On Loss and Grieving

I haven't talked much about loss, bereavement, more specifically, about losing Ken for a long time now. Other than when I'm speaking with a very few of mine and Ken's closest friends and my therapist, I've really not wanted to talk about it much. For that matter, I tend to go out of my way to avoid the subject when in casual conversation, especially when it's somebody who didn't know him. I really can't do the man justice if you didn't know him yourself, and also, if I had to rehash my story every time I mentioned that I lost my life partner, I think it would drive me crazy.

There is another reason as well, one that actually strikes more closely to the heart of the manner. I feel a sacredness about Ken, my memories with him, and wanting to know that those who do remember him try to really remember what it was about their connection with him that really mattered. Ken was all about connections. He was one of the most socially connected people that I've ever known. I feel the need to clarify socially connected, because it so often means WHO one knows in a very elitist way. With Ken, what I'm trying to elucidate is what being connected meant to him, and what I've had people describe to me what they felt about their relationship with him.

We all (most of us) have a lot of casual acquaintances, people that we might break bread with on occasion, share the holidays with, work with, meet through our profession, meet in the coffee shop. What has always amazed me about what people shared with me regarding their feelings toward Ken when he was still alive, and what people who knew him casually and who I have spoken to since his passing, basically tell the same story. More often than not, death is very kind to the memories we are left with about that person. I know that for at least myself, I have found that I usually am able to let go of the things that bothered me about a person when they were alive. It's not a conscious choice or action, I just think that for most people, the death of a spouse, child, parent, close friend and even a casual acquaintance seems to be a very specific point where most of the negative or indifferent feelings that we had about that person in life become tempered, if not in fact colored or erased by selective memory.

With Ken, what I heard over and over and over, and still hear to this day, is that he made you feel important. He made you feel like it was you and he alone in a room, and he was always fully engaged. He had this amazing knack to make even the most angry, resentful or hurt person move past what was holding them in that negative place. I have heard exactly that same thing so many times over the last 18 years that it leaves me to conclude that this was, in fact, the case. For Ken, being connected meant really giving yourself completely and lovingly to another. I have never in my life met anybody so kind, so gentle, so loving, so quiet. He couldn't stand to see any creature suffer (except for maybe fleas, mosquitoes, flies and hornets). He could not watch nature shows where one animal hunted and killed another. If there was ever a news story about animal abuse, he would turn off the TV and be on the verge of tears. He was patient and gentle with those who were slower in any way, and could always find at least two or three good things to say about nearly anybody. With friends who lost their way, usually because of addiction, Ken was ceaselessly patient, something he taught me as well, solely through example.

Ken was absolutely the BEST at conflict resolution, bar none. This was both at work, with his friends, and his loved ones. When he was alive, I used to jokingly say that Ken could probably fire you and have you leave his office thanking him. That is only slightly a stretch. Probably the most memorable time for me in this regard was when a hothead employee in his department, basically a shit-stirrer, got into a fight with a co-worker, one of Ken's favorite employees, and just an all around great guy. Well the stirrer continued to needle the other guy so cruelly and relentlessly, that finally one day this guy had put up with his fill and during the morning briefing, he finally turned to the stirrer and threw a cup of hot tea at him.

Ken was not in the room, but the guy who threw the tea came rushing into Ken's office, in tears, and told him that he would sign his termination papers right then and there, he expected Ken to do no less than terminate him, because he had dishonored both himself and Ken. Ken would have been well within his rights to do so, but Ken, always the voice of reason, got the two guys in his office, and within a couple of hours had them be able to work together. The funny ending to this story is that about 2 months later, the stirrer got terminated for a long-standing history of falsifying safety checks (that is a big deal in a hotel; burning down a hotel and killing guests because you were negligent about safety checks can land you in jail for a long time). So this guy got terminated, then tried to get unemployment and was denied since he was terminated, then went on to hire a lawyer with an axe to grind and put the hotel in court for nearly a year. In the end, the guy lost, nothing for all the months he tried to fight what ended up being a losing battle. Still, Ken never resented him, even as this guy lied and dragged drug his name through the mud with false allegations, one after another.

Ken was without a doubt the most beloved boss that I have ever heard of or known. He consistently had among the highest marks in the Marriott Corp. on the annual Employee Satisfaction Surveys. His employees would fall on the train tracks for him. His department had the highest retention rate in the hotel. I think it may actually have even been the highest in his region. His employees wanted him to come to their parties, and not begrudgingly, but genuinely. Ken was a fun guy to be around, and he never made anybody feel that they were any less than him.

It is memories like this, and many memories of times with close friends and private memories that keep him close to my heart. I doubt that there was ever any question in anyone's mind, whether they loved me or hated me, as to how much I loved Ken and how I was devoted to him, and him to me. One of my favorite memories in this regard comes from a dinner party that we had about 9 months before he died. The annual big dog show in San Francisco was going on and so I invited my close friends Steve and Sue and a couple that I had recently befriended over for dinner. Both Ken and I loved to entertain. I am a great cook, and Ken was the consummate host. Before dinner we were sitting around having a cocktail and Ken started to talk to my friends about our recently completed remodel, something he loved to share, especially with someone in the trades, as Bob (he and wife Deb were the other couple) is. He's an HVAC guy professionally, but also a great jack of all trades, as Ken also was.

A few weeks later, Sue told me that at that dinner, it was the first time that she had a chance to really observe Ken's and my interactions. She told me that as she and her husband and the other couple were driving back to the show grounds that night, she turned to Deb, and this was basically the conversation:

Sue: Deb, at dinner tonight, did you pay attention to how Ken and Parry related to each other?

Deb: Yeah I did, they really seem to love each other.

Sue: I don't know if you saw this, but as Ken started telling Bob all that he had done to the house to renovate it, Parry just sat there and looked at Ken with stars in his eyes. It was the most genuinely loving look, one you don't see all the time.

Deb: I saw that too, I was kind of taken aback.

To this day, Sue repeats this story every time Ken comes up in the conversation. She only met Ken two, maybe three times, but when she talks about him, it's like she had known him all her life. That is a common reaction, one that I've heard more times than I can count.

Ken was patient above and beyond all expectation. I am not the easiest person to live with, and I'll be the first to admit that. I'm eccentric, artistic, can be a little self-involved and still tend to be more than a bit guarded emotionally, pretty much my whole life. I never put up that guard with Ken, and he let me be me. I heard him a couple of times, when he didn't realize that I could hear him, defend me with both love and devotion. One of our friends would be moaning about how eccentric I could be, and how far I liked to live on the edge and challenge people's ideas and beliefs and make them think, and what a pain in the butt that could make me be. I would hear Ken inevitably say "yeah, Parry is different, but I would never change him. That is Parry, and I love him and I would never try to stifle his creativity or his ability to express himself in whatever manner he chooses".

In slightly less than four months, it will be three years since Ken passed away. For some reason, over the last few months I've had it in my head that it's going to be two years in November since he died, and I was only able to figure out my error tonight as I was trying to remember how long I've been in my new home. In January of 2010 it will be two years since I moved out to the burbs, so that is the only way that I figured out my error. I see a slightly deeper meaning here.

