Tickle Me Black

Thanks to Al at Black is the New Pink , I learned just the other day that November is the official awareness month for both lung and pancreatic cancer. That’s right, two of the five biggest cancer killers have to share an awareness month, which just can’t help but dilute the message. And among the five most common and deadliest cancers (lung, colon, breast, pancreas, prostate), lung and pancreatic cancer are relative losers in receiving National Cancer Institute funding per new case and per patient death. My best guess is that lung and pancreatic cancer are losing the federal funding race because both are so deadly; and sadly, there just aren’t legions of healthy lung and pancreatic cancer survivors out there who are able to form a loud and effective advocacy group for a more level playing field in cancer funding. So maybe the rest of us at The Hotel Carcinoma ought to climb out of our silos this month and speak out on behalf of lung and pancreatic cancers’ victims?

I look forward to the day when the cancer funding game ceases to be a popularity contest. And when that day comes, I’ll be ‘tickled black’.

And, thanks to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, there’s a song for that: “Don’t Do Me Like That”…



I was talking with a friend of mine, said some donors had hurt his pride.
Told him that they loved pink so and turned around and let him go.
Then he said, "You better watch your step, or you’re gonna get C
yourself.
Some doc’s gonna tell no lies, cut you down to size."
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
What if we fund all cancers?
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
Someday we might cure you cancer.
Please tickle me black.
Listen donors, can’t you see? Cancer, we should bury thee
If they were in the public eye, gettin' some more bucks to fight.
And you know you better watch your step or you're gonna get C
yourself.
Some doc’s gonna tell no lies, cut you down to size.
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
What if we fund all cancers?
Please, please, please, please...
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
What if we fund all cancers?
Please tickle me black.
'Cause somewhere deep down inside
Someone is saying, "Life doesn't last that long."
I got this feelin' inside night and day
And now I can't take it no more.
Listen donors, can’t you see? Cancer, we could bury thee
If they were in the public eye, gettin' some more bucks to fight.
And you know you better watch your step or you're gonna get C
yourself.
Some doc’s gonna tell no lies, cut you down to size.
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
What if we fund all cancers?
Please, please, please, please...
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
We just might cure you cancer.
Please tickle me black.
Wait!
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
Cancer, cancer, cancer,
Please, please, please...
Yes!
Please tickle me black.
Please tickle me black.
Cancer, cancer, cancer...
Oh, oh, oh...

The Question

I don’t know about you, but one of the hardest things I’ve had to get used to at this Hotel is that the honest answer to a lot of my questions to oncologists is “we don’t know”. It’s just the sneaky and unpredictable nature of this beast. I don’t much like it, but I’ve come to accept it. So, I’ve pretty much stopped asking questions that call for any degree of prognostication on the doc’s part. And I’ve learned not to ask a question if I’m not prepared to deal with an answer I don’t much like—that legal training wasn’t totally wasted on me. Plus my doc shares my love of golf, and we’d much rather chat about our trials and tribulations on the links than melanoma. After all, some crooked tee shots and a lot of three-putts are not the worst problems a guy could have.

So, on this blizzardly morning I’ll leave you with a new version of the Moody Blues’ “Question”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmOZFAYeurY


Why do we never get an answer
From our doctors ‘bout the score?
With a thousand million questions
About fate and death and more.

It's when we stop and look around us
There is one thing that we plead.
For a world of cure infusions
That we’re yearning in our need.

Why do we never get an answer
From our doctors ‘bout the score?
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the call of hope is for.

It's not the way that they say it
When they tell those things to me.
It's more the way that they spin it
When they tell me what will be.

And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe it's true.
That all the drugs you've been given
Have all been good for you.

I'm looking for someone to change my slides.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the tans I knew
For safely paler hue.

Between the sunscreen used in mountains
And the thrashing of UV
There lies a tan I near died for
And none’s paler now than me.

But in the rough off the fairway
My mind becomes confused
Between bad lies and the yardage
And golf clubs that I must choose.

I'm looking for someone to save my hide.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the tans I knew
For safely paler hue
The tans that I once knew.
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of bad moles.

It's not the way that they say it
When they tell those things to me.
It's more the way they really spin it
When they tell me what will be.

Why do we never get an answer
From our doctors ‘bout the score?
With a thousand million questions
About fate and health and more.

It's when we stop and look around us
There is one thing that we plead.
For a world of cure infusions
That we’re yearning in our need.

Why do we never get an answer
From our doctors ‘bout the score?

Hotel Carcinoma

Today is the first day of Lung Cancer Awareness Month. Although it’s the biggest cancer killer of all, for both men and women, lung cancer receives a fraction of the National Cancer Institute funding per new case and per patient death that breast cancer receives.

Lung cancer patients too often get hit with the rap that their disease was a self-inflicted wound from smoking. But the fact is that lung cancer also strikes non-smokers and, guess what-- a whole lot of cancer brands are caused, at least in part, by some bad habit or unwise lifestyle choice. (Anyone thinking about all those sunburns you had as a kid?)

My father-in-law died some twenty years ago from lung cancer. I’m pretty certain that the Army taught him to smoke during World War II when he served in the 82nd Airborne Division as a paratrooper, and I can hardly fault him for picking up the habit under the circumstances. (It would take a lot more than a cigarette to get me to jump out of a perfectly good airplane when people down on the ground were already shooting at me.) Years later he quit, but apparently not in time.

