Thursday, August 7, 2008

CaringBridge duplicate

Good news, on every front.

Linda is well and happy. Britta is married and preparing for school, and Evan is finally set up to work again. Peter is halfway through the script of his next movie. Chase is off on a three-day hiking trip, but called to tell us all is well before he left.

As for me, it has been six months since the last surgery and time for my semi-annual CT scan. When that time comes, we do it right -- chest, abdomen and pelvis, with barium and iodine for contrast.

The results today were all negative. That means nothing abnormal (except what was done by surgery). No growths, no tumor, no problems.

The blood test is the same -- no sign of any problem.
CEA at 2.2 (it was 20.6 last May, before surgery).
CA 19-9 at 6 (it was 64.7).
CA 125 at 4 (it was 176).

I'm getting stronger and more resilient every week. I'm walking and running and generally pretty active. The good days are very good. But for all that I can do at my best, the clearest indicator of improved health is consistency. For example, I've been going to work for months. That means getting up and dressed and out the door, driving to my office at Jenner & Block in Chicago (about 13 miles, or 40 minutes on a clear day), and staying for four to six to eight hours. However, until very recently there have always been days when I couldn't get out, when I couldn't make it that far.

Last week, for the first time since April 2007, I went to work every day, Monday through Friday. It wasn't a strain, not a grand effort to prove a point, but just what I could do.

Celebrating life by going to work every day may seem a bit backwards. But five or more 'good' days in a row is remarkable and wonderful.

Life is good. This is a good day. Perhaps I'll get one more. One more, and then another, and another. One day at a time.

Chris Kimball
Life days (most of them good): 19,405

Monday, June 30, 2008

Life is a Dance

Christina and Evan were married on June 29.

I danced with my daughter at her wedding.

With already six layers of meaning, nothing more needs to be said.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Showing Up

80 Percent of Success is Showing Up.
- Woody Allen, in "Life & Death"

June 22 was my 53d birthday. (Note to hackers: I can’t remember ever using my birth date as a password or even part of a password.) As usual, I spent the day recalling my sins, failures, errors and wrong choices. Then I spent the evening projecting trouble to come. It wasn’t a happy day.

The birthday blues are an annual experience. The fact is that I’ve failed at many things, made serious mistakes, and caused real harm. Also, there is much that I wish hadn’t happened. On the other hand, I have made a lot of good choices, I’ve had great experiences, and there are very good people in my life. Objectively, allowing for the fundamental limitation that I get to live only one life at a time, and accepting that the “happened to me” events were mostly non-negotiable, it has been a pretty good life so far.

I think it is time to be done with birthdays.

This is 2008 by the Christian calendar, which is in common use in most of the world. Although the year can be referred to somewhat neutrally as 2008 C.E. or common era, there is no avoiding the fact that 2008 is a count relative to the traditional birth date of Jesus of Nazareth. (We don't know that the traditional date is correct. Matthew puts the birth at a time when Herod was alive, which would be 4 B.C. or earlier. Luke puts the birth in the year of the Census of Cyrenius (Quirinius), which occurred in 6 A.D.)

There are other year counts. Many of them are religious at the core. This is 1429 in the Islamic calendar, counting 354-day years from Muhammad’s emigration from Mecca to Medina. This is 5768 in the Hebrew calendar (counting from “1 year before creation”). This is the year of the Earth Rat (year of Wù Zĭ or 戊子) in the traditional Chinese calendar. This is the 5109th year elapsed since the epoch or starting point of the Hindu calendar.

But a different year count doesn't help. No matter how the counting starts, counting by years means there will always be an anniversary day, a “birthday,” in which I will invariably sink into regrets and fears.

There is another approach. Digital devices -- computers, calculators, digital watches -- count elapsed time from a starting point, then make a calculation to display the date in the specified format. The most accessible of these for most of us is the count used in spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel. In Excel, day 1 is the equivalent of 1 January 1900. In Excel, my 53d birthday is day 39,621, allowing for the oddity that the count includes a February 29 in 1900 which didn’t exist but is counted to maintain consistency (earlier systems made the simplifying but incorrect assumption that every year ending in a 00 is a leap year).

Forget years. I'm going to count by days.

22 June 2008 is the 19,359th day of my life.

Thinking of days, I’m shooting for 30,000. When I get there I’ll revise my plan.

