PSA-Not the only way to fly

Until sometime in the late 80s, there was a regional airline in the west called PSA. I don't remember what the letters stood for, but their slogan was, "PSA, the only way to fly."

But there's another PSA that I've been thinking about most recently, which culminated in a biopsy two weeks ago, and I know what those letters stand for: Prostate Specific Antigen. As the song goes, don't know much biology, but I do know this: PSA is specific to the prostate, and it's an antigen, meaning that it's there to do battle with some bad thing in the prostate. That bad thing is sometimes cancer.

My PSA was 13 as of two weeks ago, when I was scheduled for the biopsy at UCSF. And this was no run-of-the-mill biopsy, but one of the "Perineal Anterior" variety, and I'll spare you the anatomical specifics. I just turned 60, but for years--six or seven at least--I've had an elevated PSA level, which hovered around six or seven. In the past couple of years it's climbed to 9 and change, and then spiked to 13. One of the things that doctors look for in PSA is what they call velocity, or the pace at which the PSA level climbs. At my age, I should have a PSA from 0 to, say, 3. Thirteen is quite high, so needles to say I was worried. On a scale of 1 to 10, my worry meter registered 13.

Well, if you'll read the next post you'll see that the biopsy results were all negative, with 32 cores having been taken. My worry, while not unfounded, turned out to have been for nothing (as worry usually is). I asked the nurse, "So, why do I have such a high PSA level?"  She said, "I don't know."

But there is another piece of the puzzle, which is that I (like some 50 percent of men my age, and more who are older) have an enlarged prostate. I'm not sure why, but my urologist tells me that it shows evidence of infection from a long time ago. I think, in fact, that I've probably had some kind of prostate infection for thirty to forty years and that chronic infection--not cancer--is likely the irritant that is making the PSA level spike.

So, take heart, men. PSA was a pretty good airline, but is a notoriously unreliable indicator of cancer, as my case demonstrates.

Negative, in the positive sense.

So, after almost two weeks of anxiety--much of it somewhat beyond my conscious awareness--I got a call today from the urologist's nurse, who had the results of my biopsy. "Everything is negative," she said. No qualifications. No, "howevers," No, "and there's just one more thing."

I'm glad she just spat it out, because any preamble or post script would've only increased my worry because I would have imagined that her next statement would be, "So, we'd like you to come in for a consultation." Nothing good could come from a face-to-face meeting under this circumstance. 

But there is no need for a consultation because all of the poking and prodding--and this was the gold standard of prostate biopsies--has turned up nothing to be alarmed about. As far as I know, there is no more tissue to be jabbed and sampled.

Needless to say I am hugely relieved, and I'm very conscious of that, even though I successfully suppressed the actual anxiety of which I am now relieved. Or, rather, turned it into gloomy and catastrophic pessimism. All of it for nothing. Surely there's a lesson in there of some kind, and eventually I will figure it out. 

For now, all I can say is hooray! 

On Hold

I had a prostate biopsy about ten days ago at UCSF Medical Center.

At least I think I did.

Here's what I remember: I was in a private room, wearing the traditional (and might I add, very flattering) gown. My daughter kept me company, and gave me a little good luck plastic giraffe, which was pinned to the gown. I filled out various forms that relieved UCSF of all potential liability, including losing the plastic giraffe or somehow stitching it under my skin.
I was visited by the anesthesiologist, and the surgeon, and half of the staff of the medical center, it seemed. They kept me occupied for an hour or so, and I did my best to be a cooperative patient.

Anyway, eventually one of the nurses came in and said, "I'm going to give you this pill. It will relax you." Then I woke up in the recovery room, sporting a catheter and feeling like I'd been gang-raped. (I don't really know what it feels like to be gang-raped, by the way. I don't want to know. It's a metaphor).

Allegedly, what had happened between the time the nurse gave me the Alice in Wonderland pill and the time I woke up in the recovery room was that the doctor and the entire (and very impressive) medical team had worked together to stick a horrendously long hollow needle through my skin in a very delicate area and stab it into my prostate, removing some 32 different samples. If you remember those little potato guns--the ones that you'd jab the barrel into a potato and get a little piece of potato, which would then shoot via air pressure out of the gun--you get the idea.

Yeah. Ouch.

I say that the biopsy was allegedly performed because to date the good doctors haven't reported any of the lab results. That is to say, waiting to hear whether I have, gulp, cancer or not. I'd say that I'm sitting on pins and needles, but that isn't exactly the feeling.

I am reasonably certain a biopsy was performed, though, not only because of the pain following the procedure, but because of the rosy glow, not of my cheeks, but of my pee. Okay, I won't subject you to further graphic detail.

Now, of course, life goes on. I think I was much more anxious about the biopsy procedure itself than I was about the results. On an MRI there were two spots that were of concern. Why they couldn't just take that needle and remove them entirely is unknown to me--and I asked one of the doctors. He was amused by my question. I don't know why.

