An Actually Informative Timeline of my Cancer Journey

 'Round January I noticed a lump on my lymph note at the jawline and irritation at the base of the tongue. I gave it a couple weeks to resolve, and it did not.

I had a dentist appointment in February, and scheduled a medical checkup for the same day. The dentist didn't see anything on my tongue during their usual oral cancer check, even with my extra concern. Doctor sent me to an ENT.

ENT stuck a camera up my nose [Fun! Remember the scene in "Total Recall"? If not, don't go watch that now. Anyway, just a tiny camera, not a... well, anyways!]. Couple days later a couple demands come in via the ENT to get a scan of some kind involving large machines into which you are moved by servo-motors. That sends me to the point man on the cancer team [see "Second Opinion", I think, re: Occam's Razor.]

At this point, Kaiser just starts taking liberties with my time. I'm like, "Can we maybe schedule some of these on the same day? Every time I get an appointment, I have to spend about an hour writing sub plans!". Yeah, so Dr. G, the point man, sends me to more electronic tunnels with a slab on a servo, and a couple of biopsies that confirm that it is HPV- related-- not, thankfully, related to my 8 years as a smoker.

By this time, the school year is really coming to a head. Maybe we can start this after school is out? Maybe I can actually Get Away at least a little in early summer. Nope. Well, Dr. G hands me off to radiation therapy and chemotherapy folks. From here on in, Kaiser has dibs on my time. During the last week of school, I miss 4 of 5 days [see "Peaks and Troughs], returning only to say heartfelt goodbyes to my li'l bunnies, and providing precious little guidance to my subs. Bless substitute teachers' hearts!!! They muddled through and nothing got broken except the disc drawer of the DVD player that I only ever use on the last day of school.

That last week had me recovering from the installation of a feeding tube on my stomach which was not as fun as I had been led to believe. It hurt for quite a while, though on day 4 I was able to ride my bike and get it up on the train to see the students.

2 weeks after surgery,  it was time to start radiation daily, Monday to Friday, and chemo once a week right after radiation.

The first radiation was harsh. It usually takes about 5 or 10 minutes, but the first session takes 15 or 20 minutes. Your tongue is immobilized, and you have to be able to breathe through your nose. Fortunately, this is something I have been practicing for the past 4 years or so, since my morning grudge matches against the Berkeley Hills on a bicycle. My goal there was to both inhale and exhale only through my nose, inspired by "Breath" by  James Nestor, an author interviewed by Terry Gross in 2020. This is part of my one-word title book collection.*

The first session was very, very difficult.  After that, it gets both objectively and subjectively shorter. I'll talk below about what the outcomes and side effects of radiation therapy.

Next up was chemo. Just like the scenes in "Breaking Bad", but a bit more medical, and less comfy. Sweet nurses. Claudia accompanied me at the first session. This whole thing creates a great deal anxiety for her. Lots of IV hydration beforehand. I was doing fine. In fact, next radiation treatment I bike the 5 [flat] miles to Kaiser. Mostly just to prove a point. I, uh, did not bike on the next 2 days. 

I did fine for the next day and a half, and I failed preemptively to take my nausea meds. Nausea, a Greek term, means "puking your guts out", apparently. Through today, Saturday, I am not good for much, in part because you can't drive your car without gas and you can't run your body or your mind without food.

As you can see, I am now well enough to fire up my laptop and type. I want to take a walk in a bit. I'm doing better.  I'll add more to the timeline next time. I want to review for myself and for any interested reader what the process will be-- it gets worse-- and what the effects will be.

*One word title. Preferably a mass noun like "sand", not a count noun like "trees". Nonfiction. Subject of book must be the same as the title. Examples: "Vanilla", "Cod", "Salt", "Banana"

Dumb Stuff I Gotta Do

Dumb Stuff I Gotta Do

My dad used to have a notepad in, I think, the early 80s where each page, if I remember  right, said the above title. It was a kind of dayrunner notebook. Such notebooks are still available.

I have to do an amazing variety of dumb stuff these days. Thing is, for years now, largely in the trenches of elementary education, I have realized that the key for me is not to think about the things I have to do, but to think about how I need to go about doing them.

This has led me to strategize or "plan" my short to middle term future actions. Plan is a word that I am told refers to thinking about the future in terms of concrete, ordered steps. It may amaze some of you to know that I can entertain this kind of thinking at all. It amazes me. Now, my dad, you see; planning was actually part of his job title. He is an emeritus professor of Urban Planning, a Planner, and a planner. The gene was not passed on.

