I had an early morning appointment for radiation and then in the late afternoon a meeting with the oncologist for chemotherapy. It was getting more and more difficult to eat “real” foods, so I thought I would treat myself to the breakfast buffet at the Sheraton down the street from the hospital. The sausage links are great there.

The good drugs for pain and nausea slowly kicked in. The ativan started to mellow me out and the vicoden started to smooth over the hard spots. Good drugs for both pain and nausea and careful swallowing make for a great breakfast.

I watch others wolf down the food – rashers of bacon and links by the score without thought of savor. Whole glasses of orange juice are thrown back in one gulp; far, far too little time to even taste the acrid oranges.

I sip the coffee and let it slide past the cancer. I can savor the flavors – bitter coffee gentled by cream. Each flavor plays on my tongue as it gently slips by the lesion that pretends to be the sentinel to my entire system. Another mouthful excites the entire mouth as it drips slowly past that indiscriminate sentinel.

To be so indiscriminate it has to be male. It has to be cajoled. To just send something down to him cannot be done – he rejects everything and sends it right back. But if I work diligently and tease him with minuscule samples, anything can get past him. Strawberries from California are firm and sweet, just the ticket to cleanse the palate.

I eat slowly. More than any other patron. A medium breakfast – one egg, 1 slice of toast, 2 sausage, two bacon – take more than an hour and a half. I savor every moment of the meal. Little do I know this will be the last “real” food I am able to eat for months. Chemotherapy and radiation play havoc with taste buds and blisters prevent swallowing more than water.

A simple meal has taught me many lessons, the most important being to relish every moment we have. Months later – still unable to to swallow more than apple sauce, my memory returns to that breakfast at the Sheraton and the time when I again will have that same enjoyment. I have been promised….

Undoubtedly many of you have recently read the Time cover story asking if America is failing its geniuses. And that’s about as provocative as the article gets.

The author goes to great lengths to avoid portraying genius students (those who are 3 deviations above the norm or have an IQ of about 145) as oddities, but by doing so they are portrayed as oddities. He does note that students who are 3 deviations below the norm are about the same percentage of the general population as those who are above. However, there is absolutely no indication that these students who fall below the norm are abnormal. Is there something wrong with this concept?

I have argued all along that the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) bill rammed through by Bush Jr. has done one of the biggest disservices to American education in decades. There are two fallacies in this thinking that have rankled ever since the bill was ill-constructed. First, it is assumed that all students can perform at the same level and all we have to do is throw more money at the lowest achieving students to bring them up to the level of our average student. In effect, we are not only disregarding the needs of the “average” student, but we are totally ignoring the needs of the brightest of our students.

At the risk of sounding elitist, what is wrong with encouraging the brightest of our bright to be all they can be? What a lot of people fail to realize is there are as large a percentage of brilliant students dropping out as there are students who are struggling just to keep up. Why? They are bored. Monumentally bored.

Since the NCLB bill was passed, only about 1/10 of what was previously allocated for teaching the gifted and talented is now available. Group learning does not work with these students. Many well-meaning teachers pair a gifted student with a struggling student. The theory is that both will gain in the trade-off. Many parents have requested that their students be moved ahead a grade or two and denied. The working theory for this denial is that gifted students need to learn to socialize with children their own age. This is another fallacy that needs to be dropped immediately.

Genius-level students do not socialize well with their peers. They process information at a speed that finds peers boring. In the earliest grades they resent having to work (do the work) of students who do not have their acuity.

Let me put this in perspective. Parents proudly sit and listen as their 1^st graders start reading their first sentences. This is a wonderful achievement. But, let’s carry this analogy further. Suppose you could only read at that word-by-word rate for the entire year. Now use your imagination to think about the students you are working with. Your little genius is only 6 years old, but s/he already knows s/he is far more advanced than the average student and wonders why this other student cannot read like s/he does. Frustration and boredom set in quickly. Our small genius does not socialize with average students because s/he simply does not process information in the same way the average student does.

So, what’s the solution? In Nevada a private school for brilliant students has been set up and chartered by the State. However, it is being criticized for elitism. There is nothing wrong with this kind of elitism. Students who are our brightest and best have been suffering years of neglect. Many teachers don’t know what to do with them. Schools cut out programs that cater to their needs in favor of the low achieving students. We are losing them at an unconscionable rate due to boredom. Why should they be forced to go to kindergarten to learn the alphabet when they are already reading and writing complete sentences? Why they should be forced to do addition and subtraction when they are able to cope with multiplication and division? Why should they be forced to sit through reading drills when they are already asking and answering questions as to theme and plot?

