Dear friends and family,
I did not get to sleep in my bed at all the night of Sep 4-5. I would lie in bed restless despite having taken my hypnotic sleep aid Zolpidam, get up and read until I could not keep my eyes open, go back to bed and lie restless, get up to read, ad nauseum. I finally fell sound asleep in my blue chair from 5:28 to 8:06 a.m. I crawled into bed and slept until 9:43. I did 1.5 hours computer work in the morning, finishing and editing my 4 Sep rant and writing up my ideas on how to mitigate the Grand Water and Sewer impact fees on moderate income housing in Spanish Valley, then another 2.5 computer work hours in the afternoon before going to Damian Nash's birthday Kaleigh at four to six, where I had delicious intellectual conversations with Damian and guests. That night I was kept awake by acute stomach pain, until I threw up three big and two small heaves at 2:28 a.m. on the 6th . The 6th was a tired, spaced-out day, during which I got no computer work done, instead snoozing on my bed or in the blue chair. I did get the credit union checkbook balanced in the morning and make red chili stew in the afternoon, having it for dinner with John and Jeanie. I went into town to City Market in mid-afternoon to get mail and drop a proton pump antacid prescription refill at City Market Pharmacy which I have to pick up tomorrow to avoid running out. While at CM I got sardines and bananas.
The night of the 6-7th my stomach did not hurt, but I still did not get to sleep in bed until 5:30 in the morning. Before then I tried to get to sleep in bed, lay around twitching and sleepless despite having taken both Zolpidem and Lorazepam, then got up and read, repeating the cycle some eight times during the night. I was not conscious of anything in particular on my mind or bothering me physically. My sleep clock seems to have radically re-set itself for no apparent reason.
My pet situation has changed radically. Baxter has decided he lives at the Deltec with the McKees and their dog Halle. I comes down to visit me every day or two, then goes back to the Deltec after a pet. Substituting for Baxter I now have a cricket and a preying mantis living in my main house office on or near my desk. My first cricket familiar had one jumping leg; he's disappeared and his replacement, a female, has a full set of limbs. When she's thirsty and I am taking my evening pills she comes over and crawls up the side of my water glass. I put out a drop of water on the tile I set my cup on, and she drinks it up, whereupon I produce a second drop. The preying mantis turned up two days ago. This morning, before I came out to do computer work, the cricket was standing on the wall behind the area of my desk the calendar is on, and the mantis was standing on the edge of the calendar. The reason they hang out in the area is that the light from my compact fluorescent drafting lamp over the calendar, which I leave on as a night light, attracts all sorts of gnats and moths. I regularly vacuum up a litter of corpses from my calendar and the nearby desk in the morning.
On Tuesday the 7th I had yoghurt + Diamond XP yeast and a banana for breakfast, finished *Conservation* magazine, and did an hour of computer work before taking a shower and going to senior lunch - where I ate very little, the PO, and City Market. I did 1.5 hours computer work in the afternoon but otherwise rested, feeling weak and vaguely sick after two p.m. I had a Nutrimeal shake for dinner. Cappie called and we discussed my digestive problems. She advised eating several soft or liquid meals a day to help food get through my digestive tract. We are both very worried that I am developing another cancer-caused intestinal blockage; there is no other explanation for throwing up the undigested contents of the previous two meals. The light eating left me with no strong digestive distress overnight, but I still could not get to sleep in bed until after 4 a.m. From 9 to 4 I got up six times to sit in the blue chair to read until I dozed off. Dozing off in the blue chair did not predict I would be able to go to sleep in bed when I returned there.
On Wednesday the 8th I went to the HASU staff meeting at 8 a.m., then the PO. Returning home I processed mail and paid bills, resting on my bed for 15 minutes between sessions. I did 2.5 hours of computer work before eating cottage cheese and fruit compote for lunch; I decided to eat light instead of going to the senior center for a hot turkey sandwich. I attended the Interlocal Housing Task Force Impact Fee Committee meeting at City Hall at 1:30, and the Planning and Zoning Commission hearing on the Cinema Court campus upzone to MFR-14 at 6 p.m. - the Commission unanimously recommended the upzone pass to the County Council. I watched Quentin Tarantino's Ingloreous Basterds on Showtime TV cable from 7:30 to ten, drinking a Nutrimeal shake for dinner. I didn't get soundly to sleep until 4:02 a.m. in my bed; I got up and read and then went back to bed eight times from 10:15 p.m. until then. My stomach hurt periodically and I belched a lot through the night but did not throw up. My weight was up one pound from the last measurement.
