Ever watch the leaves in the fall

Drop off the trees in the neighborhood

And there are always a few trees that you root for

That seem to be so stubborn and strong

Their leaves couldn't possibly fall

Ever

Well, eventually, the leaves do fall

Just as "they" said they would.

Just took a little longer's all.

MMMMM...could you scratch just a little lower,  please?

I woke up Wednesday morning around 4. I'd been tossing and turning all night, so the alarm clock just sealed the deal. My head was thick with something, I dunno what. It just seemed to be idling inside my head wafting about in long, lazy circles.

Screw it!

I had to get up and gather my stuff, the LOML (love of my life) Sarit, Sister Ginny and hightail it 40 plus miles up the Interstate to the University of Minnesota Fairview campus where they keep the Gamma Knife.

Well, that was the way it was supposed to happen.

Estimated departure time… 5AM, didn't leave till 6. Why? Because I couldn't, for the life of me, find the specially printed with hand wrtten explicit instructions on how to get there from here See, when my brain isn't working particularly well, I file. I start a file to keep the most important of documents, because when my brain isn't 100% I have been known to lose really important things, leases, birth certificates, cash. So I had started the GAMMA KINFE PROGRAM file when all this cam down, because they told me there would be side effects to this treatment. Short-term memory loss would be one of them. Inability to focus, another. Well, no problem there. All the pot I smoked in the 70's & 80's muddled me up on a daily basis. So you won't get no panic from me, bubba.

Anyway, I thought I'd located the proper address on Mapquest and Rand McNally.com and printed 'em and hustled on the highway.

But, y'know there was this nagging feeling that something wasn't right. So I started making phone calls to every number I had in my folder. Of course no one was around. Till I got the radiology department at the University of Minnesota and a live person named Jennifer. She was awesome. Although she was on the tail end of the night shift and I was nobody to her but some squeaky voice on the other end of the phone line and she didn't happen to be anywhere NEAR the GAMMA KNIFE building, she said...gimme a minute. We hung up and minutes later she called back with directions. Turns out, though, the directions were close...but not good enough. HOWEVER... she hadn't left it at that. Unbeknownst to me, she'd gotten hold of Anne, my GK nurse and let her know I was wandering about , my Sister behind the wheel and Sarit navigating as best she could at 6AM. Anne called to give Ginny the directions and we were there in no time.

TIME OUT

I gotta take a second here and just speak out about Minnesotans and how they are with strangers. Bless you, Jennifer. You didn't have to go as far as you did. You could have done what a LOT of people would do and say, "it's not my deal". But, THIS is what Minnesotans do. And how you can count on 'em in a pinch. Now, how they treat ya after you've been here a while...who knows?

GAMMA KNIFE – PART TWO

We arrive and head down into the bowels of the building to begin the process of signing in, filling out forms, being punctured and drained and measured. MRI ensues, just to find out where everything is… and then THE HALO:

Yep, there it is. Firmly attached. A cage of some lightweight metal. By the way, the bolts that are keeping it attached to my head? They're real, they're pointed and when they stuck 'em in they hurt like being kicked in the nuts on a sub-zero night. (Girls, just imagine it, guys....well, heh, it ain't funny)

The bolts actually screw down, with a syringe like object full of lidocaine following the pin into the skull, deadening the area in a delayed reaction cascade of pain/no pain/pain/no pain/excruciating pain/numb, accompanied by a delicious CRUNCHING sound at each turn of the bolt.

So, we wait. Till 4PM. Then it's down to the GK Room, full of bright light, classical music and some beautiful, no doubt sponsored by Kodak, ceiling montage of something...leaves, trees, sky maybe?

The Doctors strap me in. My Doc, Paul Sperduto, is trying to make this light and fun for me, but I'm not in the mood, frankly. And my HALO is firmly locked into this:

This, BTW, is a state-of-the-art Gamma Knife machine that shoots gamma radiation with pinpoint accuracy from 201different locations to the lesions being irradiated. I had three, so we did three sessions. 18 1/2 minutes INSIDE that tub...twice and then the final was 9 minutes.

Can I just tell you now how glad I was to be outta there at 6PM? Do you have an inkling why?

Thanks so much to my nurses Anne and Pam. Dr. Sperduto, of course. And just as an aside, the Doctor who clamped the cage around my head? His name is Dr. Hood. No shit.

