Bring out your dead

Letter to one of my daughters so she could get some righteous bereavement leave. She had to have “proper documentation” to take advantage of one of the vaunted benefits offered through her place of employment.

I’m surprised the shit suckers didn’t require DNA confirmation to chuck up two lousy days’ pay.

I hate management.

Fuckin’ suits…

Your Aunt Shelly died. The cops found her in her apartment Monday morning in her chair in the living room. One of her co-workers was concerned because she hadn’t heard from Shell in a couple days and called the cops, asked them to check on her. They did, and she was dead.

It turns out that she had extensive lung cancer, and it metastasized to her liver. No one in the family knew, and only a few of her close friends knew. She didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t want to bother them with her personal problems, didn’t want to “put them out.” I think she showed more guts facing her cancer and imminent death than I did dealing with my cancer and temporary inconsequential side effects.

I feel like I should just apologize for that and shut the hell up.

Your uncle Frank and I went to Springfield Tuesday to get things sorted out and get the Sisyphean funereal ball rolling. We had to locate her will (did that with one phone call, woo-hoo!), find a funeral home, get her body released from the coroner’s office, all that fun stuff. Plus we had to get an idea of what to do with her stuff.

Frank’s her sole heir and executor. It’s going to be a couple weeks before we get everything sorted out and moved, get the place cleaned up. The property managers seem like real nice guys, really liked Shell as did everyone else in the building, and aren’t giving us a solid end-of-month deadline to have everything resolved.

We found homes for her cats. That wasn’t one bit hard. Shell was loved enough that people readily volunteered. Since Shell was the big gardener in her apartment building we put all her house plants in the court yard for the other residents to adopt if they wanted to. Anna and I got the food tossed from the fridge so it wouldn’t stink up the place too badly, and most of it was already starting to turn. The place was in sort of rough shape, but then Shell was extremely sick, so she can’t be faulted. It was just another shock on top of shock, is all. Canned food is going to a food bank. Her craft supplies– her endless craft supplies– are going to be donated to the craft program at the Y Anna works at. Clothes will probably go back to Salvation Army. She was down to a size 0-2. We didn’t find any dirty clothes in the apartment. She might have just been buying clothes at SA or Goodwill and tossing them when they got dirty as a matter of convenience or survival. Her car was breaking down so she got rid of it, and she definitely did not have the energy to do laundry on a regular basis let alone trundle it around town to laundrymats. She was negotiating to get a newer used Ford but decided she couldn’t afford it with her medical bills, so that didn’t go any where. We think she was relying on friends and neighbors for rides around town. Grocery shopping, clothes shopping, chemotherapy, the usual moribund rounds.

The people at the Travelodge she worked at kept her on the payroll so she could keep her insurance going even though she couldn’t work a regular schedule. Unfortunately, that little bit of what’s actually right with America is slowly disappearing. But that was extremely righteous of them.

Frank and Tara went out shopping today to get her an outfit to be buried in. She’d lost a lot of weight, was down to 79 pounds, and she’d gotten rid of just about all of her nice clothes since they didn’t fit her any longer. They found a pretty good blue polka dot dress for her. Shell always looked best in blue, and liked polka dots for some god-awful reason.

But it’s her funeral. She can wear what she wants.

Visitation is at Bisch Funeral Home, 505 East Allen in Springfield, 4:00-7:00 Friday. Family at 3:00 for a private viewing. We’ll decide then if we want to do closed casket or not. You know how Shell was– always vain as hell. Frank & Dia will pick up Eileen in Jacksonville and take her along since she can’t drive any longer. I’ll drive up after they do when I get off work. Anna’s working on a video presentation to run during the visitation. Got to love that technology.

Burial is at St. Bartholomew’s Cemetery in Murrayville on Hwy. 67 Saturday at 10:00. She mentioned a while back that she always wanted to be planted next to her dad, Ed. No procession, just show up. Frank hired some Christian preacher to do a graveside service since Shell was more Christian than Catholic. If Chris is feeling up to it, we could use him as a pall bearer. Frank’s shoulder is still screwed up from his surgery. Then there’s my crappy back, plus I’m still not totally recovered from my cancer surgery. We have three pairs of crippled hands so far, and need three more, although we’d prefer they were hail and hearty pairs. Chris doesn’t have to dress fancy since most of the people that will attend are going to likely be in clean jeans, sneakers and polo shirts. If they own polo shirts. If they have a clean pair of jeans left at the end of the work week. Shell didn’t run with a particularly fashionable crowd.