On Thursday the 9th I slept in, got up to take my pills, and went back to bed. When I got up, I changed out the house towels, stripped my bed, and washed them. Joel Nystrom came over to pay the rent and utilities on 472 Bowen Circle and settle up on plumbing work he'd done on 470 Bowen and replacing the kitchen sink faucet in the MHO. He snaked the hot water supply on the kitchen sink and restored hot water flow so John and Jeanie now have a fully functional kitchen sink in the MHO for their fruit and vegetable processing. I did 1.75 hours of computer work in the afternoon before going to my massage. Judy Powers came over to clean my house. Thursday night I couldn't get to sleep again. I got up nine times to read, then back to bed to attempt sleep; the last time up was 5:15-6:04 a.m. on the 10th , after which I fell asleep.
On the 10th I got up to take my pills at eight, and then went back to bed and snoozed until 9:15. I did 1.25 hours of computer work in the morning before going to senior lunch, the PO, and City Market. Eating senior lunch (green chile chicken, rice pilaf, broccoli, citrus cup) was an experiment to see how my stomach handles the meal - it did fine. I read the *Moab Times-Independent* and snoozed in the afternoon. When I went to bed, even after taking a Lorazepam, I was restless and got up eight times to read, the last being 2:47-3:37 a.m. after which I fell asleep in bed.
On the 11th I again got up to take my pills at eight. I went back to bed and slept until ten, got up and ate my normal breakfast of yoghurt and cereal. I got nothing done until mid-afternoon because I kept falling sound asleep when I sat down in my blue chair before and after lunch of red chili stew at one. I spent hours on the computer processing E-mails in late afternoon. I threw up my lunch and dinner at 6:37 a.m. the following morning, after a night of intestinal pain that came and went and kept me from sleeping in bed, but not from dozing off in the blue chair.
On the 12th I left for Salt Lake City at 10:45 and arrived at Michael Mielke's at 3:15. The drive was without incident and did not exhaust me. Michael and Nedda had Ray and Amy over for dinner and we spent 3.75 hours discussing how to overcome the corruption of government by special industrial interests and how to get to Barak Obama through James Hansen (NASA) and David Orr (Oberlin College)'s relationship with Michelle Obama. If Obama wants to salvage his presidency and be remembered as the transformational figure he promised to be, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain at this point by seeking electoral reform and implementation of the other planks of *The Renewable Deal*. There is an environmentally just and secure, prosperous future our society can attain, but it will require a combination of leadership from the presidency and from the grass roots to overcome Congressional resistance. I took a hypnotic at bedtime and slept fairly well through the night. At 7:40 a.m. on the 13th I threw up 2 small, one large, and then another small heave in which part of dinner but no sign of earlier meals was evident. The vomitus was very acid and burned my esophagus. I woke up with stomach pain three times during the night. I found that if I sat up and rotated my torso clockwise, the pain would go away after a while and I could go back to sleep.
Michael and I had scheduled the 13th as a day to be together. We talked and talked. At noon we picked up Jean Arnold and some lunch items at Whole Foods and headed for Brighton, where we walked around Silver Lake, strategizing about how to deal with Governor Herbert's Utah Energy Plan initiative. From 5-9 I went to Ray Wheeler's house where he began a series of videotaped interviews with me about my personal history and how it led to my developing *The Renewable Deal*.
On the 14th I went to Huntsman at 10:20 for my lab work and then met with Dr. Jones at 10:40. As usual, lab values and physical examination reveals nothing wrong. I told my oncologist about the pains and vomiting I have been having and she agreed the pattern looks like an intestinal blockage is forming due to cancer pressure on my gut - although it might be something else. She made the brilliant suggestion of having Dr. Adler do an endoscopy. If he locates a place where the intestines are squeezed by exterior pressure, he can put a stent in to block the intestine open. This would buy me more time. When and if I cannot get food though my intestines, then I am at end game - my life expectancy would only be the couple of weeks it would take for me to starve to death. I am set up for the endoscopy on Friday the 24th of September at Huntsman. I will go up on Thursday, and stay over on Saturday to do some more videotaping with Ray before coming home again on Sunday. Dr. Adler and his endoscope has so far been the only accurate diagnostic of my cancer. If my problems are due to a cause other than cancer progression in the abdomen, he is the most likely person to be able to detect what is going on.