Finally!!! I feel alive enough to write a quick blurb about my last couple of days. Woohoo!

Well, first let me say this. YOU ARE, ONE AND ALL FREAKIN' AMAZING!!! Although it has died down to nothingness now, the donations over the past couple of weeks have really saved my ass, tenfold. You allowed me to be able to pay the rent, the phone bill, buy groceries, keep my website up and running, you've paid for meds that nobody's gonna cover, including a ton of over the counter stuff that's kind of personal (Like I'm gonna share butt medicine kudos…right).

There's nowhere near enough to pay for any of the medical bills yet, but every little bit helps. I'm hoping some of it will be paid for with Minnesota and Carver County Social Services funds. But I'm roughly up to $10,400 that I owe and the nice ladies are as polite as can be, but they do want their dough. I got faith they'll get it with a smile!

Next…We're gonna get GAMMA KNIFED!

I've been duped.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Often, it's information I'm passing on from an unimpeachable source who, for some reason, just can't elucidate clearly the necessary facts. As a result…I get it wrong in the retelling.

Or the source has not been impeached, or peached or whatever that means, but perhaps, should be and I'm too eager to get what I thought I heard or what I wanted to hear out to the masses, posthaste. (Wait, that's gossip, ain't it?)

Yeah…it's like that when I get duped and pass on erroneous info. except... Not this time.

$216.22.

That's the real value of the $40,000 pill we've come to know as Erlotinib, Tarceva^® or that f@!#$%#! pill.

 
My personal cool factor has now been ripped in half. Maybe more than that!!!!! I'm sorry. I did not have sex with that woman. But I wanted to.

You could blame the hoo-haw on incompetence. But then I'd have to ask you to step outside for a duel.

My nurses, Mary, Terry, Liz, Jessica, Trudy and all the others just went by what they were told. They are but babes in the woods.

Now, by the time we're done taking these little white bastards, it will have been 6 months and if you do the math on that time, you'll see something resembling a $40,000 price tag on the pill. So I'm guessing that's where the misinformation originates.

So, I have been duped about the $40,000 pill. Please accept my apology for being the duper. It was an honest duping. And it shall not happen again.

All my Heavy -Metal friends will be drooling now.... "Damn, Maj, did you really go there? Was Bon Scott there?"   Not what I'm referring to.  "But hey, how about Randy Rhoads?" What? "Hey, Maj, is this some Halloween stunt thing?"

Heavy Metal friends. It's always all about them. Still, I love them like a rock.

Anyway...Gates O' Hell. Throughout the past few days since we last blogged, I have never felt this bad. And I've learned some things about myself that I'd like to expose, as opposed to share.

I am a raging angry jerk-off. I can cut your ass down to ground beef with my scathing, rage-filled biting word daggers. I deserve to be flogged to within an inch of my pathetic life until...wait.

That happened!

Not the flogging thing, but it was very much like flogging. Three nights ago, I spent it from midnight till 6:30am PUKING MY GUTS OUT. Not your typical, "Oooh here it comes ...barf...whew that feels better, thanks for holding my hair". Nope, this happened like clockwork. Every half hour on the hour and with such intensity, I felt like I was digging down and throwing up last month's dinner with a backhoe. Oh, yeah.

And that was just the puking part. The back of my throat, hell, everything from tummy to tongue was assaulted with the most toxic of bile. The napalm of all the bodily fluids. It just burned. Think of the worst you've ever been burned. (Hey, I once set my hand on fire...long story, but pot was involved). Multiply it by 100. That's how much it hurt for 6 ½ hours.

I spent the rest of that day, hurting like hell and not being able to even swallow any of the meds to help with the pain. The radiation treatment, I thought I was gonna die there, since I have to lie on my back, an event that provokes nausea…always.

I'd been cranky as hell to my beloved ex-wife Sarit, the love of my life, who moved herself out here, forsaking her career, tearing her comfy life apart, just to be with me. A bastard. A rank, touchy, angry baby, for whom nothing has been good enough.

I woke up from the first all night sleep I'd had in ages, next to her, feeling light-years better and it hit me in the head. This woman loves me. She took all my shit without batting an eye and still wants to cuddle me afterwards. What the hell have I done? Been doing all this time?   I couldn't stop the tears. They're flowing now as I'm typing this. I have been apologizing and vowing and doing all sorts of make-up stuff to maybe make her understand that I know what I've done and how important it is for me to never unleash that part of me on her or those who love me ever again. It may never be enough.

