Tarantella Medicine

It ha been a busy week culminating today with my sixth infusion.  I get accused of having odd titles to let me explain a bit on this one.   In both Italian and Irish music the meter on many tunes is six beats per measure.  So you have 6/4 and 6/8 signatures.  As you will see below I may go through two more infusions before being released.  That depends on a pet scan which will be done in the next two weeks.  I am quite comfortable with that result.

The week started with a visit from Emily and her two girls.  We went to the Crocker - which is actually a good art museum.  They had an extra week off and we had a good visit.  The kindergartener (Dylan) spent a fair amount of time on her new iPad doing numbers puzzles where you move blocks to form sums.  The older one is an avid reader (gene trait partially from Q). She read a long book on the trip up and while she was here.  Both of those kids have a great facility with language. We also went to the California Indian Museum, which is disappointing; small and often neglected compared to Sutter’s Fort, which is adjacent.

The picture at the side is of Sloane and Dylan at the Crocker. For her ninth birthday she invited one friend to go to the Norton Simon to sketch and then go to a French dinner. Both kids have  propensity to art (not from my gene pool).

Emily had to move out on Wednesday to make space for a visit from my oldest friend in Mexico.  Fr. Dermot and I have been friends for almost 30 years.  He was president at two universities and had a knack for building places.  He is now semi- retired doing some parish work and doing seminars on ethics.  On Tuesday night, before he departed early (actually very early) the next morning we had four friends over for an early dinner.

The Sunday before, we had dinner with Peter and Jessica and the 3 kids.  They are very different from Emily’s kids although both groups are well mannered.  Mason is caught up in deciding about colleges - with lots of options.  He is looking at the choices with care and he has some good choices.  His tribe was recently certified so he is likely to be eligible for some Native American grants (unlike one presidential candidate - he is one quarter Chippewa Cree.  The BIA took their sweet time in recognizing the tribe.   Nick is in sixth grade and preparing for Spring baseball - he will be a Cub this year(which makes Q happy).  Allie is fun and energetic.

On Sunday we found a Catholic parish for Fr. Dermot to become a co-celebrant.  We went to our Episcopal service at 7:30 and then I went over to pick him up at the end of his 9 AM service.  One of the things that intrigues me about the Catholic liturgy is that priests can easily drop in.  The presiding priest for that service came from a retirement home and surprisingly had an Irish accent (from Kerry) - he seemed like a bright and charming person.

The Tuesday dinner had some discussion about all sorts of stuff - including some memories of when I first met Dermot,  The first year I was on Dermot’s first campus I was asked as a part of the Economics faculty to develop an exam for beginning students.  All of us had the chance to throw out questions for a common exam.  And after about an hour we came up with an exam which represented the issues raised by the course.  Although I did not teach undergraduates I was invited to participate,  What happened next was interesting.  The exams were numbered and then distributed on exam day.  When they were graded, the professors received a portion to grade without knowing who they were grading. - the exam was a substantial part of the grade.  No American University would have that kind of rigor.

Today was my sixth infusion.  I will schedule a pet scan to check on whether the treatments have eradicated the lymphoma if not I will do two more infusions.  I will also do a recheck with my Stanford team after the next pet scan.  So until we get the results I will be stuck in 6/8 time - fortunately I like Irish music and jigs and reels especially.

Routines

Routines help organize our lives.  For the last couple of decades before I retired three routines defined my life - Airline Schedules, the School Year, the Legislative Calendar.   Routines can be helpful to organize if they do not prevent you from spontaneity.  

Airlines were simple - once you understood their rhythm.  You must first realize that if you don't have a private jet - that their schedules determine yours and that things you cannot control will happen.

In spite of my absolute commitment to technology I learned early on that much of what I did would be less successful if done via email, phone or FaceTime.  So I soon developed a set of routines, when the disruptions occured.  That required two props - a backpack with a laptop, a music source, and some snacks and what I called my ten day bag - which was remarkably compact and I could pack for a 10 day trip (that happened after I discovered that every city has laundries!).  The laptops kept getting lighter but then I added iPads (great for watching movies and reading books). During my career I amassed 2 million miles with one airline (United) and elite status with a couple of others.

The Legislative cycle and the school year were similar and very predictable.   Both had periods of intensity and downtime.  That was especially true when I was teaching because the courses I taught were in a format where you taught for 8 hours a day, four days in a row, twice, to make up a graduate level course.  There were subroutines too - I served on a series of boards and reported to one - they had their own schedules.   All of that was determined by someone else's choices - even though I had elected to be a part of those routines.

The last six months my routines have been very different - mostly consumed by appointments with medical personnel - more than 60 visits with a variety of practitioners.  Early in this process, when I was feeling lousy, that was about all I could do.   

As my treatments have had a positive effect, I've begun to think about new routines which will accentuate my natural goal orientation but not lock me into drudgery. .  There are some continuations - Indy gets walked at least twice a day - that is a good time to think but also to listen to a wide variety of books. I'm just walking a bit faster than in August.   My daughter got me started on a project called Story Worth - which is a set of prompts issued weekly that will be compiled into a book.  The first two questions were what was your mother/father like when you were a child.   The compilation could lead to serious work on the book I mentioned in the last post.

A compromised immune system has barred me from the gym - but I have set up one in our house.  With the treadmill (an apt analogy if there ever were one) I feel honor bound to use the damn thing (and I have).   Before you declare brain death for the writer - understand that the time I spend on the machine is a chance to scour Prime and Netflix for old movies.   

But I have begun to rebel against social media.   Facebook is often, if not always, an echo chamber.  I have rarely used Twitter and the other feeds.  And I am beginning to think about how we will get to SMA when I am cleared from these cycles.  I am down to one board, Samuel Merritt, and will step down as Chair in June.   But if you are a goal oriented person, as I am, you need projects which evolve into routines.

One of the most enjoyable routines I have engaged in in the last couple of years has been in working on efforts to change higher education.   In June, I completed a role as a sell side advisor for an institution that had plenty of resources but needed to ally with another institution to survive.  That was the sixth of those type of transactions I've worked on - and it was fun.  I got a very nice note from the former President of the institution I worked with complementing me for the job I did.  So I will look for a couple more of those unique opportunities.

Where I won't go is trying to improve our political fabric.  I am truly depressed about how divided our country is about key issues - no understanding of E. Pluribus Unum and very little willingness to think about how to restore that essential part of the American system.  But I simply do not have any good ideas about how to help bridge the gap.  I think part of the problem comes from how much more government is a part of our lives but I also think the problem is deeper.   Thomas Sowell wrote a prescient book in the 1980s called A Conflict of Visions (https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056/ref=sr_1_1?crid=V5K18OO6B9AJ&keywords=conflict+of+visions&qid=1578181532&sprefix=Conflict+of+Visi%2Caps%2C201&sr=8-1) which argued that liberals and conservatives have very different understandings of key terms like equality and justice.  While we faced perils when there were only a few channels for the MSM, that problem has been exacerbated with the multiplicity of options today. I tend to ignore ALL Cable Channel news but as a conservative a lot of people think my sources are only from Fox News.  One effort where I can have an effect is to try to communicate my thoughts and opinions in a respectful way - recognizing that there could be different approaches.

The bottom line is that with the discontinuity caused by my illness, it has allowed me to think differently about the role of routines in my life.