I drove home from Huntsman on Tuesday afternoon, stopping for a nap in the truck in Price River Canyon. That night I was up and down out of bed six times, and never slept in my bed all night. At 4:37 a.m. on the 15th I had severe stomach pain and took an Oxycodone (the Naltrexone had worn off by then), after which I snoozed in the blue chair until 6:30 a.m.
At 8 a.m. on the 15th I attended the HASU staff meeting. I chaired the HASU monthly Board meeting at noon. I took Oxycodone at four hour intervals to keep my stomach pain subdued and snoozed in my chair most of the morning and afternoon when not at meetings. On the 16th I slept in after getting up at 8 to take my pills, eating a late breakfast. I did 0.75 hours computer work before going to HASU to sign checks, having my massage at 3:30, getting a * Times-Independent* and going to the PO. Thursday night at 7 I attended the Full Agency meeting at Grand Water and Sewer Service Agency, meaning that all three water and/or sewer Boards of which I am a member met in succession the same night. On the 17th my stomach was ok in the morning and early afternoon so I did not take any Oxycodone, but began hurting about 2:30 p.m. I began taking Oxycodone every four hours again to take the edge off the pain so I could rest. I went to sleep in my bed for a half hour each three times during the night, but most of my sleeping was in the blue chair: sitting up reduces the stomach pain. From Thursday at my massage when it turned up when I lay on my stomach on the massage table, I have had a sharp, sore, painful band on my right front side - it feels like a hernia. It went away before Monday when I could have had Dr. Munger take a look because if I have an intestinal protrusion into a hernia, Dr. Adler can't do the endoscopy.
The 17th was a day for calls from daughters: first Dane, then Michele, then Cappie. Dane says that Scott is finished with his current course of chemotherapy, thank goodness, and told me about going to Pomona College in Claremont, CA, with Tori who really likes that school as a college choice. Michele was on her way to pick up daughter Crystal from college for a visit when I spoke to her. Her old beau Kurt had been out for a week and a half evaluating what needs to be done to fix problems with her house's foundations, roof, and insulation. Alex is back on meds. I told Michele about my medical situation and she will be ready to come out to render help as soon as I need to call on her. Cappie said she had just run her first two simulations with the medical robot at Northern New Mexico College and got rave reviews from the students. Otherwise there was nothing in particular to report on her end; we mostly talked about my health issues.
The night of the 17th-18th I slept in bed about half the time, getting up three times for long periods in which I read a little and mostly slept in the blue chair. I got up to take my pills at 8 a.m. and then went back to bed until almost ten, doing a few chores in the late morning but mostly dozing off in my office chair. I ate a can of sardines for lunch. I printed off a copy of my 39-page exposition on Alzheimer's disease to send to Dane, caught up my rant, and did some writing work during 3.5 hours on the Athlon computer. I went to the Grand Water and Sewer Service Agency staff and Board party from 6-9 p.m. where I had mahi-mahi tuna steak, two fruit salads, corn on the cob, and fruitcake.
On Sunday the 19th I slept in and then dozed all afternoon, getting nothing done. On the 20th I took the Nissan in for inspection and registration in the morning, had senior lunch, went to the PO, credit union and grocery store, then napped the rest of the day. On the 21st I again slept in and then napped in my chair all day, going to the meeting of the Grand County Council at seven for the public hearing on the Cinema Court low-income rental housing property rezone which HASU had applied for. I made the presentation to the Council as President of the HASU Board and the rezone was approved unanimously.
