ever-fixed mark

Husband’s friend K. has always been, comme on dit, a very special restaurant customer. Yes, he has questions about the dish; he’d like to substitute risotto for pilaf; he wants the eggs cooked extremely well, but the toast should be more buff than beige; hey, how ’bout we go off-menu here? The last time we dined with K. when the server asked, “How would you like that done?” Husband quipped, “In the most complicated manner possible.” He was not incorrect.

My friend C. is also a difficult diner, but where K. is Baroque, C. is ascetic. She wants it plain, with everything on the side. She can’t eat mushrooms or shellfish and won’t each much else except salmon, beef, or ice cream. She’s lived and traveled around the world so it’s not like she’s ignorant of more varied cuisines; she’s just not interested.

K. and C. are both single, and I’ve often wondered what would happen if they found themselves on a blind date. Can you just imagine the flurry of special requests being relayed to the kitchen, hastening the harried water to an early, medicated retirement? I can see it now: “When Sally Met Sally.”

Last night, K. stopped by on a business trip, and as we walked downtown to grab dinner we ran into C. I realized immediately that this was a rare opportunity to observe two master practitioners of the fussy arts in their native habitat, so I invited her along. I’m disappointed to say that the waitress’s teeth did not fall out from gnashing, nor did the chef quit on the spot, torching the kitchen as he escaped through the side door. You let me down, guys.

Can you guess which of the incidents, below, is a real-life local news story, and which is the plot of a scary blockbuster movie?

A. A large, smelly, gelatinous, alien-looking life form terrorizes a small town, sending people screaming into the streets.

B. On the eve of a major holiday week, a fisherman in a tourist town claims to have spotted a great white shark, but no one believes him and the beaches remain open.

Yes! You guessed it! Both are local news stories AND movie plots! To wit:

The Blob

Jaws

Just your average summer in New England.

Husband and I talked it over and decided that, of everyone in our social circle, the people most likely to be covert Russian spies are….us. No family in the area, jobs that no one can explain, bizarre social habits…I wonder how long it will take for someone to turn us in?

Last week, Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times about his recent cancer scare and how it improved his outlook on life: “A brush with mortality turns out to be the best way to appreciate how blue the sky is, how sensuous grass feels underfoot, how melodious kids’ voices are.”

This has not been my experience.

Maybe it’s because Kristof’s test turned out negative, whereas I actually have cancer, but I think it’s due more to the fact that I appreciated life sufficiently before my diagnosis, thank you very much. I mean, I’m not a moron; I read books; I have an imagination; I know that even with cancer my life is more privileged than 99.99% of humanity’s. So while Kristof is fondling the grass with his insteps, I’ve just been staggering around, gobsmacked.

I should state up front that this disease, a relatively rare (I prefer “elite”) type of cancer called medullary thyroid cancer, is not immediately life-threatening. There are roughly four types of thyroid cancer. Anaplastic is a death sentence. Papillary and follicular are more or less “cancer vacations”: they are highly curable and, because treatment involves radioiodine, rendering you a biohazard to those around you, sufferers often spend a week in a hotel during recovery, ordering room service and watching round-the-clock pay-per-view.

Medullary is somewhere between the two. It metastasizes quickly to the lymph nodes around the neck, but progresses indolently from there. Thus, surgery is the standard of care, and chemo and radiation are given only in advanced cases. Radioiodine doesn’t work, because technically it’s the C cells, not the thyroid cells, that are affected. There are a few biomarkers that give an indication of how far the disease has progressed. In my case, it does not seem to have progressed very far.

It was discovered during a routine physical by my new primary care physician. I had switched doctors because of a persistent cough that homeopathic guy wasn’t helping to solve, and the new doctor found the nodule the first time she saw me. On Wednesday, I’m having a total thyroidectomy and “modified radical neck dissection” (isn’t “modified radical” an oxymoron? And will they put my neck back together after they dissect it?). After that, there’s little to do but measure the biomarkers in my blood and be on the alert for new metastases which, with any luck, could never occur.

I shared the news only with a few close friends early on. One friend, wanting to inquire discreetly about my health in front of other people who didn’t know the story, asked me, “How’s your little project going?” For some reason, that just cracks me up. My project is doing very well, thanks for asking! We’re on time, under budget, and hitting our quality targets! Just don’t use the term “deadline”!

