O blessed iPhone

My grandfather was impressed by airplanes. Of course, he was born in 1895 and grew up in Tomsk, Siberia. Freedom and electricity were pretty big deals, too. But whenever I arrived by jet at JFK airport in New York in the 1960s, it was an occasion. Sure, his grandson was arriving from Arizona for a summer at Seagate. But, ox carts be damned, look how he came!

Well, you know you're feeling older when technology surprises you, when it outpaces your wildest imagination. Take cell phones, for example. During my lifetime they have gone from science fiction (a la the communicators on the original Star Trek) to clunky imitations of real phones (remember the big box mobile phones of the George Herbert Walker Bush era?) to the iPhone 3G, which Apple's Steve Jobs calls "the internet in your pocket." (Speaking of wild imaginings, the -- um -- internet?)

Back in 2001, Marilyn and I bought our first cell phone. It was a Motorola Timeport. The name was absolute Star Trek. It flipped open like Kirk's communicator. It had a screen with bright green display, which was forward-thinking back at the turn of the century, when most cell phones had dull black-on-gray LCDs. And it did a whole lot of stuff, things that would have dazzled Lt. Uhuru, the communications officer of the Enterprise.

That's another way you know you're getting older: When things like phones have functions you didn't know existed, and when they tend to baffle you, and when they require glasses to attempt. (There are ads here for a cell phone called "Jitterbug" which is intended for old people, has big numbers, and doesn't do a lot besides make calls. Not wanting to cross entirely into codgerdom, I have refused to even consider the thought of getting such a, er, simple and functional device.)

For seven long years we used our trusty Timeport, which continued to function even though the "4" key began to fall into the body of the phone. Then, early in June, we went to the Verizon store and looked at the phones. Each one was smaller, thinner, and more complex than the next. If you have fingers the size of pencil lead and the eyesight of a spy satellite, you can work them. Other than that, they were unremarkable. The display screens were tiny and hard to read, web pages that loaded looked disjointed, not unlike they do when they load at home and there are several errors on the page.

Then we went to the Apple store. Now, I am not an Apple groupie. I prefer PC to Mac (sorry, but no delete key?). The employees at the Apple store tend to look a bit like members of a cult, outfitted in light blue T-shirts emblazoned with the words "I could talk about this stuff all day." At any moment I expected to be asked, "Have you heard about the Rev. Steve Jobs?"

So it was with a certain amount of skepticism that we both approached the iPhone display. "Twaddle!" I muttered. "Hype!"

But within about five minutes we were in love. It was sensible. It was intuitive. It had a big screen, for a cell phone, and you could "dial" the numbers without pressing all the numbers around it. The web interface looked like the web. It had Google. You could search for "pho Phoenix," have 20 Vietnamese restaurants show up on a map, then touch one, which would bring up a display showing the phone number as well as the website of the restaurant. You could touch the phone number to dial the restaurant, then ask the map to show you how to get there from the Apple store. It did everything but cook dinner.

Lest you think locating food is all it's good for, this "internet in your pocket" is a godsend for eBay sellers. Countless have been the times that we have run across a pile of something and said to ourselves "I wonder if this will sell on eBay." Now, envisioning God's gift to communication in our paws, we realized we could easily go to eBay and find out. It would pay for itself in a month.

Rev. Jobs, take my money! I'll sign over anything to have one of these magical devices!

But they were out of them. They had been out for a month. "Steve has a big announcement next Monday," a starry-eyed young man confided. "We think it's the new iPhone 3G."

And so it was. And Steve described the improvements and new features. And they were good. And it was half the price of the old iPhone. And we fell upon our knees and gave thanks.

And this is why we arrived at 7:15 a.m. on Friday at the AT&T store in Flagstaff, Arizona. Now, Flagstaff is not a big city. It has less than 100,000 people. But it's the biggest thing for hundreds of miles in any direction, so it gets an AT&T store. And they get iPhones. There were a grand total of 15 people in line when we got there, 35 by the time the doors opened. As they say in questionable massage parlors, everyone had a "happy ending."