On the 22nd I went to the HASU staff meeting at 8 a.m. and presided over a special meeting of the HASU Board at 9 a.m. At one p.m. I had a meeting with Bill Stone, candidate for Grand County Sheriff, to provide some feedback on his campaign. On the 23rd I left for Salt Lake City in the morning, picking up RJ the Navajo in Helper and giving him a ride to downtown Salt Lake City. He played two CDs for me on the way; one an album of love songs in traditional Navajo and the other a country-western band. I spent the evening with Michael and Nedda Mielke at their house.
On the 23rd Michael took me to the Huntsman Cancer Center at 8:30 to begin preparation for my endoscopy, which Dr. Adler conducted at ten. I stayed at Huntsman recovering from anaesthesia until after two, when Michael took me to his home. I snoozed the rest of the day. Dr. Adler found no blockages or abnormalities in my stomach or intestines.
On Saturday the 24th I went to Ray Wheeler's house in the afternoon where we taped 3.25 hours of interviews with me on *The Renewable Deal*, what led up to my writing it, and other issues. I stayed for dinner and met Ray and Amy's friend Mark from Boise, Idaho. On the morning of the 26th I attended the First Unitarian Church 11 a.m. services with Michael (see notes on the sermon below) before leaving to return home at two p.m. I got home about seven. I had a lot of abdominal pain which I controlled fairly well with Oxycodone.
On Monday morning at 7:36 I threw up in four heaves, in which chicken and quinoa from Sunday lunch was still recognizable. I spent 0.75 hours on the computer in the morning. I saw Dr. Jonas Munger who prescribed the slow-release form of Oxycodone, Oxycontin 10 mg, which I am to take 12 hours apart for basic abdominal pain control, and Oxycodone 5 mg to take to control "breakthrough" pain. He also prescribed Regulan for me to experiment with to see if speeding up peristalsis will enable my stomach to clear itself better. I took the prescriptions to City Market pharmacy to pick up on Tuesday. That night I had severe abdominal pain that kept me up in my blue chair most of the night; my existing supply of Oxycodone in single doses would not get on top of the pain.
On Tuesday morning I attended the meeting of the Interlocal Housing Task Force and went to the PO before going home and snoozing the rest of the day in my blue chair, eating Oxycodone every four hours. I started the Oxycontin at 8 p.m. that night which worked to keep my abdominal pain down except for one breakthrough at about 2 a.m.
Wednesday morning the 29th I went to the HASU staff meeting at 8 a.m., then the PO. I returned a package from the Lance Armstrong Foundation to Allen Memorial Hospital and had scrambled eggs and bacon breakfast for $1.50 in the hospital cafeteria - cheapest food in town. The Oxycontin is keeping me feeling pretty good without being dizzy or drowsy, but I can feel abdominal pain lurking ready to break out if it were not for the drug suppressing it. I got some groceries at City Market. I downloaded E-mail for the first time in 18 days and spent a total of 2 hours doing computer work, with a nap in my blue chair in the middle of the afternoon. I called Michele and talked to grandsons Alex and Richard. On the 30th the only thing I got done was going to HASU to sign checks before my massage at 2:15, the PO, and getting a *Moab Times-Independent*. My stomach started hurting badly during the massage session; I do not tolerate lying flat on my back. I ate almost nothing except a Nutrimeal in early afternoon and a few bites of cottage cheese with Mandarin oranges at dinnertime.
Now for this installment of my rant, *Field Notes from the Handbasket*, about issues and events that I thought worth sharing. These rants do not contain most of the additions I have made to my 107 chapters in proto-books and essays-in-progress (30 Sep =3D 1476 pages); or E-mail correspondence about water and sewer, environmental, housing and planning issues, International Organic Inspectors Association, Moab Progressive Area Network, Canyonlands Watershed Council forums, et al, some of which have also been produced during a typical month. The 36 planks and chapters of *The Renewable Deal*, plus my paper on global warming, can be accessed at earthrestoration.net. Look for The Renewable Deal tab in the left-hand column on the website home page. The full text of each of my rants is archived at http://www.speakeasy.org/~dbrick/lance/
*ECONOMIC WATCH (1): 55 PERCENT OF U.S. WORKFORCE SUFFERS FROM JOB SQUEEZE: A recent Pew poll found that, in the past two years, 32% of workers have been out of work during this period, 28% have had their hours reduced, 23% have had to take pay cuts, and 11% have been forced from full-time positions into part-time. TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence reports the real unemployment/underemployment rate of the U.S. is 22%, when you include those not looking for a job, the 8.6 million college graduates who are in low-skill, part-time jobs because the full-time jobs they were educated for don't exist, etc.