As I've thought about loss and grieving over these past few years, I'm noticing how most of the changes in how I deal with the loss are so subtle that I often don't notice them until months later. That I continue to feel in my head that it's a year less than it is in actuality since his passing makes me think that this is at best some kind of plateau in the grieving process (and for me, the jury is still out as to whether or not it is a "process"). For me, the word process conjures up politically correct psychobabble, expectations of structure as well as expectations about how an individual is supposed to handle loss and grief. For the record here, I have to say how I have the utmost of respect for many professionals that work in mental health. It is tough, often thankless, emotionally draining and exhausting. There is a segment in the field now, however, that used to be considered the fringe element, and they have now become the undeserved benefactors of a lot of undeserved credibility (in my opinion). If you are a client and choose to spend your money on these charlatans (again, in my opinion), I say God bless and good luck, but it is not for me.

So again, I'm pondering the possibility that this is, at its best, a plateau point in my grieving. Another plausible possibility might also be that this is as good as it gets. I say that with no judgment as to whether or not that is good or bad. If this is as good as it gets, that really is ok. I like that I still think about Ken every day. Remembering him brings me peace and happiness and allows me to honor his life and my memories of him on a daily basis. I don't even mind the momentary lapses back into denial, such as waking up from some happy dream and expecting that I'll roll over and find Ken on the other side of the bed, snoring like a chainsaw, and the disappointment I feel is when I realize that I'm waking from a dream and this is only wishful thinking. Still I don't see that as bad, it is what it is. Consider, if you will, that one of the most important indicators of mental health is still fully integrated into my beliefs about life: I believe that my life has meaning and purpose, and I still have a lot to do here. God can decide when it's time for me to go home, and I place full trust in these beliefs.

The way that things ended with Ken were in so many ways incomplete, with many loose ends that were never connected so that I could file them away or pack them up in a box and put it in the proverbial attic. The house is new, but I still feel him here. When I look at all the beautiful material things that we accumulated over those many years, that is how I give them a value; they were very much a part of my life with Ken. They are priceless because they are a connection to a very different time in my life, one that feels alternately like it was yesterday and also a lifetime ago.

He pops up in so many other ways. I was telling my therapist yesterday how frustrated I was with myself that I've been in my house a year and a half and I still haven't hung any of our artwork. Ken and I collected a lot of original artwork over the years, and I love it all for the memories that looking at these things evoke, more than any other reason. Then I had this realization, which I then shared with the therapist: I've always hated to hang artwork. That was Ken's thing, he loved to do it and he was really good at it. He would ask me where it should go, I would tell him where, and he would hang it. It was a nice little routine. In matters of design, color, form, and cooking, Ken would almost always defer to me, unless it was something that he had his heart set on. Then he would call me in and ask me to help it fit in within the style of our home.

Ken deferred the kitchen to me, not because of any particular reason, I was just the cook, pretty much from the beginning of our relationship. Ken could cook, and could do it reasonably well. He was a very adept with the barbecue grill, and he could also bake circles around me. Since he died, I've had to step up to the plate and become a proficient baker, but it's unlikely that this ever would have happened were he still here.

It's funny really, the things that trigger memories. Often, on the surface it looks like the connections are completely non-sequitor, but given a minute, the connection almost always flows to me, freely and unhindered. I miss Ken deeply, and likely for eternity. That said, he gave me many tools that have made my transition to a life without him far less traumatic, and with the knowledge that there is still much that I can do in my life here. There is so much that he taught me over those many years that has made me a better person: he taught me patience, empathy and integrity, as well as the importance of always being true to yourself and your core values. If there is one thing I can say, hoping that Ken hears it, is that I hope he realizes what a difference he made in the world, and in my life. I think that all too often, his pain, sadness and self-hatred made it impossible for him to see the Ken that everybody else around him saw. What we saw was a man of courage, conviction, intelligence, sharp wit, and kindness beyond measure. I can really only speak accurately for myself, and in that regard, it is without even a shred of doubt that I know that because of Ken, I am a better man.



Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.runnymedesilkys.com.

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Caught up in a Whirlwind

It's been...well...interesting. I really can't stand it when people use lines from movies and popular music to express their own feelings. It's a cheap trick, a lazy device and sappy and formulaic. And I'm going to do it now.

"Evil turns to statues - and masses form a line
But I know which way Id run to if the choice was mine
The past is knowledge - the present our mistake
And the future we always leave too late
I wish wed come to our senses and see there is no truth
In those who promote the confusion for this ever changing mood"

For those too young to have been around when that song was popular, or somebody that was around but wasn't into early 80's BritPop, that is from "My Ever Changing Moods" by The Style Council, a band that I really liked back then. It was fronted by Paul Weller, one of the best (in my opinion) musicians and lyricists of the last 30 or so years. Those lyrics pretty much sum up a lot of where my head is at right now. I'm suffering the 21st century affliction of too much information. It's not coming from the internet, television, other media or the distractions resultant of the way we're collectively living our lives in the 21st century. This time it's personal. This time it's coming out of my own little old head, chemically enhanced, or as one might alternately see it, pharmaceutically polluted at worst, overstimualted at best.

One can perform all the due diligence possible to prepare for a long, protracted and uncomfortable medical therapy. I'm not the first one, nor am I necessarily the most fragile one, nor am I necessarily even the "normal" patient, take your choice. I didn't spend hours and hours pouring over medical abstracts. I am (was) a health care professional. Let's say was, since this year I switched my nursing license to inactive. I'm mean seriously, what are the chances I'm ever going to hit the workforce again? Bing! That's right Bob, the answer is "not until hell freezes over!" Knowing what I know from my professional education, my understanding of pharmacology, my prior understanding of both HIV and the Hepatitis C viruses (though not when served as a mixed drink), and my additional research on Interferon (I had a general knowledge. Back in the very early 90's, when I was still working at UCSF, I remember having patients in our ICU that were on Interferon trials for some cancers. At least I'm pretty sure about that. We were definitely doing trials with Interleukin-2, and hopefully I'm not confusing my recombinant DNA-derived drugs. Whatever.

I remember it being nasty, and folks ending up in the ICU for a variety of complications, the most common one was thrombolytic thrombocytopenic purpura, also known as TTP, a very serious clotting disorder that at that time had a pretty high mortality rate, so that is a big deal. It's still a bad disease, though I'm certain that they have drastically reduced the mortality statistics.

Then, and this was easy. It's kind of like asking any random person if they personally know somebody who is gay, personally being described as "having had one's acquaintance face to face". Nearly everybody can think of one, and if they can't, if you ask them a week or 2 later, they will be reminded of somebody they knew with Hep C. I personally know somewhere in the range of 20 people that have it, and of that number, more than 80% have tried the Pegasys protocol, which is the current standard of care for somebody with active Hep C. I am on the Pegasys protocol, which is comprised of 48 weeks of therapy: Pegylated Interferon-a (weekly injection, self-administered) and Ribavirin, an oral antiretroviral drug, in pill form taken twice a day. I have a couple of interesting sidebars here (well I think they are interesting) for those with not a lot of medical education:

1) Hepatitis C is in the class of viruses know as retroviruses, called thus becuase of the way that they replicate. HIV is another retrovirus. Unlike other viruses retroviruses carry only the RNA of their protein. Without getting too heady here, if you take the DNA molecule, which is a double helix, you split the twon chains in half and you end up with a single strand of RNA. Since DNA is the protein molecule which transmits all the genetic information for a said cell, what a retrovirus does is deek out a host cell by finding the receptors on the cell surface which basically are the "key" to letting the viral RNA in the house. One in, this viral RNA sets up a reaction using an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to change the host cell DNA into a little virus factory that pumps out thousands upon thousands of copies of the virus. Eventually the host cell gets used up by this process and end up like a too full water balloon of viral copies. The cell wall breaks those thousands of viruses go out hunting for new host cells, and the dead cell is gone before it is allowed to do the function God made it to do, reproduce itself into, lets say, a white blood cell. It's kind of like taking home a date from the bar that if you were sober you know you wouldn't do but well, you're drunk and horny. The next morning, your present from the night before is that it feels like you are pissing sulfuric acid the next morning.

