February 2017 – WALKING ON THIN ICE

blue sky bleached

February 28, 2017 No Comments

On Learning Wife has Eye Cancer

Brown trees barren
Blue sky bleached
Wasteland terrain
Gasp in breach

From afar
From afar
From afar
I am
You are

– Smith, 2.28.2017

pixie-cut Lady w/ cancer eye

February 23, 2017 No Comments

Lady cut her hair pixie short yesterday, it had hung below her shoulders.

She did it to break the mental/emotional gloom brought on by discovering two days ago she had eye cancer, and that in 15 days the doctors are going to sew a radioactive pellet to her eyeball for three days to kill the tumor without mushing her mind.

Her online research found a 30-50% mortality rate over 10 years (much of that in the first year), so odds favor us 50-70%.

Her doctor said sewing a radioactive pellet to her eye for three days gets rid of the tumor 94% of the time. The 30-50% mortality rate comes from the cancer having spread to or from the eye, so they’re going to give her a cat scan to see if it’s anywhere else.

My being 27 years older, she’s always worried about outliving me, but now the shoe’s reversed.

She had long hair when we took up in 2005, but when we began traveling for 31 months, she kept cutting it a little shorter each time we got to a new country because long hair and living out of a backpack in foreign lands is a burden, and finally in southern France she cut it pixie short, which has always been my personal favorite of her endless permutations.

Speaking of endless permutations, check out this 70-foto montage of Lady’s looks from 1976-2007 >>> http://agentofchaos.com/lady06.html.

Status Report 251

No poem today
My brain is fried

Too much grim
Happy denied

Yet hope remains
It will go good

Roll rock up hill
Of endless could

– Smith, 2.23.2017

Lady K’s mugshots 1976-2007

sermon of the mote

February 21, 2017 No Comments

Lady K has a medium sized cancerous melanoma in her left eye. In 17 days, they’re going to sew a small radioactive pellet into her eye, keep her in the hospital for 3 days, then remove it. This could solve the problem.

Only two options with this cancer is radiation or removal of eye, and they recommended radiation, which is effective 94% of the time.

Since radiation can also harm the eye’s vision, there’s a 10-15% chance she could lose sight in that eye in the next 2-5 years, which means 85-90% chance she won’t.

They’ll do a biopsy to see how aggressive the cancer is. If it’s type 1 which only moves from eye to liver, they’ll monitor her liver every 6 months for awhile, and if it’s type 2, they’ll monitor her more aggressively.

This will make two cancer survivors in our two-human family. We lost our cat to cancer.

The world cannot pump this many corporate toxins into the air, food chain, and water and not mess up the bio fluxflow.

Sermon of the Mote

Fear lurks in the bushes
rustles mind’s maybe
robs eye’s line
rubs wrong

Flower pluck song long
when draped in gray
and gauze of gaze

Loss of lens reduces focus
lessens long

I soul lies in eye

– Smith, 2.21.2017

the in-sight joke

February 20, 2017 No Comments

Conversation with Wife 33

On possible cancer in her eye, she sez:

Well, this is going to be interesting.
I have a tumor in my eyeball!

If they have to treat my eye with enucleation,
I want a cat’s eye prosthesis!

What did the clavicle say to the breast bone?
‘What’s necks?’

Why did the eyeball laugh at her tumor?
Because she was in on the in-sight joke.

Q: “What’s a tumor?”
A: “A massive inconvenience.”

– Lady & Smith, 2.20.2017

Lady was told Friday she has a large mass in her left eye. Have a Cleveland Clinic appointment tomorrow with Dr Singh, whom we are told may be the world’s top doc for eye tumors.

Not enough data and too many possibilities to dwell on – some benign, some nasty – so must await more data.

Scary. Yet Lady K’s taking it well – on the surface at least what with her joking, but I can see the stress creeping into her. I’ve been there too many times and know how inner worry quietly alters outer perception.

Could be cancer, could be not, could be surgery, could be not, could be lost eye, could be not, but the dark side of the prognosis research is grim.

Whatever – we’ll deal with it. She’s my sweetie.

Here are the doctor’s serious sounding notes:

1. Large ciliary body mass OS:
Small area of bleeding into posterior chamber.
On gonio exam (after dilation) small area of bleed inferior temporally – mass appears to be invading anteriorly as well.
Concern for iris melanoma.
Discussed patient with ocular tumor fellow.

2. Cataract:
Critical changes in the same quadrant.
Small notch in lens in same quadrant as the mass – lens coloboma?

3. Vit heme:
Small not affecting vision.

A more-than-possible cause is her cell fone. A Swedish study I read 11 years ago in Croatia found a high correlation between cell fone use and head tumors over the previous 20 years in major cities. But the coup de grâce was the rural statistics – since users are farther from the towers, the transmitting power inside the fone is turned up to reach them, and the higher fone power caused greatly increased tumor growth versus the lower-powered city fones, which in turn saw more tumors than before cell fone use.

Her in the US they keep saying the cell fone tumor studies are inconclusive, there’s nothing to be concerned about, we need more studies – but that’s bullcrap… according to the studies, cell fones almost certainly cause tumors and nothing can be done about it because mobile fones have became an essential part of world commerce and we can’t go back. So once again corporations are killing customers for profit. Gotta love capitalism.

ildi’/kl

February 16, 2017 No Comments

Sisyphus Strewn

So quick the curve of day to night
and day through dreams return

Tea cups at table then
sit at table still

Spoons and forks and knives of course
space the empty plates

Toast to yore and gone before
ghost of what comes next

Napkins fold in honor old
front the unset seats

No guests, no hosts, no less, no most
yet one more cycle completes

Illusions sweet and present sleep
help us through the shallow

Time and light and loop of life
remote in active shadow

– Smith, 2.16.2017

ildi’/kl
(typed by cat walking across keyboard)

– Smith & Misha, 2.12.2017

edamame ain’t got no daddy

February 11, 2017 No Comments

Poet artist musician curator Shawn Mishak wrote a bone recovery poem for my neckbone surgery.

Poem for dem Bones
(for Steven Smith)

Rebel poet, regarded lover
Teen pranks lead to vast inequities
Child boy sacrifices mother
Learns how to properly extract sliver
Art crime felonies
Scream under a cinder block
Cracks until two and no longer one
A physical mixture
Tall and stretched out like exotic bird
Flaps until broken
Rebuild, rebuild
Get better; heal in the sunlight as the skin floats
As the cat whispers her purr in the lovely corner
Finding that warm spot
For the next careful climb
Drink of the savory vine
Mine the vein and never
Say that I told you so…]

– Shawn Mishak, 1.28.17

This Saturday, February 18, 2017, 3-5pm, Lady K’s hosting her 3rd Annual Open Memoir Reading at Mac’s Backs-Books On Coventry, 1820 Coventry Rd, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118.

This reading is in honor of her Grandfather who died in 2006… Lady is re-editing his memoir Learning to Swim which she published in 2012 – https://www.createspace.com/3945123

WW III

Heading for Worry War III
what with the orange virus
and small hands on large levers
in the White House

bullies bellow loud in the land
but I don’t worry
cuz edamame ain’t got no daddy
and Only the Lonely is ever so lovely
in the season of the song

so welcome on in from the dark
to our corner of the arc
and sit a spell

light is low
but warm and real
feel fine
for flowing flux
depends on being kind

and luck

– Smith, 2.11.2017