EW(2): OIL INDUSTRY BOONDOGGLES: When BP rented the Deepwater Horizon drill rig to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, it took 70% of the rent it paid off BP's taxable income. Not to be outdone, Transoceanic, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, moved its corporate address offshore in 1999 in order to dodge U.S. tax obligations. First it relocated from Houston to the Cayman Islands, then to Switzerland, allowing Transoceanic to avoid $1.8 billion in U.S. taxes it would have paid if it stayed in Houston.
Last year, ExxonMobil raked in $19 billion in profits, then used U.S. subsidies to get a $156 million tax refund. In the past two years, the oil companies have invested $340 million in lobbying to keep their subsidies flowing from the U.S. government: a proposal to slash oil subsidies was killed in a June, 2010, Senate vote, 61 to 35, with every Republican and 21 Democrats voting for big oil's subsidies to continue uncut.
EW(3): POVERTY RATE UP: According to a Census Bureau report in September, 1 in 7 Americans is living in poverty, a 3 million increase from last year.
EW(4): REPOSESSIONS OF HOUSES: 1.2 million houses are projected to be repossessed by the end of 2010. 5 million Americans are currently behind on their mortgage payments. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has been below 5% interest for 19 straight weeks, but almost no one can qualify for a loan under current criteria.
POLITICAL WATCH (1): "SOCIALISM" NOT AN EPITHET: Polls show that more than 40% of the U.S. public no longer sees "socialism" as an economic system to be feared.
PW(2): ELECTORATE VIEW OF CONGRESSIONAL INCUMBENTS: In a recent poll, 12% of the electorate said Congressmen deserve re-election and 78% agreed with "toss out incumbents." In news interviews with voters across a number of news reports, I have seen a pattern: a large number of voters are willing to vote Congressional incumbents out and vote mavericks in, regardless of party, just to shake things up and register their disapproval of business-as-usual in Congress and the perceived fact that Obama and the Democrats did not deliver the transformational politics of hope they preached in 2008. 80% of voters say the country is going in the wrong direction. Wreaking devastation on the political establishment of both parties communicates that to political leaders who are not listening to their constituents.
PW(3): REPUBLICAN LEAD IN POLLS: According to columnist Rich Lowry, a recent CNN poll found that among voters who say they dislike both parties, Republicans now lead by 38 points. Among independents in the CNN poll, Republicans led Democrats by 62 to 30. It appears to me that among voters who either dislike or do not identify with either the Republican or Democratic Party, a plurality are ready to vote Republican in order to induce a train wreck. They don't like what Obama is doing and they don't like what the Republicans are doing, so the best outcome to be obtained is to have a hyper-partisan Republican-majority Congress which reflexively opposes everything Obama and the Democrats want to do, with a Democratic president who will veto everything the Repugnicans pass. The unconscious idea in the heads of the majority of U.S. voters who are not core supporters of either the Republican or Democratic Parties appears to be: better the country not be going anywhere at all than to be going in the wrong direction.
PW(4): "REVERSE FASCISM" is what Chris Hedges says the U.S. is entering into. Regular fascism is where the politicians are making the decisions on behalf of their clients, the plutocrats. Reverse fascism is where the plutocrats are making the decisions about public policy directly, with the politicians as window-dressing.
INTERESTING (1): GENETICALLY MODIFIED CORN CROPS APPEAR TO CAUSE LIVER AND KIDNEY DAMAGE: Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini, a French researcher at the University of Caen analyzed data from Monsanto studies of the effects of consuming three GM corn varieties they have marketed (two varieties bred to express Bacteria thurigensis, a natural insecticide, and one to be Roundup herbicide resistant) which were obtained from Monsanto via a lawsuit. Dr. Seralini found "statistically significant" indications of liver and kidney damage in rats fed the GM corn because of elevated hormones in the blood which indicate the animals' livers and kidneys were not functioning properly.