If teaching to a student’s ability is elitism, please, give me more of it. I don’t want to see us lose many more of our brightest students to boredom and inappropriate education.

For the past few weeks the educational buzz has been the separation of boys and girls for certain or all classes. Yes, it does work. I have done it. And the boys who failed the reading and writing portion of our state competency exams all passed them. And that was almost 20 years ago. (How time flies when we are having fun.)

Yet this brings to mind the fads and fashions in education. Haven’t boys and girls been separated for educational purposes for centuries? Well, I know there were other reasons they were separated, but the end result was boys were taught in one classroom and girls in another. However, political correctness and a backlash against parochial education dictated that all students be taught in the same classroom. This PC attitude extended to gender, gifted and talented students, emotionally handicapped, physically handicapped, and regular, run-of-the-mill students. All students were gathered together in one classroom in the name of equality.

As for someone who fought for gender equality I am willing to be politically incorrect in firmly stating my belief that based on the reasons above, students should be separated in classrooms to facilitate their learning. Is it time for the “fad” for separation of students to return? I think so.

It is amazing how our bodies betray us. And in that betrayal we find joy in the small wonders of living.

Several years ago I had a slip-and-fall accident that left me partially disabled. During the recovery period I would sit for hours and watch the small wildlife outside my patio. Over time I watched the squirrels as they fearlessly climbed the trees and jumped from one to another. I learned their aerial trails from one tree to another. The squirrels ruled the grassy area. The chipmunks were relegated to the flower beds. The furthest they would venture out into the yard was the wooden borders holding in the flowers. Until one day when I saw a chipmunk with an identity crisis. He tried to climb the trees like the squirrels did. He actually got about five feet up the tree…the he froze.

During this time I saw my first cardinal and heard my first woodpecker. I watched the lake freeze and then thaw and the idiots who drove their trucks onto the lake before it was strong enough to hold the weight. I still remember the day when five trucks parked in the same area on the ice and all five broke through. They would have been safer if they would have spread out on the ice. There seemed to be a lack of thought processes.

For the last few weeks I have been rediscovering the joys of food. During the last six months or so I have been grabbing a carton of yogurt for lunch or a frozen dinner at night. Busy-ness has interfered with living. My friend and I have had few nights to gather at the multitude of restaurants in the Cities. They are as numerous and varied as those in New York or San Francisco. Emily’s has fantastic Middle Eastern food. It is the only place I have been in a long time that has the raw meat delicacy I learned to enjoy as a child in California. Falafal King makes the best falafal and gyros I have ever eaten. Not to mention their desserts. And the cities abounds with steak houses. Then there is Tavern on Grand that has the best walleye in town and is where presidents and leaders visiting from foreign countries have dined. It is one of the only places I will eat fish. I did not grow up enjoying fish, but this is one place where I go to relish this state meal.

Now I can hardly eat. Only three months ago my friends and I gorged at Don Pablo’s on chili rellenos and enchiladas. For Christmas my friend made and brought me home made tamales. I could eat only one and a teaspoon full of the incredibly good rice her mother made. The Chinese dinner lasts for three days. And the brownie pie my friend picked up for me that serves 6 will make a dozen servings for me now. Each of these provide me with pleasure that I had taken for granted before.

When our bodies betray us we learn to relish those things we are losing. And we also learn to step back and enjoy those things we lose in the busy-ness of living. It has been years since I broke out the paints. It is time, this New Year’s Day, for me to return to those activities that provide pleasure. It is time to sit back and read the books I have had piling up on my shelves. It is time to venture out onto the frozen patio and breathe in the crisp air. It is time to paint the mountains of the West I miss here in the Midwest.

For every one of us there are activities that feed our soul. For some there are children to raise and enjoy. For others it is the grandchildren we need to spend time with and pass on the stories that embarrass their parents. Some need to give to others and some of us need to learn to be given to. My friend loves to cross stitch. She is talented, but work and caring for home have caused her to put this aside. Another friend is a genius at crochet, but she has not made an afghan in years because she “doesn’t have the time.” Another interest of mine is genealogy. I have put it off for years because it consumes so much time. Today is the time to also start that. My great grandfather is waiting for me to discover his story.

Don’t wait for your body to betray you to force you to take time to enjoy those activities that feed your soul. It is time to do them today…even if it is enjoying an ice cream cone in the middle of winter.

