100520b

 

drinking the Kool-Aid
before radiology
this isn't half bad

021519

growl
of the machine
pause in healing

120318b

withdrawal from pain
medicine burns for a day
trying to work

092718b

such outrage
on my behalf
make some calls, Dr.

090418c

doctor guesses
that I need less and more
we'll see

060817d — Cancer post 1

Cancer

Earlier this year I had a routine annual blood test would suggested a possible problem with my prostate. This led to a visit to a urologist and then a biopsy last week, which confirmed that I do have prostate cancer. At least some of the samples indicated a rather aggressive form of it. Today I had a CAT scan and a bone scan and I guess I will find out in about a week what those show. At that time, we will decide what to do. Some form of treatment is indicated, because this is not one of the relatively benign varieties, and because I am not old enough to just calmly die of it.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to talk about it, like Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing did about her breast cancer, but I decided that I do. It might help me and it might help other people as well.

Trying not to get my hopes up too high, but then again, why not? That way I can be optimistic, at least for a while. And optimism feels good, which means it reduces stress, and that is good for you.

I have already made one decision though. I am going to eat out more often!

And perhaps it would be good to end all of these with a short poem. Again, why not?

today I ran over
several fire ant nests
because they annoy me
from now on
live and let live
will be my guide

053117

at the Dr.'s
everything's problematic
when you can't move yourself

Ebola lecture, Tuscaloosa

Talk this Friday,  February 24th, 1:30 pm, ten Hoor 30, UA, Tuscaloosa
Dr. Rob Wallace (author of "Big Farms, Big Flu"; and "Neoliberal Ebola")
University of Minnesota

Title: Bird flu, Ebola, and Zika: When Evolution Meets Political Economy
Our economy is transforming planet Earth into planet Farm. Agribusiness’s impact extends to the deadliest of diseases. Ebola and Zika both recently re-emerged when logging, mining, and intensive agriculture opened up neotropical forests to their escape. There are other pathogens evolving more directly off megafarms. We can model such connections, but there are broader implications in play as well. The search for a more perspicacious evolutionary biology is not necessarily divided from the fight for a better world. Hume's guillotine and Moore's naturalist fallacy, wise cautionaries at the heart of much of the natural sciences, are often circumstantially fallacious.  Whereas many a new scientist is taught in the lab--as opposed to the classroom--that conducting good research revolves around avoiding professionally awkward study questions, in actuality the struggles for truth and justice can be deeply entwined. 

Special thanks to the Department of Anthropology, the Blount Initiative, New College, and the EVOS program for sponsoring this lecture. 

062413

before antidepressants
nasty, brutish
did not seem short