Hypearreality...(the 3rd infusion)

Hy^pearreality (definition): 1. a reality entirely mediated by victual perceptions, especially obstical illusions; 2. an obst-ruse. (Sentence usage/Context:) Have you seen the new Hypearreality show on Chemo TV...the culinary contest where oncology chefs compete to poach the best tasting styrofoam pear? Mmmm...it's tasteless.
Last week, the wax museum pallor masked her face. In the mirror...reflections...echoed the fragmented selves, chemo split personalities of a sort. After she hosted the haunting complexion for a few days, I decided to recycle the artificiality. Today we escorted a pair of fake pears, and some other props, into the Chemoscape in the hopes of infusing the toxins, defanging the side-effects. These pulp-less pears, imitations designed to improve reality, were the most succulent of amulets. Our reliance on simulation was a necessary alchemy, a counter-alchemy to the oncological side-show. And it worked. We re-enchanted our experience...re-appropriating our time in the infusion coliseum. We laughed. Her smile returned.

You won't need a ticket to explore the carnival of authentic fakery, just click here and enjoy the real thing at your own pace....beware the styrofoam pears. They are tempting.

Sad Vibrations...

Yesterday Daniela was steeped in a sorrowful mood. Despite holding a procession of steaming tea mugs throughout the day, her hands were cold. Her feet were cold, and she shivered...a parfait in alternating layers of silk, cotton, and fleece. The fever-less trembling was unsettling. Sometime during the night, the tremors subsided and she awoke in a more balanced state of equilibrium.

While checking her email, later in the morning, she stood transfixed...gazing at the screen of her laptop. This particular email landed in her inbox at 9:39 am today...mourning the passing of a recent friend (Z''L) yesterday, a survivor who had been re-diagnosed. Daniela's demeanor oscillated between stillness and sobbing for the rest of the morning.

Later in the day, Daniela ventured again into Georgetown, another bloodletting, and a few hours waiting for the results. Her white blood cell demographics were a healthy 11.7, so the quaking and quivering were unrelated to sepsis.

Daniela's recent initiation into this community of shared experience...a localized nexus of breast cancer survivors has introduced her to both particular souls and particular stories, as well as tethered her to a cooperative sentiment. She thrives as part of this group. Today, she also mourns as part of this group. And, like innumerable matrices and associations whose constituent elements and emotions are closely linked and identified with the experience of survivorship, the departure of a member...ripples with great intensity through their social fabric, and even rips through more tangible forms.

Vitruvian Vinifera...

Today's agenda included a brief trip over the river, a scheduled visit with her plastic surgeon, and some weekly blood work at the lab.

The flow of fluids was supposed to follow a simple exchange: saline in...at the plastic surgeon's, to balance bosomy symmetries; claret out...at the phlebotomist's, to peruse platelet symmetries. Dr. Nahabedian told her that her expansion was complete...so no more need for saline. The final (outpatient) reconstructive surgery should be scheduled for the last week in April.

After enduring the surgical gaze, we meandered through the labyrinth and found our way to the lab for the required weekly blood work, necessary in order to monitor the white blood cell demographics. These donations to the phlebotomy vineyard avoid the vines running down her arm. Instead, the trained venipuncturist focused on the pulpy fruit at her fingertips. Once again, my camera intruded upon another set of symmetries, pixelated verities of a recent vintage.

Here is the series of images in slideshow presentation. If you would like a closer experience, a visual tasting if you will, de-cork and click here to view the images and read the captions at your own pace.



Salud, Amor, y Tiempo Para Disfrutarlo...[a common Spanish toast I often heard as a child]

Side Effects...

Sketching Sanity...
Pair of Haikus...

Prickly pear clamor.
Chemotherapy mood reigns.
Her words soak me dry.

Pear as antidote,
Magritte as muse, I ink fruit.
Dulcet drips; moods sift.

Metaphor, Metastasis, and Memory

Monday morning, I led the kids in an excursion to the fantasy world of Fluorides, amalgams and Panorex portraits. Shortly after our arrival in the waiting area, Gabriela's "tween" intrigue seized upon both copies of People magazine a few feet away. Their wrinkled cover pages were a stark contrast to the airbrushed youthfulness framing the facade of the pop star de jour. As Gabi turned the pages, I noticed two images within a particular array...Melissa Etheridge, the pop/rock star, and Robin Roberts, the Good Morning America news anchor. Both of the photographs captured their curvy crania in an unexpected state of undress, conspicuous connotations of their encounters with the chemotherapeutic. I smiled at the assertive display of these alopecic moments. (Gabi commented in a matter-of-fact manner, "Oh, they must have breast cancer too.")