And, for those of you who have been through the pain I'm going through, let me tell you. There's no excusing that kind of behavior. None. And, rest assured, I will not let it happen ever again, no matter how much I'm going through. That's my resolve.

Now…Where's that goddam $40,000 pill? (Next blog….)

Gushing and blushing and freaking right out. I'm in a swirl of happiness, even though I'm supposed to be dying and that's already getting a little uglier every day. (Face covered in a rash, mouth feels like sandpaper and the hair hasn't even begun to fall out.) I may not even need to get a Halloween costume.

But screw it.

There are people a ton of people. Everyday folk like you and me hitting my site because a friend told them or they happened upon it because it's something they or a family member or a neighbor has gone through. An uncanny group of folk who have been ravaged by cancer and have lived to tell the tale or have lived around those who have died and must tell the tale for them. Bless you. All of you. Each and every one of you.

And, you wanna know something funny? It doesn't give me one shred of hope, personally. Now, what it does give me, is a renewed sense of empathy we feel, one for the other. It gives me joy in knowing that the shared experience is so pervasive it cannot go away or be lazily forgotten.

When I started these blogs, I thought no one would read 'em, or give a rat's ass about anything I would ever have to say.

That has changed now that I'm getting hit after hit, day in and day out and personal little notes from people telling me about their experiences. And what's cool is that these folks don't feel the need to hit me over the head with these stories. They put 'em out there and walk away, like I'm a bonfire and each tale is a log tossed in to make the fire a little bigger. That's making me happy, because my flames are burning brighter for every log that makes the fire grow. Gives me hope for us, that we'll survive all the political and religious fervor and greed and corruption. That we're better than that and it's possible to prevail over it all.

Here I am, middle of the first week of radiation treat…..what? Oh, uhm, yeah…radiation treatment.
Oh, right, I said "Incurable" in an earlier blog, didn't  I, with the cancer being everywhere. OK, true, it's incurable. However, if I want to live a while longer and with a chance of being lucid when I go and in as little pain as possible, there's a little something they can do.

Now my first thought of this was "SCAM!!!!!!!" This is just modern medicine and the already so-sick-it-may-not-be-able-to-heal-itself HMO and privatized hospital system trying to drain revenues off a certain dead man walking!

I think like that, occasionally.

Then, I realized, it didn't matter, because it made some sense.

Let's backtrack. Back to the PET scan, the bone scan and the MRI that showed me lit up like a Christmas Tree. I was full of cancer from head to toe. So, the head part isn't far off. Yep, it's LUNG cancer, but it's in the blood and has spread to that shoulder thing I mentioned, pelvic structure, lymph glands, adrenal glands on the kidneys (so that's where we keep them!!), as well as IN MY BRAIN. Oh, yeah… I had three lesions in my brain.

Or did I?

One of my doctors is a renowned radiological doc...his name is Paul Sperduto. He's attached to the University of Minnesota but works out of the Oncology Department at Ridgeview Hospital near me, in Waconia, MN. He's gotten the National Cancer Institute involved in a study to determine the most effective treatment for those with non-small cell lung cancer and brain lesions (between 1 and 3 of them in your head). A combo that's more common than you'd think. So we do an MRI just to make sure we have everything in order and I get a call the next day saying "UHM… we're now seeing four things in your head, Mr. Majhor, we'll have to book you in for an MRA (Right, not an MRI)

Crap.

As it runs out, IT is not another lesion…Yaaaaaay! It's just an aneurysm ..Yaaaaa…Wait…an aneurysm????

Crap

Alright, alright...it's fine. An aneurysm will kill me quick, so I don't care. We're going for the things that won't leave me all drooly and unable to touch myself and my loved one in those private places (Did I just write that out loud?). Hey, it's INCURABLE!!! So a little aneurysm? No problemo!

And this is why it all made sense to me, after thinking what a freakin' scam this was. It's worth doing! I get to help with this study and take a $40,000 pill everyday. Seriously, it'll be good to know that the pain I'm experiencing right now will be a lot less so I can get off this horrible morphine and I will be accomplishing the quality of life issues we've been talking to my other Dr. Martin Blumenreich ( I LOVE this guy) about at length for the past several weeks.