And so the little darling is at home now, wanting to connect to our in-home network but willing to bring us the net via AT&T (which means we also have a backup way to get online the next time our $%@#! internet provider crashes). We have set up voice mail, which could not have been easier and which also is visual as well as aural. We went to eBay and saved it as an icon on the home screen of the phone. We have located pho in Denver.

It also takes pictures and plays music and synchronizes with your e-mail account and seems to burble when you call it (which I think is actually the vibrate function).

Like my grandpa, I have reached the age when I am, quite simply, blown away.

Life's little annoyances 1

I have decided to embrace my inner curmudgeon and, from time to time, provide a list of some things that are annoying me. If you disagree with my choices, then you are annoying me also. Here, in reverse order of blood boilage, are today's nominees:

5. High fructose corn syrup. Does it have to be put into everything? (Well, apparently, yes.) Is it possible that there are people who might not want the empty calories, or who, if they are willing to risk the calories, might want the taste of real sugar? Here in Arizona you can get Coca-Cola made in Mexico with cane sugar; it tastes like Coke did when I was a kid, before the company switched to corn syrup in the US. . . Try finding a barbeque sauce, or a salad dressing, or even a can of soup or loaf of bread at your average supermarket that does not have corn syrup in it. It will be a miracle, and you should build a shrine.

4. Muzak. The other day I was at the dentist’s office and heard, in treacly, instrumental form, “Give me the beat boys/And free my soul/I wanna get lost in your rock and roll/And drift away.” Could there be a more grotesque irony? Satan himself could not have conjured up anything "better" to play in the waiting room in Hell. This beat didn't get me lost in anything, except laughter and a certain degree of existential despair.

3. Hotels where the windows are sealed shut. God forbid anyone would want some fresh air, especially if the place has been renovated and the carpeting, paint, and luxurious particle board furnishings are outgassing their share of “sick building syndrome” fumes. What does the management think we’re going to do? Jump out the window when we get the bill?

2. Store loyalty cards. So now I have to carry a card for every supermarket I frequent if I want to get the sale price on merchandise at checkout. Ooh, I’m a member of the “Safeway Club.” How nice of Safeway to want to keep track of everything I have purchased, feed it into their computer, and target me with mailings. Why, it even tells the checker my name so they can add that "personal" touch and mispronounce it as they thank me for my purchase. (Sheesh, people, "Arenson" is not rocket science. It's "Air-in-sun," not "Arn-eson" or "Air-EN-son" or that pronunciation of people who just don't try, "Anderson.") Privacy? People have forgotten that one of the treasures of being an American is your ability to be anonymous. Think I'm paranoid? Read this and this and this.

1. Ads for TV programs inserted into other TV programs. Marge Simpson recently asked: “Can’t anyone just watch the show they’re watching?” Well, can’t we? It started with those jarring little logos that networks show on the bottom right of the screen. Now it has gotten way out of hand -- little people walking onto the screen amid flashing graphics to advertise their upcoming shows. Fans of Kids in the Hall will understand when I say "I want to crush their heads." Maybe in this age of multitasking and multimedia people are used to absorbing endless quantities of visual clutter. I want to throw a brick at the television.

Turkey season

If you ever see me and Marilyn on Dr. Phil, we will be discussing one thing: turkeys.

For Marilyn, the time beginning before Thanksgiving and running through Christmas is “turkey season.” This is when vast quantities of what Ben Franklin nominated to be our national bird show up in supermarkets. Whole turkeys are more difficult to find at other times of the year, especially at the cheap, promotional prices offered during the holidays.

Marilyn and I recently stood before a huge rectangular case of frozen turkeys, their rounded, white-plastic-covered carcasses gleaming under a bank of florescent lights.