I had to get home…to eat. An overnight stay at the hospital ended up becoming four days! The Rns, LPNs, Aides, and hospital doctors were great and worked with me to relieve the pain. But I had to eat. For the first time in my entire life I am being told, “Eat!”

Well, I would, if the food were edible. When I was taken off clear liquids (what can be worse?), I could have anything I wanted. Well, for the first meal I chose turkey stir fry. Now, most stir fry I have had is moist, has a sauce on it. Not this one…it was dry as the desert in July. I have a problem swallowing. If there isn’t a lot of moisture, sauce, or liquid to help the food go down, it just doesn’t.

So, I got transported home in the middle of a snowstorm. I got wheeled to my front door. And I headed for the kitchen cupboard. The canned ravolis were wonderful. There was plenty of sauce. They slid down easily. I had the first solid food in four days. I really did have to get home in order to eat.

Most holidays I would just prefer to spend the day alone doing what I like to do: read, paint, sleep. This year will be different for me. I am joining a friend and her family for Christmas Day dinner. It may be one of the few meals I will be able to enjoy for a long time. But, it brings to mind all those people who have no one to spend the holidays with.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas many charitable organizations make certain the homeless and those having financial problems have a holiday meal. But what about those who do have a home but no one else in it?

A very sad fact is there are more elderly who pass on around holidays than any other single time. Every January I start getting notices from Medicare that patients for whom I bill their insurance are deceased. Holidays are stressful for all of us, but for those with no family it can be even more so. There is no one around to share the memories of growing up and to pass on traditions.

But don’t let it stop with the holidays. Many years ago my mother made me go with her to visit the “mean old lady” who lived on the corner. All of us children on the block avoided her house like the plague. We never knocked on her door at Halloween and we never strayed into her yard for a lost baseball. On the day my mother made me go with her I remember trying to hide behind Mom in order not to be seen. I tried to make myself as small as I could. I hated her ratty Pomeranian, Judy, who barked whenever any one of us even came near the property line. I was afraid to enter her claustrophobic living room that was filled with too much overstuffed furniture and bric-a-brack. But it was a day that opened a whole new world for me.

Old Lady Ryan had been a debutante in San Francisco before the 1906 earthquake along with her deceased sister. She had mementos of that life all over her house. She would talk about what it was like in San Francisco before automobiles were common. She told stories of dances and theatre in San Francisco. I liked to listen to her stories. Even at 8 years old I was in love with San Francisco and I liked to know what it was life a half century before I was born.

She also had books. She had a whole library in that huge house on the corner. And she let me borrow them. I could have one book at a time and had to return it before I could get another one. And from time to time she would give me a trinket that had a story of her life attached to it. As had happened with her own children, I grew up and moved away to a life different from that on our street. One trip home for the holidays I learned she had been moved to live with her daughter because she was too ill to care for herself. Not long after I found out she had passed away.

My point? By being forced to visit this “mean old lady” I developed some memories I keep more than half a century after her passing. By my mother befriending this lonely person, I learned a lot about her life and it helped feed my love of history. By choosing to take time to befriend a widow on your block or single person in your circle, you will be giving yourself the gift of memory. In return, that person will know there is one who will treasure the moments you take to spend time with them.

So, who is coming to dinner?

I can remember when I was a kid (all those years ago) that streets in town ran in both directions.  It was a nightly phenomenon that we would drag main street.  Kids all over America did this.  You would wave to friends as you passed and yell out greetings.  Then city planners came up with the insane idea of one way streets.  Now we could no longer go up and down the main drag, we circled it like a wagon train settling in for the night in hostile territory.

To this day I hate one way streets.  I have a rotten sense of direction.  I can get lost going out of a parking lot.  Once I have the directions imprinted on the mental hard drive, I am fine and can get around fairly well in any city.  But, if the return directions are different from how to get there, I am in trouble.

This last week I have made a wrong turn twice.  In the mornings I have the directions to the hospital I am visiting down pat.  I have to.  At 6 AM I am not mentally alert and the car has to be on auto pilot.  Friday night I took a wrong turn, I thought, out of the parking lot.  It was actually the right way but I was tired and confused.  So, I turned onto a street I knew the name.  Now I was really lost.  I called my friend who practically has a map of the city burned into his brain.   I was on a street I could follow, but it would take me 90 minutes to get home through the entertainment district … on a Friday night … rather than the 22 (no traffic) jaunt of the morning.