Plus there's the chlorine gas and blue light mystery, which I'm just going to have to bring up on Thursday, the day when EVERYONE gets to see the doctor. Coincidentally, that's also the day my Mom and Sis and beloved Sarit will all file into the room and watch the techs zap the crap outta me. Nice of the folks to let your family have a look at all the goings-on behind the curtain.

First...welcome to all of you who are just finding out about the new fun developments in my life visa my website, Allaccess.com or by word of mouth!

I've received some really touching and wonderful emails from folks I've worked with or have known over the years who have surprised me with their sincerity and kind words. Either they're lying or I'm not the flaming, arrogant asshole a lot of folks have told me that I am.

Woohoo!

A lot of folks are saying the usual..."if there's anything I can do"

WELL

If you do want to help, please make a contribution to the John Majhor Cancer Fund. Not being able to work, with all the bills piling up please allow me to humbly say "Thank You So Very Much" for that moment you take to actually click over to PayPal and send a few bucks.

You have no idea how it feels. 

I don't have a fortune (HA!!!) or even a rich uncle to help and all of the governement agencies that could help take their sweet time when you really need the cash. This is the only way I can offset the rising costs of this predicament and my friends who have dealt with debilitating disease and our healthcare system have not painted a rosy picture for me.

Go to http://majhor.com  to help out. There's even a way to put the banner on your own site, MySpace included, if you think it'll help.

THANK YOU SO VERY, VERY MUCH!

P.S...A HUGE Thank You to my dear friends Chris Watson and Lee Hempfling. Chris is writing the words and Lee is writing the code. What a team. There's no way I'd be able to get any of this going without them.

Well, here we are, deep into, my friends. First, a levity-blog, before I launch into an update-with-all-the-dirty-details blog.

Did you know that many people who are undergoing radiation treatment to the brain, experience different smells and visual effects as the gamma rays penetrate the old noggin'?

Yep…wanna know what mine is? So far in two of the fifteen treatments to come, I'm smelling chlorine gas and seeing a sparkly LED type blue light on the periphery of my vision.

One of my sister's friends' father smelled ham sandwiches.

The tech sez it ain't unusual, but has anyone ever done a study? It's really weird, like the angel Michael in the eponymous movie who smelled like cookies.

Too bad you can't choose the smell and the visual, any visual sure beats the hell out of the little panels of a dolphin, palm trees, forests and sand-swept beach scenes lining the ceiling over your position on the table. OY!! And I sure wouldn't choose chlorine gas, fer cryin' out loud!

Well, now. "To Be Or Not To Be", that WAS the question.

No more.

The additional tests, MRI Brain scan, CT scan, PET scan, and just sloppy old X-Rays all show the same thing.

I'm hot.

Not Paris Hilton hot (whew) but the kind of hot that the imaging techs note and the radiologists point to on scan readouts when you're dealing with glucose burning cancer cells.

And I've got a friggin' load of 'em.

They're in some muscle tissue, my right lung, lymph glands, bones in my pelvis, the adrenal glands on my kidneys. And to top it off, I've got three lesions on my mind. Uhm, brain. Not to mention that the bump on my left shoulder...the one my idiot GP claimed was a tendon that had broken through the muscle...is just a lumpy mass of adenocarcinoma, just sittin' there, all by itself, alone on the Island of Shoulder.

Apparently that shit's been lurking inside me for quite some time now.

"How long, Doc??" (Because it IS terminal. But what the hell isn't these days, eh?)

Doc can't and won't say. Mainly because he doesn't know my cancer. Oh, sure, he knows adenocarcinoma, but he doesn't know MY cancer and it'll take a month or so of comparative lookie-loos to see how fast it may be moving to determine "How Long". He did say, however, that I can be confident in knowing that should I feel the need to buy a ticket to the premiere of the new Bond film, Casino Royale, in November, that I may run right out to the box office and slap down the cash. Silly person that Doctor B. He just doesn't get that they don't sell 'em that far in advance for mere movies. But I do like his style.

Nonetheless, I shall not be deterred from pursuing my goals of completing the basement apartment (almost done, BTW), packing up my stuff from storage and running it over the Interstate Highway system in a U-Haul truck whilst bringing my hot Ex-Wife and our two pups along with me for the ride. "ROAD TRIP!!!!!"