Thinking of days, my gifts to myself are to clear out all the slacks and shirts and coats and shoes and belts that I can’t or don’t use and give them away, to pile up all the books and magazines that I’m never going to read or look at again and throw them away or give them away, and to convert every bill that I know I’m going to pay anyway into an automatic payment.

Thinking of days, a few were not very good. But if I think of all the bad times, all the awful days, all the failures and bad choices, they don’t add up to more than a couple hundred days. Out of 19,359 days, the vast majority have been good days.

Thinking of days, out of 19,359 I showed up every time.

On June 23d, day 19,360, I discovered Psalm 118:24 running through my mind over and over again. “This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in the day.”


(July 6, when I actually posted this, is day 19,373.)

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Mann im Dunkeln, Street in Delft

Mann im Dunkeln, by Max Beckmann




Peter, Linda and I went to Germany on June 3. We spent a couple of days in Frankfurt, then drove to Koblenz, to Essen, to Dortmund, flew to Vienna (Austria), and back to Dortmund three days later, then to Frankfurt – stopping in Stiegen along the way, for lunch to pick up Chase and Britta. All five together, we drove to Hamburg. After two days in Hamburg we drove to Lüneburg, to Leer, to Emmen (Netherlands), Appledoorn (Netherlands), and Amsterdam. After two days in Amsterdam we drove to Utrecht, had lunch all together, and dropped Peter and Chase off at the train station. Britta, Linda and I drove back to Frankfurt and flew home the next day, June 18.

I remember the trip for three things.

First is survival in a foreign land. Of course Germany, Austria and the Netherlands are not difficult places. For a trip overseas this was about as easy as I can imagine. But I wouldn’t have made the trip on my own. Not yet. I’m not strong enough. I can’t be in a different city every day. I can’t spend 8½ hours on a plane. I can’t spend a half-day in a car. I can’t walk all around town and through museums and back again. I just can’t do it.

But I did. My daughter and my wife and my doctor persuaded me that even half days were better than sitting home alone. And that’s not far from what I had. I spent a lot of mornings and some evenings in a hotel room. But I did travel, I saw a lot, I ate and slept and walked and learned.

Second is the sights and sounds and people of Peter’s and Chase’s missions: Peter for two years in Northern Germany centered on Hamburg, and Chase for two years in the Netherlands. Of course they lived it 24 hours a day for two years, and I just saw a few buildings and met a few people. But I can now picture their work, the streets they walked, the people they met, the churches they helped. I’m glad I have that picture in mind.

Third is art. In Frankfurt at the Städel Museum I got to see Max Beckmann’s 8 bronzes, including Mann im Dunkeln.

In Vienna, at the Albertina, I spent some a long time with one of Monet’s water lilly paintings



One of approximately 250 in the Water Lilies series, by Claude Monet

and kept coming back to a Kandinsky.


A Kandinsky of the style but not the very one in the Albertina

In Amsterdam, at the Rijks museum, after rooms full of Rembrandts, I came upon three Vermeer paintings and my brain lit up. It was a surprise. Even with Rembrandt’s work as a backdrop (what a backdrop!), the Vermeer paintings seemed like coming upon the real thing, life in oils.

Street in Delft, by Vermeer

Standing in front of Mann im Dunkeln, and Street in Delft, I had the same feeling that came when I saw El Capitan in Yosemite, and a sunset over the Wasatch mountains, and my son talking to a stranger on the street, and Linda's smile in the morning: "This is a piece of heaven on earth; I'm glad I have lived to see this; I'm glad this sight and experience is part of my life."


(We've traveled so much in the last month that I haven't posted blogs that are on my mind. I'm dating these where they belong, not when they were actually posted.)


Monday, May 26, 2008

Memorial Day 2008

Memorial Day has always before been a parking meter holiday for me. The banks are closed, there is no mail, and I usually choose not to go into the office even when I have work demands.

We are not a military family. My Kimball grandfather registered with the Selective Service when it was created in 1917 after the U.S. entered the war in Europe. He was found perfectly fit, but was not called up and armistice was signed the next year. My uncles Spencer, Grant and Andrew all served in World War II, all in the Navy on the Pacific front. They all came home. My father was too young for World War II, and would have been exempt in any event because of his polio disability.

