So Tired

April is turning out to be a very expensive month. Not because I owed the Feds any additional imperial tribute on the 15th, but because I’ve been kidnapped by vigilant health care professionals-- despite feeling perfectly fine, dang it.

It all started when I dutifully answered the summons from my primary care doc to appear for a routine checkup before he’d continue to refill my ‘scrips for blood pressure and cholesterol meds. Next thing I know I’m having an electrocardiogram, just because the test has recently become part of their protocol for a patient with high blood pressure and cholesterol. It turns out my EKG is abnormal now and it was over ten years ago when, unbeknownst to me, an EKG was performed when I was doing hard time in the hospital for biochemotherapy treatments. Although nobody ever told me about that, perhaps just because they thought it was just a temporary effect of being infused with IL-2 in the convenient 24-hour bag. Up to then I’d thought that a “prolonged QT interval” was an extended pit stop at a QuikTrip convenience store for fuel, caffeine and unhealthy snacks to stoke a hurried road trip.

But an unexpected EKG was just a side trip on a much-longer trek down the road of preventive medical care. You see, my diligent primary care doc usually interrogates me on the subject of whether I’m seeing the ‘ologists over at the cancer center at the prescribed intervals and I made the mistake of being honest and ‘fessing up that I was coming due, but not until September, for a follow-up MRI on Mr. Schwannoma and visit with the fine folks in radiation oncology. I guess he must have made a referral because a few days later I received a phone call from a familiar voice at the nuking clinic to set it all up, at which time I had to clear up a misconception that I was a new patient of theirs.

The MRI showed Mr. Schwannoma is “unchanged”, a conclusion I could’ve reach based on unchanged tumor symptoms and without spending 45 minutes in noisy and costly confinement in one of General Electric’s finest medical imaging machines. But these happy results didn’t end the journey, because a vigilant radiation oncologist thinks it’s been much too long since I’ve been scanned for evidence of a melanoma recurrence.

So I’ll end the month on Wednesday with a precautionary chest, abdominal and pelvic CT scan, assuming the Gods of Cost Control at CIGNA deem the scan to be medically necessary for a guy who’s blessed to have spent the last decade in NEDland and presents no symptoms of a recurrence. And when the scan shows nothing of concern, which I’m sure it will, I just may declare myself cured and stage a breakout from The Hotel Melanoma. Simply because I’m tired of this drill. So tired of waiting in drab waiting and exam rooms, so tired of waiting for examinations and tests that almost never occur at the scheduled time, so tired of waiting for insurance company authorizations, and so tired of waiting for diagnostic test results.

That’s enough ranting, it’s time for rocking. For all of you at this Hotel who are equally tired of the drill and probably have far better reasons for that than me, I’ll sign off with a new twist on The Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting for You”…



I'm so tired
Tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you

I'm so tired
Tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you

I had some homely moles
I had tanned body till I met you
But you keep-a me waiting
All of the time
What can I do?

It's your time
And you can do what you want
Do what you like
But please don't keep-a me waiting
Please don't keep-a me waiting

'Cause I'm so tired
Tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you

So tired
Tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you

I was a rosy soul
I was so cocky till I met you
But you keep-a me waiting
All of the time
What can I do?

It's your time
And you can do what you want
Do what you like
But please don't keep-a me waiting
Please don't keep-a me waiting
'Cause I'm so tired
Tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you

So tired
Tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you
For you
For you

A Fine Day at The Clinic

I’ve been a patient at a big university hospital cancer center for over ten years now and have been ‘seen’, in whole or in part, by a slew of ‘ologists of various and sundry specialties and sub-specialties. They’re all good people of great skill, experience and compassion, but it’s often seemed to me that there’s not a whole heck of a lot of collaboration and communication going on among this gang of ‘ologists. And that’s probably just because each one of my ‘ologists is too dang busy hustling from one exam room to the next to sit down and talk to me about what is or isn’t going on with my care in some other clinic down the hall. But every so often one of my ‘ologists has the time to climb out of his or her specialty silo and take a comprehensive interest in my care at the cancer center, and Friday was one of those days.