So what is Ribavirin, currently the only antiviral for Hep C? Well, it's a neucloside analog, and it blocks the production of the reverse transcriptase, thus preventing virus replication. In theory, that is. If you remember the old days of HIV, the first drug on the market, AZT, is a neucleoside analog. It was certainy better than nothing at the time, but after a period of time, HIV finds a way to work around it and its effectiveness over time diminishes. Which is why us HIV'ers that are on drug therapy are on a "cocktail", or combination of drugs, which instead of just blocking the reverse transcriptase, they block a number of necessary steps to viruses making babies, and you can then stop disease progression.

The problem here is that Hep C therapy is still in the pharmaceutical dark ages. We only have a neucleoside analog (Ribavirin) and a drug that is found in our immune system naturally (Interferon) and this is a "signaling" protein mounted as one of the first defenses to viral infection. The problem is that interferons are non-specific to the cells they are targeting to kill, and so when you use this as a drug therapy, it is basically like going squirrel hunting with an AK-47. You might kill the squirrel, but there will be (a lot of) collateral damage. This is why the compendium of potential adverse reactions that you are warned about when starting the drug is the most voluminous warning that I've ever seen, warning you of the possiblity of anything from a dry mouth to suicidal or homocidal behavior. Lovely.

2) You might remember awhile ago (unless I already put you in a coma with the previous explanations) that I said that I am taking Pegylated Interferon-a. The a is for alpha; there is more than one sub-type, or genome, if you are a geek like me. All that pegylated means is that the Interferon is suspended (mixed) with a lovely little industrial solvent (in the diol alchol family) called Proylene Glycol. It is used to make everything from antifreeze to deodorant sticks to food color to hydraulic fluid. Oh, and it's used in the pharmaceutical industry as well, often as a solvent when making an oil-soluble drug into a water-soluble form so that it can be given intraveneously. The way it works when it is put into Interferon is to (by some chemical reaction that I still don't understand that well) slow down the release of the drug so that it has a longer period of therapeutic drug levels, which is, by luck, from 2-3 days to 7-10 days. That's why I only have to take it weekly. So to put it a little more simply, it's like I'm treating a bum knee by amputating it slowly with a rusty steak knife.

I have gone onto such a wild tangent that I'm not quite sure where I was headed in the first place. Somehow this was supposed to all be connected. Oh yeah, Pegasys sucks. But for now, it's the only game in town. There isn't an antiviral cocktail for Hep C yet, so with only a single-antiviral drug, the option is to go at it with a scorched earth mentality. There are some new drugs down the pipeline, one is a protease inhibitor (this disrupts a different stage of the viral replication cycle, but I'll spare you the details this time. If I've still got you, then honestly, haven't you suffered enough?

The long and the short of it is: Pegasys is the standard of care. It's not got success rates that would inspire a lot of optimism. If Hep C is diagnosed in its acute stage (defined as the first six months post-infection) the cure rate is about 60-70% for the sub-class of the virus that I have 1a, which is, of course the one with the poorest response to Pegasys. If someone is in the chronic stage (more than 6-ish months, the cure rate drops by about 50%. We're unfortunately unsure as to whether I'm an acute or a chronic case. The last negative Hep C test I had was in August of 2007, so I could be lucky or unlucky.

They don't treat everybody with Chronic Hep C with Pegasys at the moment. If somebody is otherwise healthy, then they will often sit on it, since once the virus hibernates for its 20-30 year winter, the typically otherwise healthy patient will be asymptomatic for that same period of time. The problem for us co-infecteds (Hep C/HIV) is that Hep C doesn't tend to follow the rules. Typically with sub-type 1a, one can divide the remission period by half.

The other ugliness with co-infection is that the risk for a certain very nasty form of liver cancer, called hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) is about double the incidence that is seen in the Hep C only infected population. I had a good friend named David, a nurse that I worked with for many years. We went on disability within a year of each other. Unfortunately, David had Hepatitis C, which he got from a needle stick at work years before, and within 9 months after being diagnosed with chronic active Hep C, they found a mass on his liver. Within a year and a half this beautiful, tall, handsome, slender and dapper gentleman (he kind of reminded me of a cross between Nick Charles and John Waters) went from looking vital and relatively healthy for a guy that was pretty debilitated by HIV but puttering along at a level that still allowed him a quality of life (once he was able to stop working) to a walking skeleton the last time I saw him. I barely recognized him when he walked into the doctor's office. We hadn't seen each other in about a year, for various reasons, but coincidentally we had the same doctor. Had I not heard him talk (and David's voice was so characteristic, at least to me) I would not have recognized him. That last time I saw David haunted me from then on. David died within weeks of the last time I saw him. He didn't die of complications of HIV, or direct liver damage from Hep C. He died of HCC. I never expected to lose my friend to cancer, and to watch him wither away so precipitously. There are three cancers I hope to never have to face, since they decimate the body quickly and have very low cure rates relative to most other cancers. Those are pancreatic cancer, melanoma diagnosed at stage 3 or 4, and any of the liver cancers.

The other option for non-coninfected patients is to wait until the damage to the liver is at a critical stage, and then the treatment is a liver transplant. I'm almost glad that isn't an option for me. When I worked at UCSF in the ICU back in 1989, I took care of the first liver transplant patient treated there, and after that, many more post-operative transplant patients. As if it weren't awful enough just to go through that surgery (and it is a long, complicated, bloody and nasty surgery), the rest of your life you're on drugs to keep your body's immune system from rejecting the donor organ. Again, this is another case of shooting ducks in a barrel with an Uzi. You aren't just (hopefully) stopping the rejection, you're messing up your immune system and a lot of other organs and systems along the way. I've watched that. It's not pretty, and I wouldn't want to have to make the decision whether or not to go down that road.

So back to where I started: I think I know too much here. Not only have I done my straight-on research, I've also done my experiential research. I've talked to at least 20 different people about their experience with Pegasys. I may have said this in a previous post, so sorry if I'm repeating myself, but I have yet to find anyone that sailed through without a problem. The one problem that I've heard from every last one of these people: depression. Unfortunately this is not your "typical" depression. It is insidious, it seemingly creeps in from nowhere, like the uninvited (and unwanted) party guest. It tends not to come on slowly, but most people have told me that one day everything was fine and the next day their world was collapsing. Imagine how living with that information can be. I am second-guessing myself constatantly. I wonder if a little melancholy is going to erupt into a full-blown plunge down the rabbit hole.

