Ontario

I went to the dentist today, as I am in the middle of the longest-ever root-canal procedure. I got the temporary crown today.

He is in solo practice and takes off only a week a year, during which he goes fishing in Ontario with a buddy. They've done it for 30 years. His parents were city folk, he said, but his father had a cousin, M, who had a bunch of different jobs and no job but was married to a German woman who didn't mind. They lived in Wisconsin. When my dentist was in high school, his father was dying of cancer. The cousin suggested that my dentist come stay with them. He did and learned to fish. He loved being in the middle of the water without telephones or TV, just with the silence and the fishing, away from everything.

So that is why he likes to fish. His sons used to but don't any more, after his wife talked about the suffering of the fish. But they eat fish. There's no reason to force them, he said, and there's nothing else to do at the place in Ontario except fish.

My dentist and his friend eat fish every day of their trip but don't bring any home any more because of conservation rules.

Fishing is like meditation but with a concrete goal. I liked fishing when I did it at camp. L doesn't. I don't seek fishing out, and so I don't fish. I stopped eating fish for a while and became a lacto-ovo vegetarian when I saw one struggling on a line. But now I eat fish and shellfish and chicken. I am a species-ist. We're more powerful than they are and we overtake them and eat them. I take 3000 mg. of fish oil a day, to help my chemo brain. It would be nice if my dentist's son liked to fish with him. Maybe one day he will.

And that is all I have to say about fish.

READ MORE - Ontario

The tongue,

said the endodontist this morning, is a very curious animal.

This is true. It has its own obsessions and compulsions. The tooth (number 13, third from the left, on top, next to the molars), had broken off after phase one of his root canal. Part of the remaining tooth had formed a point, which my tongue kept touching and feeling until I had a sore on it. The mild endodontist shaved off the point and will finish with the root canal next week. Then I'll get a crown from the dentist. I don't know why he didn't do the rooting out of the canal and the filling of it in one fell swoop. I should ask. I also don't know why he works downtown only on Tuesdays.

He told me his brother is an oncologist in Washington State who had cancer in his tonsils and directed his own treatment.

The cancer cell has its compulsions and obsessions. We are told: "Normal" cells stop dividing when they come into contact with like cells, a mechanism known as contact inhibition. Cancerous cells lose this ability. The cancer cell does not get the social cues. It cannot read the faces of the other cells. It does not know when to stop reproducing iteself, when to stop telling that story one more time about its cross-country trip in a beat-up station wagon. Because of this we need to ingest poison to stop the cancer cell, and in so doing, the toxin stops other harmless and helpful cells in their tracks. The faster the cells are dividing, the more likely it is that chemotherapy will kill the cells, causing the tumor to shrink. They also induce cell suicide (self-death or apoptosis).

Cancer cells are uninhibited. They put our lampshades on their heads and run through public fountains. But these same frolicking, out-of-control cancer cells are trying to kill us. In defense, we try to induce suicide. Can you blame us?

Today was chemo Round 5, the first dose of Taxol, which is derived from the Pacific yew. We have some kind of yew bushes out front, which we prune. I don't know what kind they are. Taxol is preserved with a chemical called cremo-something, which a few people are allergic to. The nurses told me that a reaction is rare, but they laid out epinephrine and benadryl on the table nearby just in case. They'd already given me some benadryl in the drip. Reactions include feeling very hot or having constricted breathing. It happens in the first few minutes.

After a few minutes on the drip I felt blood rush to my head and ears and they were hot hot hot, and there was a heavy foot on my chest and it was hard to breathe. I reported this calmly because they’d said they were prepared. They took me off the Taxol and gave me more benadryl and put oxygen cannula in my nostrils. I felt better. Then a few minutes later I had what felt like menstrual cramps, and a nurse gave me a heat pack. The cramps went away in about ten minutes.

Was this anaphylactic shock? I asked. No, said the nurse, it was anaphylaxis. Which, from what I read, is serious and life-threatening. But not shock.

So it may not end with a whimper, or a bang, but with a closing up.