I’m sure there are other relatives who served in one war or another. But there is nobody else whom I know well enough to have heard stories from or about, and I'm not aware of any deaths in war, among family members.

I grew up with the war in Vietnam always present. Just today I checked the dates (using Wikipedia and subject to whatever flaws the “Vietnam War” entry contains), and confirmed this.

I was born in 1955. Vietnam was partitioned in 1954, in what was supposed to be a temporary partition pending national elections in July 1956, except that the U.S. never agreed and the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, declined to hold elections. Instead, in 1955, Diem launched a “Denounce the Communists” campaign, and in October declared the new Republic of Vietnam.

I was four years old in 1959 when North Vietnam’s Central Committee issued a secret resolution authorizing an armed struggle, and the southern Viet Minh began large-scale operations against the South Vietnamese military.

I was eight years old in 1963 when some policy makers in Washington concluded that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists and might even make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. Apparently the CIA was in contact with generals planning to remove Diem and told them that the United States would support such a move. President Diem was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on November 2, 1963.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated three weeks later, on November 22, 1963.

I was ten years old when U.S. involvement in Vietnam War was escalated, starting officially on the morning of January 31, 1965, when orders were cut and issued to mobilize the 18th TAC Fighter Squadron from Okinawa to Danang.

I was sixteen when the wind-down began, when the U.S. troop count was reduced to 196,700.

I was nearly eighteen, a senior in High School, when Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam and a cease-fire was declared across North and South Vietnam.

My birthdate was assigned number 11 in the draft lottery. Had there been an active draft in 1973 I almost certainly would have been drafted. However, for the first time in my young memory, in 1973 nobody was drafted.

From 1956 to 1975, essentially the first twenty years of my life, almost 3 million Americans served in Vietnam and at least 58,193 Americans were killed in Vietnam (other counts put the number at 58,209 or 58,217). (I'm thinking of men almost exclusively, but of the casualties 8 were women.) Vietnamese military dead on both sides exceeded 1.3 million, and civilian deaths are estimated at 2 million.

We visited Tom and Michael last weekend, stopping for an evening and a morning on the way up to Northfield, Minnesota, to see Chase at school. Every time I see Tom I’m aware that there is a part of him I can’t know or reach. That part served in Vietnam. It was a long time ago. We are getting to be old(er) men now. But surprisingly there is an always present “I was there” mystery and depth to Tom. I have the same feeling with Doug Braithwaite, with whom I’ve discussed this directly. Doug tells me that there are a few stories he can tell, more that he can share with and will only make sense to other men who were there, and some that he will never tell anywhere.

But today I’ve been thinking more about all those who did not return except as a body in a bag or a casket. They would have been the men just older than me. They would have made my world a livelier, better, richer place. But they didn’t come back, and I never knew them.

The Vietnam war was a mistake in sixteen different ways. So is the current action in Iraq, whatever it is rightly called. But the young men who went to war are not to blame for the mistakes of the leaders. Those young men serve where they are called. I wish they all had come home. I wish I had known them. I mourn them, and honor them.

There’s no great mystery about why this Memorial Day for me, and not any of the 51 Memorial Days that came before. This Memorial Day I am alive, after learning that I had cancer that was fatal if not treated, and for which the treatment was only a little less extreme than the disease. A year ago today I was 11 days post surgery and still in very intense care. Linda celebrates May 15 or May 16 as a new “birth” day for me. However, I slept pretty much all of May 15 in an operating room, I was barely conscious on the 16th, and for some days after I wasn’t sure I would survive the night. It was more like Memorial Day one year ago today when I started to believe that I might live another day.

I am glad to be alive. I celebrate every single day, every hour of every day. And yet by the time I was diagnosed I had three adult children and a partner in Linda with whom I had already made a life together for nearly thirty years. I had had three significant careers and was working on the fourth. I had lived well and long. Morbid as it sounds, I had probably done all that was needed for me to do.

Those young men who went to Europe and to the Pacific and to Korea and to Vietnam, and now to Iraq, but didn’t come home, those young men did not get to live out the full measure of their lives. They are gone, and we are the lesser for it. I remember them today.


Saturday, May 10, 2008

Bigger than a duck.