Then? Well, who the hell knows? Doc doesn't. I surely do not. Perhaps I'll go see Shawn Colvin in November (if my new MySpace friend's offer still stands). I'll enjoy the new Aaron Sorkin TV show, for sure. Perhaps there'll be time enough for Super Bowl 41 and if I'm very, very lucky, I'll be around long enough to do a final air shift in May at 1050 CHUM in Toronto for their 50th Anniversary (before Bell Global Media fires everyone and turns 1331 Yonge Street into a condo building).

And maybe...just maybe...the distance healer will be as good as they say she is and all this will be moot.

Who knows?

Can't remember when I 've been so bone tired!

No wait! I can, actually. It was many many years ago...

I was "volunteered" to run a 10 or 15K run for some charity in Toronto. Start at the top of University Avenue, head directly toward the C.N.E. and along Lakeshore Blvd. to who the hell knows where....I never found out because I collapsed at the precise moment I hit the 1.5K mark. Luckily the radio station's receptionist and her hubby were following me, as I brought up the rear. They leaped out of their Mercedes & hauled me into the back seat. In minutes they had delivered me to my Yorkville apartment. Despite the sauna built in to my luxury apartment, I could do no more than crawl from its steaming confines to bed...there to reside in agony for three days.

I feel that way now. Didn't run or anything noble (or ignoble), just been helping the cadre of family and friends who have pitched in to finish the basement apartment that will be my last abode. My God, these people have stamina, the have heart, they have POWER TOOLS!!!! I love each and every one. My Niece, Stephanie and her dear boyfriend Adam. My incredibly talented Brother Phil, my other Niece Samantha's boyfriend, Mike. Phil's tenant, Andy the Electrician...They have all made this past two weeks of work go by so quickly and I can't say enough positive things about them.

I...well, I am physically screwed, but manage to pull my weight in drywalling, stapling of fiberglass insulation, hammering, sawing, drilling...but I feel as though I have been run over by a Peterbilt with a full load.

Thank you Dr. B for the Percocet. Makes it all go away in a haze, just long enough to sleep and recover for the next days' delightfully delicious torture.

It won't be the Taj Mahal when it's done, but I will have paid for it on my own, built many parts with my own hands and it will be a warm and cozy spot to ride out the final days with the love of my life, Sarit and our two pups, Freddy and Lia.

But goddam, am I bone tired!!!!

Oh, yeah...tests this week. Bone scan, brain scan/MRI, regular X-ray filmage, CT scanning...all to find out where else this cancer has decided to travel in my body.

Dr. B sez..."Well, if we can't get it in one shot, no point in having surgery." Couldn't agree more.

May turn to a distance healer who has agreed to send me the universal healing zap as a favor from a long time, dear and well-meaning friend and mentor. Not till October, though. I can wait for a miracle.

Just gimme some more drugs and I'll wait.  8^D

You know that expression... "You don't know what you've got till it's gone"?

Well what we've got was nearly gone this week, as my Mom nearly died from septicemia. If you don't know what that is, it's really, quite simply blood poisoning. Bactieria is in the blood and you have about a 50-50 chance of living if you get it in time. We were lucky.

Quite sobering to have an ambulance come to your home at 10 o'clock at night and your Mother is so weak she has to be carried to the stretcher.

Mom's always been a fighter. When my Dad was going on his 4 or 5 day alcoholic binges, she would pull him up by the short and curlies and let him know in no uncertain terms, it was not acceptable. When he died shortly thereafter (I was only six and my brothers even younger) she packed us up and moved us to be near her parents where she could get some work and go back to school to get her Masters.

My Sis told me a story yesterday about my Mom, that pretty much sums her up. When we were only a year or so past Dad dying, my youngest Brother was tree climbing and came crashing down into a branch that had been bent and broken, nearly impaling himself and breaking his leg in the process. He said to my Mom.."Mommy, I can see my food", thinking, of course, that the protruding bone was somehow his stomach contents. Hey...he was 5. Well, she took him in, bundled him up and took care of him, saying, "Don't worry, you're going to be OK"...then walked into the next room and smothered her screams of horror with a pillow...or something to that effect.

Let's just say she has spent her life holding back the tears. Well, we held back the tears this week, too. And thankfully we never had to express them. She may not be the best Mom anyone's ever had, but she's ours and we love her to death. We do know what we've got. And we don't have to wait till it's gone.

Do you?