Wednesday, February 26, 2014

PERCY THE BEAGLE: Treatment Strategy.

It seems that a beagle's lifespan is between 12 - 15 years and, having just turned an estimated age of 13, he’s probably going to die somewhere in the middle of that range.

If I were rich I would have Percy’s Cushing’s brought under full control, have his stomach tumor removed and aggressively treat his bladder cancer via chemotherapy (oral and intravenous)  and radiation.

Beyond this, he has a suspicious spot on his lung, and enlarged adrenal gland and blood work indicating a possible tumor (malignant or benign) in his neck.

I believe what I am capable of doing is treating his bladder cancer through chemotherapy and provide enough Cushing’s medication to keep him relatively comfortable.

I can do this through my local vet without taking vacation days to treat him at Ryan's Veterinary Hospital in Philadelphia (although Ryan's gave him exceptional care and the removal of his diseased gall bladder probably bought him at least another six months because he was, literally (okay, "figuratively" for you English language purists :-) ), dead dog walking).

The end will probably come relatively quickly when it comes: either through a digestive tract blockage due to the stomach tumor or a urinary tract blockage due to his bladder cancer or through breathing difficulties from lung cancer.

At that point the most merciful thing to do will be to euthanize him while he is still largely pain-free.

Most merciful for him. Not sure it’s the most merciful for me. But it might be.

I feel bad that I don't have the financial resources to pursue a full-court press on treatment but, oddly enough, that might be the best for Percy.

He will, in all likelihood, be put to sleep due to the onset of acute symptoms of cancer and he will probably be fully alert and aware and affectionate at the time I will need to do that.

I don't think any amount of money could create a different outcome.

If I had a lot of money I could push back the timeline a bit but, in the end, at what cost to his quality of life?

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Artificial Intelligence within our grasp...

The bar that must hurtled to achieve artificial intelligence gets lower every day.

One day I visited Gettysburg and hiked with a friend until I was both famished and exhausted. (Probably about two miles  )

We went to a Red Robin for dinner and stood in the waiting line.

When we got to the front, I walked over and looked at the largest, most beautiful salad bar I'd ever seen in my life.

It seemed to extend back for yards.

I circled around to view it from the other direction and - it abruptly disappeared and was replaced by a wall.

I had my best dumbfounded stupid look on my face.

The hostess went to my friend, at the front of the line, pointed to me and said, "What on earth is he doing?"

My friend, John Cope, who has known me for decades explained: "He doesn't realize that the salad bar was next to a wall with a large mirror on it.

So, I can truthfully say that I've been outsmarted by a salad bar.

See Human Intelligence to fall below level of household appliances (The Daily Mash, a British satire similar to The Onion.)

SWEET DREAMS AND FLYING MACHINES...

I had a strange dream two nights ago. My boss was sending me to the International Space Station. Unlike the real ISS, this one sat on the ground of our business campus and was to be launched into space.

My special mission involved my giving a PowerPoint presentation either to the Russians or about the Russians. (Why I had to do that from earth orbit was not clear.)

I remember I needed to use the toilet and had a really difficult time figuring out how to use it. I decided that one thing I would accomplish on the mission would be to write a good user's manual for it.

And, yes, at some point during the dream, I slipped and fell on the ice.

I think Freudian anality, the Olympics, my job, Big Bang Theory, my Simvastatin (which can cause nightmares) and Buspirone (which can cause vivid dreams), and the weather all got together and decided to have a wild party in my subconscious mind last night.

I seem to remember remaining fully clothed throughout the dream, which is often not the case.

[Incidentally, whereas I often wake up with a fleeting memory of a silly dream, I don't often recall dreams in this detail.]

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Having Generalized Anxiety Disorder is like having a car with a loose gas cap.

The Check Engine light comes on and you immediately conclude - based on no evidence whatsoever - that the car has a cracked engine block.

Ice Station Zebra :-)

Saturday morning I resorted to going on my hands and knees in the alley, to get to my home, and, ultimately, rolling my way across a large patch of ice that, based on my D- grade in Physics almost 40 years ago, had an almost zero friction coefficient.

No one would have mistaken me for James Bond or Bruce Lee.

Two neighbors found me after I had rolled my way to dry pavement and helped me to my feet.

