to clarify ...

To clarify the notion of "someone on my shoulder" ...

That reference was about my old mate I lost mid last year - the one whose cardigan I was wearing on ANZAC Day, as I do most mornings with a cup of tea in the garden.

And it may well have been Leunig's direction finding duck right there on the shoulder with Pop too ...

un/lucky

There's been an essay growing on the notion of luck.

It's a colony first spawned in the culture dish of that collapse: unlucky to pass out for four minutes, rushed to hospital; so lucky to have fallen in a safe environment (well, save for a corner of Michael's desk) among good people who showed great care.

Someone was sitting on my shoulder throughout.

I hate to think about the places where and circumstances in which that event might otherwise have happened ... but it must be done.

Mountain biking flat out down the side of a gum-filled hillside?
Too soft - that's a self harm scenario only.
Let's get to the guts of it: I've driven my grandmother through crowded streets.
I've driven past schools just before the bell.

I've driven Nixie to school ...

... there it is.



A month or so thinking I had a brain tumour - potentially malignant ... that's an odd one.
I'm coming to think myself lucky for having experienced that - for reasons I need more low tide shuffling to articulate.

Someone has been sitting on my shoulder throughout.
Hopefully they're still there when we hear more news on Wednesday.

... in the meantime I'm going to do those low tide hours and try to call on some training to cull a few pages from the essay, then post a few better crafted pars that look like they will lean to the spiritual.

Suffice to say, through all this, I feel strangely lucky.

Perhaps it's not much different to my cringe in a pharmacy yesterday at the whine of a woman (who looked like she'd been chewed up and spat out by Iggy Pop) at the "shocking" weather - with her water supply at 26 per cent. While we in Red Hill - on tank water - rejoice after a night of rain on the roof.
But then I start to write about perspectives and it starts sounding trite again.

I'll give it more seaweed and abalone shell since, hopefully, there's not the need to rush.

Wednesday adventures

Went for blood tests, arrived wrong time ('predose' is another word in the medical lexicon I now know - it's a steep learning curve).

Well overdue for a chuckle.

Went Op Shopping with Emma ...

Rosebud Vinnie's came up with these at $4 for the pair with winter just around the corner.

Kim's not chuckling so there's a chance they'll end up on Bennie's feet in his shed while he thrashes out Hendrix on his Fender ... though I might pierce the lefty first.

Tuesday whimsy

If fear had a Beaufort scale ... Force 12 might have abated to a Force 9.


... and feeling stronger for having felt the Force 12 ... perhaps even for the very fact of the embarkation a month ago.


"Under the best of conditions, a voyage is one of the severest tests to try a man"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that combined with something about 'anyone can stand by the helm in calm' ... can't remember who wrote it.

Smokebush BOG ... GOB being tested

Smokebush Grace (Cotinus coggygria 'Grace') leaves get Best on Ground today - the heavy saturation crimson leaves backlit over the past few months give an almost Andy Warhol effect, here in their last days before winter they adopt reptilian markings (but of course, lose a bit squished in the scannner)

Seven sleeps to winter, eight sleeps until we hear what this hitch-hiker in my head is.

More interesting still will be the treatment - whether we use a spray of Baygon in right ear, open lid and lob in a mini Molotov cocktail or shove a needle up my nose and into its arse. Being Australians, we'd have to find some strain of bio control we can employ (which would then set about destroying more than little Pol ever could or would) - microscopic cane toads?

Apparently there are many tests being done by many people on the gob extracted, Wednesday week we find out what new twist to the tale they come up with.

... It's nice to know what it isn't.

At three quarter time, an open letter of thanks

Dear Mr Danks and team,

It’s a simple A Minor chord ...

If this note of thanks had a backing track, it’d start with an A Minor strum.

Though all’s not entirely over or indeed known yet on this bizarre journey of the past month, I wanted to give you my very sincerest thanks at what I hope is at least something of a three quarter time break, and this left hand formation perhaps best represents a soup of emotion post operation on my right temporal lobe.

With random scribblings of fears pre-op filling two and a half A3 pages, this three finger formation made by me soon after coming out of theatre is a picture of a joy indescribable, which I hope none of you ever have to know. It followed soon after I made my wiggle of toes and a four year-old’s whine about how the catheter felt like it might have a fish hook or burning ember at its end (to my embarrassment in hindsight!)