For myself, the problem has not been planning things out, but rather communicating to ordinary Homo Sapiens Sapiens just what those plans are. This comes must sharply into focus in the various journeys I have taken, such as my exquisite month of filth and suffering in Quebec on a bicycle last summer, but also in something as simple as what I can get up to just traveling form Emeryville Amtrak home. Pity the fool who would be subject to these whims. In company, I tend to leave the planning, for better or worse to others.

The watchword here for me is that if you can't change your mind, how do you know you even have one?

Well, I been changin' a lotta plans lately. This current week was to be a heroic glidepath of not teaching too hard as we come down to the end of the year. Oddly, Kaiser seems to have a different view of things. I gave up on asking them to schedule my appointments on days that were convenient to me. They just have no understanding of what it takes to set up a substitute teacher even in glidepath days. Their apathy toward the needs of my working life is palpable. So it is that my last week of the school year has an at least 3 day cookie cutter hole in it. 

My line in the sand is the last day of school. Clearly, nothin' educational is going to happen tomorrow, Friday, before the kids leave for summer. I do have a lot of organizing to do, that is, I need to have the kids take home everything in their desks. Turns out tomorrow's work day is not a "thing I have to do", not a "thing I need to work out how to do", but rather a thing I will not be able to do.

There is a famous and perhaps apocryphal quote of a pro cyclist, Tom Simpson, who died on the Tour de France in 1967. He had been using amphetamines, among other things, in an apparent effort to improve his performance. Allegedly, his last words were "Put me back on my bike." There are stickers available with this phrase. (I think I need one.) The tragicomical thing about this is that at some point, we need to acknowledge that we cannot just pedal away. In his case, he really needed to get on with the business of dying, and he did. Cyclists visit his memorial on a French mountain road. Sheesh. (This is not the kind of cyclist I am.)

Well, anyways, back to the subject at hand! My plan was to finish the school year and then start therapy. Funny, not everyone has that option. Not every teacher even has their cancer line up with their calendar. But here we are. As to finishing the school year, I have had to scale way back, as I said above. But at a certain point, school year or not, a teacher has to face the possibility of just leaving the whole shebang looking like a bomb has gone off, just walk away, leaving it for the hapless sod who has to clean it up. Leaving the spare underwear in the closet (rainy days on the bike), the yogurt container forgotten on the snack shelf (it keeps surprisingly well!), and the despicable pile of ignored paperwork for someone else to deal with.

I just found out that there will be a 1 week gap between the end of school and the beginning of radiation therapy. If the pain of my abdominal surgery (long story, off topic here, and as you can see, I stick doggedly to my topic) recedes, I will be able to use that to impose some kind of order on the room for whoever it is who starts out next school year in it. It may not be me.

Peaks and Troughs

Yesterday, in the last week of school, I played in the annual teachers vs. 6th graders soccer game. I've been doing that since I came to this (soccer-mad) school 9 years ago. 

The experience when I first came to the school was quasi-religious. It lit up circuits dormant since I was about 10 years old: the spatiality of the game, the focus of the game. [Note: this may be the basis of how I behave at political demos.]

As one commentator famously said, "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death...I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." I would not go that far, but it is pretty cool. 

Anyway, yesterday I was on top of the world physically. Now, to quote a favorite olde epitaph, I am a poor caitiff.

Radiation treatment on my throat will make swallowing feel comparatively like it does when you have strep throat. (As a kid, I thought it meant your throat was stripped.) To keep my weight constant and the tumor in the same place for the radiation (X-ray radiation, actually), I have a gastro-something-or-other tube installed to inject "food" directly into my stomach.

If anyone can find that Alan Watts quote about not trusting anyone who refers to food as fuel, I would appreciate seeing that.

It might have been nice for Kaiser to let me know that I would be pretty fucked up for the next 24 hours. I have 3 sub days this week, the last week of the school year. I will not relinquish the last day of school, though, not unless there is bleeding, severe dizziness, or projectile vomiting.

Second Opinion

Doctor says, "You're overweight!" I say, "I want a second opinion." He responds, "Yeah, you're ugly, too!!"

Well, anyway, the doctor tells me that based on Occam's Razor (i.e. "If it walks like a duck...), it's an HPV related cancerous tumor on my tonsil, but that actually good news. It involves chemo, and that's tough, real tough, but odds are good that I will recover.