There are times when having no pride has survival benefits: a slip on fall in the ice that cracked my skull would be a trip to the emergency room as I'm on blood thinners.

Friday, February 21, 2014

On Idolatry

On Idolatry

" I would love for you to explain in a rational way why you reject worship of other gods."
-Ron Nakata

Death

First, let's distinguish between words and the reality - if any - to which they point.

Wittgenstein said that the map is not the territory.

The words are the map. The reality is the territory.

I'm just going to state what I believe without attempting to defend it.

I can, if you wish me too, but you'd probably find it incredibly boring. (I'd suggest reading, "The Denial of Death," by the late atheist Ernest Becker, as a good starting point.)

So, "gods."

Death is a problem for human beings in a way that it is not a problem for other creatures. Unlike other creatures, we can imaginatively anticipate our death and - due to our "fight or flight" survival instincts, seek to avoid it. All the time, consciously or sub-consciously.

I find there are three main strategies for dealing with death: direct combat and victory over it (the "kill the evildoers" response so popular in movies and foreign policy), escapism ("eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die") and the most sophisticated strategy, deal-making.

Deal-making says it is okay if I die if I, in some way, can be given a token of immortality: through achieving great wealth, being popular, having a romantic relationship, writing a book... really, it can be anything.

Ernest Becker calls this our "immortality project."

Something we do or accomplish or create as a token that will survive death and give our lives a meaning that transcends death.

The problem is, none of these are effective.

More to the point, their obsessive pursuit (as compared to more ordinary pursuits) of these tokens is extraordinary destructive of our relationships to others, to the natural world and, ultimately, to ourselves.

It is the One Ring in the possession of Gollum.

It is Voldemort's creation of horcruxes via murder to ensure his own immortality.

Their pursuit - again, as obsessions rather than as ordinary aspects of human life - is responsible for much of the world's misery and mayhem.

In the end, it really doesn't matter if you crush your enemy, live a life of indulgence or have grand-kids or a world-renowned baseball card collection. Death trumps all.

And everything you place your hopes of immortality in is also, ultimately, subject to the reality of death.

The objects of our commitment or loyalty or service or "worship" are themselves subject to death.


gods

The above is written in secular language.

But the phenomenon is known biblically as idolatry.

In idolatry, we dispose of our life in service to the god or gods that will save us, in some way shape or form, from death.

Again, these gods usually take the shape of the "kill the evildoers," "eat, drink and be merry," and "let's make a deal" strategies for dealing with death.

Biblical examples of these are legion and I will not bore you with them - unless you really wish me to. :-)

But they are redundant in the biblical writings and are remarkably consistent across the two thousands years of documents contained within.

Are gods "persons"?

Good question.

There are certainly gods (including God in Christ) who can be thought of in personal ways.

This only makes sense as us humans, as natural worshipers, are persons.

If we were cows, then gods would no doubt be conceptualized as Bovinity rather than Divinity. :-)

It is hardly an argument against water that we tend to think of it in a glass convenient for our drinking... we are reliably self-absorbed creatures and think of all things as they relate to us.

And that includes gods.

Having said that, there are many gods that can be thought of in non-personal ways. Consider the Force in Star Wars.

Are gods real?

That's another good question.

We can argue about the metaphysical or ontological status of gods if you wish, but - again, though it is an important question - you will be bored to tears.

We are still at the level of, "Why should I care?" rather than, "How can this be real?"

So, as a working hypothesis, I will rely on the pragmatic argument of, “What is real is what has effects." This is from the Gestalt psycholgist, Kurt Lewin, best known for his coining of the phrase, "group dynamics."

In short, gods have effects, whether the word "god" is used to conceptualize them or whether their dynamics work in human history through those things describable in secular as well as religious language.

Again, the map is not the territory and all I learn from someone who tells me they are an atheist is that the word, "god," is not part of their working vocabulary.

It tells me nothing about their relationship to gods in any meaningful sense of that term. (The same goes for people who tell me they are Christian. )

Stalin was formally an atheist but he had one, big whopping immortality project that pretty much gave him the tune to which to dance and which was responsible for millions of murders.

God in Christ and the gods

Christians believe that God is perfectly revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ as prefigured in the history of Israel in the Old Testament, as witnessed by the ancient Church in the New Testament, and as illuminated through the ongoing witness of the Christian churches throughout history.