“Where else can you get this much meat for 47 cents a pound!” Marilyn exclaimed, eyes aglow with that crazed look common to kamikaze pilots and Scientologists.

And so it begins.

There are people who are minimalists and there are people who embrace abundance. I am one of the former, Marilyn is one of the latter, and if there is any way in which our mutual compatibility has been tested over the years, it is this.

I am not exactly like the Buddhist monk who goes around with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a bowl for food. But left to my own devices I would live in a house where material objects are on the sparser side, where I would probably know everything I own and where it was.

But we do not live in that sort of house because, over time, life’s cornucopia has spilled forth upon us. Or, in the words of Marilyn’s sister, “You guys have a LOT of stuff.” Besides turkeys, Marilyn has some other -- ahem -- areas of interest. She has been known, for example, to appreciate the occasional objet d'art. And I am pleased to report that we have no shortage of towels. But her most passionate interest is books, a category that, like the universe, is ever expanding and has no end.

My only obsession is CDs, which I am forever pointing out take up almost no room around here. OK, that and stereo equipment. I have a component system in the living room, a bookshelf system in the kitchen, a portable stereo in the eBay room, a portable stereo in the library, and a component system in the bedroom, complete with two sets of speakers, which is connected to a large television. I argue that the latter is something of a home theater. Marilyn does not entirely believe me yet.

And we do have a couple areas of common interest: One is kitchen knives, gadgets, and pots and pans. Another is cats. There is a very thin line of sanity that we dare not cross when it comes to cat collecting. So, after our Pyewacket died in 2006, we decided to get just two, to keep each other company. But since cats are contraindicated in bone marrow transplant patients, and since I am headed that way in a few years, we are holding off and may volunteer to foster cats for the animal shelter instead. We need our fix.

But I digress. It is turkey season. Minimalist me would buy one turkey, enjoy it for the week it takes to eat it, and be done with it. Marilyn would buy enough turkeys so that we could build a small pyramid and worship Gobblor, the Lord of Poultry.

The real issue -- to me anyway -- is carrying capacity. We have one refrigerator/freezer. If we also had a chest freezer, I’d have no problem with indulging in turkeys. But we don’t. Space is limited. Turkeys are large. (Marilyn figures a 22-pound turkey has more meat than a 12-pound turkey and that once you’re prepping the bird, it’s not that much harder to prep a big one.)

We entered turkey season this year with one large turkey already in the freezer. It dates, I believe, from 2005. Then, not long ago, we won a turkey at the local natural foods store. Into the freezer it went. This required some rearranging and cramming.

“Don’t block the air vent in the back!” I blustered.

It is my argument that two turkeys in the freezer means that much less space for anything else. And given the rate at which we eat turkeys -- one a year, pretty much -- we are using precious room to store something that just doesn’t get et.

Now, in Marilyn’s mind’s eye we are always enjoying a delicious roast turkey. But she forgets that making said turkey is a long process. There is the four-day Defrosting, then T day itself: The Cleaning of the Innards, the Making of the Stuffing, the Cramming of the Stuffing, and the Emplacement of the Little Metal Spikes in the skin to hold the stuffing in the cavities. This is followed by the Enracking and the hours and hours of cooking.

Then there is the midway Turning -- keep it breast-side down the first half of cooking time and you get a turkey with juicy breast meat, but you need to turn it breast-side up to get a nicely browned breast. This means that halfway through yours truly must don the most heat-proof gloves available and lift said monster turkey, which is hot and has tiny, sharp metal things sticking out of it like a porcupine. The turkey must come off the rack without sticking to the rack or getting a leg caught in the rack, and then it must be turned over without dropping. This can be done but it is something that I look forward to like visiting the dentist.

Now, four days after this process, having finished yet another turkey dinner, and after a third glass of champagne, Marilyn has been known to say things like: “This was an easy meal seeing how much food we’ve gotten out of it.”

In an alcohol-induced glaze, I sometimes find myself agreeing. But why, then, do we not do it more often?