In December I ordered a pair of hiking boots. They were out of stock so I received a pair made for me in late January, just before I went into the hospital.

These days it is easy to find hiking boots that are built like running shoes with ankle support. They can be relatively inexpensive and certainly do the job for casual hiking. They have lots of plastic parts and don’t change at all until, at the end of their useful life, they simply fall apart. They either fit right the first time you put them on, or they never fit at all.

I discovered that it is also possible to have hiking boots made to order. Some of the best have a backlog of more than a year and cost thousands of dollars. I expect they are wonderful to walk in. I hope they are indestructible. I'll probably never know.

What I wanted was neither the hydrocarbon-intense running shoe with ankle support, nor the turn-out-your-pockets custom built. I wanted boots like the ones I eyed in the store and envied on my older friends’ feet when I was 15 years old. Sturdy leather boots with serious waterproofing, with a lug sole stitched to the upper so it can be replaced. The kind that are too stiff and give you blisters when they first come out of the box, but after a few weeks mold to your feet and from then on fit perfectly. The kind that will take you through any terrain in all kinds of weather, so you don’t even check the weather first. You just pull on your boots, confident they’re the right choice whatever it’s like outside. The kind you resole three or four or five times because the uppers last forever and once they’re broken in they feel better than anything else you’ve ever worn.

Surprisingly I couldn’t find what I wanted in the stores, even places like REI that I thought would cater to that kind of interest. Thanks to the internet, I did find them online and ordered a pair (Irish Setter Countrysider Style 1885, from Red Wing Shoes). I’ve been using them every day since I got out of the hospital. With well over 100 miles on them, they are starting to feel good.

Almost every evening I go out for a walk. Around nine o’clock I put down whatever I’ve been working on, turn off the television if it’s been on, and start into my nightly routine. I pull on the boots, choose the appropriate coat for the weather, start up an audio book on my iPod, grab my walking sticks, and head out for a walk. The walking sticks keep my upper body involved and keep me walking at a fast pace. They also help when my balance is off; I’ve lost some of the feeling in my feet, my left foot in particular, and sometimes I miss a step. These days a brisk 30 minutes is about right for a good walk without strain.

I like to look at the houses. Most are lit from the inside at that time of night, so I can see all the different colors people use in their living rooms, and who has interesting art work hanging. Because I’m walking I know where there’s a house surrounded by tulips. Where the construction sites are. Which houses are for sale and which have sold (houses around here are in fact selling). Which yards are kept up and which are already going to seed, if that’s possible in May.

The air smells a little different every night, especially in the Spring when there’s always something new blooming.

There are almost no adults on the streets at 9 or 10 o’clock. The adults seem to be home, or in a car, or rushing from car to house. I do see teenagers, mostly in packs. Mostly having fun, but sometimes mischief. I can usually tell by how they look at me. The open eyes, “hello,” “nice evening,” “I like your walking sticks” kind of look is kids having fun. The “what are you looking at?” And “why don’t you just go away?” kind of look is kids engaged in some kind of mischief and feeling guilty. Like the time they were setting a fire just outside the municipal tennis courts.

After the walk I get ready for bed and then play the piano for 30 or 40 minutes, finishing with a random and different every day medley of hymns.

All together, the walk, the smells and sights and sounds of the night, the audio book, the piano, all serves as a celebration and reminder of life. I’m alive. I hear and see and smell, walk and think and praise. It’s a good day, one that ends with walking and making music.

Oh, the title to this entry: “Bigger than a duck”? It’s my favorite line so far from “Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman, the book I’m listening to right now:

“To say that Richard Mayhew was not very good at heights would be perfectly accurate, but would fail to give the full picture. It would be like describing the planet Jupiter as bigger than a duck.”

Monday, May 5, 2008

Marriage

I’m told that a key indicator of getting better in my circumstances is when you stop thinking all the time about your body and the location of the nearest toilet. On Thursday and Friday last week I had hours when I didn't worry. Two days in a row with hours free of worry is great progress. Of course Saturday was a reminder that recovery isn’t simple. For about 12 hours I sat and napped and read in my easy chair, 10 steps away from the bathroom. I made that trip many times.

More than enough said on that front.