Since then, that’s how it’s struck me: Not as a goad to more contemplative living, but as an unwanted project draining time and resources while I’m still expected to do all the rest of my work — you know, the kind I get paid for.

Or, to use another analogy: Since I got the initial diagnosis from the endocrinologist (over the phone, during a meeting with my manager and VP, after which I had to give a presentation), I’ve felt like a computer running an extra program. On my desktop are all the usual applications: commute, kids, breakfast, work, lunch, work, commute, kids, dinner, and so on. But in the background the “cancer app” is weighing all the various cancer-specific alternatives to whatever is being discussed in the foreground. Vacation plans: Will I need to reschedule them? An off-site meeting in July: Will I be able to drive by then? A new assignment: Will I be heading into a second surgery by the time it hits?

In the morning, it doesn’t bother me too much. By the time I get into the car at the end of the day, though, I feel like the cancer program has sucked up all my CPU. Every day at sundown, I crash, and I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time with this. Physically, I feel wonderful, and I expect to recover quickly. Mentally, I want to stop the world, but it just keeps going ’round in its orbit, and I’m resentful as hell. I don’t know what’s worse: being sick, or being angry at myself for not handling it all better.

You know, as a kid, I was a huge fan of all those terminal illness stories. Remember Eric? Death be Not Proud? A Summer to Die? (If every time you get a nosebleed, you think “cancer,” then you’ve probably read one or more of these books.) I always thought that if I became a tragic heroine, I’d be a lot more heroic.

On Sunday afternoon, watching Aitch’s t-ball game, I experienced a profound sense of deja vu. One might think it could be explained away by the fact that it was my fourth game that week, but no — it was something else. The easy grounders sailing through the Colossus stances of multiple kids; the entire infield pursuing an errant ball into the outfield; the one skilled kid on the team leaving his position at second base to catch a pop fly headed toward the inattentive first baseman: I had seen it all before, but where? As the strains of “March of the Toreadors” played in my head, it hit me: The Bad News Bears!

As a child, I was no baseball fan, but like the rest of America I was intrigued by the foul-mouthed kids in the trailers, so I saw the movie in the theater, and I loved it. I was exactly the same age as Tatum O’Neal’s character and absolutely coveted her hair, her clothes, and her ride on Kelly Leak’s motorcycle. Husband also had fond memories of the film, so on Sunday night we rented it to see if it stood the test of time. It did, but I found my perception of it had really changed.

First, I had remembered the rivalry between the Bears and the other teams in the league as a kind of class warfare; the Bears, I had thought, came from the other side of the tracks. That wasn’t strictly the case; as a kid, I had missed references to a lawsuit filed by a city councilman as a reaction to the league’s cutting of the poorest athletes. The Bears were so bad, initially, because the team was made up of the worst athletes in the league.

Having missed that, I didn’t really appreciate the change in Walter Matthau’s character: at first he cares too little about winning, then too much. By the end he achieves some kind of equilibrium, but the movie makes you think about where that point is, which is an interesting mental tug-of-war if you’re a parent of a little athlete. If you make your kid practice and attend every game, if you enforce discipline even if your child would rather be picking daisies in the outfield, are you enabling his fullest potential or just being kind of an asshole?

On this viewing, I also appreciated the subtlety of the final playoff between the Bears and the Yankees. (All the teams in the league had mascots; the teams in Aitch’s league are just called by their sponsors’ names, making cheers difficult.) Each team made good plays and errors; each team played dirty; each team showed hustle and had bad luck. Vic Morrow was clearly the bad guy, but even when he lost his temper and beat up his own son (the kid from “Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” another chlldhood favorite of mine — now that I’ve raised that see if you can get the theme song out of your head), it was largely because his kid had intentionally beaned a batter (although it might have been because he gave up a walk with the bases loaded).

As an eleven-year-old, I had been shocked by the racial and ethnic slurs slung by one of the thirty-five tow-headed kids on the team, and by Jackie Earle Haley smoking cigarettes on his Harley. As an adult, I was most horrified by the team riding around town perched on the trunk of Walter Matthau’s convertible. Seven kids and no seatbelts! They could never get that movie greenlighted today.