These last couple of weeks I've been really weepy. It's weird, because in general, I'm stoic, quiet and I don't wear my heart on my sleeve. I've never been a big crier, so when I cry my friends know that something is up. The weird thing is, this time I'm getting weepy not because I'm sad, but it's a more schmaltzy kind of melancholy: crying at silly movies, stirring and inspirational stories I read. For that matter, I've caught myself crying at commercials. The weird thing is: I don't feel, depressed, hopeless or inconsolable. It actually feels good, really cathartic. Now normally, pre-Hep, if this had happened I wouldn't have put much thought into it. I would probably say it was hormonal, on my male period. But now, I second-guess everything. My moods, my desires, my energy level, or really for the most part, my lack thereof, my physical symptoms are all getting second-guessed. Is this normal? Is this live or is this Memorex?

I'm getting tired of walking the minefield of disease and treatment. I'll keep doing it as long as the benefits outweigh the risks and/or the pain. But this is definitely not normal for me. I don't really know what is normal for me anymore. My ability to discern the differences between normal/typical and new/atypical is way out of whack. It goes without saying that this is an interesting time in my life. That doesn't mean that I really wanted to learn anything this way. That is rhetorical though. This is where I am, and this is what is happening, and these are the tools that I have to deal with it. The answer to the question "but is it enough?" seems out of reach at the moment. For that matter, maybe it's not the time to be asking that.

It's midnight, once again I've written myself into exhaustion and brain freeze. This is going live virtually unedited. It will likely read at least a little bit differently tomorrow when a less addled brain goes through and fixes the mistakes. But if you're lucky enough to get the unedited read, you might get something that is gone tomorrow. Hopefully it will make sense, or at least sound logical.



Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.runnymedesilkys.com.

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I'm Canning As Fast As I Can

My new obsession is canning. Actually, to be more accurate, it's food preservation. I'm sure there is some Freudian or Jungian conclusions to be drawn here. Maybe I'm trying to preserve myself and this is the closest I can get. Maybe I'm trying to get back to my roots. Neither is likely entirely inaccurate, but if we're going to be entirely accurate, here it is. I've always loved to cook. It's been my obsession since the first time my Mom put a mixing spoon in my hand and had me help her in the kitchen.

I need to preface all the rest of this with the following caveat: I have a terrible memory. I have only a handful of memories from childhood that I can pull up consistently and accurately. Most of them are culinary, and this is one of them. More surprisingly, I was probably no more than seven at the time, and maybe as young as five.

The story could stop there. Most kids of my generation, even the boys, probably got to help Mom in the kitchen a time or two during their early years, but with the boys, it usually stopped there. For me it did not, and there are at least three reasonable explanations that would fit.

One is that I really did love cooking from the start, and would beg to help as much as possible. By the age of ten, I was cooking on my own, no supervision, and this was some fairly complicated cooking for a ten year old. I could do this with my Mom's trust and blessing, because I had earned it. By that age I was cooking a lot. The next reason seems obvious to me now, but until recently I never would have considered it: I think my Mom looked at me and knew "This one is never going to get married". Not necessarily just because I was a gay in making, but I am, and always have been, a very free spirit.

It helped that my Mom worked nights (cocktail waitress in a supper club), and she was raising four kids on her own, no help from my Dad, the government or anyone. Never on food stamps, never on General Assistance. I think instinctively we all wanted to try and take some of the load off for her, so (mostly) me and my sister Pam took over a lot of the cooking and cleaning. My mother's standards were very high with both of these duties, and I think that setting the bar high at an early age wasn't bad in the least. She expected no less than she did, and I can thank her for my perfectionism, which I see as an asset, not a character flaw.

Remember now that this was the 60's. The extent of processed food could be summed up thus: Swanson TV dinners, Kraft Mac and Cheese, Top Ramen (still the staple of moneyless college students and welfare families everywhere), Campbell's Soup and Spaghetti-0's. That meant that unless you were a hapless bachelor with little money and barely the skill to boil water, one would tire very quickly of the food and move on to more challenging culinary turf, just from sheer lack of variety. The quality (palatability) of those mentioned was borderline passable, yet they were probably less toxic and more nutritious than the processed foods of today. The processed food landscape was, in few words, exceptionally bleak. Thank God!

So I started to cook, and cook well the vast majority of the time. I had the occasional flop, meaning that I either screwed it up, or I was attempting dishes beyond my skill level at the time. But I continued to challenge myself, never feeling that I had mastered cooking, and as a result, I became a pretty exceptional cook.

Now as I said, we were pretty darned poor, so that meant that as much as possible, we grew our own produce, went to pick our own at the pick-it-yourself farms at the edge of town, or went to farm stands (the precursor of the modern Farmer's Market). An interesting aside: most, if not all of these small family farms on the perimeter of my hometown have disappeared (which I would venture to guess is not at all uncommon elsewhere in the US today). They were at what was the edge of my town in the 1960's so it won't take Miss Marple to figure out what happened: suburban sprawl swallowed all of this land. The farmers were given offers they couldn't refuse, for what they thought was land that didn't have nearly the value that it actually had. The developers got hold of this, and these parts of unincorporated Missoula (the town in Montana from where I came) are now strip malls, casinos, big box stores and fast food crap holes. They started legalizing gambling in the late 70's, and as they have legalized more and more gaming, casinos have sprouted up like cockroaches. Probably the only thing keeping up with that pace with the growing number of casinos is the number of Gambler's Anonymous meetings that continue to sprout up.

Our grocery store meats were average by the standards of that time but probably still superior to today's meats at the big grocery chains. What we bought at the grocery store was supplemented with a number of fantastically lucky gifts. First was freshwater trout (my home town is at the confluence of three major rivers). This we either caught ourselves (my Mom used to be a decent fisherman) or it was donated from friends. We were also lucky to have friends that were either cattle ranchers or avid hunters, so we had a pretty reliable source for amazing beef (grass-fed and unlike anything you find today) and spectacular game meats: elk (my personal favorite), venison, antelope and wild water fowl (mostly ducks and geese) were the most common game meats we were given.

In many ways, I was the luckiest poor kid on earth. Here was my mother, raising two rowdy teenage sons, an eccentric daughter (who unfortunately fell down the rabbit hole of mental illness in her teens, never to recover), and a rather shy, sensitive, artistic and emotive young boy (me) on the salary of a cocktail waitress. Though we didn't have a lot of luxuries, we always had good, high-quality healthy food, and generally in abundance. If not abundance, at least we never suffered for lack of good food.

Since Montana has four real seasons, that meant there was a much shorter growing season than here in California. That meant that if we wanted to have that quality produce year around, we had to preserve it. Can I digress here again? Now that I am eating outdoor-grown tomatoes, and have been for the last few weeks, can someone please tell me why we Americans decided to accept those crappy hot-house cultivated orbs of pale red cardboard trash that are called tomatoes? Calling them vine-ripened is a guise, in case you didn't know it (and an insult to vines everywhere). Once picked, there is very little ripening that happens with tomatoes, so they spoil, but unless you define spoiling as ripening, then this is a bullshit phrase. All ripe tomatoes are vine-ripened. Tomatoes grow on a vine, so that is the only place where they can ripen. I guess that after enough years of seeing that moniker used in labeling these mushy or chewy, mealy and tasteless pieces of junk, most people will forget that real tomatoes that taste like real fruit have to be grown outdoors and in the dirt, not hydroponically in a growth substrate and fed a chemical stew in corporate hot-houses.

But back to preserving food. Back then, if one's family was at the bottom end of the income scale (aka, the poverty line), or if one grew up in a farming family, or if one's parents grew up in a farming family and grew up during the depression (that would be my Mother), then one "put up" for the winter.