But this is about Shell and not wardrobe or social niceties.

But we could use a couple of sturdy, young bucks to help send Shell off and do her props. We’re unfortunately too old to be dealing with this shit like we used to. There comes a point where you haul one too many people to a hole in the ground before it starts to invite you in and you wish you could take it up on its kind invitation.

You can probably rack out at Anna’s, but call her to make sure. We’re staying overnight Friday and Saturday, maybe at the Hilton again if we can get a deal. Or the Travelodge. I’ll give a place like that my business any day of the week after what they did for Shell.

Sunday we might go to the apartment to do some work if it’s OK with Frank. He needs some serious slack time and isn’t up for it. He’s never had to deal with anything like this before, plus since it’s Shell, well, he’s understandably dragging ass. We all are.

(paragraph referencing surviving sister and spouse deleted at suggestion of Counsel)

Don’t you dare bring that up this weekend. I can be bitchy about it if I want to, but you need to be discreet, shall we say?

Shelly was always on the timid side. When I first started running with Dia and we’d go to her mom’s for something, Shelly would literally hide in the closet in her room rather than deal with me. Unfortunately, I’ve had the effect on lots of women over the years, but Shelly was the first one like that. She was a walking contradiction. Pretty and slim, she always had a certain timid mousiness about her. Fashionable and popular, she was at heart a wall flower. Sometimes she seemed scared at the thought of her own shadow in spite of the ooooo’s and ahhh’s and you’ll go far’s everyone heaped on her.

But man, to off-handedly stare her death in the face like that… to treat it as a mere inconvenience… just another damned thing in the day to deal with… she had more balls than most supposed men walking this world.

Damn it, babe… I didn’t have a chance to tell you good-bye…

http://www.legacy.com/sj-r/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=142088090

I am a god

I am a fucking god.

Spent Sunday smoking a brisket. Over 10 pounds of prime meat exposed to nothing but mild heat from Steakhouse charcoal and the smoke from chunks of hickory. Well, there was a dry rub involved. And a mop. And some random curses hurled at yuppies and squirrels. It took about 11 hours to finish it, which is sort of disappointing because I really wanted to have time to visit with Amanda since she came in from Cambridge for the holiday. We don’t get to see her often enough. The last time she was here was for my surgery. The other girls were here as well, except for Larissa. She shows common sense at the oddest times.

That’s one of the nice things about smoking as opposed to grilling: you have time to sit, visit and bullshit.

Today I trimmed off the burnt ends and blackened fat and re-introduced them to the smoker for a couple of low & slow hours. About two cups of them wound up in a pot of beans that are now in a 350f oven for an hour along with sundry other goodies.

You know if it takes three days to produce a dish of food it has to be oh, yum.

Adore me.

Blood on the tracks

Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out but when they will I can only guess. They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy, She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me. I can’t help it if I’m lucky.

The medicos found a marrow donor for Greg.

According to Harriet, the donor is an 80% match and the test results look promising. They’ll keep his brother (50%) as a back-up donor. I have no idea what’s involved with that. But Greg goes back in the hospital for intensive chemo and a round of radiation before the transplant. He’ll stay in for a month or so afterwards to make sure everything “takes.”

Cool. But don’t let that dissuade you from signing up as a marrow donor if you haven’t already.

The trivia night went alright. I have no idea how much was raised and our table only came in fifth, but we had fun. Hadn’t been to one before so it was something new, and being the “official” St. Patrick’s Day weekend it gave me a reason to kilt up. There were grab bags (mine contained shampoo, which is par for my luck) and also baskets that people could bid on. Dia walked with a basket of kitchen stuff, and I got a pair of candle sticks and gift certificates for a decent Irish pub, along with another ball cap I really don’t need.