If my reading of the various blogs, medical center reports, and other literature regarding prostate cancer is correct, there is a 60 to 80 percent chance that I DON'T have cancer. I'd prefer 100 percent but they weren't offering that. Now that I've waited ten days to hear the results of all this science and discomfort, I confess that I'm a lot more anxiety than I was previously aware of. That is, I spent all my time dreading the procedure and didn't think much about what they were really looking for.

So I thought I'd spent a while investigating health insurance options via the Covered California website. I made an application a few weeks ago--they can't turn me down, I understand, no matter what the biopsy says--and then for about a month was unable to logon again. But apparently the internet people figured out how to make the site work again. I finished the application, then pressed the button to reveal all of the wonderful health insurance options available to me, in colors ranging from Bronze to Platinum. A veritable rainbow of choices. Well, if your rainbow has four metallic colors to it.

The options available to me? Zero. No plans are offered. Surely this is a mistake, as I've had health insurance for as long as I've lived, and this recent procedure notwithstanding, am in overall good shape. Good enough shape to have backpacked 50 miles last summer anyway. No options? Nothing? Are you serious? I could make no headway on the website, so I called the 800 number, where a recorded voice told me that the wait was either three hours and thirty minutes, or three hundred minutes. It was kind of garbled. With the phone on the table beside my computer, I decided to wait on hole while I posted this long-delayed entry.

And then the connection went dead.

What's in a name?

Faithful readers of this blog have been anxiously waiting Bagnoose Media International's new designs and, yes, new titles for the book series featuring hapless writer Tom Huttle. The wait is over, dear readers! Steven Booth of Genius Book Services--www.geniusbookservices.com--has done a wonderful job of capturing the tone of the series, which is now known as The Chronicles of Huttle. 

There are currently three books in the series: The Spy Who Loathed Me, set in 1982, introduces Tom, although he is not the central character in this story.

In Huttle We Trust, Book Two in the Chronicles, is set in the mid 1990s, and finds Tom with his wife and family in the quirky town of Echo Valley as he struggles to complete Garbage, his first book.  

Book Three, Huttle to the Rescue, occurs in the late 1990s, as Tom and his wife, Amy, are swept into various intrigues in the Middle East. 

Currently in progress is the fourth book in the Chronicles, Huttle On Fire. 

All are currently available in Paperback! Kindle, Nook, and Apple Editions coming soon! See the images to the right.  

Dinner Questions

Every year, my brother Bruce hosts a lobster feed at his lovely house in Maine. He invites only men. After eating and drinking, everyone gathers ‘round the campfire and there’s a set question for everyone to answer. One of the best questions, as legend has it, was to describe your first kiss. No, it’s not a question, but you get the idea. Around the fire, everyone’s guard is down, and people speak freely and candidly.

This summer, was my first year at the event, and I knew only Bruce and his good friend Schultz, so I felt uneasy. There were five questions this time, sent via email to Bruce ahead of time by his friend Eric. The idea was that each person would choose one question. I’ll try to recreate them, though I don’t have the originals:

1) Describe a particularly difficult repair job on an engine, when something went wrong. What did you do? 2) Does your name fit you? What does it say about you? 3) How would your oldest friend say you’ve changed over the years? 4) What do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Fear? Curiosity? Guilt? and lastly, 5) Why do you think you made good money? Was it hard work? Lucky timing? Just dumb luck? Did the gods play a role?

When I read the questions I felt more uneasy still. They seemed to be largely related to business, or at real mechanically oriented people, or aimed at people, like my brother, who have made their professional marks in life. At least that’s how it seemed to me; not so now as I recall them. In any event--just call it my own insecurity--I felt my answers wouldn’t measure up. So, I decided I would just lie. That is, make up a story that answered not one but all of the questions, in order. I told Bruce what I was up to and he suggested I go last, out of deference to the others who—and here’s the irony—might feel intimidated. That wasn’t my intention, but I can see how it would seem I was showing off. And perhaps I was, but it definitely didn’t start out that way. There’s a life lesson somewhere in there, I’m sure. In any case, I had fun writing this, and bear in mind, it is not a PC story. This was addressed to a bunch of half drunk guys sitting around a campfire on a beautiful night in Maine.

1) It was 1974 or 1981. I was staying with my friend, Nick, who had a place around the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Nick and I had worked together many times over the years, and he was the type of friend who could disappear for a few years at a time, but every time we saw each other, it was like he’d never left. I suppose he was my best friend.

Nick’s girlfriend Donna was there, and after a night of drinking and talking over old times I went to bed, and had almost drifted off to sleep when I heard the creaking of floorboards. My door opened and Donna slipped between the sheets with me.