I have 3 questions. One is about cancer. Another is about treatment. My third question is about cannabis, what we used to call "pot" in the dark ages. He says it does not interfere with the treatment. Our science teacher Isabel says that cannabis has some good medicinal qualities with things like cancer. Honey, I ain't interested in medicinal benefits. There's only one thing I'm interested in with pot. 

"Hard work fine, and hard work good, but first take care of head." -The Toys, "Smoke Two Joints", played on KFOG every Friday at 5 p.m. back when we had rock 'n' roll radio in the Bay Area. No, I will not be smoking. For one, that's not hip. It's not easily dosable, and the doctors have some rather dire things to say about inhaling smoke during chemo. Like, fungus infections and stuff. I'm pretty sure that's bad.

 

Why is that?

I have just learned that  Georgina, a teacher whom I respect a great deal was made to retire mid-year by the strong intervention of her personal friend because she was suffering physical symptoms of stress that could seriously have damaged her health.
When I taught at the same school as Georgina, I also was suffering a great deal of stress. I was in the habit of visiting her kindergarten classroom just to drink in the vibe, as well as to pick up cues for my classroom in an entirely different grade. 
She had been teaching for more than 3 decades when she had to retire.
What exactly is happening when our school system fails to support such people to the degree that it does not allow them to accomplish their task-- their mission-- and threatens to damage them in this manner? What on earth are we thinking??

Misadventures in Bilingual Education and Incompetence: new edit

        2001-2002 An SST (Apparently, this acronym stands for Student Success Team. It is a meeting where various stakeholders in a student's education meet  in an initiation of allocation of special education resources.) about 2 particular students causes then-ELL (English Language Learners) director Emma Lerew to decide, top-down and unilaterally, to create a K/1 bilingual class at Bidwell in the next year.
        2002-2003 1st-year teacher Celina Kanat is hired to teach the class. 1st graders come from English-only kindergarten. She leaves at end of year to teach a non-combo class elsewhere in Hayward. She left teaching only a few years later.
        2003-2004  A new teacher, Mr. Bess, hired 2 weeks before the start of school. A tend of year, he suggests in a power-point presentation that parents transfer their children to other Hayward schools with bilingual 2nd grade. Only one family does this.
        2004-2005 Mr. Bess' 2nd year in the assignment. End-of-year discussions with Emma Lerew for a solution to the problem give no results. At any rate, Dr. Lerew retires in May 2005, expressing no responsibility for the class in her written communication.
        2005-2006 Mr. Bess' 3rd year. Mr. Bess holds end-of-year discussions with Letty Salinas, new ELL director, and Mr. Grasty, principal. Mr. Bess presents significant data on children's reading progress in English. Ms. Salinas decides to expand the program to a full K class and a 1st grade/ 2nd grade combination class. Unfortunately, Mr. Grasty gets word at the end of the year that the status quo will continue.
        2006-2007Mr. Bess' 4th year in the K/1st combination bilingual classroom. Again, at the end of the year, it is decided to have a full K class and a 1st/2nd split. This time it works. Over the summer, Mr. Bess attends the interview of the incoming teacher, Melynda Esquivel.
        2007-2008 Mr. Bess' 5th year, and 1st year of teaching only one grade, Kindergarten. Ms. Esquivel, an excellent beginning teacher, teaches a nearly full class of 1st graders and a very small number of 2nd graders,  2 or 3 children, too few to be a really viable educational situation. At the end of the year, Ms. Esquivel, like Mr. Bess before her, suggests to her exiting 1st graders' families that they transfer to a Hayward school with a viable bilingual program, or to an English-only 2nd grade class at Treeview Elementary.  All take her advice and transfer to SEI (English-only) classes, but 2 students are told by Mr. Grasty that they cannot transfer to another school when they try to just before the new school year. This is offensive and probably illegal. Thus, Ms. Esquivel's class stays a combo class, despite having a full class of kindergartners to fill it.
        2008-2009 Mr. Bess continues teaching Kindergarten bilingual. Ms. Esquivel is again forced to teach a split-grade class, again with only 2, or sometimes 3, 2nd grade students, too few to make the 2nd grade part of the class really viable. Ms. Esquivel quits in October due to medical issues. The class has daily substitutes, who do not speak Spanish, for several weeks, then a long-term substitute who speaks some Spanish for about a month. Eventually, a Spanish-speaking teacher is hired. At the end of the year, Mr. Bess distributes information to parents at Open House about the history and future of the bilingual program.  A meeting is scheduled with Ms. Salinas and the parents of the students in the bilingual class, but she fails to show up.  Mr. Bess and the parents take the issue to the school's ELAC (English Learners' Advisory Council).  Ms. Salinas comes to ELAC, but presents only information of the types of programs in Hayward schools. The decision is made to regress to a K/1 split and no 2nd grade at all, causing Mr. Bess to resign from the position:

2nd June, 2009
Dear Mr. Grasty,
Dear Ms. Salinas,
I firmly decline to accept the bilingual kindergarten/ first grade position at Bidwell Elementary for next school year.
For 7 years, we have had a bilingual program here. For 5 years, it consisted only of a Kindergarten/1st grade split-grade class. Anyone with the slightest insight into the bases of bilingual education should know that only 2 years of bilingual education is generally not as effective as no bilingual education at all.
For4 of those 5 years, it was I who was saddled with K/1 bilingual assignment. I was able to carry out my task effectively because of staggered reading and the dedicated support of my fellow teachers. In my 5th year, I was happy that the program expanded to a full kindergarten class and a first grade/second grade split. The teacher who taught that class extremely effectively, again with major support from our colleagues, left, presumably frustrated, early in the second year of its existence.
I have volunteered to teach a bilingual split grade class again, if it is that 1st
/2nd grade split. Unfortunately,our school will be reverting to having only one bilingual class, a K/1 split.
As an educator and as a learner, I live to progress, not to regress. This regression to a K/1 bilingual class is unacceptable to me. I will no longer allow this class to continue with my involvement. I fit were in my power to help stop this class from happening at all, I would stop it.
It is in my power to ask: does this school district really have the human, financial, and political resources to create and support an effective bilingual program at Bidwell Elementary?
Piet Bess

        2009-2010 Mr. Bess teaches 2nd grade at Treeview Elementary in English. David Beaston takes the bilingual K/1 position. At the end of the year, Mr. Bess takes the issue to the school's SBDM (Site Based Decision Making, a democratic body of representatives of all stake holders with limited executive power),  arguing that the program should be canceled.
        2010-2011 We have a change of educational leadership: Dr. Jessica Bonduris is our new  principal. Change begins, and the bilingual program starts to grow through the grades. Mr. Beaston has a full K class. Mairtin MacAnGhoill teaches a 1/ 2 split.
        2011-2012Growth continues: Beaston, K. MacAnGhoill, 1, and Audrey Nichols teaches a 2/ 3 split at Treeview
        2012-2013 Beaston K. MacAnGhoill, 1. Mr. Bess agrees to rejoin the bilingual program at Dr. Bonduris' request, seeing that the program is valued and supported, and is growing upwards through the grades. He teaches the 2nd
grade, albeit at Bidwell, the sole 2nd grade class at that site. Yanira Canizales, an excellent teacher, teaches the small 3/ 4 split bilingual class at  Treeview. Mr. MacAnGhoill leaves mid-year due to medical issues, and his class suffers a string of substitutes until Ms. Jameson, an excellent sub with Spanish skills comes in from May until the end of the school year. Mr. Beaston opts to leave bilingual because of heavy assessment loads in kindergarten, and, in the case of bilingual, a double load of them. With half a class of 4th graders, 12-13 was our high water mark.
        2013-2014 Sadly, Dr. Bonduris leaves us. The program recedes: Ms. Canizales' students are put in SEI, and the program supports up to 3rd grade. All bilingual classes are split-grade classes at the beginning of the year. This is a hard decision taken by Dr. Bonduris and discussed in our SBDM . Bilingual teachers assent to the split-grade classes in order to ease combos in English-only classes, especially in the case of a particular SEI cohort with big behavior problems. Even so, bilingual combo classes typically have fewer children than the English-only classes. Ben Hinchman, K/1. Mr. Bess, 1/ 2, and Laura Mingst with the 2/ 3 combo at Treeview.
        2014-15 After the interim principal, an incompetent named Andrea H*,  failed to hire teachers in a timely manner in May of the previous school year,  we get a new principal, Jennifer Reichert. She is a strong leader, but uses a deception towards me and other members of the school community as part of her leadership style, uses a racist slave ship picture explaining her leadership plan, and appears to suffer some ethical lapses, according to second-hand information from teachers. The year starts with Mr. Hinchman in K, Mr. Bess in 1st grade, and Noemi Hernandez, a very competent 30-day sub with native Spanish skills in 2nd grade.  A planned  3/ 4 split is canceled before the 10th day of the school year.  Terrifyingly, there was an attempt to shut down the whole program at this point, early in the year, but Ms. Reichert argues successfully against this.
We would have had a chance to grow the program out to its historic high, up to serving children through 4th grade, albeit in the diminished form of a split-grade grade classroom, but it didn't happen.
        2015-16 The program is axed by Sandra Escobedo. District director of English Learner programs. Mr. Bess and Mr. Hinchman take jobs at other school sites through the involuntary transfer process. The mother of one of the students,  Ana Navidad, is very involved in this process. With Mr. Bess's informational help about where bilingual programs are located, she focuses on Schafer Park Elementary, a 2009 building, where Mr. Bess happens to find a 1st grade DLI (Dual Language Immersion). She convinces a large proportion of the Treeview 1st grade class to transfer there.
        2016-17 Mr. Bess is transferred to 3rd grade at Schafer Park to its last remaining bilingual (as opposed to DLI) cohort, teaching many of those same former 1st graders.
As of 2024, both Mr. Bess and Mr. Hinchman are at the same schools, though Mr. Bess was taken out of the DLI program without explanation in 2022.