There are 4 basic methods of preserving food: canning, freezing, fermenting and dehydrating. I attempted a little dehydrating as a kid (apple rings) with moderate success, but other than that, canning (especially) and fermentation seemed like hocus-pocus. My mother didn't do any brine and crock fermentation (coleslaw, barrel pickles, etc.), but she did do a lot of canning (primarily) and freezing. The extent to which I was allowed to help encompassed a little stirring, but mostly, it was watching. For the record, I'm thankful that she didn't have me do a lot of the cooking with hot pack canning (heating the food to boiling before packing in a sterilized jar, as opposed to packing cold, otherwise known as raw pack). I'm also thankful that she kept me at a bit of a distance until my late teen years with this and with candy making for the same reason: boiling sugar (and gloppy food) is like napalm if it gets boiling too hard and starts to splatter. I've yet to meet anybody who has done any substantial amount of canning or candy-making who has not given themselves a nasty blistering burn at one time or another. Speaking for myself, it has happened more times than I can count, which is why I try to remember to keep a big bowl of ice water at the ready before I start canning or candy-making. If I'm being totally honest here, I'm a bit of a klutz. I always have been, and my Mom figured that out rather quickly. The bowl of ice water, by the way, is a good hint. It's also a great idea if you're working with hot glue.

But back to canning. About the most that I did was help make jam and seal the jars, since at that time, it was standard to seal the jars with melted paraffin instead of vacuum sealing in a hot water submersion bath. This is now not ever recommended, since it is at best a suspect airtight seal. They leak all the time. I'm still alive after years of eating jam from paraffin-sealed jars, but it's still not that safe. The wax was hot, but not that hot (ask any pervert with a fetish for having hot wax dripped on them), so my Mom wasn't that worried.

(Skip to Saturday night/early Sunday morning: two days later)

Well, as is my lot of late with all this Interferon crap, my days and levels of energy are unpredictable. As a general rule thus far, the unpredictability seems to rarely work out in my favor. This has forced me to be even more adaptable to the situation than Chronic Fatigue Syndrome already did, or the consequences were more than unpleasant. I've definitely become a lot more obedient to the limits my body is imposing on me, rather than trying to fight it, overdo, exacerbate the symptoms, and set in motion an infinite loop of exhaustion, frustration, fallibility, vulnerability and ultimately, bouts of depression here and there. Thus far, this has all been manageable, but I'm keenly aware that this could change at any moment for no apparent reason, and I think that this realization, more than anything else, has finally taught me to listen when the body says "no more". I've always tried to fight that (emphasis on try), and most often I have failed.

So to make a short story long, every week I'm having more lengthly bouts of post-Interferon symptoms, and it's also become more unpredictable. Mondays are a given, that is my "glued to the couch watching movies" day. Tuesdays are becoming more and more like Mondays, and sometimes it creeps well into Wednesdays. So the rest of the week I try to play catch-up: pay bills, do my banking, maybe a little housecleaning, maybe a little time in the garden before it becomes stinking hot. Then, every now and then, a bad day (or two) will creep up on me insidiously and knock me down for the day. This has been a great lesson in patience, adaptability and acceptance.

But enough about that; let's get back to the canning. Thus far, Saturdays have been predictably "ok to good". This means that my morning involves hitting the Farmer's Market, then back home to canning, or whatever other preserving I'm doing. Now that the fire has been lit under me, I really savor the satisfaction that comes with the art and ritual of canning. I've pretty much taken up its practices with a faith that is almost religious. But as I was getting ready to talk about before I pooped out on Thursday, leaving this post unfinished, canning is kind of magical. To be honest it had always seemed somewhat surreal and supernatural to me, bizarre as that may sound. You have this very sanitary hygenic ritual, governed by a doctrine of unbendable and/or unbreakable laws. In this case, the wages of sin (well, breaking these rules) can potentially be death. Yesterday (Friday) my final weapon in my arsenal that will take me through the battle of the microbes one can get from unsanitary food handling practices is now mine: my brand-spanking new pressure canner-cooker.

I didn't just go for your garden-variety, typical little household pressure cooker. No sir, this is THE industrial shit. It is a 30 quart All American forged aluminum gasket-less metal to metal (pot to lid) vessel which is secured shut with 6 big eye bolts. Today I did 13 pint and 1 half pint jars of beets. And this is why I love this pressure cooker so: I processed every last one of them in a single batch, instead of the usual 7 jar batch that my old water bath canner maxes out at. And this is some serious shit. If it were any bigger, I really doubt I could fit it correctly onto the cooktop. This is no small cooktop either, mind you, it a 5 burner, 36" cooktop that has yet to have found a pot that it couldn't handle. It can handle this one just fine, but I think that I'm pretty close to its capacity, at least in size, with this cauldron.

Then, after I finished that little all-day project, I decided to try a little recipe in the book that came with the canner: chocolate bread pudding. The recipe is simple and the ingredients are ones that most cooks have in their kitchen: bread, milk, eggs, sugar, chocolate, vanilla and salt. The recipe is a very simple one, that is, long as you follow the recipe. Well, I guess that was too much for me. I had the custard ready to go in the cooker, when I got the last-minute inspiration to add some chocolate chips, just to tip the scale over to "fabulous". I grabbed a handful of chips, scattered them over the top of the custard, put the dish in the cooker, clamped down the lid, cranked up the fire and let her rip.

Unfortunately, I forgot to read that last crucial instruction: you (well I guess except for stupid me) are supposed to cover the dish before starting the cooking. D'oh! I don't think I need to fill you in much on the gloppy details, but suffice to say that I'm just thankful that it didn't leave custard splattered all over the interior of the new cooker. I had another bright idea: I would put it under the broiler (low heat broiler) and cook off some of the excess moisture. In the meantime, I was going down to the market and get more milk, because I didn't have a ton of faith in my fix-it idea, and I was going to make it right AND tonight, gosh darn it.

Good thing my expectations were low, as it was an only slightly satisfying fix. What I got out of it after browning under the broiler was a lovely, caramelized chocolate-laden crust with a lot of gloppy unset overly-moist separated custard (the kind of custard looks like scrambled eggs instead of a smooth pudding-like custard. And when I say gloppy, I mean saturated with so much water that it was ridiculous. And then back to the races I went.

My closest grocery store is a small local chain (no more than three in total) that is very yuppy but has great food, exceptional produce for a grocery store and has incredible real old-timey fish and meat markets and a gorgeous bakery. There are doors on two sides of the store; on the north and south walls and directly across from each other. If you enter through the south doors you hit the full service deli, and if you come in through the North entrance (as I usually do) and did tonight, you pass the bakery. This led to another epiphany: Brioche! I ask the bakery girl if they have brioche, since I've never gotten it there before, and lo and behold, not only did they have it, but it is the real thing. Better yet, it was sold in small loaves, about 1/3 of the size of a typical loaf of brioche. And it is divine. When I opened the bag, I swear to God, I smelled Paris. Back home I go to seek some pastry redemption.

In another 5 or 10 minutes I have another batch whipped up, and back she went into the kettle, this time with not just a lid, but a sheet of foil that was held down by the lid and created what turned out to be an exceptionally moisture-proof covering. Then, as I let that cook up, I finished up cleaning and chopping the greens from about 12-15 pounds of beets, then blanched and prepped them for freezing. They are in the freezer overnight, so by tomorrow they will have set to a nice flash-freeze firmness, which will help then hold up really well to thawing and cooking.