Didn’t have much of a chance to talk to either Greg or Harriet since they were getting swarmed, but talked with them long enough to find out that Greg had been back “in” for pneumonia and that Barrister, their Maine coon, was doing alright. Didn’t have a chance to ask about Phoebe, their other cat.

On the front here, I finally got my penis pump. Manual model because the worthless shit suckers at Blue Cross are too fucking cheap to pop for the automatic job. According to the instructions, it’s supposed to be two weeks before any improvement is seen. I’m giving it much longer than that considering how abused the nerves were during the operation. It’s a twice a day therapy, 15 minutes each.

I started on the Cialis yesterday, which is part of the therapy. I got the script in November, mainly for my final waa-hoo! weekend, and have been stockpiling since then, anticipating starting the pump therapy. Getting potency pills is truly fucked up. They run between 5 mg and 20 mg, and they cost the same per pill. They’re also doled out in the same amounts. According to the fucktards at the insurance company I can either get six 5 mgs a month, or six 20 mgs a month. Well, gee… if I get the 20s I can cut those down to four 5 mgs. Even with an SIU degree I can figure out which is the best deal is on that.

So I’m doing 5 mg doses every other day, which I think should maximize everything. Push comes to shove on those, I can always hit my primary medic up for samples, or maybe get a script from him and get it filled in Canada. It doesn’t matter to me if I get a hard-on or an erection.

Oh, figure out the damned joke on your own… although for the life of me I have no idea why “hard-on” would be feminine in French…

Rock & a hard place

I’m the innocent bystander
but somehow I got stuck
between a rock & a hard place
and I’m down on my luck

Just a reminder, the trivia night benefit for Greg is at:

St. Elizabeth of Hungary
1414 South Sappington Road
Crestwood, MO

When:

Saturday, March 13, 2010, 7:00 pm.

Tables are $160 for eight people. You can reserve yours by calling:

314-621-0200, ask for Jan or Karen

or emailing:

ebw@stl-attorneys.com

You can also become a bone marrow donor by going to:

http://www.marrow.org

We have two openings left at our table. You can also contact ebw@stl-attorneys.com about making a donation if you’re not up for a night of strange questions.

It just feels right

Oh, baby, you know what you’re like?
You’re like my favorite underwear
It just feels right, you know it

One of the more difficult parts about all this cancer surgery crap has been dealing with underwear.

Right after the surgery it wasn’t a problem since the catheter was inserted. I just ran around the apartment in a towel sarong and hooded bathrobe when I wasn’t on the couch whacked out on vicodin. When I had to go out– to the doctor, the at&t tech center because my cell phone crapped out– I wore one of my kilts and just hooked up the collection bag to my hiking stick. Hey, I was uncomfortable with a quarter inch diameter tubed shoved two feet up my schwantz, and didn’t care if it made other people uncomfortable.

Misery loves company, as they say.

But once it was out and I was in diapers or pads, my old underwear didn’t make the cut. Bikini underwear is just not amenable towards prostate surgery recovery. Fortunately, I had picked up some boxer trunks when we went on our Katy Trail ride last June. In all the excitement I’d forgotten to pack underpants and had to stop by a (forgive me) Wal-Mart in Clinton since there was no other store. I grabbed some trunks– boxer briefs with short legs– and used those after I cleaned up from the ride.

For years I went commando, and it was fine. But after my vasecotomy in ’81 I got used to having support after wearing a jock strap for a month after the procedure. Fortunately, bikini cuts were available for men then, and let’s be honest– I like to feel sexy as much as the next guy. Plus I’ve always had the legs and ass to pull off sporting bikinis.

The problem with the boxer trunks was that I only had four pair, and the way I was dribbling– when I wasn’t outright pissing myself– I needed more. I picked up some Hanes at Target, but they fit horribly, plus had the longer legs. I got some shorter legs and tried those, but they still didn’t fit right. They rode up to high, up around the waist instead of around the hips, and sagged too much when my pad got wet.