*Ms. H was taken to task about joking about Mr. Hinchman and another teacher, a woman, being paedophiles. Responding to me, the union representative, about remedying this situation, she chose not to take responsibility for what she had said,  but rather to threaten to expose the fact that I and other teachers had gathered during work hours after school on the last day of the school year at a colleague's house to celebrate. It turned out that the party had been called at that hour so that a male stripper could entertain for a teacher who was retiring that year. So, the principal was incompetent, failed to grasp boundaries about speech at work, and did not hesitate to use blackmail as a tool. I wish her unwell.

• ---

A Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Moment

From Nader Khalili's book _Racing Alone_, out of print, acquired at Berkeley Public Library. It is a favourite reading moment of mine, and something I have seen in several forms, beginning with the TV ad for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, where one complains that there is chocolate in his peanut butter, and the other that there is peanut butter on his chocolate.

"The villagers understand my firing and changing their houses into bricks very easily, and they relate to every part of it. But their hesitation as to what the house may become has be be brought to the light. And for that I am ready to freshen their memory with a walk to the old kiln just several hundred steps away.
I ask the villagers if thee have been any kilns around here, the kilns to fire qanat kavals.
“Yes, right down the road,” says one.
“There, you can see it from here,” says the other.
The kids start running that direction to show it to me. I don;t mention what I intend to do,  but ask my friends and the villagers to come along. Everybody comes to see what I want to how. Ezzat, the eager architectural student also jumps down from the roof and joins us with his camera. The feeling is that there may be a puzzle I want to talk about, or possibly refire the kiln or brick or something.
The several-hundred-step march is like an exodus from the village. To me it is an exodus from the present to the past.
We reach the kiln. Children climb all over the roof and the walls.
“What was this building used or before?” I ask the old man of the village aloud, while everyone I trying to guess.
It was a kaval kiln. In my childhood time I saw it fired.
“How long ago was that?” I ask.
“Oh, maybe 40 or 50 years ago, maybe even more. I don't know how old I am now. “ He laughs as he says hat.
I let them play around with the walls and touch the rock like pieces.
“They used to fire it right from underneath on this big hole. They used to burn wood, animal dung, or anything they could burn. Yes, see, right around the firepit the soil is melted to rock,” the old man says while while he tries to break a piece but can't. A younger man kicks a piece with his boot; he can't break it either. Everyone laughs.
Then I stop them and ask them in a low voice, acing the old man and trying to have them observe silence.
“Amoo, why have all your houses collapsed but this roo hasn't collapsed? Yet you all plaster your roofs every year and you say that this roof is just left under the rain and snow for thirty years?”
“Not thirty but fifty years,” he says.
“Okay, fifty years, Why is it still standing?” I ask.
A middle-aged peasant answers in a loud voice from behind: “Don't you understand? This is fired and baked to a rocklike brick. Even a cannonball can't break it.”
Then there is a few seconds' silence. Several have already made the connection. My architectural students and engineer friends make the connection first, but before they start to explain what I am trying to say, someone in the crowd says, “So this is the puzzle?”
And in a few seconds everything falls in place.
The history connects with the present. Moments link, and the chain is completed. There is more silence, and everyone is digging a piece or climbing to the roof. More conversation, more comments, and more photographs, even several group portraits for the memory's sake are taken on the roof. By the time we walk back, there seems to be no question as to the validity of what we will be doing. And everyone offers his house for the first firing."