Let’s can the blame game for this or any other cancer, and instead focus on prevention and finding better treatments. For Bill, and all of lung cancer’s victims, and everyone else living somewhere in the Hotel Carcinoma chain, here’s a new version of “Hotel California”…



On a dark crowded highway, cool wind ‘stead of hair
Warm sting of new stitches, raising up some new scares
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a hospital light
Lymph nodes grew heavy, and prospects grew dim
I had to stop for the fight.

There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the clinic bell
And I was thinking to myself
‘This could be heaven or this could be Hell’
Then she picked up a clipboard and she showed me the way
There were nurses down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say…

Welcome to the Hotel Carcinoma
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
What a lovely case.
Plenty of meds at the Hotel Carcinoma
Any time of year (any time of year) you can find them here

Her mind is Ativan-twisted, she got the biopsy bends
She got a lot of tricky, tricky docs, for life depends
Got more scans in the morning, sweet smell of sweat
Some scans to check tumors, some scans to regret

So I called up my Doctor,
‘Please tell me I’m fine’
He said, ‘we haven’t lost a patient here since nineteen ninety-nine’
And still those nurses are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say…

Welcome to the Hotel Carcinoma
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely case
They livin’ it up at the Hotel Carcinoma
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise), bring your tumor slides

Bright lights on the ceiling,
Our bad habits on ice
And she said, ‘we will always be patients here, of our own device’
And in the surgeon’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
‘Relax’ said the night nurse,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’

We Can Be Heroes

It’s Halloween and (thank heavens) the end of the over-commercialized hype that Pinktober has become. It’s been a long, strange month for those of us who aren’t ‘in the pink’, and I for one am glad it’s over. It’s been a month in which Broncos quarterback wannabe Tim Tebow, a personal brand marketing machine, auctioned his pink cleats and former Steelers coach Bill Cowher did a very nice breast cancer awareness PSA in honor of his wife without mentioning she died of melanoma. One of my favorite blogs, www.adventurewithmelanoma.blogspot.com, carried an American Cancer Society ad for breast cancer awareness. And my package of Kroger deli sliced turkey breast carried a pink lid and a “you guessed it” awareness message on the label—something I found just a bit creepy and unappetizing.

Do you have any idea which brand in the Hotel Carcinoma gets November as its awareness month? I had to look it up, but it’s the biggest killer of all, lung cancer. It killed my father-in-law and an aunt. One can only hope we’ll hear as much about this beast in the coming month as we did pink cancer in October, but I’m not holding my breath.

I hope that someday all of us living at the Hotel Carcinoma can get past this zero-sum game of awareness competition and that the general public and corporate ‘marketeers’ will care about and support everyone’s cancer. Until then, I guess we have to do what we have to do to compete, so with thanks to all of you melanoma walkers, runners, riders, bikers, etc., here’s a new version of
The Wallflowers’ “Heroes”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g2VdB4YpzQ


I, I wish you would walk
Like the warriors, like warriors will walk
’Cause something, something will bring us together
We can beat this, for ever and ever.

We can be Heroes, just for one day.

We, we will be kings
And you, you will wear ‘screen
’Cause something, something will drive this away
We can be Heroes, just for one day
Black can be ours, just for one day

I, I remember fearing, Black C’s call
And the birds, sing above our heads
And we’ll walk, because cancer will fall
’Cause the pain, is on the tanner’s hide
Oh we can beat this, for ever and ever

Then we could be Heroes, just for one day

We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
Just for one day

We Will Survive

Hey, Pinktober is almost over! I had a checkup with my smiling oncologist (I’m a clean machine!) at my cancer center yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find the only predominant color scheme was orange, because it seems the entire medical campus is one big construction zone. I’ll leave you with a request from a blog reader, a new version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. Go find a DVD of the football movie classic “The Replacements”, and get down and boogie in the endzone…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I


At first I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
with Black C by my side
But then I spent so many nights
thinking how tans did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along
and wear my black
and pink replace
I once checked in and found C here
with that sad look upon my face
I should have shunned that burnin’ sun
I should have known to wear my ‘screen
If I had known for just one second
C’d come ‘round to bother me

Go on now go walk out the door
just turn around now
'cause you're not welcome anymore
weren't you the one who tried to hurt me with those fries
Did you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
oh as long as I know how to fight
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my life to give
and I'll survive
I will survive (hey hey)

It took all the strength I had
not to fall apart
kept trying hard to mend
the pieces of my fighting heart
and I spent oh so many nights
just feeling sorry for myself
I used to fry
But now I hold my pale up high
and you see me
somebody new
I'm not that drugged up sickly patient
still in fright of you
and if you feel like dropping in
just don’t expect you’ll win with ease
”Cause now I'm saving all my fighting
for someone who's stalking me

Go on now go walk out the door
just turn around now
'cause you're not welcome anymore
weren't you the one who tried to break me with sun fries
Did you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
oh as long as I know how to fight
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my life to give
and I'll survive
I will survive (oh)

Go on now go, walk out the door
just turn around now
'cause you're not welcome anymore
weren't you the one who tried to break me with sun fries
Did you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
oh as long as I know how to fight
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my life to give
and I'll survive
I will survive
I will survive...!