So, at last count we had two turkeys in the freezer. Rather than being satisfied, this only opened the door to Marilyn’s obsession. When she found out that our favorite grocery store had turkeys for 47 cents a pound, we had an argument. It was settled by a roll of the dice. She won, and so we found ourselves standing in front of the frozen case.

And we now have a third turkey -- weighing in at 22.74 pounds, the heavyweight champeen of the world! -- slowly defrosting in the refrigerator. Marilyn was tempted to get a fourth turkey but took pity on me.

My argument that there is no way two people can eat all the meat on a 22-pound turkey falls on deaf ears.

Did I mention that Marilyn doesn’t eat dark meat?

Calling Dr. Phil . . .


Marilyn and I and all our turkeys wish you a happy holiday season! See you in 2008.

Butt ugly

One of my many inspirations that has never come to fruition is the Museum of Bad Art. I got the idea for this -- it was to be an actual brick and mortar place done up with all the solemnity and seriousness of a major art museum, from the careful lighting to the little descriptive cards next to the paintings -- after having gone to too many thrift stores in too short a period.

This was about 15 years ago, and the crowning glory of the collection, the canvas that would have been kept behind glass with a security guard at the ready to ward off demented knife-wielding slashers or sorely misguided art thieves, was Devil on the Toilet.

Devil, as aficionados would have called it for short, was discovered at the Goodwill store in New Paltz, NY. I marvel to this day that the same species that built the pyramids, created the fugue, and learned to fly could also have conjured up this image and set it to velvet: Satan, with horned ears and pointy tail, outlined in red, sitting upon a silver toilet, cigarette in hand, his demonic visage twisted into a grimace.

The artist, who left the work unsigned, provided these stark brush strokes against a completely black background, making the Devil’s distress all the more, um, jarring. For here we see the Prince of Darkness trapped in his own existential Hell -- ah, the irony! -- his powers sapped by the need to perform a simple bodily function. Unable to complete the task at hand, Satan himself is reduced to a pitiful state, a figure as powerless as the mortals he is so wont to lord over. Who is the tormented one now? (A facsimile of the original appears above -- apparently there is a guy in Tijuana churning these out and you can buy them on eBay for $35. The original Devil, it should be noted, did not bear the words “help” and "ouch." Unlike the work of this poseur, it spoke with an admirable degree of subtlety.)

Alas, I did not purchase Devil, even though it was severely discounted, for it had the piercing capacity, like bad paintings of clowns, to provide fodder for freakish nightmares. But it came to mind recently as I embarked on what is for me a new medical procedure: the colonoscopy.

Yes, friends, it has finally happened. I am reduced to writing about poop, the old Number Two. Passing waste through the body is the work of our friend the colon, and being 50 years of age, I have been bombarded with advice that it is time to have it checked out. Girls have their sweet 16, when you turn 21 you can legally drink, when you’re 35 you can run for president, and at 50 you had better get a tube stuck into your nether regions. Ah, the joys of life’s little milestones.

Colon cancer and CLL

Now, lest you think this has nothing to do with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, there is some evidence that CLL patients may be at greater risk for colon cancer. Some of the genes that are overexpressed in B-CLL cells are also involved in colon cancer, as well as other cancers.

To quote one mind-bogglingly complex paper from the Mayo Clinic (the sort of read that has you saying to yourself, “Am I really this stupid?”) “ . . . 31 genes were overexpressed in B-CLL cells. Of these 31 genes, 16 were previously identified as related in one way or another with an oncogenic transformation. For example, LEF-1, a transcription factor involved in development, has been shown to be involved in many cancers, most notably in colon cancer.”

Translation: CLL may open a Pandora’s Box of dysfunction that could predispose you to other cancers.

According to Dr. John Byrd of the James Cancer Center at Ohio State University, “We recommend routine cancer screening, such as colonoscopies
every three to ten years, depending upon the risk category that you fall into.” (Gastroenterologists recommend colonoscopies every five years after the age of 50.)