Those fears included coming out of surgery as a hybrid of three or more chapters from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat – perhaps preposterous to you who understand the brain much better than I, but real fears to me nonetheless.

Then there were the visions of a life after stroke
. . . and worse.

After this simple right brain to left hand communication, I then formed G, C an D chords in my still groggy haze, then went through the 3X table – and a good many of those fears vanished, knowing things had to be working reasonably well up there.

From my very first meeting with Mr Danks, myself and family felt great comfort that I was clearly in the right hands – an important factor when resigned to the fact that the man in front of me was soon to go deep inside my brain with stainless steel (not to put too fine a point on it – excuse the pun).

I had prepared for a minimum four weeks, possibly eight, on my back and not much able to string more than a few words together: I feel that my recovery is remarkable and a testament to your excellence as a surgeon.

Perhaps equally important though is the obvious sincerity, empathy, compassion and clear articulation in layman’s terms of a complex and very frightening matter to myself and family at all times by yourself and your team.

You have shown real interest, real care.


It has been much appreciated at a very tricky time.

Again, thank-you all.

Sincerely,
James Clark-Kennedy 25.05.09

Peter, Russ, or Pol?

I think I remember, from way back in my days as a Crisis Line counsellor, something about externalisation being a helpful coping mechanism for many a drama . . .

Going with Amanda's suggestion, this beastie or tribe of beasties in my brain needs a name.

Once it has a name of its own, an externalisation, we give shape, form and persona to wage war upon.

Gus and Jodes figure it's a Russ.

I picture a hybrid octopus/dugong character with a Peter Costello smarmy smile and eyes of steely intent.

Given its likely SE Asian origin, I think 'Pol' fits well as a name: I can picture it hands on hips like the 1975 Cambodian dictator we all despise, intent on mass execution of one third of the grey matter around it.

Any other suggestions ?

(illo borrowed from matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com)

Brain or balls?

On my wanderings this afternoon, this unsympathetic colt and I had a natter, which ended in him snorting: "So what . . . I've heard on the wind that I'm losing my knackers soonish - where would you rather the knife really, brain or balls?"


The Mexican sage is a near-winter stunner: a favourite of the bees right now, and a pair of Rufus honeyeaters.

'Exotic', 'fluffy' twist . . . I get to grow old

In true B Grade drama style, an 'exotic', 'fluffy' twist which would make me turn the channel because the plot is now so preposterous . . . we heard last night neither benign, nor malignant.

We had thought the best case scenario was the word 'benign' , and I had readied myself for the rough road of chemo and all that other ugly stuff . . . with a broad grin neurosurgeon Mr Danks announced (and I will try my best to use direct quotes): "I have good news - the pathology results tell us it's not a tumour, well, let's qualify that with 95 per cent sure it's not a tumour".
(... though I do hate that 95 per cent stuff after being in the 5 per cent category for CSF leakage post lumbar puncture)

In fact, many of the cells in the mass that Mr Danks and his team went in and excavated last Thursday are 'foamy' or macrophage cells - the body's own little security guards that go in and tackle invaders. Their presence means a whole new ballgame.

According to Ross and Wilson's Anatomy and Physiology, these cells will "bind, engulf and digest foreign cells or particles".

What they're attacking, we don't know yet, and this is where it gets intriguing: the pathology people are testing over the next two weeks for a range of 'exotics'.

Apparently there's a good chance I've been carrying around some brain infection since my first travels in Asia - back in 91. It could also be that I've carried around some hitchhiker parasite deep in there behind my right eye for 18 years too.

All of it makes more interesting the fact that I had a fever for a week before that first epileptic episode in Hong Kong ... and was it really dysentary in Calcutta?

Me, shellshocked, asked how this 'exotic' infection theory is better news than a tumour.

His words, to the best of my recollection: "because tumours kill people, infections in the modern day do not".

Once they define what this lodger is, it gets an eviction notice and a dose of something and it's gone.

... and I get to grow old.

My mother, perhaps for that moment forgetting that I was just six days out of surgery, gave an embrace to test thoracics were still sturdy and showed her best restraint in not leaping across the room to hug the surgeon.

I see him again in two weeks - by which time hopefully they have a name for the infection/parasite, and a good dose of Roundup for this weed.

A nurse then removed my staples - with me looking like some marsupial on the Hume caught in Roadtrain headlights.