This does not mean one can only find God in Christ in those witnesses but it means they are the standard for discerning God in Christ's presence in the world - all the world, religious or secular.

The prologue to the Gospel of St. John states that the entire world was created through Christ and therefore one should not be too terribly surprised when one discerns God in Christ in nature, in music, in mathematics, in our friends and family, a slum, a death camp or even a Freethought convention.

God in Christ is ubiquitous.

The differentiator between God in Christ and the gods is that while the gods deal with death through "kill the evildoers," "eat, drink and be merry," and "let's make a deal" strategies, God in Christ sanctifies death through sharing our human nature and participating in it.

Religious belief in Christianity is, or should be, profoundly realistic about the reality of death while celebrating God in Christ's transcendence of death and our potential for participation in that transcendence.

It sees the Resurrection of Christ as something that transcends death rather than as something that somehow "undoes it" though some allegedly magical means (such as do the gods).

And there is a differentiated ethic that goes with that belief: relieved of the need to kill, run from or make a separate peace with death, we are freed from obedience to our always destructive and often lethal immortality projects.

We can live in the world as ordinary, mortal people: nothing more and nothing less. And we are sufficiently released and relieved from our own anxieties to be fully available to the legitimate needs of ourselves and of others.

It is not a vastly different final outcome, I'd wager, from what secularists yearn for.

I just think they kind of share the "realism" aspect of Christian faith and add the "hopeful" part ex nihilo.

Secularists and the other world religions are not enemies of Christian faith. They enrich the conversation and I more often disagree with them on what they leave out rather than what they contribute.

The only religious or philosophical stance I've found in life inimical to Christian faith is nihilism and, to be honest, I don't think I've ever encountered an atheist who is a nihilist (although more than one Christian has raised my eyebrow a bit on that front, especially the ones that tend to appear in the media).

But, you asked, and this is why I reject the worship of the gods.

Don't know if other Christians would agree with it (although, as a major, accredited Protestant seminary has deemed my theology relatively orthodox, I'd like to think I haven't colored too far outside the lines :-) ) and I don't know if you would accept the argument as "rational."

But it has certainly been an opportunity to clarify my own thoughts on the matter.

In forty years of Christian witness I've only "converted" one person and, years later, he told me that was only because he misunderstood me. :-)

So your soul is quite safe. You won't become a snake-handler any time soon, at least, not under my tutelage.

Wednesday, February 05, 2014

The Ghost of Birthdays Past (Warning: More Than You Want to Know)

I turn sixty today.

Technically, it's at 3:02 PM in the afternoon, but I think I'll make it. :-)

My mother was 44 years old when I was born. I was born on her birthday and always believed I was her gag gift.

I always thought my mother couldn't conceive after my older brother Alan was born seventeen years earlier, but found out relatively recently that she had had a series of miscarriages.

So when the doctor found she was pregnant with me, he all but restricted her to her bed for nine months.

Despite this, I was born about 2 - 3 months premature. And thank God for our neighbor Shirley Thayer who had managed to get her to the hospital just in time. (No doubt, after my mother insisted on taking a bath and changing into all clean clothes.)

This must have been especially difficult for her to deal with as she had lost her own six year-old son in a drowning accident a year or two earlier.

My birth weight was 2 lbs., 10 oz. and my Iranian-born doctor - Doctor Partow (sp?) - decided to bleed nitrogen into my incubator instead of the pure oxygen used at the time.

In doing so, he may have saved my retina's from being burned out in the pure O2 environment.

There was only one other memorable birthday from my childhood, my last one at the age of 13 - a skating party with my Jr. Hi. friends.

Jr. High was about the first year I had a group of friends at school and I'm still in touch with some of them - via Facebook, of course, today.

None of my other birthdays were particularly significant (beyond the parties and cakes and presents and such) until my 42nd birthday.

Having read, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," I presumed the mysteries of the universe would be revealed.

I worked at the Red Cross at that time. People at the Red Cross had contributed money to buy me clothing. (Yeah, I'm that bad. :-) )

My supervisor, Kate Davis Santoro, went with me as a chaperon to Men's Warehouse, the day before, on Feb. 4th.