It is interesting, in a morbid sort of way, to note that B-CLL cells, which are known to travel far and wide, can also be found in the colon. I know of one patient who was diagnosed with atypical CLL after aberrant results from a colonoscopy. According to Dr. Terry Hamblin, “In CLL it would not be unexpected to find small lymphocytes anywhere in the body, so finding them in the colon may not be significant.”

Hamblin says the jury is still out on whether CLL patients are more predisposed to colon cancer:

“CLL and colon cancer are both fairly common diseases of the late middle-aged and elderly. It is very hard to demonstrate that it is truly commoner than one would expect. The problem is that everybody with colon cancer gets a blood test (which would diagnose CLL) and not everybody among the 'control' population does. Similarly, colon cancer is best diagnosed by those who take an interest in their health, which describes most people with CLL. There is good evidence that skin cancers are commoner in CLL and also probably lung cancer, but the statistics for colon cancer vary from study to study.”

Let the anal probing begin!

I think we can all at least agree that, whether CLL is a factor or not, age is. The good news is that colon cancer is largely preventable and successfully treatable if it is detected early enough.

All this means that there is no good reason not to have a colonoscopy. But like people who put off dental work until they lose their teeth, there are those who put off colonoscopies until they lose their lives. Common excuses include loathing the stuff you have to drink before the procedure and not wanting strangers to probe where the sun don’t shine.

There are those, of course, for whom the whole subject of Number Two is fraught with drama. I have a relative, who shall remain nameless, whose family is obsessed with shit. Her mother usually could not poop in any toilet but her own, making cruises and vacations rather uncomfortable. A successful evacuation of the bowels was a big deal in that family, a cause for much strutting and praising. My relative, well into her middle years, would emerge from the bathroom at times in triumph, announcing to all who cared to hear: “I made a good doodee!” If only our poor Devil could say the same, trapped forever in a vicious circle of anticipation and disappointment.

I don’t have these issues. I have always been, how shall I put it, a regular guy. And after sitting in the infusion room hooked to an IV pole and surrounded by fellow cancer patients in various states of health or the lack of it, having a tube stuck up my butt doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

By consensus, the worst part of the colonoscopy is the prep. In my case, this involved drinking four liters of something called Go-Lightly, my nominee for the most misnamed product on Earth. While the “go” part is accurate, there is nothing “light” about it. For those who have not had the pleasure, imagine drinking an eight ounce glass of salt water every ten minutes for two hours. I managed this by taking a lemon-line soda chaser after each glass to eliminate the taste from my mouth. Over the course of time, two things happen: One, you start to feel incredibly bloated. Two, you start to spend the evening on the toilet as the product works its magic. A more accurate name for the product at this point would be The Ass Blaster.

The colonoscopy itself is anticlimactic. (Note to CLL patients with swollen spleens: let the nurses know so that they can take extra care when turning you on your left side.) Anyone who has ever had chemo is familiar by now with being stuck with needles and put on an IV drip. I was given 50 mg of Benadryl, followed by an anesthetic called Versed and a painkiller I didn’t catch the name of because I was asleep by then. I awoke some time later to see the doctor and two nurses congregating about my posterior, removing the endoscope and chatting about the weather. On a video monitor next to them I saw some images of my innards flash rapidly by.

The end result (oh glorious pun!): My colon is picture perfect.

“Come back and see me in 5 years,” the doctor said.

Back to the art world

Due to lack of my winning Powerball, my museum was never built, although another great mind with the same thought eventually started one and put it online a few years ago. (Despite the presence of some delightful works -- a few of which I have presented here -- believe me, they have barely scratched the surface.)

Not all thrift store art is bad. One can view some of the better samples at Goodwill’s online auction site. Indeed, thrift store art is sometimes surprisingly good. Antiques Roadshow regularly showcases examples where people bought paintings for ten bucks, only to find out that they’re by so-and-so and are really worth $10,000.