I found some Fruit of the Loom, but they were sized differently. Most mediums are 30″-32″, and FotL are sized 32″-34″. I was leery of the sizing, but got some, washed them in hot water and dried them on hot. That seems to get them close. I think one of the advantages of the George trunks I originally got is that they were 95% cotton and 5% spandex, which made them fit snugger, as well as they’re being cut more hipster than waister.

Since we’re at the beginning of our spring cleaning the Hanes are in my Salvation Army donation pile. My bikinis are in a plastic box in the bedroom with most of my cycling clothes. I am not throwing those out because once the incontinence is no longer a problem I’m slipping those back on. Hopefully by then the Chief Justice will be fine & Jim Dandy as well, peeking out proudly over the waist band screaming yoo-hoo, sailor! once again. Still no word on the pump. That’s probably another three weeks away yet.

Something

“If I had to die for a word, that word would be ‘poontang.’”
-Private Cowboy, Full Metal Jacket

OK, OK, OK, I’ll post something.

Yeah, it has been a while. But it’s February, which is a shitty month for me in normal years, and my head’s been eaten up with projects at work (I hate mail-merge). Plus I’m in a rut as well, but that’s a different story.

There were a couple of recent benchmarks. I hauled some banker boxes of closed files to the storage room at work. That in itself isn’t a big thing, but the boxes weigh around 35 pounds each and I have to throw them up on storage shelves. Since the storage is in the basement, and the elevator can’t be called from there, I have to walk up two flights of stairs, get the elevator, take it to the basement, get my cart and head back to the second floor. So physically, I’m getting a little stronger, have a little more stamina. I do tend to crash about 7:00, but I suspect that is mainly due to boredom.

I went over to a lighter-weight pad. I might not be ready for it, but I thought I’d try them. They’re slimmer and not as bulky. The incontinence is getting a lot better, although there are more instances of stress incontinence from coughing or sneezing. But that gives me an excuse to grab my crotch to make sure the pad’s in place. I’ve been having a pretty solid stream and don’t necessarily have to head to the bathroom every half-hour. It’s been going so well on that front that I’ve been neglecting to do my Kegels, which isn’t a good thing.

We also did our first road trip since the surgery. Last weekend we went to Jacksonville, IL, for our oldest daughter’s grandmother-in-law’s memorial. No major problems there, although I did diaper up for the drive just in case. There are only two rest stops on the drive and not a whole lot of places immediately off the interstate that cater to old farts.

And today I took the bike out for the first time in I know not how long. It wasn’t a big ride– three blocks to S. Grand for my Friday breakfast at City Diner and back– but it was a ride. I was actually scared to go out on it for some reason, so I dawdled getting the beast ready. It didn’t help that I had to literally knock the cobwebs off my floor pump in order to air up the tires. Yeah, it’s been that long. But I made it. I was concerned about straining the lower ab muscles where the doc sliced into me, but I took things easy. I’m tempted to maybe try taking it in to work Monday, but I’ll see how that goes. Maybe one or two more exploratory rides would be in order first.

There might be movement on the potency front. The place I’ve been trying to get my pump from hadn’t had any action or response from Blue Cross, so Wednesday night I drunk dialed the customer disservice center. I got a little rude with the lady who took my call, but got some action going. She called the urologist’s office and told Betty the office manager what to submit to the medical supply place. Then she called Betty at the medical supply place, told her what to do with the paperwork she got from urologist Betty, and which forms to send over there as well as which forms to send to Beddie at Blue Cross.

The upshot of all the phone and fax tag they played is that once the scum sucking swine at Blue Cross get all the necessary documentation they require they run it through their “pre-determination group,” sit on it for a month and then issue their answer. I’m expecting them to say “no,” and I’m trying to get written copies of our policy so I can go over that with an eye on some complaints for breach of contract. Yeah, it’s no where near the limit of the statute of limitations, but I’m about at the limit for my lack of breaching some poontang.

Since the weather is still relatively crappy– 20s at night, low 40s during the day– we can’t go camping yet. Dia complains about temps like that with a three-season tent. So I’m going to look for used sports jackets. Scholarshop is pretty good for stuff like that, especially if you catch them at the beginning of the season, which is now.