Last Monday my sister Sarah and Kevin Whisenant were married. They seem to be a great couple, both in love and very clear headed and smart, all at the same time. It probably helps that they are both in their 40s. They each sold their living alone houses, and together bought a living together house. That’s a kind of financial wherewithal and security that Linda and I couldn’t imagine when we got married, almost two decades younger than Sarah and Kevin, and with less than a thousand dollars between us before we bought wedding rings for about $100 each and our first car for $425.

The wedding was very normal seeming from a secular point of view, but quite unusual from inside a Mormon worldview. My daughter’s wedding in June will also be unusual from a Mormon point of view, for a different reason.

From a Mormon point of view, there are three kinds of marriages:

  1. The premier, how it’s supposed to be, marriage in the temple, referred to as a “sealing for time and eternity.” This is for a man and woman who are both card-carrying by-the-book orthodox Mormons who follow all the rules.
  2. A civil or religious service by a judge or minister or Mormon bishop, for time (“till death do you part”). This is for non-Mormons, and a Mormon marrying a non-Mormon, and two Mormons one or both of whom is not quite the card-carrying by-the-book orthodox obey-all-the-rules type.
  3. Not legal marriage. Two men. Two women. More than two, as in plural marriage or polygamy, which was good for Mormons in the 19th century, but illegal in the United States and forbidden by the LDS church in the 20th and 21st century. (The group in Texas is referred to as an FLDS group, the F being “fundamentalist.” The distinction is important. The FLDS haven’t been part of or tolerated in the LDS church for more than a century.)

My sister’s wedding wasn’t any of these. From all I can tell, and others confirm, Sarah and Kevin are both card-carrying by-the-book orthodox Mormons, and they really wanted to be married in the temple. In my opinion, they should have been married in the temple. They were prevented from doing so by an arbitrary ruling that relates to Kevin’s having been married before and divorced at least 10 years ago. As I understand it, the ruling was that they could wait another year and be married in the temple, or get married now in a civil service and be sealed in the temple in another year. They took option 2.

So the two card-carrying by-the-book loyal committed Mormons are making do with a “lesser” marriage, one which is perfectly legal, but not what they really wanted, for at least a year. I don’t understand. I can’t even make up an explanation that is coherent. It is arbitrary.

My daughter’s wedding isn’t any of these either. My daughter is Mormon in the sense that she was baptized and confirmed in a Mormon ceremony, and grew up--at least until her late-teens--as a Mormon, with all the education and activities and experiences of a Mormon girl. In some important ways she will always be Mormon whether she likes it or not. On the other hand, Evan is not Mormon and never has been. So one might categorize their wedding in the second group, a religious service where a Mormon is marrying a non-Mormon.

What makes their marriage different is that Britta and Evan did not meet as Mormon meeting non-Mormon. The “Mormon” part of the pair isn’t making do with a “lesser” marriage because she can’t have the temple sealing with a non-Mormon spouse. Britta chose a church long before she met Evan, and followed that choice from college to Boston to Brattleboro to Belmont to Cambridge, and then met Evan, a fellow choir member, under the yellowwood tree over punch and cookies in the fellowship hour after services. They will be married in their church, with their choir around them, with their minister Mary solemnizing their commitment. They are home, getting married in the very best way they know, and they and we are celebrating from beginning to end.

I was asked to say a prayer at the end of my sister’s wedding celebration. It was short. I offered thanks that we were all able to celebrate their wedding, and prayed for a long, happy, healthy marriage for my sister and new brother. That was it. Some people commented positively on the short prayer. I thought it was enough, and best short and to the point. Furthermore, what nobody knew was that the next phrase, the one I cut off, would have been a petition for the day when any two adults who want to be married can celebrate a legal and lawful marriage in the same way. But that wouldn’t have been fair. While I am confident the first two phrases were shared by the group, I know that my third phrase would have been met with opposition, for reasons I cannot fathom.

My views about marriage are on the record, and have been since 1998. It turns out that a speech I gave in 1998 at an Affirmation conference was recorded and is available on-line. One view of that talk is that I was ahead of my time, advocating for same-sex marriage. Another view is that I made everybody upset, telling Mormons that same-sex marriage should be legal, and telling gay men that they should get married if they wanted to have sex. It was not quite the message anybody wanted to hear (and it isn't quite what I said). A third view is that I once told my daughter (when she was 24) that we had never had the infamous “birds and bees” conversation, and since she already knew all she needed to know about mechanics, the rest of what I had to say was in this talk.