Marilyn and I have had no such luck, although we did stumble across some nice works at a Savers in Phoenix by a regional artist, Susanne Nyberg, who is alive and working. It was as if she was clearing her studio of things that she didn’t like all that much, but it still looked good to us.

And then there are the James Swinnertons. These are two large desert landscapes we bought at a Goodwill. I say they’re reproductions, Marilyn insists they’re probably real. One of these days we’ll have them checked out. If you ever see Marilyn doing her unique triumphal dance on Antiques Roadshow, you’ll know why.

Detail, above, from Frolicking Raccoons, acrylic on canvas board, and the only bad thrift store art we actually ever purchased. (At 69 cents, it was irresistible.) Below is the full work. How many critters do you see? The artist, simply known as Gil, has cleverly painted over at least one, using his masterful skills to blend errors into the landscape.

UPDATE

This gem was discovered at the Goodwill store in Prescott, AZ. It appears that Spot is about to join the Union army during the Civil War. He can probably expect some "ruff" times ahead.

Supersize me

I am now the proud owner of an infrared trash can. It’s stainless steel and has a battery-operated sensor that opens the lid when you approach it and closes it when you’re done. It works like a charm, the only drawback being that I am unable to program it to make a burping noise when it closes.

Until last Tuesday, I didn’t know such a thing existed. Last Tuesday is when I joined Costco and my eyes opened to a lot of things.

Costco, for those of you who live in quaint places where shopping is still done at the corner store, is what is known as a warehouse store, or Big Box. There are some 375 Costcos (Costci?) in the US. The average Costco is about the size of a municipal sports arena and contains everything from plasma TVs to packages of croissants large enough to feed the Third Arrondissement.

Indeed, almost everything at Costco is supersized. Light bulbs cannot be purchased in packages of less than 16. Batteries come in lots of 12. Cheese wheels really could be used as wheels. Oversized boxes marked “Tropicana” contain enough orange juice to inundate the lowest-lying parts of Florida. Shoppers toting 30-unit packages of toilet paper resemble ants carrying crumbs twice their size. After a few minutes in a Costco, one is thrown back to early childhood, when adults and their furnishings all seemed so very, very big.

The attraction is, of course, low prices. For access to these you pay $50 a year to join and you get an ID card with your picture on it. Marilyn and I joined because the car needed a new set of tires and Costco was practically giving away Michelins, with a $60 off coupon to boot.

During the time it took to get the tires installed, we trolled the aisles of our new shopping sanctum, which is how I found the infrared trash can. At $36.89, it is cheaper than similarly sized non-automated cans at Bed, Bath and Beyond, and the same model is sold online at various places for twice the price. With two buttons on the front of the lid and the flashing infrared sensor between them, it has a pinched face-like look that resembles one of the hokey robots from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Sometimes, like the computer Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, I can almost hear it talking to me: Hi, Dave. I’m hungry, Dave. You don’t need the rest of that sandwich, do you, Dave?

We also have our eyes on the new computers. (You can configure a new PC at HP.com and you can configure the same exact PC through Costco.com’s HP portal and save $255.)

And I must admit that the plasma TVs looked rather tempting.

As did the asteroid-sized package of crab and gruyere cheese in puff pastry.

And the six-pack of wine.

Lots of money we’ll be saving.

Right.

The President's Club

During a recent visit to my hem/onc’s office I noticed that my medical file is now about the size of a phone book for a mid-sized city. It is larger than most of the other files that I see stuffed sideways into the open-faced cabinets arrayed in back of the reception desk.

And so it occurred to me that as a patient with a chronic disease who needs treatment regularly and who has a fairly long life expectancy, I am a cash cow in the cancer business. Most other patients at this office either beat their cancer, or don’t, and their files probably cover fewer treatments over a shorter period of time. Having chronic lymphocytic leukemia makes me a frequent flyer, so to speak, a prize customer.