I also have to get some boxer briefs, and unfortunately might have to make a run to Wally World since they’re the only store that carries George brand. Those fit me pretty well. I got some Hanes boxer briefs at Target, but they sag, which means the pads sag, which means I leak more. The George’s fit snugly, and keep the pads up against me better which is good with the stress incontinence. I’m going to check a couple other places first since I hate Wally World almost as much as I hate Blue Cross and MetLife. Someone suggested Old Navy, and there’s a place downtown that specializes in men’s underwear. I just don’t want to spend all weekend running around looking for boxers and getting my panties in a bunch because no place carries anything that’ll work.

When the going gets weird

“Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous ‘trickle-down’ theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow ‘trickle down’ to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.”

- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Holy shit! It’s an election year! I just realized that after seeing a VoteVets ad running against Roy Blunt.

I like VoteVets. They don’t play games. They like to go straight for a kick to the nuts without any pussy footing as it were. The first ad I saw of theirs was during the senatorial campaign between Jim “No” Talent and Claire McKasskill (no relation to Danny). Talent, a career Republican political hack and born again– with the usual social and genetic connections to sleaze and greed– eked his way to the Senate in 2002 after narrowly beating out Jean Carnahan. Jean Carnahan was appointed to the seat her dead husband, Mel, won not running against John Ashcroft, the only Senatorial candidate to ever lose to a dead man.

McKasskill got the Democratic nod against Talent in ’06, and VoteVets targeted Talent. The following video is theirs:

That was probably the most effective political ad I’ve seen since the “Daisy” ad in ’64 when Lyndon Johnson stomped Barry Goldwater like a cornered, drunken rat.

I was so excited by the VoteVets ad that it took about four viewings for me to realize that it wasn’t produced by McKasskill’s camp. It just kicked ass in general, and helped kick Talent’s in the general election.

The fact that this is an election year totally passed me by in the cancer confusion and brou-ha-ha. But I’m glad it’s upon us, because it’s an amusement, a distraction, and with the neo-cons temporarily out of power it’s always fun to listen to their paranoid rantings and ravings. It saves money on the LSD budget. If we had a budget. If we could find some decent acid.

Roy Blunt is another conservative, born-again career political hack. He’s a federal representative from Springfield, MO, area, which is the most conservative section of the state. Blunt’s been feasting off the public teat since 1972 at the county, state and national levels. His voting record is reactionary enough to garner a 96% approval rating from the American Conservative Union, a 92% approval rating from the Christian Coalition, and a 97% rating from the Chamber of Commerce, the last making him as anti-worker and anti-labor as one can get. He’s voted for a federal amendment banning gay marriage; is against gay adoptions; supports prayer in public schools, the No Child Left Behind Act, and school vouchers; opposes any form of public health care, including Medicare; opposes legal protections based on sexual orientation, and is a charter member of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy. I doubt I could split a pizza with him because there isn’t a thing we agree on.

All-in-all, Blunt comes across like a guy who’d fuck you in the ass and not even give you the courtesy of a reach-around. He’s running for the Senate seat being vacated by Kit “Bottled In” Bond. One thing Roy’s always been big on is defending the oil industry interests. As a result, big oil has been a big contributor to Roy’s retirement campaign coffers. And that’s what the VoteVets ad calls him on.

Lawyers, guns & money

Greg’s wife sent me the following Missouri Lawyer’s Weekly article. It’s reprinted without permission.

They can get Greg to sue me. He could use the work.

Starting over [again]

A first-year solo attorney was on the brink of success — until cancer struck. Now Greg Stewart finds himself back at square one.

Published: February 7, 2010

By Allison Retka

allison.retka@molawyersmedia.com

Greg Stewart’s Monday mornings are spent not in court but at Siteman Cancer Center.

Nurses check his blood counts and give him a transfusion of blood or platelets. The transfusion perks him up. But by Thursday, when he makes his fourth night court appearance, Stewart is exhausted and moves like a man much older than his 46 years.

He shows up to court in slacks and a sports coat. He lost 40 pounds in the hospital, and none of his suits fits him anymore. He can’t afford to buy a new one.