Oh, and how could I forget! I made my first batch of sauerkraut today. I have now officially popped my fermentation cherry. It seems to be (so far) pretty darned easy. You chop a lot of cabbage, one head at a time. You then put the chopped cabbage in your crock (I'm using a typical restaurant twenty two liter thick food-grade plastic canister). Then you sprinkle three tablespoons of kosher salt over the cabbage and you don some rubber gloves (unless you have a pain fetish for hundreds of little stinging abrasions from coarse salt), and then you stick those latex-clad fists into the salty brine, because you have to pound the crap out of the cabbage. I am not playing here either, you make a tight fist, and you beat the hell out of the cabbage, using that combination of physical force plus the osmotic nature of salt to draw all the water out of the cabbage.

You basically do this until you have drawn out enough of the water from the cabbage to fully submerge it in the brine. You then find a cover that will go down on top of the cabbage and is as close as possible in circumference to the inside circumference of the crock. You place that cover (mine was a large heavy dinner plate) over the cabbage and then weigh it down with sufficient force to keep the cabbage packed and fully submerged (I filled a gallon ziplock with brine and packed that closed ziplock into a foodsaver bag and heat-adhered the seal at both ends). This is highly unlikely to leak, but even if it does, all is not lost, because since the bag is filled with brine, at worst there will be excessive brine that I can then ladle out.

The crock is then covered with a towel, in order to both allow airflow, which is required unless you want nasty cabbage, and to also keep out foreign matter, like dirt, dust, food particles, whatever. Every five or so days, I'll remove the towel and inspect the surface of the brine. If it's scummy, I'll skin off the scum. As long as the cabbage is fully submerged in the brine it won't spoil and I needn't worry. If things are going perfectly I should have fantastic, homemade sauerkraut, which makes what you get at the supermarket such an inferior product that you feel sorry for it. My grandma used to make her own in one of the old pickling crocks in the root cellar and the family would have enough sauerkraut until the following summer.

I still to this day remember two things about my Grandma (my mother's mother): her sauerkraut and her Swedish rosette cookies. Mind you, she has been dead since 1986, and the last time I saw her was around 1974. I always thought it was funny that one of the two foods whose preparation she had truly mastered in my mind was a Swedish dish. My Grandma was a spectacular cook, and it's something that one might not have expected of a girl that was coming of age in the aristocratic class in England, when in the middle of WW1, she met my Grandad, a humble farmer from Idaho. She gave up all her riches and privilege (she was a model at Harrod's Dept. Store in London as well, so she was no slouch) to move to the US and become an Idaho farmer's wife. She was a beautiful charming sophisticated and gracious lady.

That lady could cook circles around most anyone. She was an amazing gardener, and every summer of my mother's childhood and well beyond, harvested and preserved as much of the bounty of her garden as she could. She also had a smokehouse for meats (mostly game and fish) and the fish especially was amazing. Her home where she retired in Southern British Columbia, just across the border from Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, was on a lake. Actually, it was a lakeside home on one of the largest lakes in North America and west of the Rocky Mountains: Kootenai Lake. That lake was teeming with fish, at least in the 60's and 70's, the years where I spent the most time there. My memories of that time are sporadic, but especially in regard to my time at my Grandmother's, I have many distinct, clear and detailed memories.

So here I am, I've managed to lead you on the long and circuitous journey, but I did do it for a reason. I wanted to put my culinary obsessions in perspective. Hopefully I've painted a picture that comes at least slightly close to describing the combination of my love of good cooking, perfectionism and desire to create these transcendent gastronomical experiences has brought me to this point. Either that, or I've confused the hell out of you.

But it's not about you, it's about me. I don't say this selfishly or with hubris, but this is my journey. You are either the lucky or unlucky hitchhiker that I picked up on some dusty country road on a warm late summer day, perhaps to go search for wild berries out in the woods. On the other hand, you might not really like the artistic flourish that some of us authors tend to use when waxing sentimental. In that case, just don't read the last paragraph of my posts.



Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.runnymedesilkys.com.

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Looks Like Someone Has a Case of the Mondays

I don't like Mondays. This is a new thing, by the way, I used to love Mondays. Sundays and Mondays have historically always been my favorite days of the week for some reason. I would have to guess that this is partly because Sunday and Monday had been my days off in my working life more than any other days, but I think it goes even further back. I've loved Sundays and Mondays for as long as I can remember. Until now, that is.

Sunday night is Interferon night. I start dreading it in the afternoon, and will usually do the injection right before bed. Then Monday: hoo boy, it is a dilly, not fun in the least. Let's start with the migraines. I've had headaches for most of my life, including my childhood. In adulthood, those garden-variety headaches morphed into migraines and cluster headaches. Pre-interferon, I would have bouts a few times a year, typically every 2-4 months. They would last a couple of days (up to a week sometimes) and then go away until the next spell. Thanks to Interferon, they have now become a regular Monday visitor, and will usually stick around until Tuesday evening, sometimes until Wednesday evening.

Then let's go to the fevers and sweats. That will also typically start on Monday morning, and every week they last longer. This last week, I had them up until Saturday morning. I hope that is a fluke. This week might also be a bit nasty in that regard, since we started a pretty serious heatwave today. I didn't look at the temperature during the daytime today, but I can tell you that it almost certainly went over 100. At 9 pm tonight, it was 87 degrees. That's right, that is not a typo; 87 degrees. Tomorrow and Wednesday currently look to get progressively hotter, and it will then drop slightly the next few days. That should not be very conducive to me staving off a fever, or for that matter, help out with the next problem: the malaise.

I've had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since 1993 or so, but the fatigue that I'm having now makes the usual old malaise I was used to look downright inconsequential. So far, it's not lasted more than 3-ish days, and I hope it stays that way. Today, it meant that I basically didn't leave the couch, other than to feed myself, the dogs, or go to the bathroom. I don't even have the energy to read. Actually, I had to pep talk myself tonight into writing this because well, I knew I needed to. Writing has been my refuge. As much as it may sound like I'm getting ready to host a pity party, it's far from the truth. Just putting this down onto "paper" is so therapeutic. It's giving this perspective for me, and since I'm somebody with a high tolerance for discomfort, pain and disease, that perspective is not a view that is leading me to feeling hopeless. On the contrary, it is keeping me sane. When I'm lying there for an entire day, it's easy to fall into the despair that it might never be any better than this. I know that is not the truth, I just need to keep reminding myself of that. That is another unfortunate problem with Interferon, and that is the psychiatric adverse reactions.

I've still been unable to find a single person who has done interferon and has avoided any psych issues, and the usual one is depression. It's typically an insidious and unpredictable variant of depression, often not set off by or the outcome of anything that one can identify. I'm just starting to get glimpses of it, and am thankful that I did my homework. Otherwise, I might be a lot more concerned. I'm not saying that I'm not vigilant; to the contrary, I'm on pretty high alert. But I have to say that I think that knowing this makes it easier to remind myself that it won't always feel like that.

