which basically just says, "We're opening the store on Sunday evenings." PLUME: Has there been any scuttlebutt about a feature film? SHEARER: No. PLUME: Would you be adverse to that? SHEARER: No. Nobody's ever asked us. The process would basically be a lot of wrangling at the top end of the pyramid that we'd hear about before we saw any signs of the script. I don't know if there's actually reasoning about it. At some point in time one would have thought it was, "Well, we don't want to cannibalize the television audience." Certainly South Park has proven you can put out a feature and not hurt your TV ratings. So I have no idea. PLUME: As far as characters go, you do about, what, a dozen? SHEARER: A dozen regulars, yeah. PLUME: Is there any one that you particularly like - or hate - performing? SHEARER: Well, I didn't like doing Dr. Marvin Monroe. They killed him off. I just made it a bad choice to do a guy with a particularly gruff voice, and then got caught doing it semi-regularly. Although I was saddened when I heard they'd killed him off, it was a relief to my vocal chords. PLUME: Is there any character you like performing, or just like the character in its final conception? SHEARER: Well, the one that gets the most response from the audience is Mr. Burns. PLUME: Why do you think people have latched on to him? SHEARER: Because I think a lot of people have bad bosses. PLUME: There are sites on the Internet idolizing this character... SHEARER: I don't know about that, but I know that, in terms of the response I get face-to-face, that's the one. And Ned Flanders I guess would be second. PLUME: Which is the easiest voice for you to slip into? SHEARER: They're all easy. I wouldn't do them if they weren't easy... I mean, Marvin Monroe was an oddity. Usually they're all easy to slip into. Even he was easy to slip into, it was just keeping it up was a task. PLUME: It looks like, after 10 years of licensing, you finally got one of your characters as an action figure... SHEARER: Yeah... I've just gotten a box-full.J %n
PLUME: Speaking of being well-recognized by name, how did the Simpsons gig come SHEARER: Matt (Groening) and I had met by chance at a newsstand in Hollywood in the mid-80's, and I think he introduced himself to me and said he was a fan of the radio show. He used to write a column, in addition to doing the comic strip, which was supposed to be a music review column... And he did everything but review records. I really liked it, so we just sort of exchanged compliments. Then years later, I got a call from his office and his then-partner Sam Simon asking me if I wanted to be part of this animated show, and I said, "Nahhh... Sounds like a lot of trouble." They said, "No no no! It'd be really, like, and hour a week. Really!" So we were both wrong. PLUME: What's the average time commitment for it? SHEARER: About half-a-day on Monday and Thursday morning and some other time during the week to do repairs and fixes on shows that are about to air... So it's parts of three days a week. PLUME: When you were initially hired on, was it with the fact that you would be doing multiple voices already in mind? SHEARER: Yeah, I think that's what they had in mind - that they'd get a lot of work out of me. PLUME: What would you say is the most difficult part of doing the show? SHEARER: For me, I guess it's retaining the joy of doing it despite the continued signals from the network that we're not that appreciated. PLUME: Signals as far as... SHEARER: Basically, we're the most successful show in the history of that network, we're the most successful animated show in the history of American television - we're one of the most successful television shows, period - and you don't really feel that way, day-to-day, there. PLUME: Is it largely, you think, a matter of "out of sight, out of mind" since you're not on camera, as it were? SHEARER: No, I think it's largely the company's way of doing business. It's just an attitude. PLUME: You certainly sent some signals to the network a couple of years ago with the walk-out... SHEARER: It wasn't a walk-out... Our contract was up. We weren't walking out of anything. It was just that our contract was up, and we were having negotiations about the new contract. PLUME: Were you surprised by the network's open advertisements to replace you all? SHEARER: No... It fit in with their general attitude. That's what I mean. PLUME: Were you surprised by the solidarity of the voice-acting community when they said, "We're not going to touch that... Those are their roles."