Still, the trips to court are a slow return to normalcy for Stewart, who was diagnosed with leukemia in September. The cancer struck him a month before Missouri Lawyers Weekly was to wrap up a yearlong series of articles on Stewart as a new solo attorney.

Stewart started his first year slowly building a law practice. He lost his first trial to a pro se plaintiff, and he marveled over his first winning case. But the year ended with a cruel interruption: acute
myelogenous leukemia.

Stewart is out of the hospital but not yet in remission. He will undergo outpatient chemotherapy treatments for the next five months and eventually will need a bone marrow transplant. Right now, Stewart is focused on slowly taking back his cases from the friends who jumped in to help him after his diagnosis.

Those friends and colleagues have organized a trivia night fundraiser for Stewart on March 13 at St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Crestwood.

As a newspaper editor for two decades at The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, Ill., Stewart wrote articles about fundraisers for local families struggling with illness. It feels strange to be on the receiving end of one, he said.

“The reality is I need it,” Stewart said, sitting in a recliner in the living room of his rented house in Maryland Heights. It’s a rare sunny day in January, and an air purifier hums nearby.

Stewart’s face is ashen and gaunt. In the hospital, the gray hair that circled his head fell out in clumps until he finally asked the hospital staff to shave his head. He now sports a band of downy white stubble.

But Stewart’s sarcasm and dry, self-deprecating wit remain intact. When he called his friend and fellow solo attorney Don Kraher to tell him about the leukemia, Kraher said Stewart delivered the news matter-of-factly.

“He was Greg. He was not massively upset,” Kraher said. “I got the impression that he was like, ‘Life threw me a curve, and now I have to learn how to hit a curveball.’ ”

Stewart’s doctor guessed his medical bills could top $800,000, but those aren’t the bills Stewart worries about. It’s the credit cards, gas bills, law school loans and mortgage payments on a house in Illinois that he and his wife, Harriett, haven’t been able to sell. Harriett works as a nurse at SLUCare, but her salary alone won’t cover everything.

If Stewart worked for a law firm, he could have at least collected a salary for the three months he was hospitalized for aggressive chemotherapy treatments. But as a solo attorney, the weeks away from court – where he often met new clients – ate at his burgeoning business.

Before he fell ill, Stewart expected to make close to $45,000 in 2009. In his first full year as a lawyer, his earnings would have eclipsed his longtime salary as a newspaper editor.

For the immediate future, Stewart’s best financial option may be applying for Social Security benefits. His type of cancer could qualify as a disability.

A last resort looms: bankruptcy.

“I never thought I was that type of person, but it’s an option,” Stewart said. “I still can’t work a full day.”

Through the fog

In his hallucinations, Stewart saw Paris.

He glimpsed the soft grays of a rainy day at the Eiffel Tower, the Seine winding nearby in a city he’d never visited until he went there in his mind.

As chemotherapy drugs coursed through his veins 24 hours a day for seven days at a time, medications to fend off infections spurred fantastic scenes behind his closed eyes. Sometimes Stewart saw the canyons and craggy peaks of a vast land he understood to be China.

Over time the hallucinations became interactive, and characters spoke to him. Once a doctor and nurse talking outside his room at Siteman entered the scene in his mind and passed through it like blurry-faced ghosts.

In a weird way, the hallucinations amused Stewart through his three months in the hospital. But they made it tough to think about cases or clients.

Some patients on his floor set up makeshift offices in their rooms during their chemo regimens, but Stewart struggled to concentrate or stay awake long enough to examine a case file, study his calendar or call a client.

“Three months in that little room; it made me feel crazy,” he said. “You can only read so much or watch so much TV. I was miserable.”

Soon after Stewart was hospitalized, Kraher – his friend and colleague – drove to Stewart’s house and picked up his active client files. He recorded a new outgoing message on Stewart’s cellphone, directing Stewart’s clients to call him instead.

Kraher called or visited Stewart at the hospital every day to talk about clients who had upcoming court dates or new issues on their cases.

“If he was blurry, that was fine, we’d talk our way through it,” Kraher said. “He was still coherent enough to talk through things.”

Early obstacles

Week after week, Greg and Harriett Stewart have returned to one question: “Are Greg’s white and red blood cell counts up?” They have never heard a “yes.”