Today I wheeled out of the parking lot and forgot to take the two left turns to get on the correct one way street.  How did I find this out?  The street ended at a lake rather than the freeway entrance.  I didn’t quite panic as much.  I stopped (by now there was no traffic in the residential neighborhood …  a clue), made the two left turns and headed back the right way on another one way street.

This isn’t the first time I have been baffled by one way streets.  The downtown area of Minneapolis is riddled with them.  I never seem to have problems getting into the city and the location I am looking for.  I always have problems getting out of the city.  Not long ago I started off in Minneapolis but ended up in St. Paul.  Along the way I passed the cafe I can never find and several golf courses I didn’t even know were in the city.

I need to get the return routes hard wired into my head.  Of course, there is an easier answer … GET RID OF THE ONE WAY STREETS!!!

“Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens.” — Fay Weldon

Boy, does Fay Weldon’s quote capture what I am now feeling. It has been a whirlwind of activity during the last two weeks and it will continue for at least another week. Doctors…tests…doctors…more tests…doctors…tests again…more doctors. At least at this moment I can keep all their names straight. I’m not sure about my own, but I sure know their names and specialties.

In the meantime life does go on. Wednesday is the last day of classes this semester. I just about have my presentation ready. I have one more rewrite to do on my Creative Non-Fiction piece. I chose to write about one of my former students. I am still in contact with her, but I realized as I was writing this piece just how much we depend on others in our lives and my love for her has grown as I wrote it.

Ever since I found out about the cancer I have depended heavily on my friend. He has been at every consultation with me. I keep telling him he doesn’t have to be at all meetings, but all he says is “we’ll see.” My friend at work keeps track of me. She makes sure I have something to eat and drink enough to keep hydrated. The guys on my team at the day job are helping me a lot. They have taken on many of the daily tasks that free me up to get what I can get done on those pesky reports that have been sitting on my desk for at least three weeks. They are making sure before everything heads south on a slide that I am able to get things up to date. All this while having to take 1 ½ days a week off to visit my new best friends at Abbott Northwestern.

I really haven’t had enough time to let all this sink in. I was thinking last night of the last real meal I had. It was September 5^th for my friend’s birthday. Steak, baked potato, vegetables (no V8 slap on the head for me), and desert so big we had to share it. I mainly attributed the weight loss, which was not so great, to the fact I had not been eating too much. After a day at work I really didn’t want to come home and fix something. And I thought the ulcer was acting up after having been gone for about 20 years. So, no big worries. Then there was the 10 pounds in 14 days that caused me to be concerned. It got me to the doctor. But I still wasn’t worried. But, now, looking back, I can see where the signs were. For the first time in my entire life I don’t have a doctor telling me to lose weight. This is something radically new for me. I get to have chocolate milk!

Sometimes the signs that all is not well are lost in the hustle of daily living. I’m still in that hustle. Sometimes we just don’t see what is happening before us until we get time to step back and look at where we have been. I still have many things that have to be put in order before I can let myself stop and really think about what is going on. I figure that will take place sometime after next Wednesday. Class will be over, the whirlwind of doctors and tests will be done, we should know the course we are taking. Then I will have time to sit and ruminate. That’s when I will be on the phone to friends. That’s when I will be making those calls to relatives. That’s when I won’t want to be alone.
At least until Friday night when we have the “Girls Night In” at my place. Some of the girls at work have a party planned. I’m up for that!

Everything started going wrong the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I had been on antibiotics for 10 days and thought they had done a good job of killing off the bacteria…both the good and the bad. The good news was the bad was gone. But by the day after Thanksgiving it was not getting better. So, like any sensible person I got in to see my doctor. By the time we were finished I think we thought we were dealing with a big, honking ulcer. OK, I can deal with this. But to be certain, the doctor wanted to me to see the gastroenterologist.

In the meantime, I got a call Saturday morning that my friend, only 38, had died during the previous night. She did have medical problems. The irony was that after two years of really bad problems things were starting to settle down for her. She had gone back to school to get her BA. But during the night she had a seizure and died. She was like my daughter, and I was dumbfounded by the news. It took a couple of days to get the concept through my mind that she had passed away…so young.

On Thursday afternoon I saw the gastroenterologist. He used the scope to see if there were ulcers. I didn’t like that test. And I didn’t like the preliminary results: there is a mass in the esophagus. He thought it might be malignant. His office made an appointment for me to get a CT scan on Friday.