The talk lasts 47 minutes and it isn't a comedy. If you are interested, click here for an mp3 version.

The talk has been available for years at http://www.affirmation.org/audio/09_1998/chris_kimball_copyright.shtml, but that version is coded for Real Player which I dislike and refuse to use.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Running!

I ran Friday evening. I felt pretty good during the day and got home in daylight. It was raining but warm -- in the 70s -- and I wasn't going far and anyway the rain stopped while I was putting my shoes on.

I ran around the block twice. That is almost exactly 0.8 miles. Eight tenths of a mile. Four tenths for each time around. I was exhausted. On the last straightaway, the last one tenth, I kept going only because I could literally see the end in sight.

Eight tenths of a mile is almost ludicrous for someone who used to run 4 miles regularly, and 8 to 10 on a long weekend run, not for training but just for fun. I'm a little surprised. I've been walking one to four miles a day most days for the last 18 months, and I have been working on the elliptical machine for the last month, 30 minutes at a time without feeling exhausted. But running is different. I suppose the fact that I run with a 4-pound weight in each hand (as I have done regularly for the last 30+ years) might have something to do with the level of exertion.

However exhausted, I finished in good form, nothing hurt and I didn't get sick. The effect on my digestive system has been noticeable but not disastrous -- consistent with having done too much and tired myself on Friday.

It's a start.

Leaves

I have a little prayer rug. It is just a scrap of carpeting in the corner of my study. I put it there when I found that kneeling on the hardwood floor hurt my knees. Our whole house has hardwood floors, except the bathrooms and kitchen which are stone or tile, and the basement which is concrete. So for the benefit of my knees a piece of carpet is essential.

When I was most sick last year I developed a todo list for myself. I didn't want to forget things, and I wanted to accomplish something in a day. Some of the items are daily, and some of those took hold as new habits or routines. I'm sorry to say that some of the daily items never have taken hold and still sit on the list reminding me that I have failed yet again in something I fully intended to do.

First on the list is prayer. I have prayed all my life, but never with the fervency, immediacy and intimacy that I found in the last year. I get up in the morning, stumble up to my prayer rug, open the curtain and look at the tree outside my window for a few minutes, and then give thanks that I'm alive. That I can walk up the stairs. That I have one more day. I offer thanks for the body I'm blessed with, for the healing that has occurred, for hearing and seeing and walking and thinking and feeling. I pray that I can see and smell and hear beauty this day. I pray that I can see the godly, and the ugly, in people. For it is there, both the good and the bad, and it is all part of this life, and I would open my eyes. I give thanks for my wife, who has been by my side constantly, who seems herself to be healthy, and who seems, beyond all reason or sense, to love me. I pray for the wellbeing of my children, Britta and Peter and Chase, each in their work and life. And I pray in intimate detail that I would not speak to another nor would make sense to another, for my bowels to work this day in ways that are intended, and some that never were, where compensation is required.

I have learned that God has more to do with my body than I ever imagined. I always thought of God first with the mind, then sometimes the heart, but never the body. Yet the body may be first, not last, in the catalog of God's concerns and blessings.

Outside my window the tree that I watch every morning has made new little branches which swelled at the end and now have put out tiny green leaves.

It is Spring and the world rejoices in life.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Tired?

Blogging is something of a new activity for me. Linda and I posted frequently over the past year on CaringBridge (http://caringbridge.org/visit/chriskimball) as I went through a couple of major surgeries, chemotherapy, and some other unpleasantness. Those posts had a lot to do with my physical condition, and it always startled me that anybody cared, let alone enough for over 18,000 visits.

When I softly shut down CaringBridge and opened a blog, I had a semi-firm commitment to myself not to blog (apparently a verb for almost a decade now) about my physical condition, after the transitional opening post. But here I am again, thinking about physical condition.