Originally, Stewart thought his cancer treatment would follow a similar course as his mother’s breast cancer, which took her life in 2000. She got the diagnosis, left the hospital and went back for chemotherapy dates. But Stewart had to linger there for months.

When it struck, the leukemia seemed like a classic flu. Stewart stayed home from work one warm September day with chills, a fever and body aches. When Harriett came home that night, her husband’s lips and fingertips were blue and he struggled to breathe. She threatened to call 911 unless he agreed to go the emergency room. They drove down the street to St. Mary’s Health Center.

While Greg underwent a battery of blood tests and a chest X-ray, Harriett sat in a waiting room. She was still dressed in her work scrubs and abuzz with a terrible awareness of every Code Blue and each urgent page for a doctor. “Please don’t tell me that code belongs to me,” she thought.

It took two days of tests to confirm a diagnosis the couple suspected but still wasn’t prepared to hear.

“It comes at you at so fast,” Harriett Stewart said. “There is no time to sit there and say, ‘OK, let’s think about this now.’

“They’re saying ‘We have to do this now. If you don’t do this, you’re going to die.’ You keep hearing that over and over.”

A bout of pneumonia worsened the effects of Stewart’s first round of chemotherapy. A month after he was admitted, doctors operated on him to address a dangerous buildup of fluid in the sac surrounding his heart. Surgeons inserted a chest-tube and also removed the lower part of Stewart’s sternum so any future fluid drains away from his heart.

The emergency surgery rattled Harriett. She spent their 22^nd wedding anniversary sitting at Greg’s bedside while he lay unconscious, a machine pushing air into his lungs.

“I wasn’t expecting him to be on a ventilator,” she said. “They didn’t tell me that. All those tubes, all the equipment, the beeping. It was a little hard to swallow.”

The days of chemo never made Stewart nauseated, but he found it hard to muster an appetite. Thanks to a near-constant saline drip, everything tasted like saltwater rolling across his tongue. For a few days, everything tasted like turnips.

To coax him to eat, Harriett often cooked meals on Sunday night, stored them during the day in the refrigerator in her office and ferried them to her husband at the hospital. “What’s Greg getting for supper tonight?” her co-workers would ask her.

She made stews, meatloaf and, in November, a full Thanksgiving dinner, re-heating the meals in a small kitchen for Siteman patients.

With Greg Stewart’s low-key personality, his descriptions of those months in the hospital come off almost as a shrug. Harriett Stewart is blunter: “It was a nightmare.”

The slower road

In December, Stewart’s doctors floated a possibility: He could receive his next round of chemo outpatient while living at home. Stewart leapt at the chance.

Harriet said she was terrified to bring him home, anxious that any dust or mold or cat hair in the house could make him sick. If he coughed, she ran to his side: “Are you OK? Are you OK?”

She felt equally nervous about her husband going back to work. Her friends talked her down.

“Greg has to do this. You need to let him do this,” she said with a sigh. “I’m scared to let him. It’s like somebody sending their kid off to school for the first day.”

Two weeks ago, Kraher returned Stewart’s box of active files. Stewart still doesn’t have the strength to file them away. He limits himself to climbing the stairs to his home office just a couple times a day.

But he is back to getting some traffic cases from John Newsham, the established criminal defense attorney who helped Stewart get his start more than a year ago.

Because of Stewart’s weakened immune system, his doctor advised him to wear a surgical mask when he goes to court. He’s often forgotten to grab one of his green masks before leaving the house, although a potent sneeze from a judge could land him back in the hospital.

Stewart’s doctor is still searching the national bone marrow registry for a potential donor for him. Stewart’s one brother, Danny Stewart, is only a 50 percent match. That isn’t close enough for a transplant.

His best bet may be stem cells from umbilical cord blood. Cells gathered from cord blood are less likely to reject a transplant recipient or attack his immune system. But Stewart’s doctors told him he must be in remission to receive cord blood cells, and he’s not there yet.

“I think we will get there,” Harriett Stewart said. “We’re just taking the slower road than anticipated.”

