Wonderful. Breathtaking. Funny.

Fuck 3D is good!

Tags: reviews
Current Music: The Phoenix Foundation "Pegasus" (2005)

We went and saw Avenue Q the other night, a birthday gift from friends. For those who don't know it's an Adult puppet musical, with profanity, nudity and puppet sex inspired by Sesame Street. Sounded just like my kind of thing, and after all, I LOVED Peter Jackson's Meet The Feebles.

My review?

Everyone in the audience was clapping along to the songs, laughing away at the jokes, and simply amazed at the content.

I hated it.

Tame. Lame. Cheesy. Predictable. Cliched. Soft. Stereotyped. Camp. American. Excruciating.

Tags: reviews
Current Music: The Phoenix Foundation "Pegasus" (2005)

I just found out another person, Ros, who was on the same 10-day residential course at The Gawler Foundation has died. That's three people now. I think there were roughly twenty people with cancer on that course.

She was diagnosed with bowel cancer at roughly the same time I was. She also had the same chemotherapy treatments as me, as well as Avastin. Ros was 62.

See you, Ros...

Shit.

Tags: cancer, gawler, the road forward
Current Music: Great Lake Swimmers "Ongiara" (2007)

The Chronos Awards shortlists have been announced.

I'm pleased to see "Her Collection Of Intimacy" (Black Magazine #2) on the Short Fiction list. Some tough competition there, especially Kirstyn McDermott's "Painlessness" and Adam Browne's magical Michael Jacksonal "Neverland Blues".

Full listing here.

Tags: writing
Current Music: Neil Halstead "Oh! Mighty Engine" (2008)

"Following previous extensive treatment for metastatic liver disease (including surgery and RFA) are two sizeable metabolically active metastases in the liver as outlined in the main report. No sign of disease outside the liver."

It's strange to feel such relief when you are told you may still have cancer in the liver. What a weird thing. Naturally I was hoping for an all clear, but the liver I can deal with. The activity (ie glucose absorption) is happening in the RFA scar tissue so far as we understand, so what does this mean?

We're not sure. Could be cancer. Most likely is cancer. I ring the surgeon tomorrow and arrange an appointment. We'll discuss the results and get a biopsy done, which is probably the only way to determine whether it is cancer or just a very fucked up and scarred liver doing its business.

But such relief. My wife was terrified that it would have spread to my brain. Any spread outside the liver would have indicated the cancer taking over, and thank God that's not the case. The rest of me is clean. The regenerated liver is also clean. Even better news.

I know a lot about the liver. I've been living with a deep understanding of my liver and what we can do it for almost a year now.

Tags: cancer, the road forward
Current Music: David Sylvian "Everything and Nothing" (2000)

I love Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy. He's a musical genius with a twisted sarcastic and cynically wonderful romantic view of the world. He's teamed up with Thomas Walsh from Pugwash (an XTC-influenced band I have still not heard and unavailable in Australia) to form The Duckworth Lewis Method.

And with The Ashes coming up, well fuck me. Listen to this.  It tells the tale of the ball of the century bowled to Mike Gatting...

Tags: music
Current Music: The Duckworth Lewis Method

Scared. Nervous. Tired. Of this, of everything, of never ending.

I spent last night trying not to think about it as I lay in bed listening to my wife tossing and turning trying not to think about it. We ended up in separate beds in a failed attempt for either of us to get some sleep. To stop my mind thinking about it, I think of nothing - a meditational state - but this doesn't help me sleep.

My dreams are fractured with subconcious fears. In one, my oncologist is a game show host and he smiles and says the good news is I'll be going to Japan on an all-expenses paid trip. It's a trip not a holiday. Because...drumroll...my PET scan has revealed I'm elgible for cutting-edge experimental cancer treatment in Japan. Strangely I'm excited about this. I've always wanted to go to Japan.

I wake early, exhausted. I get up, cuddle my daughter and my wife who are down in the spare bedroom, make porridge and feed it to Isla as we discuss the finer points of the dancing finale on In The Night Garden and exactly where the Pontipines are dancing in relation to Macca Pacca, and then I'm dropping her off at day care. I forget to kiss her goodbye.

