Caregiver's reflections back on day 30

First,  a huge thank-you to Beth Lindow, Dizy Brown, Susan Johnson, Mark Schurdevin , and all who helped pull off  the Fund raiser at Backstreet last Sunday. Sure were a lot of grey hairs in the photos I saw, and everyone was smiling. The spirit exemplified is what really makes Beaufort the "Coolest Small Town in America".  Congratulate yourselves. Personal Thank-Yous, to follow.

After the Jump,  Anne's take on the transplant.

What's The News ?

 I wrote this song  10 years ago when the "second story songwriters" group would meet in the office space over what is now the Cru Wine Bar. Jim Fodery, Stephen Spitler, and  Lindi Mereness come to mind as being the most prolific. I debuted this song upstairs at Backstreet Pub to an audience of about 20 people while the TV set  downstairs provided an eerie, aural backdrop of bombs and gunfire.  A few days later W made his ill fated announcement of Mission Accomplished. I offer it here as a poem.

What’s the News? 

©2003 Christopher Siegel

 What's the news this year? Come in and sit a spell

 Tune your harp and tell us of the world beyond our keep

Have you seen our sons, gone these weary months

 Off to fight with Saladin, in the terrible Crusades?

What’s the news this month? Come ashore and sup with us

 Have a pint and tell us of the world beyond the sea

Have you any newspapers, lithographs or renderings 

 Of Bonaparte and Wellington, and the fields of Waterloo?

What’s the news this week? Come sit by the fireside

 FDR is chatting on the wireless tonight

Have you seen The March of Time? We had to stand in line

 To see the latest newsreels from the Beach at Normandy

What’s the news tonight?  C’mon  and check it out

 Cronkite’s in our living room on the new color TV

Bouncing off the Satellite, film clips fill the screen tonight

 Death in living color, fresh from Viet Nam

What’s the news right now? Come jog along with me

 Here, put on this Walkman- just listen to those bombs

Have you seen the scenes on CNN? Images of now and then

 Like something out of Hollywood on the far away frontier

Faster than a speeding bullet

Sharper than a two edged sword

Images assault us with a fire that will not cease

And I can’t get a minute’s peace

Since the Dawn of time Mankind has the urge to know

 All that’s going down around town, all around the Globe

If we are Global Villagers, do we need a new Town Crier

 Who doesn't try to tell us what we didn't want to know

For now embedded journalists funded by advertisements

 Spin factoids into info-tainment right before our eyes

And their curiosity over-rides diplomacy

 While overlooking Pulitzers in their own backyard

So what’s your news today? Come out and sit a spell

 I’m weary of the media, and drama that won’t cease

Please tell me something good, right here in our neighborhood

 So I can find some meaning, and we can have a minute’s peace.

What is a Mondegreen? (no Medical content)

.

 WHAT IS A MONDEGREEN?

Technically, it is a result of near-homophony.

A mondegreen is simply a misheard lyric. The word was coined by Sylvia Wright, a writer and editor of Harper's magazine, and  published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.  Sylvia  recounted hearing the Scottish folk song, "The Bonny Earl Of Morray."

She heard the lyric,

"Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray

and laid him on the green"

as

"Oh, they have slain the Earl o' Morray

and Lady Mondegreen."

Listen to it here. ♫ Scottish Music - The Bonnie Earl O' Moray ♫
Just need to hear the first line...

Get it? 

Like " There's a Bathroom on the right" for "There's a Bad Moon on the Rise

or  "The ants are my friends" for "The answer, my friend"," in "Blowing in the Wind," by Bob Dylan

or  "Olive, the Other Reindeer, used to laugh and call him names"

Or these two  from Sunday School 

"Gladly, the Cross - Eyed Bear", and  "Up from the Gravy a Rose'


Ever wonder what those lyrics you are a little fuzzy about really are?   Find  a vast collection of misheard lyrics over the Jump

To our Beaufort Friends

It has not escaped our attention that plans are afoot for an event at the pub.

Brings tears to our eyes.

We wish we could be there. 

Chris and Anne

DOT + 29 Fatique

Day of Transplant + 29

A friend  and stem cell veteran told me before I went in for my transplant that I would not believe how tired I would get. She said that one day her goal was just to read the get well cards that had accumulated, and she would fall asleep just trying to read a card..

Well I can now relate.  The last two weeks have been marked by a fatigue and ennui. Falling asleep in the muddle of a sentence, slow to respond to questions, stuff like that.

Same as Mr.Natch, but without the beard.

These feelings of weariness have been echoed by my son Josh's wife Ramona who is simultaneously undergoing treatment for cancer of the lady parts in Berlin. Her most excellent blog is here. Her post of
April 29th is reprinted below the jump, along with a soundtrack of the same name.

Lymes Disease/Chemo Induced Symptoms

I know that several of my readers in NY and Maine, as well as NC have had a run- in with Lymes Disease.  Some of the same symptoms that have shown up in this last week attributed to Chemo Induced Periperhal Neuropathy are similar to the damage from the insidious spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi .

This is of interest to me as well as some of the medicos here at Duke who have asked me about my Lymes
experience.

After the jump there is an email I sent to my sister Laurie pre MDS diagnosis for a report she was doing on Lymes back in 2009, and a few comments from the present.

follow over the jump

DOT+16 We have Engraftment !

DOT +16       Medical Content

"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated" 

                                                                                                 - Mark Twain

Sorry about no posts in the last 12 days, but I have not trusted myself at the keyboard due to the number and nature of my meds, and the attendant lack of lucidity.

Big doing's though,

Anne has been in the hospital too.

Stories of weird dreams and more after the jump, and at last some medical content -   to wit, a chart showing my rising blood counts!