? SHEARER: I was very surprised and delighted and heartened and amazed by that. I thought that was remarkable and admirable and should have gotten more attention than it did. I mean, I didn't even know about it at the time. I heard about it later. I just thought it was amazing, and something that I never read about - nobody wrote about that. I thought that was a remarkable, remarkable thing - especially in this business. PLUME: Especially in voice-acting, where people are always desperate for a job... SHEARER: Yeah! I mean, there's no way to describe how... PLUME: I mean, here's a network saying, "Here's one of our top-rated shows and we need replacement talent..." And the community said, "No." SHEARER: There's no way to describe how remarkable I thought that was. I sent a couple of personal messages to people that I knew had done that. It's amazing. PLUME: And I would think it sent a few shockwaves through the network, who probably don't get stood up to that often... SHEARER: Yeah, I guess. I guess. PLUME: How much life do you see left in the show? SHEARER: Substantial. PLUME: Do you see it continuing on for many years to come? SHEARER: I don't know about many, but I think it's probably going to go on for a while yet. PLUME: How do you still make it exciting for yourself? SHEARER: If you enjoy performing, then it's fun to perform... It doesn't take a trick. As far as the longevity of the show, if Fox wants an audience to come sample a show that they're trying to get established, the best place in the universe to do that is Sunday at 8:30 - following The Simpsons. It's helped King Of The Hill, it's helped Futurama, and it's helped several other shows establish themselves by being in that slot. I do believe - and I may be a little off on my numbers, but I don't think I am - that the most successful show to follow The Simpsons in that time slot has been The Simpsons... Which basically just says, "We're opening the store on Sunday evenings." PLUME: Has there been any scuttlebutt about a feature film? SHEARER: No. PLUME: Would you be adverse to that? SHEARER: No. Nobody's ever asked us. The process would basically be a lot of wrangling at the top end of the pyramid that we'd hear about before we saw any signs of the script. I don't know if there's actually reasoning about it. At some point in time one would have thought it was, "Well, we don't want to cannibalize the television audience." Certainly South Park has proven you can put out a feature and not hurt your TV ratings. So I have no idea. PLUME: As far as characters go, you do about, what, a dozen? SHEARER: A dozen regulars, yeah. PLUME: Is there any one that you particularly like - or hate - performing? SHEARER: Well, I didn't like doing Dr. Marvin Monroe. They killed him off. I just made it a bad choice to do a guy with a particularly gruff voice, and then got caught doing it semi-regularly. Although I was saddened when I heard they'd killed him off, it was a relief to my vocal chords. PLUME: Is there any character you like performing, or just like the character in its final conception? SHEARER: Well, the one that gets the most response from the audience is Mr. Burns. PLUME: Why do you think people have latched on to him? SHEARER: Because I think a lot of people have bad bosses. PLUME: There are sites on the Internet idolizing this character... SHEARER: I don't know about that, but I know that, in terms of the response I get face-to-face, that's the one. And Ned Flanders I guess would be second. PLUME: Which is the easiest voice for you to slip into? SHEARER: They're all easy. I wouldn't do them if they weren't easy... I mean, Marvin Monroe was an oddity. Usually they're all easy to slip into. Even he was easy to slip into, it was just keeping it up was a task. PLUME: It looks like, after 10 years of licensing, you finally got one of your characters as an action figure... SHEARER: Yeah... I've just gotten a box-full.$datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl $datatabl , Q M $ flRenderOnEntryname pikeRenderer Q L ) ,expansionState Arial LAND win heightleft scrollLinetopwidth hB , " 3 8 @ H T b ] j v " + 6 alsoListedIn % Arial hBhB LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody qbodyType text/x-opmlctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumopml outline zpostTime rendererInfo T responses Arial hBhB LAND win subject 2/21/01timeZone windowInfo ޱ I have two types of Chinese herbal powders now. A second mustard container has replaced the capsules. This second powder is darker and denser than the first; it sinks like sand when I drop it in the water. One scoop of that, followed by two scoops of the other stuff, stir and ingest. Despite the addition of the new ingredients, the drink tastes the same as always: like flavored dirt. There is still fallout from Thursday's ultra-low blood counts. Diane tells me in the morning that she was up most of the night, making a list. She tells me she feels we have to have our ducks in a row for a visit to Houston like it might happen tomorrow. She tells me that, contrary to what Dr. Stevenson conveyed to Teresa yesterday, I am NOT stable. My counts have dipped from 900 to 700, then 600, 500, 400 and now 300. If I go two more weeks like this I will be critical. "Nobody's really watching this or thinking creatively," complains Diane. "If we could just keep you out of the danger zone for two weeks." In effect, those are our marching orders for the day: think of every medical authority we know of and ask them what, if anything, should be done about my low counts. Then there are the ducks-in-a-row