Emma's still pretty sure that I was abducted by aliens who inserted a foetus by anal probe and the planet's colonisation by neon glowing walruses is about to begin when this thing wakes up and crawls out my eye socket . . . and she knows it only hurts when I laugh.

Later this week there'll be a three-storey bonfire in Red Hill to celebrate beneath the stars - and while I'm not yet able to do cartwheels, I'll be stomping my very best 'Where The Wild Things Are' dance around it.


... and I heard somewhere, from some 1970s road movie perhaps, that 'chicks dig scars', right?

To the guts of the (brain) matter ...

This morning has been a slow moving wander - punctuated with a Rose-like nap in full sun on the deck - compiling a list of questions for this afternoon's meeting with the doctors.
Among them:

'When can I swim again? I must swim.'

A silly fear perhaps in medical terms, but one that makes sense to gardeners: 'doesn't pruning encourage growth?'

The list gets less silly: Benign or malignant ... either way that opens the door to the next question, the real matter, 'let's talk life span'. That's one I know they're going to have standard responses for, like 'it depends on many variables' and other such non-committal, well rehearsed language. But really, they got 15 per cent out, there's still 85 per cent in - and wrapped around blood vessels and other 'important structures'. Well, how fast is it growing? How long until it starts really messing with me? How long have I got? I guess at 38 and all going well I'd given myself another 45 years on this earth - what now, 5? 10? 25? 35?
It's a discussion no-one wants to have, well meaning friends and family whose role it is to help you keep your chin up especially. But really, it's fundamental to all of this: 'benign or malignant' is only half the question, 'how long' is the guts of the story.

I mean, being concerned that your superannuation is in three different funds and budgeting for eating out just twice a week looks pretty stupid if you've got 15 years right?

Putting that walk in Argentina off any longer than it takes to recover from this shit starts to look really dumb too.

70% cacao dark chocolate together with fresh mandarin segments for a late morning snack help all this a little, so too some consultation with a few locals . . .


The wattle birds were too busy but the family of magpies down the driveway, chortling like Swedish backpackers, didn't seem to think there was much to be concerned about. The cormorants, moor hens, the mountain ducks - all seemed to say benign and went back to the rich happenings in, on, under and around the dam.

The swamp harrier, seemingly at play giving the crimson rosellas and the sulphur crested cockatoos a scare with dazzling aerobatics ... I'm sure I saw him wink.

I only speak a smattering of eastern rosella: but I didn't pick up 'malignant' in anything they had to whistle and glark to me. I don't think it's even in their language.

My favourite manna gum, in an elegant forward lean, as if having come out of a glissade down the hillside decades ago and frozen there: seemed to suggest there were broader, wider concerns, possibly related to how many rings you had to count.


Grevillea didn't say much - just burst out a smile that'd light any room.

I didn't think the seriously confused bearded iris - not sure even which hemisphere it is in - was of fit mind to consult, but it's here because it looks beautiful anyway.

Such thoughts are probably best tackled in short bursts.
Celebrating the pumpkin harvest and compiling a list of recipes to use them up is possibly healthier this next hour or two: an Asian styled pumpkin soup with ginger and coriander kiss I am particularly looking forward to this week - benign or malignant.

And another fundamental one for the doctors:

"What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?"

Nurse Rose

Nurse Rose has been making sure I'm ok, and likes to play wheat bag on me while on the couch in front of the fire. I'm not a cat person - they eat birds and I'm a bird person - but this one is very hard to dislike. I've tried.

I'm learning valuable lessons from Nixie's cat - with the feline apparently needing to sleep about 16 hours a day, they're good ones to watch when you're not up to normal speed. In this time of convalescence, Rose was good enough to show me - and share with me - her best spots to curl up in as the sun moved through the morning.

As a nurse, well, Rose is not too quick with a glass of water or pain killers, but then she doesn't want to take my blood pressure every half hour either, nor is she injecting anticoagulants into my stomach, making a pin cushion out of forearms and backs of hands - and isn't asking me at 3am in a near northern neighbour accent "Ha yoo ohpun yo bow toodee?".

Trite to embrace?

Random glimpses into a perfect autumn day - out of hospital and in the sunshine . . .

Tomorrow at 4.15pm we talk to the hospital team:
25 staples removed ... and biopsy result discussed.




Snowgum in flower.



The morning dew.



Eucalytpus caesia - the juvenile with its big broad leaf, longer narrow ones form
on the mature plant.