Greg Stewart recently navigated through his voicemail settings and recorded a new message, this time in his own voice.

“Hi, you have reached the law office of Greg Stewart. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now but if you leave your name, number and a brief message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

In his first months as a lawyer, Stewart had no problem admitting ignorance about entering an appearance or filing motions.

“Now that I’m starting out on my own, I don’t know how to do a thing,” he muttered in late 2008, dodging red lights in his 1998 Hondo Accord, racing to the county courts in Clayton.

One year and three rounds of chemotherapy later, Stewart has come full circle. The sense of déjà vu is overwhelming.

“I’m back feeling like I don’t know what to do.”

The fund raiser is at:

St. Elizabeth of Hungary
1414 South Sappington Road
Crestwood, MO

When:

Saturday, March 13, 2010, 7:00 pm.

Tables are $160 for eight people. You can reserve yours by calling:

314-621-0200, ask for Jan or Karen

or emailing:

ebw@stl-attorneys.com

You can also become a bone marrow donor by going to:

http://www.marrow.org

How high’s the water, mama?

I hit a new benchmark over the weekend and just realized it today.

Since Sunday, I’ve been getting through the day with just one pad. And I’ve actually been going since Sunday. None of that constant dribbly stuff: a full, steady stream, and definitely much more than a couple of drops. There are times I get the urge to go and just get a bit out, but the times where I can hold off for an hour and then pass a cup or more of urine are getting more frequent.

I still get strong urges, but they’re manageable, and I usually make it to the head on time, although I really wish Dia would get into the habit of leaving the seat up.

We’ve never had to deal with this before, and it sort of undermines our egalitarian bathroom etiquette. If the seat was up, it was up. If it was down, it was down. There was none of this “put the seat down when you finish” that is so common in some households with a majority of females. If it was up and the girls needed to go, they had to put it down. If it was down, they could squat with the assurance that I didn’t pee with it down. It’s worked well for decades, but these are extenuating times.

Word falling, photo falling

It’s a dull territory unless you enjoy shooting a paralyzed swan on a cesspool.
-William Burroughs, The Soft Machine

That pretty much sums up the day-to-day stuff recently, as well as life in general in St. Louis. Burroughs managed to succinctly summate life here with that sentence, which is probably one of the reasons he settled in Lawrence, KS. Not a whole lot to share. Well, at least stuff that’s family friendly. I feel good that at my age I can still shock people without giving it much thought.

Got my PSA results: 0.01, which is for all practical purposes non-existent. The test is essentially a test to see if there were any cancerous cells left in the prostate well– the area where the prostate used to nestle– and if there are indications of micrometastization.  I go back to the urologist in July for another PSA test, and every six months after that.

So like my friend Deb in Czechago who was dealing with melanoma the same time I was dealing with my big nigger, I’m living my life in six month blocks. I get a “pass cancer, collect $200″ until six months whittle away. Then I get to go through it again. Sort of sucks, but it beats other alternatives.

Got a call from Betty at the urologist’s office. She’s been bumping heads with the alleged humans at Blue Cross over the penis pump constrictive vacuum device. After her playing phone and email tag with the shit suckers Blue Cross customer service reps, essentially what I have to do is go to an authorized Blue Cross provider to pick up the hardware and give them my urologists info so they an initiate the claim paperwork.

You think the alleged humans at Blue Cross could have told me that six weeks ago when this odyssey started in order to save people a lot of aggravation. It seems simple enough. I mean, even I understand it.

Ah, well… I like Betty. She’s looking out for my prick, which is more than I can say for a lot of women.

On the work front, I have more photo work to do. Week before last I had to take some pics and do some Photoshopping so one of my attorneys could go for a temporary restraining order for a client. That was fun. He came up before I was even back from lunch, told me what he needed. I went out and got it, but then had to get them home, edit and shop them, make prints… for the next morning, which was supposed to be a sick day for me. I got them done, took them in to work. Someone had copies made while I was at the doc’s. Then we had to assemble the book, file, all that good stuff, and the next day I was barely off the bus when I got a call telling me to haul ass over to the federal court.

This isn’t that hell bent being an arbitration case, but it’s still another graphics assignment.