Heron: Epilogue
Via deep and peaceful sleep, the drama of my survival faded. The blind boldness; the failed roll; the strain and desperation and anguish and regret of clinging to life: it was all a mixed bag of “what...
View ArticleHeron: Complete
One can read all 10 installments of the Heron chronicle in chronological order on the “Heron” category page: Heron: Complete (Note that the query string “?order=asc” in the above link reverses the...
View ArticleFaces of Depression
In November of 2004, when I visited the psychiatrist in Yarmouth, he came into the waiting room, where I was waiting alone, looked around, and said “You’re not Bogart.” I might have conceded sharply,...
View ArticleMy Story in 125 Words
I have brain cancer. Despite a successful surgery, my tumor is almost certain to come back, and, eventually, to kill me. It was supposed to kill me six months ago! How can I live happily in the shadow...
View ArticleMy Story in 250 Words
On May 5, 2011, my old life ended. I was diagnosed with a malignant brain cancer called gliosarcoma. A neurosurgeon removed my tumor the next day. I woke up free of the mysterious neurological symptoms...
View ArticleMy Story in 500 Words
Something’s wrong, I feel it. I walk into walls. My foot is numb. I wake up one morning with a terrible headache, and throw up. My wife sends me to the hospital, but they have no answer. She lobbies...
View ArticleMy Story in 1000 Words
I’m ill. I’m ill, but it’s not a cold, it’s something strange. My foot has been numb for weeks, and then at my Aikido class it stopped working and hung from my leg like a dead fish. I am off-balance. I...
View ArticleA Collection
CONTENTS Nothing, Something What’s Wrong With Me? The Bargain Plausible Explanation My Old Life and My New Life Got Cancer Ups and Downs He Has Home Nothing, Something I hope they find nothing so...
View ArticleMind Maps
Was it a hero’s quest, a dream vacation, my own little Make-a-Wish, or a luxury undeserved? When I found out Gary Carter had high-grade glioma, like me, I reconsidered the meaning of his ’86 Mets...
View ArticleThe Giant Shrug
On Tuesday night I was texting a friend and tapped out “Also, I’m feeling a littl” and stopped suddenly with a fright. I had meant to write that I was “feeling a little ill,” but shrank from this...
View ArticleA Thousand Days
Wednesday, January 29, 2014 marks the thousandth day since my diagnosis of brain cancer on Thursday, May 5, 2011. (1) My sister, Sasha, gave me this jar of garbanzo beans to commemorate my achievement...
View ArticleThe Dollar Bill
When I was five or six years old I tore up a dollar bill my father had given me. I think he’d said something that made me angry, that made me feel silly and foolish, perhaps about having a “bad...
View ArticleA Place of My Own
I had a room of my own at the age of eleven, upstairs at the house in Limerick. It’s another of those spaces of the mind in which my memories dwell, to which I’ll never return in body. It was around...
View ArticleVoices
Write the truth. That’s my job, if I have one. Write the truth. It is sometimes hard to believe I started this blog only a couple of weeks after my surgery. My urgency to witness this life seems so...
View ArticleBlight
There is a blight upon the land. Parts of the forest have withered and died from an infection of sleazies. As King of the land, I, Bogart, must find and destroy the sleazies before the whole world is...
View ArticleBlight, Explained
My brain tumor is back, it seems. The last few MRIs have shown a slowly growing pair of white dots near the black void where the old tumor used to live. I had imagined this moment of reckoning as the...
View ArticleBigger
My oncologist told me this morning that my tumor is bigger than it was in June, and big enough to warrant a resumption of radiation and chemotherapy treatments. These could start within a couple of...
View ArticleIn the Attic
NOTE: There was, at one time, a post here that described my efforts over the last month to come to terms with what happened in my early childhood, around the time my parents separated. I talked to both...
View ArticleThe Realm of the Heart
It seems there are two activities, and perhaps only two, which reliably contribute to a feeling of well-being during this incredibly troubling period of my life: writing, and meditation. When I’m...
View ArticleAn Excellent Response
We’ve returned to that five-month period of the annual calendar in which it is acceptably convenient to spell out the names of months in full. Watch for confetti. What can I say? There has been a lot...
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