She had actually made a color coordination chart so I knew what went with what. (Of course, being partially color-blind, this was of limited use. :-) )

But I was all decked out in my new finery when I walked to Darto's in Bethlehem the next day for a celebratory breakfast. I think I got a scrapple*, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. Or maybe a cheese omelet with scrapple on the side.

I remember the scrapple and am hazy on the rest.

Leaving Dartos, I walked the 1/4 block to the bus terminal.

I never made it.

Slipped on the snow right in the middle of the intersection where the buses pull in.

Heard the ankle pop as it dislocated.

Knew I wasn't going to walk it off.

Just as I had been trained at the Red Cross, people ignored my cries for help. It was about 2 degrees. They gave me a curious look and then acted like I was invisible.

Finally someone, responded to me - and, again, as per training, once the first person responded, others helped out. Someone had me get my gloves out of my pocket and put them on.

A LANTA bus driver called for an ambulance.

When the police showed up they covered me with one of those tarp things they use with traffic fatalities. :-)

Got my one and only ride in an ambulance to the hospital.

I'm a total wussy when it comes to pain and was waiting to be examined by the orthopedic surgeon before they'd give me any pain meds. I was biting my arm to keep from screaming - no lie. :-)

The doctor - Dr. Bana I believe - examined me and said that he could just set it, but that I'd probably develop arthritis later. He said he really needed to do surgery and pin it.

I whimpered, in true heroic fashion, and asked if it was going to hurt a lot.

I obviously insulted his professionalism. He gave me a cold look and said, "Mr. Bekkenhuis, you have just severely dislocated your ankle and broken it in two places. And you did it WITHOUT anesthesia. I promise I won't hurt you THAT much."

Point taken. :-)

So he re-set the dislocation and somehow managed to keep me from puncturing a hole through all eight levels of floors and roofs above me and then nailed me with something that was REALLY, REALLY nice. :-)

They couldn't operate on me for about 8 hours because of my breakfast, so I just lay in the hospital room, high as a kite (per my brother) all day.

Around noon my co-workers in the marketing department at the Red Cross came over, gave me my gifts and gave a really pathetic rendition of "Happy Birthday," as I lay there in my new clothes, covered in salt and road grime, with the trouser sleeve sliced open to my thigh. (When the EMT cut it I told him, "Oh, NO! Kate will KILL me!" But to no avail, he cut it anyway.)

That night they wheeled me down to surgery. The anesthesiologist took one look at my overweight self and my family history of heart disease and told me he wanted to operate using an epidural. I asked what that was. He said it was like a spinal tap. I giggled and said, "Great, I LOVE their music!"

Like I said: high as a kite. Normally, knowing he was going to stick a big ass needle in my spine, I'd have had a miraculous healing and run for the hills.

There was no pain from the epidural (I was probably incapable of feeling pain), I just felt pressure as he pushed. But, sadly, it also didn't work.

"Do you feel that?", he asks, pinching my knee.

"Yes."

"How about that?"

"Yes."

The last thing I remember before going under anesthesia was asking the surgeon on which leg he was intending to operate. Drugged or not, I was a bit paranoid. :-)

The next morning the nurse asked me if I needed to pee.

I said, no thanks. Moving myself out of bed was an obscene thought.

"No problem," she said, "We'll give it a half hour or so and then catheterize you."

I'll tell you, I jumped out of bed and hopped right over there and pee'd like a champion.

For the next eight weeks, I could only sponge bathe myself and the only way I had an income is that my heroic supervisor, Rich Santoro, would come to the house each day and give me a disk with data entry to do. He had to stare down the dachshund, Gretchen, who was fiercely protective and wanted to eat him.

And I lived because my nieces kept shipping me food and a close friend kept picking up food and liquor for me.

But, after 8 weeks, think Jack Nicholson in, "The Shining." :-)

In any event, I'm anticipating this birthday will go a bit better.

Though the weather is the same. :-(


* Spell check does not recognize "scrapple" as a word, just as a nutritionist would not recognize it as a food.

A 13 year old kid has a few items on his shopping list

  A 13 year old kid has a few items on his shopping list: Beer ❌ Cigarettes ❌ Racy Magazines ❌ Lottery Tickets ❌ Gun — No Problem! Another ...