I'll have acupuncture and meditate before I see the oncologist late this afternoon for the results, the real results, of last week's PET scan. You don't get used to this, this fear and anxiety tearing your insides apart.

I have my Lotto ticket, my one in forty-five-million chance.

Who knows? Today could be my lucky day in hell.

Tags: cancer, the road forward
Current Music: Eels "Useless Trinkets" (2008)

...(apologies in advance to friend and neighbour John Dearsly, who shaved off his moe a few years back, drives a bright pink truck, and only lets the language really loose when his rugby league time is losing)...

Walking home from the greengrocers today, I approached the pedestrian crossing and hit the button. This is a busy street, it's the main thoroughfare bewteen north and south, and 8 times out of 10 we have to use the Little Green Man to cross. After pressing the button, I noticed a break in the traffic and scurried across the road. As I rounded the corner I heard a whole lot of yelling, punctuated by the occassional furious 'fuck' and then I realised this tirade was directed at me. I turned around, and there, leaning out of the cab window of his huge gleaming white semi-trailer, sat a handle-bar moustached, jowled-cheek, reflective sunglassed spitting and swearing truckdriver.

A few more 'fucks' were directed my way and between the swearing something about how the light was green and I crossed the road and the button was pressed.

"What's your problem?" I yelled back. At this point I'm curious and surprised.

"Ya fucken pressed the button and the light was green and you crossed the road. Why the fuck did you press the button? Ya fucken..." mutter mutter.

At this point I'm angry. "So?" I yell back.

"Fuck! You fuck, so ya fucken ruined it for the rest of us. Ya fuck!"

Right. So is he angry because I didn't wait for the lights to turn red before I crossed? No. He's angry because I used the pedestrian crossing.

I throw my finger at him and return a loud "Fuck You!" and walk off to fresh tirades of "fuck" amongst other things.

And now I'm angry for two more reasons. One, cunts like him use our streets as sneaky back ways to avoid the tolls, clogging it up with diesel and metal and screaming air-brakes, and Two, I should have, in my response, rolled around laughing at him while, through the guffaws, calling out "Look at the monkey! Ha ha ha! Look at the monkey."

But I didn't. And it's still annoying me.

A little while ago, I walked down to the post office, saw a car quickly pulling into the street, then a huge white gleaming semi-trailer roar past with someone leaning out the window screaming "Ya stupid fucken cunt!".

I don't think it was the same guy, but it was certainly the same species.

I think I might hang out on that road for the next few days looking for white semi-trailers coming down the road. When I see one, I'll press the pedestrian button and then NOT cross the road. That'll confuse that swearing monkey.

Tags: angst
Current Music: The Earlies "The Enemy Chorus" (2007)

The last time I rode a bicycle for any length or duration was when I was 18 years old, almost 21 years ago.  I had an old 10-speed Dad had picked up in a garage sale for probaby about a dollar per gear. I was using it to bike to and from work in the summer holidays, a 10k ride each way that left my exhausted (and I was a fit bastard back then, but my body was designed for running not riding) until, on Christmas Eve, while cycling as fast as I could to beat a truck to the upcoming corner, the bike flipped and I followed it head over heels, sliding along in loose gravel while the corner approached fast and all I could see were semi-trailer wheels looming closer and closer. Time slowed down and for a second I thought I was dead. Then I stopped sliding. Stood up. Kicked the shit out of my bike. Swore a bit.  Luckily a cop car had been behind the truck and pulled over to help me home. As I tried to lift the bike into the boot of the car, with a bit more swearing to show how tough and okay I was, I realised my arm wasn't working too well with me. And it started to shake a lot. The cop took me home, my mother freaked out at the sight of a cop car coming down the driveway on Christmas Eve, then Mum plucked and dabbed at the loose gravel that had collected on my hip, shoulder, and elbow. I'd been wearing nothing but a singlet, short and sneakers. Helmets? Huh? This was 1988. Only poofters wore helmets. I got a tetanus injection and some great scars. I was lucky.

I haven't ridden a bike since. (Except for a mate's mountain bike at uni, when I'd cycle through empty winter streets between our flat and the computer labs, but that really doesn't count...)