So where are my rewards? I mean, airlines have private lounges for their best customers. Even Camping World has something called the President’s Club. Why not a President’s Club for CLL patients?

For example, I might enjoy a private infusion room -- nay, suite -- with a genuine leather recliner, none of that vinyl stuff. And why can’t my IV pole be at least gold-plated? Where, oh where, is my plasma TV? My private nurse? The dessert tray, fer chrissakes?

“Champagne with your Rituxan, sir?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Clink!

But no, I’m stuck in there with the hoi polloi, some of them using cheap, off-patent drugs. I am a Rituxan user. My insurance pays $5,000 a pop for this stuff; in the last three years I have brought this office around $150,000 in gross income. Yet the management is forcing me to root, raccoon-like, for bags of peanuts from an oversized communal snack basket. What is this, the Motel 6 of oncology?

In all seriousness, or at least partial seriousness, there are times when having CLL can be used to one’s advantage. After one recent Rituxan treatment, Marilyn and I went to our favorite hotel in Phoenix. I plopped my bandaged hand on the counter and announced to the twenty-something clerk that I had been doing chemotherapy and that I needed a quiet room in which to rest. This led to a free upgrade.

When Marilyn and I flew to Florida recently during the height of the gels-on-planes scare, we were able to bring a bottle of Purell hand sanitizer on board with us. This required showing the TSA guards a report stating I have CLL and am immune-compromised, which was backed up by me pointing to my neck and saying, “It looks puffy because I have swollen lymph nodes from my leukemia.”

Indeed, at the Miami airport one of the Northwest Airlines clerks fell all over himself being helpful and gladly agreed to give our bags priority handling even though we weren’t flying first class.

The best story I’ve heard came from a fellow patient in the infusion room, not a CLLer, who lost her hair to chemotherapy. While speeding down the freeway, she was pulled over by a cop.

“Officer,” she said, whipping off her baseball cap to reveal her bald head, “I am late for my chemotherapy.”

It worked, of course. No ticket.

Let that be an inspiration to you the next time Cytoxan does nasty things to your hair follicles.

And while I still wish I could get a complimentary foot massage while being hand-fed Godiva chocolates, I'll take what I can get.

Here they come . . .

Sometimes, with my warped sense of humor, I see the various drugs used to treat CLL parade before me in a rather grotesque and unsettling beauty pageant. I sit as the judge, flanked by my white-coated medical advisers.

There’s Miss Rituxan, comely and alluring, though some say she’s a bit mousey. Too bad her solo talent is a little too limited. But she’s definitelty going to be one of the winners; for in this pageant there will be a minimum of two and perhaps even a third, that will steal my heart with their combination of talent and beauty. Or what passes for beauty in these things.

Miss Fludarabine comes trotting out again, a contender in every pageant so far, and always an also-ran. She’s big-boned and can belt out quite a tune, but I wish she’d find one besides “You’re My Refractory Baby.” Plus, she’s covered with skin cancers. Somehow, I just can’t open my heart to her.

Her sister, Miss Pentostatin, is a little more demure, a little more petite, perhaps a little less able to hit the high notes, as well as the low notes. Somehow she is getting lost in the blur as the contestants tromp across the stage in formation singing: “This is our time, and we’re gonna make it fine!”

I can’t take my eyes off Miss Campath, or as she prefers to be called, Mistress Alemtuzumab. Not every contestant comes attired in black boots and carrying a whip. This isn’t my thing, but she does stand out. She has a certain authority, and is effective in the talent portion, but I do wonder how severely she might kick my ass.

Miss Chlorambucil has been in so many of these that she is going to appear with a Rhinestone-covered walker someday. Her baton twirling act is the best in the land, if you like baton twirling. But it’s coming back in fashion, and some of Miss Rituxan’s glow has rubbed off on her. Maybe she’s wearing her hair differently. All I can think is, “Why, Miss Chlorambucil, I never thought of you like THAT before.”