In October, right about the time I joined Weight Watchers, I accepted a new role at work managing a small group. About the same time, I got into a scrap with a nurse practitioner in my pediatrician’s office, a Facebook “friend,” who was posting inappropriate (in my judgment) gossip about parents who called on her on-call overnights. After I switched pediatricians, I vowed that I would never, ever, ever, ever post anything even remotely related to work on-line. Not only am I prevented by law from disclosing details of my work, I can’t even imagine the horror if my direct reports were to stumble upon a chatty blog post by me about the darnedest things they did or said at work that day. They would feel just like I did when I read about the craaaazy parents on Facebook bothering the nurse practitioner with their stupid problems: Sick and betrayed.

So, I’ll try to keep it general. I’ve gone from project management to people management. I inherited four people, hired two, brought in one contractor, and am actively looking for another person. Since I’m not that experienced in people management, I’ve been relying on my strengths, treating the department business as if it’s one giant project and I’m the uber-project manager. So far, I’m doing OK, but I can sense that it’s not a sustainable paradigm — too many details for me to keep track of. I know I should be working more on people development, but I’m struggling with the right level of oversight. Does anyone know of any good books on management? It’s not exactly a genre known for its deathless prose, although you can usually count on a nifty two-part title, separated by a colon. Or can you recommend some entertainingly bad ones?

Back in October I joined Weight Watchers at work. The premise is pretty simple: you get so many “points” (assigned by calories, fiber, and fat content) per day, with some extra weekly points, and you tote up your daily points, subtracting “activity” points, trying to stay under your target. Counting one’s food is abhorrent, but so is eating yourself sick, so there you go. It also works, but only because under the WW regime I ended up eating only a fraction of my typical daily intake. For example, on WW I got 20 points a day. Here’s what I would normally eat, pre-diet:

• Bagel: 8 points
• with peanut butter: 4 points
• 3-egg omelet: 8 points
• with cheese: 3 points
• actually, more cheese than that: 3 more points
• large orange juice: 4 points

Already 10 points over the daily limit, and that’s just breakfast! (And, you know, I would have considered that a perfectly healthy breakfast because there was no donut.) I’ve gone from wondering why it’s so hard for me to lose weight to marveling at the speedy metabolism that’s been keeping me from reaching “morbidly obese” for all these years.

It’s an unpleasant and somewhat terrifying experience, feeling your body consuming itself. There is a sort of panic that sets in when you’re burning more calories than you’re eating, not to mention a kind of anhedonia when you realize that there will be no joy in breakfast, lunch, or dinner for the foreseeable future.

Did I mention the TIRED? I didn’t exercise at all the first four weeks because I was just too damn exhausted to drag my butt anywhere. Then when my energy started to revive, I thought, hey, I’ve just lost x pounds; why should I go for a run? (I’m sure Doctor Mama would have a good rejoinder, but lalalalalala…I can’t hear her.)

I also suffered a strange kind of body dysmorphia that prevented me from realizing that my clothes were now far too big. I had been the same clothing size since high school (of course, the sizes have grown along with me since then). I kept visiting the mirror, wondering why 25 fewer pounds didn’t LOOK better on me. I finally twigged to the fact that one’s trousers weren’t supposed to sag in the ass like that, and I bought some pants a size smaller, but they still seemed baggy. Then I decided, just for grins, to try on the next size smaller and, incredibly, the next size. I am finally clad in something that does not make me look like a hobo (although Aitch says that my new red Converse make me look like a clown).

Another odd effect: I am now continuously COLD. I’ve lost some insulation, it’s true, but I’m still on the higher end of a normal BMI; I’m adequately confit‘ed. I’m convinced it’s my body slowing way down in a panic over the lack of incoming sustenance.

Happily, over the last month or two, my metabolism seems to have revved up a bit. During ski season, I added a weekly bagel and ice cream sundae to my menu, with no ill effects. I no longer record every bite, but I do weigh myself every day, and when the scale starts to creep up, I cut food or add exercise. Sounds like a fun existence, doesn’t it?