It was time for a MRI and visit to the radiation oncology clinic to see if Mr. Schwannoma is behaving himself and a day that involved the standard redundant questionnaire about my metallic jewelry implants, etc. (A Schwannoma is a fairly rare and usually benign tumor of the Schwann cells in the protective sheath surrounding a nerve, and the ‘ologists found a big honking one on the left brachial plexus bundle of nerves branching off of my cervical spine through the first CT scan performed after my Stage 3c melanoma diagnosis. A crack radiation oncologist, who I affectionately nicknamed Dr. No, nuked Mr. Schwannoma in 2007 into a stable state.) They’ve not been directly involved in my melanoma care and treatment, but perhaps because they’ve treated one-too-many melanoma patients with brain metastases, Dr. No and his successor have taken a great deal of interest in my melanoma care and had a lot to say to me over the years about what I ought to be doing for the sake of early detection of any melanoma recurrence. Both have expressed concern that I haven’t been scanned in a coon’s age, and my new radiation oncologist up and ordered a precautionary chest and pelvic CT scan. I’m sure it’ll prove “unnecessary” in hindsight, but I’m nonetheless grateful for her proactive initiative. I just hope my ‘friends’ at CIGNA authorize it.

I never particularly liked this song, only because a college roommate we called Woodstock played it incessantly, but with gratitude to the good folks in radiation oncology here’s the Hotel Melanoma rendition of Golden Earring’s “Radar Love”…



I have MRI fright
My hand's wet as an eel
There's a voice in my head
That drives mag wheel
It's my rad tech callin'
Says: I read you here
And it's a scan abhorred
In that magnet sphere

When C is mole C
And the growing gets too much
He sends a ray stream
Coming in from a gun
Don't need to groan at all

I've got a thing that's called Ray Doc Love
He’s got the waves if you dare
Ray Doc Love

The waiting room’s playing some old rotten song
Lawrence Welk’s polka gone wrong
These forms have got me hypnotized
And I'm seating into old naugahide

If I get Mole C
And I'm sure I've had enough
She sends her protons
Comin' in from a gun
Don't seem to fret her at all

I've got a thing that's called Ray Doc Love
They've got the time for this guy
Ray Doc Love

No smoke weed, I'm almost bare
Gotta neat blue gown, lotta great care
Scan time on mass, here I go
And the time in jar passed too darn slow

And the waiting room played that old rotten song
Lawrence Welk’s polka gone wrong
And the new scan sang its same song
Once more Ray Doc Love is on

If I get Mole C and I'm sure I've had enough
She sends her protons, coming in from a gun
It don't seem to fret her at all

I’ve got a thing that's called Ray Doc Love
They’ve got the time for this guy
I've got a thing that's called Ray Doc Love
I've got a thing that's called
Ray Doc Love

Don't Tan So Close To Me

Thanks to the billing excesses of certain entities in the medical community, I didn’t make it south-of-the-border this year for a winter respite at a beach resort. But that’s probably all for the good. Why, you ask? Because I wasn’t subjected to any visual assaults from weathered people who look like an old saddle partially wrapped in a strip or two of nylon with me, meanwhile, being all sanctimonious and smug about sporting a phosphorescent pale and mostly-clothed carcass and hiding under a palapa hut. Maybe I’m still just a bit envious of folks who can still bask on a white sand beach without disappearing, but I think it’d be a great marketing ploy if a beach resort offered separate “no tanners” sections on the pool deck and beach where we members of The Paler Nation could enjoy ourselves without feeling like we ought to be handing out our dermatologists’ business cards. A similar policy has worked out quite well for a handful of upscale Utah ski resorts that attract well-heeled skiers by banning snowboarders.

What do you think? Until next time, I’ll sign off with a new version of “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” from The Police…



Old preacher, no subject
Of schoolgirl fantasy
He wants skin so badly
Knows what he wants to ‘screen
Inside him there's longing
For tans of olden days
Mole mapping - C's so close now
His ‘screen is half his age

Don't tan, don't tan so
Don't tan so close to me

His friends aren’t so zealous
You know how tan ‘girls’ get
Sometimes it's not so easy
To be the doctor's pet
Temptation, frustration
So bad it makes him cry
Met Mohs doc, C's grating
His scars are worn with pride

Don't tan, don't tan so
Don't tan so close to me

Deuce docs in exam room
To cure they try and try
Long words in the staffroom
The gene mutations fly
Skin abuse, C needs cure
He starts to shake tan off
Just liked the old tan skin
That looked like orange improv

Don't tan, don't tan so
Don't tan so close to me

Don't tan, don't tan so
Don't tan so close to me