I turned back to the graphic novel I had carted with me, and continued reading an alternative tale from Tangent Comics (1997), the Joker re-imagined as female anti-villain and chaotic do-gooder. The last page of this issue features her dark silhouette in black, staring at the ground. The silhouette is unmistakably hairless. The story's ending had revealed that this anti-villain was the daughter of survivors, survivors of a nuclear geo-political accident, her anti-villain persona a vehicle inextricably bound by multiple undercover identities...each with its own mask and wig. After the caries-detection amusement ride ended, I paid the bill and made appointments for the next dental fair in August.

Throughout the day, I kept dwelling upon the choices Daniela has made, from her patient tolerance of my C.B.D. (Compulsive Blogging Disorder) to her decision to forgo the faux filaments stranded atop the Styrofoam perch. I started to compile mental notes on the range and manner with which some women displayed, exhibited, exalted, sequestered, veiled, narrated, muted and even berated these metastatic moments in their lives, a vast expanse of experience.


Susan Sontag, one of my favorite writers, memorialized her first metastatic moments with Illness as Metaphor (1978). She qualifies her enchanting rant and tells the readers of her introductory page that she wants to describe, not what it is really like to "emigrate to the kingdom of the ill and live there, but rather the punitive and sentimental fantasies concocted about that situation." She begins her narrative with these two indelible phrases, among others.

• Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick [...] sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

• My point is that illness is not a metaphor [...] and that the healthiest [...] way of being ill [...] is one purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking.

I love (re)reading this book. And I enjoy it every time despite my issues with her pronouncement to inoculate against metaphor. My issue with her idea of metaphoric quarantine is that those afflicted are literally creatures of metaphor...beings that communicate in language (at its core a metaphoric system). We cannot escape the gravity of metaphoric thinking. We are drawn to metaphors, and sometimes are drawn by other metaphors. We are also capable of drawing our own...in reply, in retribution, and in reciprocity, sketching our way through utterances and inheritance, language and culture.

At the end of the day, I find myself summoning that dark silhouette in the graphic novel, a powerful outline of hidden narratives. I know of a few survivors that choose not to tell their story or instead choose to ration it’s telling. Perhaps, they fear the encounter with what Sontag so poetically labeled "punitive and sentimental fantasies." Perhaps, they fear being pitied.

I go back to Sontag's words and (re)read the introduction. I go back to the comic book and (re)read the ending. Today's interplay of text and image has left me intrigued...by how metastatic moments and their experiences are minted and the currency of that experience is exchanged, or not. I am enticed by this marketplace of memories, its rules, its boundaries, its ability to elicit extraordinary encounters, as well as its ability to conjure illicit fears of certain social transactions. I wonder how she (both the literary critic and the comic book character) would have reacted to my syncretism of artifice and admiration...curiosity and consumption.

Coeur-nucopia....

This morning we stumbled upon (approximately) 2,050 cubic inches of affection nestled upon our doorstep...a Valentine bouillabaisse steaming with greeting cards, lollipops, chocolates, CD's, flower bulbs, and more. One of our friends had masterfully brewed this fusion of geography, geometery, and kinship. As we read a few of the cards, my mind meandered in an attempt to trace this greeting card spice route: Hawaii, Arizona, Michigan, Louisiana, North Carolina, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, California, Washington (State), Maryland, Virgina, and a few more.

I don't know how long this box, and its contents, sat still before they arrived this morning. Harnessing all of that sentiment was a feat indeed. When Daniela opened the box, the avalanche of kinetic energy had quiet an effect, on both of us. The layers of emotional tension gave way, breaching the surface with a mixture of brine and breath.

To all of you who flavored this experience and the ones that plated the dish...Thank You!

Hair Haiku II

Follicle Harvest...

Ballet in Steel Symmetry,

Pas de Deux; Skin Glows.

Saloon Solid(ARI)ty...