tasks. Diane tells me to get a release form signed so she can go over to GH and pick up the slides of my bone marrow biopsy. And she begins plotting how we should deal with Pendergrass if it comes to that &151; if for some reason I must see him NOW, not later. Since we effectively dumped Pendergrass for Houston, we have to figure out some way to weasel back into his good graces: "The point is," Diane says, imagining the pitch, "we had been thinking about going to Texas all along ..." Diane adds, "I don't want his nose even slightly out of joint." I start scribbling all of this down, less to remember it all than because I can feel my anxiety rising. Why is she always fucking pushing me? "If we just let this freefall continue," she continues, "you're going to be at 100, and the worst case scenario is that you get in the car and get sick somewhere in Oklahoma." She also wants me to do the taxes. What the hell for? I ask her. "Wouldn't that just be a good thing we don't have to think about?" And: "What if you have to have surgery and you're out for six weeks?" You file an extension! I tell her, to no avail. Teresa calls. She has called down to M.D. Anderson Center, where she spoke with Keating's assistant and was told that he was out today, but if she wrote up a note and faxed it down, the assistant would show it to Keating on Monday morning to see if he wanted to overbook &151; schedule me on an earlier date even though he has no openings. The hematology secretary faxes me a release form. I print it out, read it over ... it's the wrong form. It's the form someone gives to another hospital to authorize sending material to GH, when what I need is a form to ... anyway, I cross out the wrong parts and write in the correct parts, sign the release, put it in the scanner, make an image and then send it off with the fax software. It's unsettling to look at the fax cover page and see Dr. XXXXXXXX at the top. On the other hand, it's reassuring, the knowledge that he is no longer tormenting me. I call Fran at GH family medicine and tell her I need a referral to M.D. Anderson and why. She'll have it ready this afternoon so Diane can swing by and pick up both the release and the slides. The next call is mine. I decide to call up my nurse at Baptist, Nancy Hodes, who seems to know everything. This time, however, she knows precious little what to do with me. "I think it's just a matter of pretty good handwashing and stay away from crowds," she says, and I'm thinking ha! I'm not going to see another living soul until my white count gets back to at least 500. She knows that, too. "Just keep yourself isolated," she says. At the hospital, people are put in isolation if their counts go below 1000 -- nurses wear paper masks, restricted diet, etc. Wait: Does Diane have to start wearing a mask now, too? "No," says Nancy. "The worst offenders are like, little kids with runny noses. They're like a big fat germ." Then I realize I haven't been above 1000 since I was on Neupogen three months ago. Then Nancy asks me why I'm not on neupogen. I explain. It makes sense to her. Now I ask her worst-case questions. I find it very hard to do this but there is a worse feeling, namely having Diane all but browbeat you into calling someone back to ask the question you should've asked. So I ask Nancy what are my risks as my white count goes lower and still lower. "I would say, if you go a pretty prolonged period ... you're going to get something that's an oddity" -- the sort of thing the body just normally swats away without any effort at all could cause an infection. Nancy also tells me to make sure everything I eat is cooked, and to avoid raw fruits or vegetables of any kind. (This 30 minutes after I had eaten half a banana with my oatmeal.) V R ~ th # $ . alsoListedIn % Times New Roman tt LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Times New Roman tt LAND win subject 2/23/01 V T Arial (6LAND win $datatabl $datatabl Q M $ flRenderOnEntryname pikeRenderer Q L ( dexpansionState Arial LAND win heightleft scrollLinetopwidth Z V n * $ 1 6 e m x alsoListedIn % Arial nn LAND win TEXTtvbarnManilaSitesComStoriesbody bodyType text/x-opmlctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo 0 lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumopml \
http://www.accessexcellence.com/AB/GG/monoclonal.html (illustrated!)
http://www.mabpd.com/ (UA-Birmingham institute creates MAbs)
http://www.ultranet.com/~jkimball/BiologyPages/M/Monoclonals.html (another illustrated guide) In a nutshell, monoclonal antibodies "can play a role in identifying antigens present in minute quantities - such as those that may be present on cancer cells - that are often missed by heterogeneous antibody preparations such as those made in normal immune responses." However, there is a cautionary note on the Ultranet page:
***Problems with monoclonal therapy Why are there so few monoclonals being used in human therapy a quarter century after their discovery? The main difficulty is that mouse antibodies are "seen" by the human immune system as foreign, and the human patient mounts an immune response against them, producing HAMA ("human anti-mouse antibodies"). These not only cause the therapeutic antibodies to be quickly eliminated from the host, but also form immune complexes that cause damage to the kidneys. Link to discussion of immune complex disorders. (Monoclonal antibodies raised in humans would lessen the problem, but few people would want to be immunized in an attempt to make them and most of the attempts that have been made have been unsuccessful.) Two approaches have been used in an attempt to reduce the problem of HAMA."bull" I find this quote at an astrology site: "We must remember that the United States is a Cancer nation and that this Full Moon eclipse falls on the natal Sun of our country's chart. The Sun is now in Capricorn, opposing our country's natal Sun. The Goat rules business and politics and the Inauguration of the new President is on January 20. This can be a time of great division or great healing, depending upon the choices people make now. Now is the time to come together as family based on love for the greater good. " (http://www.therainbowbridge.com/articles/astro.htm) And this from starcats.com: "The United States, with its Sun in Cancer, first rebelled against Capricorn England, and then selected Capricorn Russia as its principal world enemy. Thus we can see how global conflicts can be founded on the inability of a Cancer nation to accept its Capricorn opposite, and vice versa. The United States, with its Sun conjunct Jupiter, is obsessed with an ideology of 'freedom' and has a constitution based on clearly defined rights, wehreas the chart for Communist Russia [no longer valid] has its Sun in Scorpio, a position indicating adherence to a rigid State religion and semi-deified national leaders." Mundane Astrology, Campion, et al., p. 220. t ۶λ ! . 4 9 @ T - [ d n body ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial ۶ LAND win subject This is a private diary. t λQ * 5 < P . W ` j body ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial λλ LAND win subject This is a private diary. It's becoming clear that I won't be able to set aside time every day to type in diary entries. In fact, no sooner did I begin this than I realized I owe the copy desk a review of a show airing on Monday. It's just a capsule, but still. I need to sign off and do that first. "bull" We'll start with the freshest items and work our way backward. I'm right now reading one of two children's books about pioneering figures in blood research. This would be for the Blood book, obviously. (By the way, I notice my agent suitor Richard Abate is representing a talented young writer who has authored a literary novel called Egg Code that "embraces the history of print" from the 11th century on.) This is a book about Charles Drew, the black M.D. who in the mid 20th century perfected the system of storing blood. Until he came along, transfusions were done human to human, otherwise blood spoiled. It notes that his 245-page doctoral thesis, "Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation," though never published, became "the prime guide for the country's future blood banks." That'll be a good resource. He also devised a way to ship dried plasma around the world in the months leading up to WWII. His career was cut short by an auto accident in 1950. He was 45. "bull" I slept 11 hours last night. I think I will have to resign myself to this for the next six weeks. Nurse Nancy got out the protocol yesterday and showed me that I MUST take 25mg of Benadryl, INTRAVENOUSLY, every time I get Rituxan. No exceptions. Well, this is how it went yesterday. Nancy stuck a needle into my IV line. Over the course of a minute she slowly injected the Benadryl into my bloodstream. Two minutes later I was slurring my words like a drunken sailor. Five minutes later I was on my side, knocked out. I remembered to keep my I-V arm exposed so she could hook me up to the Rituxan. But five hours later, as I was being checked out, neither Nancy nor I was completely sure I should be driving. Fortunately, I picked up as soon as I hit the exit and after a couple minutes on the road, I was fine. But I really wasn't the same the rest of the day. Of course, I had only slept five or six hours the night before and we did go to tai chi class after the Rituxan. So I had various excuses. "bull" Richard Abate and I spoke this afternoon. He's a young-sounding guy, very personable, very much the New Yorker, self-proclaimed media-savvy, ~ R F ! ; H F S Z n / u n- ~ body ctReads ctRevisionsflNewPostNotificationSent inResponseTo lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial R R LAND win subject This is a private diary. Neither one of us slept much last night. Tonight we will be back in the same bed, so that should help. I talked last night for nearly two hours to my brother, my poor, lost-soul brother, who is finding responsibility a very hard pill to swallow. But if he takes his medicine, I believe he will finally be healed of decades of pent-up anger and resentment