A disclaimer: I don’t think there’s any particular virtue in being thin, nor any great vice in eating recreationally. Both are the result of habits, and once a habit is entrenched, it’s pretty easy to follow. I’m happy now to have some habits that have pulled me from the brink of pre-diabetes.

Unfortunately, arteriosclerosis still has me in its sights. A few months ago I went to a new primary care doctor (more on that later) who tested me for Vitamin D (the hot new deficiency) and cholesterol. The Vitamin D was fine, but my cholesterol was over 250. The doctor sent me the lab result and wrote on it, “Modify diet and retest in 3 months.”

“Modify diet”? I’ve MODIFIED, baby. That ship has sailed, with an all-night buffet loaded with everything I’m no longer eating.

Periodically, Husband gets together with three of his old high school buddies for a boys’ weekend. Husband and two of the three friends enjoy similar modes of relaxation, chiefly urban and Scotch-fueled.

They have a fourth friend who is a musician. For unknown reasons they decided to let him plan their boys’ weekend this year. Where is the Rat Pack headed? You guessed it: the Renaissance Faire!

I have been trying to imagine what a lame version of The Hangover that particular Lost Weekend would inspire.

A: Zounds, but my head doth ache! O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil.

B: O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! That we should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause transform ourselves into beasts!

C: What ho, lads! An infant, mewling and puking? The recollection of its arrival is in my memory locked, but I have not the key.

A: Men! I’ th’ jakes! A ravening Tyger!

B: But where is D? He is rendered lost.

C: Wait. Is D the one who made us come to the Renaissance Faire?

A: Yep.

B: Let’s get the hell out of here before he comes back.

Exeunt, pursued by a Tyger.

I have always thought that listening to a book is like being fed through an NG tube: aces in an emergency, but not the preferred content delivery method.

The boredom accruing to a year’s worth of commuting, though, has come to seem like an emergency crying out for some audio relief. I looked into audiobooks; they were quite expensive, though, for something I wasn’t entirely sure I would enjoy. I wondered if there were any free audiobooks, much like free podcasts.

There are. Librivox.org records books in the public domain — old books, but that’s mostly what I enjoy anyway. I downloaded an English translation of a French nineteenth-century detective story, The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux. To my astonishment, I was completely captivated. It was pure police procedural, and I had to listen carefully to take in all the clues. The miles flew by.

Oddly, to my ear, different chapters were read by different narrators, and some of the narrators were clearly not native English speakers, although that was an advantage for some with all the French names in Yellow Room. I logged on to librivox.org to see if I could divine the reason, and as it turns out, all the readers are volunteers. Anyone with a pulse, a computer, and a microphone can contribute one or more chapters to the public domain audiobook of his or her choice.

Upon learning this, I had a crazy idea. What if I read a chapter? One the one hand, I’ve always loved reading out loud. On the other hand, I have something of a tortured voice. I can enunciate clearly and read fluently, but the sound, due to some biomechanical fault, is distinctly unmelodious.

But, hell. I don’t have to listen to it!

So the next time you’re on a long road trip, and the kids are clamoring for the next installment of the Palliser series (”Mommy! We’re dying to know…does Phineas Finn get back into Parliament?”) note that Chapter 12 of Phineas Redux is yours truly.

The parking garage at work is five blocks away from my office building, but there’s a really terrific coffee shop between points A and B. The proprietors are Moroccan, and because their dialect and demeanor are so close to Tunisian I feel very much at home there.

I usually stop for a hot coffee on my way into work in the morning and for an iced latte on my way home. I always get one of those cardboard jacket thingies for the cup because I don’t want to burn my hand as I walk to the office, or freeze it as I walk to the car.

Suddenly, today, that seemed so absurd. I thought about drinking coffee in Tunisia, where a cup was a sit-down affair, not a perambulatory accessory. I always had my direkt in a small glass, and on a cold day I would have wrapped my hands around it to draw out the warmth, storing it up against an evening in an unheated apartment. On hot days, if I ordered a Fanta from the refrigerator, I would have held the bottle against my wrist to cool the maximum amount of blood before drinking it and going out into the sun-parched streets.

I’m not discounting the wonders of modern HVAC, but sometimes I do feel my life has become a little too insulated.