She wasn’t there because she was cold. And no, I shouldn’t have, but I did, and when we were finished Donna said, “Take me to Mexico.”

I didn’t have any other plans. So early that morning I hotwired Nick’s 1962 Ford Town & Country station wagon, figuring he wouldn’t miss it, and soon Donna and I were headed south across the desert. We’d driven for an hour or so when the car started wheezing and chugging, then stalled. We were dead on the side of the road, a hundred miles from nowhere. Donna popped a stick of gum in her mouth. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Wait here,” I said. Where was she gonna go?

I popped the hood, and a family of rats flew out from the air filter and headed for their new home in the saguaro. The air filter was caked with rat shit, so I spun off the wingnut and popped off the housing, then banged it on the fender to get it cleared out. As I started to put it back on, I dropped the wing nut right down the throat of the carburetor.

I stuck my finger down the hole, but the nut was just out of reach. I opened the back of the car, hoping to find a tool kit, but all I found was Donna’s hot pink travel case, and a bunch of junk: a flimsy tire iron, an old vacuum cleaner, and a hedge clipper. I cried. I cursed. Nick would wake up soon, and it wouldn’t take him long to catch up with us.

I took a look at Donna, fanning her face and loosening another button on her blouse, a little sweat glistening off of her tawny skin. She said, “Do you have any diet coke?”

God I loved her. I took another look at all the shit in the back of the car and gave the matter some thought. Then I had an idea. I clipped off the cord from the vacuum cleaner and stripped out the wires, then I wrapped them around the tire iron. Going to the engine, I hooked the wires to the battery. Now the tire iron was an electro magnet. I poked the shaft down into the throat of the carburetor—God, Donna and I were going to have a wonderful time once we got out of this heat—and snapped up the wingnut.

2) Soon we were underway. Donna sidled up to me and twirled my hair around her finger. “You know, Chris, your name really fits you.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, etymologically, Chris is derived from Christ, isn’t it?”

I told her it was.

Her lips brushed my ear as she spoke. “Christ the savior,” she said, then ran her hand up my leg. “You’re my savior,” she sighed.

3) I put my arm around her, but I was already starting to have doubts. Did I want to be this girl’s savior? How much saving did she need? I hardly knew her, and began to regret leaving with her at all. The truth is, if she hadn’t been Nick’s girlfriend I wouldn’t have. But Nick is my oldest friend, and our relationship is complicated. Back in our days as roustabouts in the Gulf of Mexico, maybe Nick would have thought of me as a savior, too, just like Donna. I pulled him off barroom floors to earn the name. But one night, he stole Sue from me, which really pissed me off. So I stole Jenny from him. He made off with Ruth, and I took Della. Then it was Sybil and Elaine and Meredith—I loved Meredith—and Joan, Leslie, Jessica, Bernadette. Amelia, another Betty, three Jennifers, two Tracys, a Monica, and on and on. Nick and I stole so many girlfriends from one another that I lost count. So, I suppose Nick would have seen me as more of a Judas by the time Donna and I drove off that night.

4) With Donna resting her head on my shoulder, I woke up the next morning in a cheap Nogales motel. I looked around and didn’t recognize the place and my heart pounded with fear. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, fear gave way to curiosity. Why was there a cheesy black velvet portrait of Jesus on the wall? Who the fuck drained a fifth of Jack Daniels? Who hung their panties on the mirror?

I looked over at Donna a wave of guilt washed over me. She opened her big blue eyes and smiled. I ran my hands up and down her naked body, then between her legs, and soon, guilt had given way to passion.

5) The sun was blazing when Donna and I emerged from the room and climbed into the Town & Country. We hadn’t gone a half-mile before I heard the throaty roar of motorcycle catching up to us. I’d know the sound of that Harley Panhead anywhere, and looking in the rear view mirror I saw Nick, wearing leather pants, cowboy boots, and a white tank top, roaring up behind us, his long blond hair flowing in the wind.

He caught my eye in the rear view mirror and flipped me off. I stomped on the accelerator and wheeled the town & country onto a narrow dirt road, headed toward Mexico.

Of course, I didn’t get far. As we charged across an arroyo, the car got high centered and in seconds Nick was at the drivers door. I rolled down the window.

“You stupid shit,” he said.

I was about to respond—it wasn’t like we hadn’t had this conversation before—when I heard Donna’s voice. “Give me that motorcycle or I shoot,” she said.

I turned to see she was pointing a Walther 9mm at my head. And her grip was steady.

“Donna… what the fuck?”

“Her name’s not Donna,” Nick said. “She’s Natasha Mechenko—or at least that’s what one of her passports says—if you’d bothered to look into her travel case you’d know all her names. I’ve been tracking her for four years.”

Donna got out of the car, her pink travel case in one hand, the Walther in the other. 

Donna climbed into the saddle. The Mexican border wasn’t more than a mile.