This is a very foreign landscape that I'm navigating. I can honestly say, this is thus far the most challenging thing, other than losing Ken, that I've had to confront. I'm still sometimes feeling like I'm walking in the dark and waiting for the step that will stub the hell out of my toe or send me falling down the staircase. At its worst moments, it's like that scene in The Silence of the Lambs when Clarice is being stalked by the killer in a totally dark house and the killer is wearing night-vision (infrared) goggles. At its best times it's an annoyance. If I can keep the balance in my favor that will only make this journey more tolerable. More than anything else right now, writing is keeping me sane. It's taking all this negativity that is swirling in my head and giving it a face. If it has a face, it's less scary for me than than the faceless monster that is stalking me in the dark.

Next time, I'll promise a little more happy talk. This solitude hasn't been all bad. On my good day or two of the week, I've been able to get myself in the kitchen and cook again. Actually, I've found a new obsession that helps the time fly by when I have the energy for it: canning and preserving. I've become obsessed with canning, freezing, dehydrating, fermenting, any way that I can preserve food. "Putting up" (as we say in Montana) for the winter has been so satisfying. I know that what I'm getting at the Saturday Farmer's Market will be available in various reincarnations throughout the rest of the year. And I made it myself.

But more about that later. For now, I don't like Mondays. I want to shoot the whole day down. But that will change, that I know. I just have to stick it out and keep my eyes on the prize. That is not so bad, I can do that thing. I know I can do that. I think.




Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.runnymedesilkys.com.

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Confessions of an Accidental Agoraphobic

I'm really not agoraphobic, but in just 4 days I've developed a new-found respect for the plight of those so-affected. It's funny, because unlike an agoraphobic person, I really do want to get out of the house. Having clarity and self-awareness about that makes it easier for me to resolve myself to the truth that it's not in my best interest to go out and hang out amongst the general population, no matter how stifling and imposing this current situation feels to me. No matter how much I want to defy what is in my best interest, I also know what the potential cost of being so foolhardy can be. What I'm working with now is a good old fashioned case of "he wants the one thing that he can't have the most". I have to think that 4 days of not leaving the house by choice wouldn't even make me bat an eye. I know Parry, and the one thing about the quirky little man is that if you tell him that he can't have something, that is the one thing that he will want the most. But enough of speaking (writing) in the third person. I usually hate that, it comes across as being so affected. I'll chalk it up to a momentary lapse in judgment.

In the last 4 days, these have been my adventures outside of the house:

Two trips to the post office to get the mail out of my PO box (wearing surgical mask)
Two trips to the grocery store for a few essentials (wearing surgical mask).
A trip to Walgreens to pick up an antibiotic prescription for a sore throat. Luckily, my neighborhood Walgreens has a drive-through, so I was able to complete the transaction with no direct physical human contact.
The Pleasant Hill Farmer's Market yesterday (I went commando; I just decided that it was outdoors, lowering my chances of getting viruses coughed into my face. I just needed to feel normal for a minute so I rolled the dice, took the chance and abandoned the surgical mask).

As a result of these few masked outings, I have learned how self-conscious and proud I really am. I cannot stand to go out in public with a surgical mask on my face. I'll do it if I need to go out, but I'm doing it very much against my wishes. I am normally an astute social observer. It doesn't matter what I'm doing when I'm out in public, if I'm out there I'm always people-watching. I love to observe social behavior. I love to just look at people and marvel at our aesthetic differences. I might see another long-haired, middle-aged curly brunette-haired man, but I can find far more that differentiates us as opposed to physical attributes that we have in commmon. I love this, and I marvel at both what we as humans have in common with each other, and also what makes us unique. Most importantly, I like to make eye contact with people as a general rule, there is just something magical that often happens when you make that connection, and I never fail to marvel at that fact.

But now, as I walk through Safeway or the post office or wherever, I'm finding myself walking down the aisles with my eyes fixed permanently downward, neither making eye contact with anyone else, nor taking note of any reaction they might be having to seeing this old hippie-looking guy walking around with a face mask. Is he crazy, a germophobe, immune-compromised? I really don't want to see that questioning expression, and if I see it, all it would do is make me want to walk around with a big banner explaining the mask.

Then again, perhaps I should see this as a learning experience; specifically an exercise in letting go of my hubris that won't let me show others any degree of vulnerability, be it physical or psychological. I have to now think that in the past, I was paying lip service to the importance of letting down my guard, and overstating my ability to do so.

Tonight was my 4th dose of Interferon. At some point this week, I should reach peak blood levels of the drug, and I'm hoping that once that levels off, the side effects will also level off. So far, it's been a little tougher for me after each dose, and the crappy feeling seems to hang on a little longer. It's been about an hour since I gave myself the injection tonight, and I just went through my first little feverish and sweaty episode, one of many likely episodes I'll experience in the next few days. They usually last less than an hour, but that doesn't make them fun by any stretch of the imagination.

This is (so far) more challenging than I expected. I'm not saying that in a manner that would suggest that I'm surrendering to this crap, but I'm definitely looking at my current state of affairs with more honesty and eyes more widely open. There seems to be another unexpected positive response to my social isolation; I feel like I'm seeing all this very clearly. I'm still positive, I believe that the drug is working, I really do. That said, I also now have a very open-eyed and realistic acceptance of how difficult (challenging) and bumpy this road is likely to be. Even knowing that, as I say nearly every time I write (or think) about it: if it works and it knocks the virus to kingdom come, then all this will have been oh so very worth it.

What is really bothering me the most right now is my lethargy. I just want to lie on the sofa all day and watch stupid movies, and if I can't find a decent movie, then I'll just watch whatever stupid thing is on the TV. It's frustrating, because there is so much to do around here. I could do some high cleaning. There are still boxes that I've not unpacked since the move of a year and a half ago. I've hung almost none of my artwork on my walls; all that adorns them right now are television flat screens, speakers or light fixtures. I have lots of painting, patching, touch-up work, gardening and organizing that needs to be done. I also know, having lived so many years with chronic fatigue syndrome, that the mind can have all the best of intentions, but the body needs to be willing. The Interferon has only amplified my usual baseline malaise. To be honest, of all the shit that it's done to me, the very notable upsurge of my fatigue and malaise is the most frustrating, disheartening and depressing aspect, much more so than any other ill effect of the "therapy".

But I am tough. I can make it through this, just as I have made it through every other roadblock that I've come upon in my life. I'm also very conscious of the value of documenting this. More than any other reason for writing this journal, I think this is probably its greatest value. I fully expect that at some later date when all this is only a distant memory, it may only be then that I'll realize this writing's value. Hopefully I'll appreciate how helpful it has been to be able to look back on the darkest moments and see how I'm able to get through the worst of them. In reality, this isn't even close to the darkest periods in my life. It really is all a matter of perspective, and perspective requires memory. If this is the crutch that will help me remember how it felt in the moment, then so be it. Sometimes, it's just comforting to look at what's going on in my head, and then see it put into words. I am, after all, a wordsmith, and words give me peace and comfort.



Doggydad's Life Now: The Viral Monologues by Parry Tallmadge is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at doggydad.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.runnymedesilkys.com.

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Waiter, there's a microbe in my soup

Three things have been capitalizing my thoughts lately: food, microorganisms and isolation. To some degree they are related, but not completely.

I've been seeing food in a whole different light lately. A few months ago, when I first found out that I was dealing with Hepatitis C, I was concerned that I was either already protein-malnourished, or that its occurrence was a strong possibility. With that in mind I decided to start eating meat again, after living as a vegetarian for the prior two and a half years. As a result, I have in general felt better, but it also opened up the Pandora's Box of the temptation of fast/junk food, something that really doesn't offer a lot of opportunity to experience when one is eating meatless.