*****

Waiting for the L (train, not husband) today to go to Fancy Hospital I saw a guy in a very dark suit, white shirt, red tie with diagonal red and white stripes. Something odd about his outfit--so very severe, formal and self-conscious. He had opened a black leather folder to reveal a list, handwritten on yellow legal paper. Tell about... Tell about your… I presumed they were interview questions he was going over. His outfit was too perfect and plain. He did not seem proud of his suit. It was not ill-fitting but didn't seem tailor-made, either. Who wears white shirts any more, and who wears a black suit when it’s 80 degrees? I don’t see many people in suits on the L, but that’s because I don’t ride much during rush hour, especially in the morning. Tom Wolfe says he wears a white suit because he’s not trying to fit in. He used to try to dress like his interview subjects but he couldn’t look authentic. So he decided to look out of place. If you use that line of reasoning, then a person interviewing for a job shouldn’t look like an employee because he’s an outsider. Perhaps it is right and proper that he should dress differently from them as a sign of respect and a nod to the artificiality of the interview process. At the same time, he wants to communicate the message that he’d fit in. He wants the interviewers to imagine him working with them. When they offer him the job they should grab his jacket and fling it across the room and tell him to loosen his tie, roll up his sleeves and tear up his practice questions.

If he is smart, he will keep the list of questions.

READ MORE - The tongue,

Bleed Me a River

Another day concerned with orifices. I went to the endodontist for part 1 of a root canal for tooth number 13. He was a modest guy without the Hail-fellow-well-met-ness of many dentists or others who often greet the public. He only said what needed to be said, no small talk or jokiness. I'd asked him to explain what he was doing and he did. He numbed me (three shots), clearing out bacteria from under a cracked filling, and cleaning out and widening the canal, home of the inflamed pulp. Now I'm using file number 30, he said, then I'll try size 40--or something like that. The only thing that hurt was the first two shots. I go back in two weeks for part 2, when he will fill the tooth permanently. Everything is fine except tonight I smelled cloves and realized that my tooth felt hollow and there was soft clay coming out--the source of the clove smell. I read online that oil of clove, eugenol, is used to sterilize the tooth, and is also part of a cement compound used to seal the tooth. A certain site says that eugenol is one of many toxins used in root canals, and recommends using acupuncture instead. However, having gone this far with conventional endodontia, I will ignore that. (My acupuncturist threw in some needles last week to help the tooth, but nothing changed.) I can't ignore that the temporary filling in the tooth has fallen out. I'll have to call tomorrow.

While I was filling out a form at the endodontist's, the Boyish Gyne called on my cell phone. My biopsies were negative. He hypothesized that I'm in menopause but bleeding because of the fibroids. I don't agree. I think I still have real periods but they're very very looooonnng because of the fibroids. Why would I think this? Am I loath to give up this sign of young womanhood? Maybe. Am I scared? I think I'm scared. Of what, besides death and old age and turning into a crone, a word that feminists reclaimed 20 years ago, after all? Have I enjoyed the sheer weirdness of 38 years of bleeding? Put that way, I realize I've bled more years than I haven't. I am used to it. The blood seems alive, a sign of life, though I know it's a sign of death (no embryo taking hold). I am so full of life that I have blood to spare. I have so much blood that it falls easily out of me, doesn't have to be sucked out by leeches. So much blood...but I have to admit it's too much; I have to take iron twice a day.

The gyne said that when I go in for my ultrasound (to see if the fibroids are growing), I can (or did he say should?) get a blood test for FSH, which is follicle-stimulating hormone, to see if I'm menopausal. However, it seems that the test might be unreliable. I would like for it to be reliable. I don't want to be in menopause but I don't want to be in limbo, either. I want to know. And then what? I want to be in menopause because menopause is supposed to cause the fibroids to shrink. But if I'm in menopause already, and am having faux periods caused by fibroids, then it means that menopause is not causing the fibroids to wither, as Engels said the state would, after the proletariat seized the means of production and abolished social classes.

There's an analogy here, but it only goes so far.

READ MORE - Bleed Me a River