   She gunned the engine once or twice, then clicked the bike into first. Then, in a cloud of dust, she headed down the road, her miniskirt fluttering up around her waist. I never understood why women wear thongs, but I’m glad they do.

She hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards before she lost control of the bike. No one should ever to drive a Harley wearing high heels, but more importantly they should always put the kickstand up.

Nick had drawn his weapon by that time and as we walked up to her—there was no rush; she was pinned under a six hundred pounds of iron—he explained that his long absences were times when he was on assignment: Cairo, Moscow, Helsinki, Beijing. “I thought you were a surveyor,” I said.

Nick shrugged. “It’s a good cover.”

The reward for Donna’s capture was a half-million dollars cash—good money. Other than filling out the papers and all the questions, I wouldn’t say it was hard work, JUST a lot of dumb luck and lucky timing. Maybe the gods—or at least Jesus--played a little role, too.

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard

This from a letter I sent to my brilliant son, Drew, as he started doing standup comedy in New York:

"As a kid, people always told me I was funny. In fact, I competed with my across-the-street neighbor, Bruce, to see who was funniest. We each had an audience of one. One time when I was about 9, my sister was sick and I did a little spontaneous comedy routine to make her laugh and feel better. I wanted to make people laugh for as long as I can remember. 

When I moved to LA, it took me nine years to break into TV. I made a lot of people laugh along the way, and I'd sold columns and the like, but I'd never really been a paid comedy writer until then.

So, finally, I was on staff at a sitcom. It was a big deal, and it was a blast.

Besides writing,  the primary activity of a sitcom writing staffs is eating. 

One day, we all went to a deli. Everyone was standing around the counter waiting to order, and we were all making jokes. Finally, our number comes up and we're still riffing on whatever was making us laugh that day. The guy behind the counter looks balefully at us as yet another joke is made--probably about the food. "Everyone's a comedian!" he said. 

I thought, "Yes! We really are!" It was so exciting for me to be able to own that.  

So, all of this is a long-winded way to say--as you've probably detected--that I really respect humor and the ability to make people laugh. Comedy is a weird profession: at once, it's not well-respected (there's no Academy Award for Best Comedy). However, the ability to make others laugh is one of the most desired attributes that a person can have. To be able to do it professionally is really an accomplishment, and I think that you are eminently capable of doing it, lad. I hope you're as proud of all the work you're putting into it as I am." 

It's All There

I've been taking an improv class in San Francisco, with Doug Kassel. We're working on objects. "Objects?" you say.
Here's how a typical exercise worked. We held our hands in a shape, imagining we held some object. Then, we move our hands to different positions--it becomes dancelike after a while--and let another object appear.
It probably looks strange to a bystander. But in the experience--at least for me--it verged on hallucinatory. It wasn't as though I actually saw the objects... but then again, I did. That is, outside of their lack of actual physical form, they were there.
To any artist, I don't think this seems so strange. If you're going to do a painting, it is entirely in your imagination. Or, as Michaelangelo is alleged to have said about sculpture, the form was already present in the stone; he was only chipping away the parts that were not the sculpture.
The stone, in the case of improv, is space, of course. I heard a recent Radiolab bit about the Chicago improv artists known as TJ and Dave. They do a 50-minute-long improv, five nights a week, entirely developing the characters, the story, the themes, and everything fresh. Their idea is, like Michaelangelo's, that the people and the stories are already there. As artists, they intersect with them for this brief time (though a 50-minute improv would be HARD!) and bring it to life.
I have had this experience doing improv on occasion, and working with objects added (excuse the literalness) a new dimension to this experience. The objects are already in the space. And it isn't an intellectual experience to find them. In fact, if you start to think about it, they disappear. Improv of this sort is experiential, and more than a little mysterious. As for the objects already being in the space, it got me to thinking about Dark Matter, which composes 30-something percent of the universe. The visible universe comprises only 4 percent of the universe. Dark Matter can neither be seen, nor can it be measured outside of the effects it has on things that we can see and measure: radio waves, gravitational fields, light, etc.
So, working in space, identifying and manipulating "objects" that are found there, feels a little other-worldly, as though one has entered that realm of Dark Matter. It becomes fleetingly visible when you need it, and then it recedes into whatever dimension it resides.
What does any of this have to do with writing? Quite a lot, in fact. Of course, writing fiction begins, like all art, in the imagination. A novel begins on a blank page. Like improv, you "make it up as you go along" (thank you David Byrne for putting that phrase to music in Naive Melody) but I would argue that you don't really make it up. When I'm engaged in the process of writing, it feels more like I'm watching and listening to and feeling the emotions of the characters and just writing down what happened. On a larger scale--the scale of a novel--the whole story, the interplay of the characters, and the multitude of moving parts that make up a good and compelling story, are already there, just as the objects that one uses in improv are already there, or the form of a sculpture.