The show stealer is Miss High-Dose-Methyl-Prednisolone. The name wouldn’t even fit on the sashes that the other contestants are wearing, but Miss HDMP is a lot taller than the others, and so her sash is a great deal longer. She also has biceps as big as a tree trunk. Dig those washboard abs! No swollen spleen or nodes in there. She reminds me of those pumped-up East German female athletes of yore, and she is winking at me a lot.

Somewhere back in the crowd is that perennial contestant, Miss Cyclophosphamide. She usually blows it during the question-and-answer part, when I inquire about her views on the 17p deletion. Just talk about world peace, girl! Maybe your day will come, but don’t get your hopes up too high this time.

Tripping all over herself is Miss Vincristine. Must be the peripheral neuropathy she’s suffering. I do believe Miss Mitoxantrone is having a heart attack in the back, as we speak. Or is that Miss Doxorubicin? Hard to tell from here. They’re among that group that always gets eliminated shortly after they’re introduced. Chief among them is Miss Mini-Allo. She can puff out her chest all she wants; it ain’t going to help. Still, it’s nice to see she’s there.

I hear there may be some interesting contestants in future years. There’s a lot of buzz about Miss Humax, but she’s still learning how to walk and smile at the same time, and as much as I might want to fantasize about other contestants -- stop the show, it’s Miss Cure! -- I am left with the group that I am left with.

It’s quite a circus -- er spectacle -- er pageant. And I can’t wait for the finale. I have some white-coated advisors to consult, but I’ll let you know who wins.

Attack of the hair loss bozo

I am always interested to read the comments people leave about my posts, and a link to the comment system can be found in light blue at the bottom of each post. Since I want to enable the most people to comment with the least amount of hassle, I have enabled the software to allow anyone to comment, not just those who have signed up with Blogger.

These comments often add an extra dimension to the post, and I am grateful that they seem to be quite positive. I don’t mind ones that take issue with a point, or a post, though. I am a civil libertarian when it comes to the free flow of ideas.

What I am not a libertarian about is spam. So far I have found a total of three “comments” left by some guy who claims his name is Mike, and who always includes a link to a website promising a hair loss “cure.” These comments are of the generic “great blog!” variety and obviously the person hasn’t bothered reading the blog, other than seeing the word “leukemia” and thinking “chemotherapy” and then thinking “hair loss.”

And then, like some ravenous Ferengi, thinking “profit.”

This little slice of internet life is as amusing as it is annoying, and what amazes me most is this: How much of a bottom feeder do you have to be to search out cancer blogs, then insert comments after posts linking to your website? If this is your method of drumming up business -- or of gaining traction in the Google search results ladder -- then I would highly recommend not quitting your day job as a “sandwich artist” at Subway, should you be so lucky as to find employment outside the prison system.

I knew something was fishy when I saw one comment that said “fun blog!” This blog may be somewhat entertaining at times but CLL is not fun, and neither is coping with it. So I deleted that and in its place Blogger inserted a note that reads: “This post has been removed by the blog administrator.”

I wish the Blogger software would allow me to explain why comments are deleted; since it doesn’t, I feel compelled to explain it here. I am not deleting comments that disagree with something I have said. I am deleting spam posts that are intended to promote someone’s website. So if you see that “removed by the blog administrator” line, it means there is one less opportunity for you to learn about some bozo’s miracle hair loss cure.

By the way, I have had a receding hairline since the age of 13 –- yes, 13, and I had a bald spot at 16 -– so I know all about the incurability of hair loss. I even once went to some guy in Manhattan, Dr. Philip Kingsley, who billed himself as “the world’s foremost trichologist.” (After all, one wouldn’t want to see the world’s second-best trichologist, would one?) Despite being sent home with several bottles of shampoo and salve with magical names promising a verdant world of hair, nothing stopped the inexorable progress of baldness except for age.

It’s now slowed to a trickle, or would that be a trichol?