A few nights ago, during dinner, a scarf-less Daniela and I were planning for the next day. So, I offered to take the kids somewhere Saturday morning and give Daniela some free time. "You can get some work done, and we will all stay out of your hair," I tendered. My offering, framed by an involuntary metaphor reflex, caught Ari's attention. "But Mama doesn't have any hair," he deconstructed with a sheepish frown. We all laughed, and Ari relaxed. Presumably, Daniela's crew cut coiffure has made a deep impression. Ari's comment, an unexpected reification of the literal, gave me pause. I was curious, and wondered if his comment was just a fraction of more formidable fears.

Yesterday afternoon, we both purchased the finest blue bubble gum cigars we could find. In the evening, we pocketed our bubble gum cigars and headed for the local pub, The Lost Dog Cafe. We sat at the bar. Ari ordered a tall pint of Root Beer Soda, on tap of course. I ordered a pint of pale ale. We trafficked in tall tales, and delved into the drama of his seven-year-old world. During our talk, he mentioned that Daniela looks "pretty good" without her hair. We toasted to the day when it grows back. Cheers!

(Le Mon)de Graphique...Chemo Infusion No. 2

The Chemotherapy cruise has a well-known side-effect, nausea. Like all good cruise lines, Taxotere and Cytoxan don't disappoint when it comes to programming. The nausea is tolerable with scheduled doses of powerful pharmaco-wizardry such as Anzemet.

Passengers must not relax...the next activity awaits....ahhh, the Midnight Metallic Buffet. Imagine a lozenge made of pure iron, or a milkshake of iron filings. Imagine your palate's reaction, epicurean dissonance manifest in pilomotor reflex...a goose bump paté dotting the dermis. She tells me that even water has an alloy aftertaste, an unenviable mineral bouquet. Her grimace is a gesture equal parts disbelief and disappointment. (Her taste buds do eventually regain their senses, a week or so after the infusion.)

Lemons, or more accurately lemon flavorings, are a powerful citric countermeasure. Lemon drops taste great. Lemon flavored water quenches her thirst. I'm not sure why these particular papillae are spared by the chemotherapeutic assault on taste. (I recall reading comic books decades ago and one of my favorites was Green Lantern, Hal Jordan. His ring, was the most powerful force a young boy could read about; however, it was unable to affect anything yellow. Yellow escaped then, and it seems to escape now.) In order to ward off the zesty zinc aftertaste, I brought a lemon to the infusion party, my citrus version of a voodoo amulet. The lemon won't restore her sense of taste, but it did make our time at the hospital more palatable. Daniela was a great sport, as was her friend Petra. They tolerated my camera, and even joined in the lemon-play.

Here are the pictures. As usual, if you would like to read the captions or view the images at your own pace, click here.



Lemon Coda: Our favorite nurse at the Infusion Coliseum is Julie, who lost a recent Super Bowl bet with her boyfriend. (She is a New England Patriots Fan, while Mike is a New York Giants fan.) She had to attire herself in this t-shirt toga, a made-to-order outfit courtesy of Mike. She sported it well, all in good taste. Here is her smile along with the Patriots' season record.

Hair Haiku...

Capelli rain storm,
Clippers crop carefully; sigh.
Scarf and skin dance; breathe.

Cilium Delirium...

While waking up this morning, Daniela's red pillow cover stared back at me, a flannel softness punctuated by cilial strands. I kept quiet. A few minutes later, she noticed too, composedly commenting, "I want to go get a wig today."

By midday, Daniela, Ari, Gabriela, my schwiegermutter, Charlotte, and I were on our way to Old Town Alexandria, our destination...Crown Wigs, an address on the 700 block of King St. I brought my camera along hoping to conceal both my dispassion for wigs and my perceptions of the synthetic garden of acrylic willows. I imagined the styrofoam catacombs that awaited as we coasted along the Potomac river on the George Washington Parkway towards Alexandria. I kept quiet and drove.

In the end, my apprehensions about the wig store were mostly misplaced. We enjoyed our visit, especially Gabriela. (Ari was bored most of the time, and sat in protest surrounded by solemn stares similar to his own.) Here is the edited pictorial narrative.


If you would like to read the captions at your own pace, click here.

After riding around the styrofoam carousel, we strolled down King St. darting in and out of the quaint storefronts. Tourists in our own backyard, for an afternoon--a refreshing virtual vacation. Tonight, the wig-acquisition sits atop the dresser, transplanted temporarily. A few hours ago, Daniela tried it on. I watched cautiously.... "I hate wigs," she lectured her reflection in the mirror.