that he is only now beginning to acknowledge. Diane and I talked about it this morning over breakfast. She thinks Todd should go to the Landmark Forum. I must admit I wasn't surprised at all when I learned that not only had Todd raised a scant $30 toward his leukemia benefit run in Anchorage in June, but he got himself fired from the Wild Oats store that was supposedly going to set up the chili-feed fundraisers. I was more surprised to learn that when Todd moved out of the house in 1973 to go live with my father, it wasn't (he claimed) of his own accord; his mother kicked him out. I don't remember it that way at all, but then I don't remember a lot of things that seem seared into Todd's conscience. Nor was I aware that my mother was without a redeeming feature. But Todd insisted to me last night, "Mom doesn't care about her children. It's weird, but she just doesn't." He's distorting reality, but that's Todd for you. I had no inclination to argue with him on that point. I realized that you could let him talk for 10 or 20 minutes at a time and he would scarcely be aware he was monopolizing the conversation. t נ߷3 ! . ף 9 @ T 0 [ d n body ctReads ctRevisions inResponseTo lastUpdatemember aaron@tvbarn.commsgnumpostTime responses Arial נ߶נ LAND win subject This is a private diary. 6%6* ( 0 < D P X d l x , 4 @ H T \ h p | $ 0 8 D L X ` l t ( 4 < H P \ d p x 0000001 20000002 (w0000003 *0000004 -A0000005 20000006 50000007 0000008 0000009 I0000010 ٳ0000011 ު0000012 0000013 0000014 0000015 0000016 p20000017 r0000018 )0000019 7>0000020 f 0000021 œ0000022 R0000023 0000024 0000025 0000026 0000027 0000028 30000029 ;0000030 Y0000031 h0000032 l0000033 oA0000034 0000035 0000036 Y0000037 )#0000038 90000039 0000040 0000041 0000042 0000043 Ȭ0000044 W0000045 l0000046 0000047 O0000048 S O B єף t 1 adrMsgReaderf["D:\\Guest Databases\\www\\manilaWebsites3.root"].tvbarnManilaSitesComManilaWebsite.discuss.msgReaderflChangesDirty msgReaderUrl 0http://tvbarn.ManilaSites.Com/discuss/msgReader$ nextMsgNumurl 2http://tvbarn.ManilaSites.Com/stories/storyReader$ S x t єף B і і ї ( @ 0 8 ) @ H 5 P P X j ` h p x 4 @ n Ʊ Ʊ: ^ y 9 f y AK At h3 f ( 0 Y 8 @ @ ^ H [ P ^ X Ʊ ` 4 h λ p F x ף000000100000020000003000000400000050000006000000700000080000009000001000000110000012000001300000140000015000001600000170000018000001900000200000021000002200000230000024000002500000260000027000002800000290000030000003100000320000033000003400000350000036000003700000380000039000004000000410000042000004300000440000045000004600000470000048 x 6 2 єє changes 6 L 6%6* + : F O [ a m scalendar a checkouts MeditorialPrefs messages prefs fstats I E Arial T m H : LAND win on finalFilter (pta) return (manilaSuite.filters.finalFilter (pta)) E Arial T qG E < LAND win on firstFilter (pta) return (manilaSuite.filters.firstFilter (pta)) C Arial T m E 6 LAND win on pageFilter (pta) return (manilaSuite.filters.pageFilter (pta)) y . EqG $ 0 ; finalFilter j firstFilter ? pageFilter VArial y I I \ D ѓ url http://tvbarn.ManilaSites.Com/ V MS Sans Serif ^ 2 F & Ʊ U ] W _ Y a [ c ] e 9 Q D O D M ) . X b M \ r J ^ U c ' { . = 1 d k c | 2/10/00 I2/10/002/12/01 J2/12/012/15/00 J2/15/002/15/01 J2/15/012/16/01 J2/16/012/17/01 J2/17/012/18/01 J2/18/012/19/01 J2/19/012/20/01 J2/20/012/21/01 J2/21/012/22/01 J2/22/012/23/01 J2/23/012/24/01 J2/24/012/25/01 J2/25/01 Aaron Barnhart's Leukemia Diary bAaron Barnhart's Leukemia DiaryAaron Barnhart's Weblog IAaron Barnhart's WeblogAbout 7AboutAbout this site QAbout this site Appearance YAppearancebluedotIn both cases, the new gene is expressed in mammalian cells grown in tissue culture (E. coli cannot add the sugars that are a necessary part of these glycoproteins).
- Chimeric antibodies. The antigen-binding part (variable regions) of the mouse antibody is fused to the effector part (constant region) of a human antibody using genetic engineering. Infliximab is one of these.
- "Humanized" antibodies. The amino acids responsible for making the antigen binding site (the hypervariable regions) are inserted into a human antibody molecule replacing its own hypervariable regions. Daclizumab, Vitaxin, and herceptin are examples.
bluestar 
Browse this. 9Browse this.bull 
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BUTV 2000 !{manilaSuite.gems.includeGem (1)}
December 1-10 PDecember 1-10December 11-20 QDecember 11-20December 21-31 QDecember 21-31 February 1-6 OFebruary 1-6
February 7-10 OFebruary 7-10
February 9-10 OFebruary 9-10February: Winter's Chill ZFebruary: Winter's Chillhairy cell leukemia Mhairy cell leukemia
It Worked! 7It Worked! January 1-10 OJanuary 1-10
January 11-20 PJanuary 11-20
January 21-26 PJanuary 21-26
January 27-31 PJanuary 27-31Leukemia: The Diagnosis YLeukemia: The Diagnosis MediaNews 0MediaNewsmedical update Kmedical updatenext 
Part 1: Diagnosis SPart 1: DiagnosisPart 2: Chemotherapy WPart 2: ChemotherapyPart 3: Outpatient UPart 3: Outpatientreddot 
Table of Contents TTable of ContentsThis is a private diary. [This is a private diary.TV Barn ,TV Barn yellowdot 
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