I'd like to participate in a triathlon. Notice the carefully chosen word "participate." Not "compete" or "race" or even "finish." It will mean getting back on a bicycle, which was once a regular activity but needs a restart. It will mean running again, which was a very regular activity until late 2006, when the symptoms that ultimately led to a cancer diagnosis and treatment started making it difficult to run. But most of all it will mean swimming, which I haven't done regularly since I was 10 to 12 years old learning to swim in the old, cold, heavily chlorinated basement pool at the downtown YMCA in Madison. I have been swimming enough times in the intervening 40 years to know that I can still swim and -- at least in my 2006 physical condition -- could finish a half mile with effort but not undue trauma.

I've since learned that everything I was taught about swimming form was wrong. If I'm going to start swimming again, I really should find a coach to learn a good form without repeating old bad habits and building up a muscle memory of old bad form. Perhaps I will do so. Knowing me, it's more likely that I'll read a book or an article and try to do it myself. We'll see.

But the real problem is not finding a coach or getting started again. The spring weather is sufficiently encouraging without anything more. The real problem is this body I'm now carrying around, with some parts missing and some parts rather unhappy. Even with all the right medication and the right foods (cutting out almost all fat, supplementing with vitamins and enzymes), I still have a serious problem every time I get tired or stressed. After fatigue or stress, the next "day" -- typically a period of about 12 hours starting in about 12 hours -- is awful.

I've lived my entire life counting on the fact that I could work and keep working at essentially full speed for 20 hours a day for extended periods. I didn't do that very often, but it was my ace in the hole. Late on a paper? I'll just push for a day or two and it will get done. Big deal to close? I'll work around the clock until it is done. I might have a bit of let-down afterward, but I could get it done. And physically I could train hard. My knees, ankles, elbows and back might complain -- there's nothing magical about my joints -- but up to the limit imposed by my joints I could work and work and work, and get stronger or more agile or faster within days.

I can't do it any longer. I know this would have come with age, eventually and gradually. However, for me it has come all of a sudden with the surgery and shortening of my digestive system. Push hard, stay up late, work until I'm tired, run an extra mile, worry about something out of my control, and I will pay dearly in near-term physical discomfort ("discomfort" is such a nice word for experiences that make me seriously question whether I want to live another hour).

I feel like an old man before my time.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

It has been two months since surgery. Linda and I took a walk around the neighborhood this afternoon. It was a beautiful day and a pleasant walk. I don't know the objective temperature. I do know that Linda was warm and I was cold, even bundled up with coat, hat and gloves.

I'm doing pretty well some days, and tolerable or better most days. There is still an occasional awful day, just to keep life interesting.

We saw a gastroenterologist for the first time last Wednesday. There were three significant observations.

First is that my situation is now mostly in the GI (gastrointestinal) category. We've dealt with everything else, and what I'm left with are GI issues, some of which will continue the rest of my life. I suspect that Dr. Ehrenpreis and I will become good friends.

Second is that we should expect a year for everything to settle down to whatever “new normal” is going to be. I think the progress is much faster than that, but expecting another ten months is probably good for me . . . patience . . . breathe deeply . . . one day at a time . . . and so on.

Third is that one of the things removed in the first surgery is part or all of the section of the intestines that processes fat. This has several consequences. One is that it will always be difficult to gain weight, because fat is calorically about three times as dense as carbohydrates and protein. (I consider this generally a good thing, although I could use another five pounds right now.) Second is that fat will pass through me. (I consider this generally a bad thing.) Third is that I will need to supplement the fat soluble vitamins A, E, D and K, because I won’t get an adequate amount by diet alone, and I will need a vitamin B12 shot every month. (I consider this disappointing but manageable.)

With this news, and the prospect of months and years of upkeep and maintenance and nothing much changing, we will do a soft shutdown of CaringBridge. If I end up in an emergency room, we’ll post. If the PMP comes back, we’ll post. But I suspect the risks are higher that I’ll have a climbing accident (yes, I’m climbing again) or motorcycle accident (it’s been too cold to have much fun on the bike, but I’ve been out once so far this year), than that something related to cancer and surgery will cause a serious problem.

I do have a blog which has been completely inactive until now. A copy of this message has been posted as the opening entry. Chances are the blog will be very very slow, but even at that, more lively than CaringBridge. See chriskimball.blogspot.com.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to every person who posted, and every person who read and thought about me. Your good wishes and prayers and jokes and Haikus and general thoughtfulness have meant the world to me.

Chris Kimball
6 April 2008
Evanston, Illinois
ckimball@pobox.com