My mate Heath, who incidentally lent me the Lance Armstrong book to read when I was first diagnosed, who incidentally lent me reams of graphic novels to take my mind off chemo, who incidentally was the first boy my wife ever kissed, has been dropping hints regularly about getting me on a bike for a while now. Roughly about the time he dropped off the Lance Armstrong book.

Yeah yeah yeah, I thought, as I humoured him, but it ain't never gonna happen.

This morning he turned up with a mate's bike, the lycra gear, helmet, clip ons (which he soon realised I was not ready for as my sense of balance is shot to shit), gloves, sunglasses, measured me up, and, after my wife howled with laughter and camera in hand, and my daughter squealed in delight, Heath took me off for a ride down to Williamstown.

I thought I'd die in 10 minutes. But I didn't. It was great. My legs held up, my feet were numb, but didn't feel cold, and only on the way back did my stomach turn a little queasy. It was great. No sore scars, abdominal muscles coping. One hour and 22 kms later we returned.


- the dressing room, Jules howling with laughter                        - preparing to mount, Isla squealing with delight


- me copying everything Heath does because I haven't a fucking clue.

I spent the rest of the day pleasantly tired and alive, until the afternoon kicked in with a heavy-handed Fatigue doing his best to cripple me. I didn't succumb.

Heath, thanks, man. That was cool. (And thanks to your mate for lending me the bike!)

Tags: bike, cancer, the road forward
Current Music: The John Steel Singers "In Colour" (2008)

Yesterday I was scheduled into have a PET Scan to determine whether I'm in remission or whether the increase in the CEA levels in my blood means the cancer has returned elsewhere in my body. I'd had my first PET Scan almost a year ago, and knew what to expect.

After two pieces of marmite toast for breakfast, I fasted for the day, drove through the beginnings of evening rushhour to a hospital 40 kms away and went inside calm and unfazed.

I drank my cup of delicious contrast, lay back and let the radioactive glucose enter my veins from a needle, then meditated for almost an hour to music (Kasabian's latest, if it be known. Meditate to that? Yes. I can). After an hour and a half I was ushered into the scanning room and lay in a small tunnel for the next forty minutes while my body was photographed, the radiactive glucose being soaked up and providing subject materal for the scans. I then drove home.

By 8:30pm I ate my second meal of the day: a wholemeal pasta of tuna, corn and peas. I then read bedtime stories to my daughter (it was late, she was lucky to be up, and she didn't want me to sing the songs to the Yellow Submarine story book, except for Nowhere Man which she tried to sing along with, until she realised we were singing then put her foor over my mouth to stop me), finished the final edits on my glorious Wives novella, and then began the first of a continual stream of diarrhoea combined with abdominal cramps that has lasted still. I haven't had cramps for a long time (the last time I can remember was at the end of the six weeks of chemo and radiation where I lay on the toilet floor with my head pressed to the cold tiles, but this isn't anywhere nearly as painful as that). This time round it's more like my experiences in India.

The details? I shat myself stupid until midnight then went to bed. I struggled to get to sleep due to abdominal cramping, then after an hour of broken sleep would drag myself to the toilet and stay there for forty five minutes. This pattern repeated until 4am, when broken sleep would stretch to an hour and a half. 

The upshot? I managed to read one hundred and fifty pages of the current book I'm reading and lost almost 2kg.

This has been an interesting experience, as last year I suffered no ill side-effects. I'm seriously wondering if it is because, for the last nine months, I've had almost nothing unpure in my body. Minimal fat, sugar, salt, alcohol, caffiene and preservatives. No pharmaceuticals except for occassional panadol and one dose of neurofen. Then I get a dose of radioactive sugar and this happens. (At least I don't think it was the tuna pasta, as Isla and Jules were fine and they ate it too).

Even more interesting is the total absence of corn and peas in the toilet bowl.

I get the results of the PET Scan from my oncologist next Tuesday. 5:15pm. Nothing like stretching out the agony.

Tags: cancer, the road forward
Current Music: Guided By Voices "Do The Collapse" (1999)