Thankfully, I have to say that only two or three times have I given into the temptation, and it's been with either KFC or Taco Bell. Which is worse I'm not sure, or if there is even worse fast food is probably debatable (and rhetorical; after all, isn't bad really just bad? Divisions like less bad or more bad is really splitting unnecessary hairs).

But that is not what I want to talk about, I want to talk about good food. As I spent the last couple of months preparing for Interferon therapy, and the likely malaise and fatigue it would bring along as its baggage, I decided that an important part of my recovery would be good healthy fresh food. If I was too tired to cook, I didn't want to have to rely on prepared processed store-bought meals (picture the frozen food section of Safeway and Costco). I didn't want to stuff my gullet full of food rife with corn and soy products and by-products, artificial this or that, stabilizers, preservatives, extenders. If I was going to have pre-made meals, I was going to make them from scratch, using only fresh ingredients, and then package them as complete individual meals and freeze them.

Storage was my initial concern, so off I went to Sears a couple of months ago, and I bought an upright freezer and put it in the garage. Between that freezer and the freezers in my kitchen and garage refrigerators, it looked like that would provide ample storage space. I know, 2 refrigerators does come across as excessive, but I do entertain on occasion, and like to keep cold beverages as well (since it's barely been below 100 degrees this last week; typical Walnut Creek summer). I actually do use all this cold storage, so I don't feel bad about it, especially now, as I sit here basically home-bound by my even more compromised immune system (more on that later). I really do not have to leave my safe little enclave much, and I'm grateful that I've been able to make that happen.

Now that storage was solved, I headed off to Smart and Final (food service grocery, mostly for restaurants, delis and caterers) and found the ideal storage for my meals - freezable and microwaveable containers (made for caterers), perfect size for a meal and somewhat reusable. Then I set off in turning my kitchen into a catering kitchen, and spent the next one and a half months cooking, packing and freezing meals. They are balanced (a meat/protein, complex carbohydrate, and fresh vegetables), portioned appropriately (I'm a small eater, so I was able to portion the meals to my appetite, not having to deal with leftovers if I had a store-bought prepared meal), and most of all, healthy and not full of plastic food crap, like what we're fed at fast food establishments and chain restaurants and/or store-bought prepared food.

Up to today, I've frozen around 80 meals, and have the makings for easily another 80-100. Unfortunately, all my freezer space is now taken up, so I'm going to whittle away at what I've already made before making more. I seem to have at least two good days a week, often more, so I can still make more meals when needed.

Lately I've been inundated with news, writings and discussions about food. I've seen at least two interviews with author Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food). I've seen numerous references to the new documentary "Food Inc.", which is described as the extension of Pollan's book. I keep seeing news stories, articles and interviews about how what we buy from the grocery stores today is so far from the ingredient's origins, how the "food" we buy is chocked with corn and soy products. My eyes have really been re-opened in regard to how our assumptions about where our food comes from, i.e., assuming that the produce in the grocery store is regional, when it's likely from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Partially as a result of this flood of information and partially just by coincidence, I made the conscious decision to eat more locally (regionally), organically, and to also eat seasonally. Eating seasonally is actually something that will happen naturally if one is eating locally. I am buying almost all of my produce at the Farmer's Market, which I go to every Saturday. This has been my conclusion: local seasonal produce tastes better. Actually, it just tastes right. Raspberries and strawberries that were picked the morning that I bought them from a local berry farm have the most incredible, intense and complex flavors. I am finding that the more I listen to my body, the more I realize that my body craves what is seasonally available. Beets, turnips, Swiss chard, green beans, peas - all these are ripe right now and I crave them. A week or two ago, I started having a hankering for apricots and peaches. When I got to the market that Saturday, there they were.

Even though it won't be quite the same, I have been freezing a lot of what I've bought so that I can enjoy it this winter. Though I won't be eating seasonally at that point, I'll at least be enjoying food that was grown and harvested locally and seasonally. To keep my pledge to myself to eat seasonally, I'll supplement what I'm preparing from the freezer or a canning jar (that I canned myself) with seasonal produce: winter squashes, root vegetables etc.. As I write this I'm waiting for tomatoes (grown in the dirt and outdoors, not hothouse cardboard "tomatoes"), rhubarb, corn and melons. I'll can and/or freeze what I can, as well as enjoying it the day it comes home. So far, I've canned jams (strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and apricot), plums from Brian's plum tree, hommade teriaki with seasonal fruit and dessert sauces made from the same fruit I'm making jams from and freezing for baking. I've frozen green beans, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries so far, as well as making strawberry and rasberry freezer jam, and will continue to freeze produce as it matures and comes to market.

There is a fly in the ointment (or soup, pick your metaphor) here: I was at my doctor's appointment yesterday, and found out that the Interferon has dropped my white blood cell count to a dangerously low level. What this means is that my risk for infection is greatly increased, and I have to take extra precautions; decrease social contact, avoid raw or undercooked foods (especially meat products), wash all produce thoroughly, and as much as possible, stay home.

I have never been much of a germophobe. Even being a nurse hasn't made me neurotic about germs. I won't take foolish risks, and I do maintain good hygiene and practice frequent hand washing, but I'm not obsessed with germs. Let me rephrase that; I didn't used to be obsessed with germs. I may have only found this out yesterday, but I'm now rethinking all of my prior beliefs on infection control. I see the microbe-laden boogy man everywhere. My question is: where does prudent behavior end and obsessive behavior begin?

I started weekly injections of Neupogen yesterday. It's basically a hormone that stimulates the bone marrow to produce white blood cells. It should work relatively quickly, so hopefully I'll only be stuck in this plastic bubble for a few weeks. This is all still worth it to me, as long as the Interferon works, and I need to keep telling myself that it is working. If that is the case, then I'll see all this as just a series of minor inconveniences.

Being stuck at home in medical isolation really isn't all that bad. I'm a solitary man by nature, and I relish my alone time. That it has now been forced upon me is not that big of a deal, but it is interesting. Things that I would have considered ridiculous in the past, like deciding that the prudent thing to do if I'm out in public is to wear a surgical mask, seems downright sensible now. So much for blending in; I probably couldn't stick out more, unless I attach a flashing red light to the top of my head. Maybe I'll just stay home. The house is a mess and I'm exhausted. Once I'm rested up and if I have the energy, there is plenty to do around here.

Last week was Gay Pride, and it ended with a bang on Sunday with the parade down Market St. followed by a celebration outside City Hall in San Francisco. After that, we went to a pool party hosted by Miss Jauanita More!, one of San Francisco's drag royalty. All three of us, myself, Amanda (Brian) and Mona (Mikey) looked gorgeous. There are thousands of photographs of us out there now. I've only seen a few, but we looked pretty darned fabulous. For those of you who don't know, I'm notoriously bad about taking pictures, I always have been, but as mine start appearing I'll put them on my Facebook page.


Today I want to get the house cleaned up. At this moment, I'm not sure that I have the energy to follow through on that, in which case, I'll flop myself onto the sofa and watch movies, much as I have done for the last 3 days. Right now one of the creepiest movies that I've ever seen is on, "Shutter". It's about a photographer whose camera is haunted by the ghost of somebody whose death he is involved in. Creepy, creepy, creepy.



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