Friday was my friend’s funeral. It was one I didn’t want to attend, but for her husband and grown children I was there. Her husband had asked I be there and, of course, I could not refuse. I love these people. It was a rough funeral. But during the services I got a spiritual message that I was in for a rough time but would end up being OK.

Immediately after the services I got a phone call from the gastroenterologist. The pathology report was back and it was confirmed: I have esophageal cancer. And I headed down to the hospital to have the CT scan run to find out just how bad it is. The gastroenterologist told me he would make an appointment for me to see the doctor at the hospital for evaluation. I told him to have it made for after Wednesday: I see my primary care physician on that morning.

I couldn’t sleep too late on Saturday morning. I woke rather early and couldn’t get back to sleep. I spent all morning and most of the afternoon on the web. I found out all I could about esophageal cancer, the hospital I’m going to be referred to, the possible and probable treatments. Knowledge has always been my key to making decisions. Between what I found out and the spiritual message I got I am at peace with what is going on. I know the options. Once I have been evaluated, I will be ready for whatever treatment we decide is best.

The problem is that my friends and loved ones are scattered all over the country. I have some great people here supporting me. I let my cousin know Friday night. If the primary treatment is what has to be (surgery) I want her to be the one here the week after I am released. Letting my “kids” know was rougher. There was absolute silence on the line when I called Pris. She took in the information. She will be keeping the kids in Reno calm and informed. I let my brother and some friends know by e-mail. I had to call two more of the kids. Shawn lost it. I don’t want him here until the second week. He is the one who is physically able to lift me if I fall. That is the week I will be starting to move about. Tony took it rather calmly.

On the way to the hospital for the CT scan, I hit the car in front of me at a stop. It didn’t even dent. We just traded a scrape of paint. But I about lost it. When the woman who I hit found out (we did trade insurance information) she asked if she could have a moment of prayer with me. That was really touching.

My friend in Argentina and another in England is praying. All the kids are taking time to pray to whatever higher power they believe in. The members of my church will be over on Sunday for a blessing. I have found support in many circles…at work, at church, from my “kids,” from strangers. I’m not sure I will really come to terms with what is going on. I think I am still in the shock stage. I know I will fight. I will find out all there is to know about what is going on. I will be selfish about what I need from everyone. I am already in survival mode. I am taking care of me before anyone else at this moment. I will survive, as the Spirit promised. Evidently I still have some lessons to learn.

As Mother Teresa said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

It all started when McDonald’s was giving away those beanies. One of my kids was a manager at the local store and he got me my first moose. TFMoose rode shotgun in my car for years. In our little group, we each had our animal: pig, cow, penguin, crab. And that started this insanity.

Over the years Christmases and birthdays and other occasions brought another moose. For an animal that lives a solitary life in the wild, in my living room they are a raging herd. Not only does the herd grow constantly, but TFMoose has become the mascot and name for my web design and graphics.

I have moose jewelry. There are a myriad of beanie moose. There is a Radio Moose, a welcome plaque moose, several Christmas mooses, a Mrs. Moose, glass moose, funny moose, ornament moose, moose pillows, moose posters, salt and pepper mooses, moose cups, cuddly moose, moose letter holders, albino moose, basket moose, and moose stationery. There’s even a moose in an outhouse reading a paper (one of my friends knows my warped sense of humor). The only moose I don’t have right now is a toilet paper holder moose.

Moose in the wild have been a favorite animal of mine for years, even before it became fashionable to collect them. They are a magnificent animal that live alone in the northern forests and only seldom join others of their kind. I had never thought I would really see one in the wild and would have to content myself with the National Geographic specials about them. Then, I moved to the Upper Midwest. About a year after I got here, I caught my first glimpse of one. He was striding down the meridian of the freeway on the edges of the western suburbs. He was magnificent. And, I’m happy to say, he was able to get across the freeway and disappear into suburbia without getting hurt. Unfortunately the one who wandered into one of the towns around the lake I live on did not fare so well. Instead of sedating him and moving him to open forests, the local police shot him.

Will I continue to collect moose? Yes. Undoubtedly friends and family will add to my herd in the future. And I found one online just recently that is out of glass. And I also found a bookmark at the local Made in Minnesota store that I use daily. My fellow students think my bookmark is “unique.” As the holiday season approaches I am rearranging the Christ-mooses. The Canadian Mountie Moose will stand guard over the Christmas tree along with the Nutcracker. And the one bearing gifts will stand under the table on which the tree stands. This will be the Christ-moose of mooses.

Happy Holiday season.