... biopsy result.

A day to embrace all: everyone and everything around.
I want to say something like 'makes you wonder: what if we lived every day like it was the day before receiving biopsy results?' but it sounds too trite, even as bad as some sort of US corporate sales coaching program bullshit. Anyway, there, I said it . . . in among being very aware and appreciative of beautiful stuff all around on a blissful autumn day.

Don't fuck with me . . .

On the Tyson thing: I've been in Red Hill today - to the post office, bakery, general store - scaring young and old with the remodelled face.

I'm going to get a T-shirt made: 'You should see the other bloke . . . don't fuck with me'

(Posting this pic because it's more impressive with the bigger bandage)

'Nothing a year in the tropics wouldn't fix'

For all those who remember the original Mad Max . . .

Max: You ok?
Goose: Nothin' a year in the tropics wouldn't fix.

Therapy tubing

A doodling from hospital: about the time I figured they'd done their bit, now it was time to get back down the coast.

Jim's Dad here again. Jim escaped from the High Dependency Unit 24 hours earlier than expected, and is in a normal ward. He now has a developing shiner as the bruises from surgery come out, and he is sleeping most of the time, which is normal after surgery. Jim is expected to be discharged on Monday. We expect there will be a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the results of the biopsy and the next steps. Jim is on his feet for brief excursions down the corridor, but this leaves him pretty tired at the moment.

Hello everybody, Jim's Dad here. Jim is out of surgery and is recovering quickly after a 3 1/2 hour operation. He has traded his multiple Doctor Who type headplugs for a new punk look with partially shaved head and interesting scar. Luckily, Jim hasn't had any of the possible side effects such as stroke or temporary double vision. After running some quick internal checks, Jim has declared that he is still Jim, which we are happy about. Late-ish last night he was preparing for some proper sleep. Today we expect him to be preparing to be bored with hospital. The surgery removed about 15% of the growth and the biopsy results could be as late as Tuesday, which is when we will hopefully know what the appropriate treatment approach will be. If there is any more news in the meantime I will post it here. Cheers.

Personal E-tag trial ... cheers all

The neurosurgeon's assistant and the radiologist seem to have rigged me up as a guinea pig for a trial of personal E-tags: coming home this arvo they beeped under each of the Eastlink toll sensors probably racking up $1.16 a piece.

Apparently they're actually little channel markers to help the surgeon find his way around in there tomorrow.

Anyway - they promise me a haircut to rival Sid Vicious and the self-portraits are apparently going to get a bit like those warnings on cigarette packets for a couple of weeks ...
So here's a filed Bay of Many Coves one from an NZ escape (healthier days):
with a cheers to all for your incredible support over this month.

(and Dad will be posting a post operation update/biopsy result in coming days)

Clifftop meditation ... pre embarkation

Some clifftop meditation time at Kerry Greens with Kim this morning . . . low tide roar on the rocks below, about 10 knots of sou'wester.

MRI this afternoon.

In for surgery at 7am tomorrow.

Definitive biopsy result should be in by Saturday.

All going well, 3 to 7 seven days in hospital - then between four to 8 weeks recovery.

If only this Bass Strait air could be bottled, perhaps sat next to the black and white oxygen tanks by the hospital bed and run into the oxygen therapy mask . . .

A few crew will recognise the rockpool below - and recall the folly of summers past in that special place.

About mid November the water temp enables more rockpool antics.

See you there.

Implications ... and adjusting the sails

This evening's beach stroll - thanks to Sue, Linda and Geoff - was some important time and exactly the right space to ponder a word drawn from pre surgery discussions, four syllables that encompass many fears.

In its context, but not a direct quote "... surgery in the region so close to the carotid artery can, of course, have implications ..."

Perhaps two seconds after scratching these fears in the sand, a particularly gentle Western Port wiped clean the canvas with an almost slow motion, reassuring hug of sorts. If not entirely ameliorating those fears, the bay left its ebullience, its effervescence to muse upon instead.
(... perhaps the best illustration of why I need my seaside shuffles right now.)




Just two more sleeps to surgery time - fears of implications notwithstanding - I'm ready to meet change.


"The pessimist complains about the wind;
the optimist expects it to change;
the realist adjusts the sails"

- William Arthur Ward

For moments like these . . .

It's for moments like these that you stay strong . . .