I(2): The Alaska Inter-Tribal Council website www.nunat.net was set up to provide a place for rural Alaskans to share information and document changes in the environment around them. One report is of salmon with unusual spots and deformed spines caught on the Yukon River.
I(3): IMMIGRANT LABOR IN DAIRY FARMS: A survey entitled *The Economic Impact of Immigration on U.S. Dairy Farms* (see www.nmpf.org) found that 41% of 138,000 full-time workers in U.S. dairies were immigrants. I have no information about how many of these were in the U.S. legally v. illegally.
I(4): ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS, GENES AND AUTISM: Stephen Barrie, ND, presents evidence that childhood autism is firmly linked to neurotoxins in the environment. Since the 1970s, there has been a 60-fold increase in autism spectrum diagnoses. Barrie's statistics put the risk as 1 in 58 for boys currently; Health and Human Services 2007 statistics put the risk at 1 in 38 among boys. Autism spectrum includes autism, Asperger's syndrome and Pervasive Development Disorder. The U.S. Senate held a hearing on the state of research into autism which showed an emerging consensus/convergence on the cause being the interaction between toxins in the environment and the child's genes. A study in India showed a direct dose-related association between levels of methyl mercury or lead in the blood and the severity of autism in the child. The cause of autism spectrum disorder appears to be elevated levels of neurotoxins confronted by genes of the CYP and GST families that do not provide for proper detoxification of these fugitive chemicals. Children with autism spectrum disorder also have reduced levels of beneficial gut bacteria.
I(5): 67% of U.S. women wear dress size 14 or larger ("plus" sizes).
I(6): FIRST UNITARIAN SERMON delivered by Rev. Goldsmith on 26 Sep: What would Jesus have me do? -Peter Gomes, Harvard Professor of Ethics. For the world to get better we must let go of our fortunes. The ultimate inconvenient truth in Jesus's teaching is what we must sacrifice. The phrase translated from the Aramaic as "Son of God" means "folks like us." In the New Testament, Jesus gets annoyed at the stupidity of his followers - their inability to grasp the obvious.
Wendell Berry has two tests: (1) If we had been alive at the time to hear Jesus directly, would we have become his disciples? (2) Had we become disciples, how well would we have followed his teachings as to what we ought to do?
An invitation to the future is what the prophets of today are preaching. We must make a radical change to achieve that future.
The gospel of wealth is antithetical to a world in which the end is near. Truth by definition is inconvenient - to embrace it requires change and sacrifice.
GOOD NEWS (1): NEW MEXICO WILDERNESS ADDITIONS: The Cibola National Forest Boundary Extension, HB 5988, which would protect a critical wildlife corridor through the Manzano and Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque in NM, passed the House Natural Resources Committee on July 22.
The Desert Peaks Wilderness Act, S. 1689, passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with strong bipartisan support. It would add over 300,000 acres of southern NM mountain terrain, mostly in the Organ Mountains, to the Wilderness Preservation System.
BAD NEWS (1): BEING HEALTH-UNINSURED RAISES RISK OF DEATH IN CHILDREN: A Johns Hopkins study of 23 million children found that being uninsured increases a hospitalized child's risk of death by 60% versus an otherwise similar hospitalized child with insurance.
BN(2): BEING HEALTH-UNINSURED RAISES DEATH RISK IN ALL AGES: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that adults younger than 65 who lack health insurance are 40% more likely to die that similar people with insurance.
BN(3): PREVIOUSLY HEALTH-UNINSURED MEDICARE PATIENTS HAVE WORSE HEALTH: 65 to 74-year-olds who lack insurance before going on Medicare are more likely to be hospitalized for complications of cardiovascular disease and diabetes than comparable Medicare beneficiaries who had health insurance before 65. Medicare pays an average of $1,200 more annually on the "previously uninsured" with these conditions than on people with the same conditions who had been insured.
And so ends this rant installment. As you can see from the personal narrative at the beginning, many days in September have passed with me not having the energy to spend time on the computer writing this exercise in blofication. I do not know what the future will bring day by day. It was only on Sunday night the 26th that abdominal pain became a regular issue, and the 28th when Dr. Munger's new medication regime proved able to cope with it most of the time - so far. I will keep on keeping on and get the next rant installment out as I can. In the meanwhile, Blessed Be! -Lance