- the manchurian pear in its autumnal livery

- a Sunday stroll to the alpaca farm up the road where . . .

- my little mate Cailin of the Lewis clan gives a 15 day-old baby alpaca a kiss


- then back to a restaurant for Mother's Day

Bargains purged

Nothing happens without a deadline . . . and part of the pre-op preparations is getting the house in order for probable renting.

We purged two decades of over caffeinated op shopping 'bargains' on Saturday in a huge working bee at home where much hard work by great crew was punctuated with many good laughs.

Four piles: to go back in the shed in sealed containers, go back to the op shop, go to the 6m skip in the driveway and then - the bonfire out front.

The selection committee became more severe in their assessments as the afternoon wore on: "Oh, you might need that one day " turning to "burn it" without so much as a two second gap for think music.

. . . here's a 'bargain' wine rack in flames.

And here's a pic of cans around the fire back at Gus and Jodes' place with plenty of guffaws, cackles and lecturing one another other about how we should be living our lives and where we've been going wrong . . . standard Saturday night behaviour: a bit of very much needed normalisation.

the cure for anything

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea."

-Isak Dinesen

Smooth seas never made skillful sailors

'Smooth seas never made skillful sailors'
- An African proverb.


Surgeon's office called this morning. Next Thursday, May 14 is when they're going into my skull to see what goes on in there (a question former colleague Platty has often posed!).

In a stroll yesterday with long time mentors - Tonza and Merricks beach - I heard on the wind that the next couple of months are about self visualisation: is it about the bloke in white gown who, if he can walk in two weeks, hobbles like a 90 year-old, must press a button for assistance in removing spittle from chin and can't spell his own name?
Fuck that. It's not Jim.

For long time hiking mate Dave's sake and mine - here I post a couple of snapshots, self visualisation that I'll be holding to while the hospital does its best to convince me that I'm invalid/frail/sick . . . reminders of a stronger Jim, and reminders that there's many reasons to get up and out of that wrong hospital air ASAP, back to mountains and sea.

Next walk - November. Next foray into Bass Strait . . . ? Sooner rather than later.

I will beat this fucker.

Time in the small spaces

One of my favourite sports used to be wandering the garden, forest or beach with camera set to macro - spending time in the small spaces.

It forces a slowness of movement and reveals incredible discoveries, completely missed when moving at normal pace.

Best done with a cup of tea in the first rays or with a glass of wine in the last rays.

It's again become a favourite thing to do - helping alleviate all the shit that goes with waiting for news of date and time for surgery.

Slow walks in macro mode with sister Emma are also one of the strategies for recovery after hospital.

My persimmon tree is Best on Ground right now . . .

"But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?"

- Joshua Slocum, from Sailing Alone Around the World 1900


Pic: Flinders towards Cape Schanck - poetic - low tide this evening.

A bigger story, a great soothing

Something that just works about being by the sea when the head's in tempest.

Something about being reminded there's a much bigger story perhaps. Bigger processes.

A great soothing.

We are the makers of music

Shuffling along the sand at Pt Leo late this afternoon with mum and my mate Tonza, a dolphin couple we saw at play - apparently teaching their littlun to surf.

Just magic.

. . . Perhaps all the more so for the shit week just past.

This next week is about getting strong. Getting ready for the surgery. And soaking up - somehow stockpiling - just such moments for the long hours looking at a hospital roof.

Pancakes and life coaching

It's not all bad news . . .

Feeling a little better this morning - pain from Lumbar Puncture has eased (touch wood) but still making sure I keep up the pills - don't want to go back there again.

This morning beautiful autumnal sunshine on the deck, with breakfast thanks to Chef Nixie: blueberry and maple syrup pancakes with King Island yoghurt- and she picked the apples herself for an stewed apple, cinnamon and sultana filling!

. . . so so good to be able to hold head vertical and soak in some of the magic around us.

Oh, and soak up some of Chef Nixie's worldly advice ... free!

According to Life Coach Nixie in this coming week I should be . . .

"Milking it - at every opportunity you have. This includes:

• Have lots of cuddly nights with Mum
• Do lots of painting, sketching and drawing
  
• Lots of coffee mornings
• Watch all the TV shows which Mum wouldn't normally allow
• Play whatever music you want
• Lie on the couch and let everyone else do all the work
• Start the day with chocolate
• End the day with the richest, yummiest desserts known to man"