Creating

Iguana, acrylic on canvas

Creating, whether one writes, paints, arranges flowers, or what have you, takes a person outside him- or herself. That’s always been my experience. I can be lost in a manuscript on the computer or in layers of paint on a canvas for hours, oblivious not only to the passage of time but also to pain and hunger.

Painting, for me at least, for as much as it takes me outside myself, it also takes me inside—to a different place, a deeper place, somewhere beyond the conscious. There is something primal about pushing paint around on canvas. Even when it is a frustrating exercise, which it often is, there is still something uniquely satisfying about it. Contradiction upon contradiction. It is both energizing and calming.

I scarcely recall a time when I did not paint, and I can’t imagine a time when I won’t want to. I’m certainly not alone in persevering despite various odds: finding the time, energy, and drive to ignore the side effects of my cancer therapy and just get on with it. Some famous examples are worth considering. Painter Georgia O’Keeffe in her final years continued to paint even as macular degeneration dimmed her eyesight. Classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein did not give up performing until he was virtually blind. Both continued creating into their nineties. Ludwig van Beethoven began experiencing hearing loss early on and was nearly totally deaf when he composed some of his best-known works.

Cat Chair, acrylic on canvas

Modern artist Henri Matisse was diagnosed with abdominal cancer at age seventy-two. When surgery left him bed- and chair-bound, he turned from painting to creating paper cut-outs, for which he became almost as well known as for his earlier paintings. He continued creating in this new way for the next decade until his death at age eighty-four. Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis that left his hands paralyzed and so had his brushes strapped to his hands in order to continue painting until his death at seventy-eight.

If you are a creative person — a writer, a painter, a composer, a performer — you cannot not work, you cannot simply stop. You must create. Against all odds.

Note: Displayed are two recent paintings I composed as remembrances of a vacation trip to Puerto Rico a couple of months ago.

Poetry...Again

My interest in writing poetry began in high school and continued into college, although nothing I produced then was particularly worth reading. After college, in the 1970s, I wrote poems with greater intent and even published a few. But after that decade other interests, activities, and life in general made for about a thirty-year hiatus. I didn’t take up writing poems with any real passion again until after I retired in 2006.

Nowadays I write for my own pleasure, and I share my work with family and friends. My poems tend to be either autobiographical or responsive to nature—or both. I don’t consider myself a nature poet, but I have always responded to the passing seasons, flora and fauna, and weather phenomena. Perhaps because I also work in the visual arts, mainly as a painter, I try to create visual images with words. I have persisted in a lifelong fascination with impressionistic and expressionistic free verse, inspired by the likes of Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, and many, many other Modern poets. If there is one thread, however slender, that unites at least some of my poems now, it is reflection on aging, keenly felt in particular since my cancer diagnosis in April 2015.

Is writing poems a form of therapy? Certainly. What artistic expression is not? But writing, at least for me, is always more than that. It is the creation of art, which in itself is intensely fulfilling. I suspect it’s that way for most poets, who, when it comes down to it, seldom write poetry as their livelihood. Many, in fact, never get published or, like Emily Dickenson, are published extensively only after their death. And fame? Most find little within their lifetime, although some achieve it later. Sylvia Plath, for example, became really well known only after her death.

Thanks to the ease, convenience, and low cost of the Nook on-demand publishing platform, I’ve put together a couple of collections of poems in recent months. Published privately and never intended for sale, these volumes are gifts for family and friends. (The cover of the first one is pictured above.) Having worked in publishing and possessing an inclination for writing and design are helpful but not essential to this type of project.

In sum, the advice I’d give to anyone who is curious about writing, whether poems or some other form, is simply to do it. Ultimately, the intended beneficiary is the writer. If readers also benefit in some way, so much the better.

Note: This commentary is cross-posted on two blogs: Arts in View (http://artsinview.blogspot.com) and Living With…A Cancer Journal (http://livingwithcancerjournal.blogspot.com).

Travel

Travel is a passion of mine, at least to the extent permitted by time, money, and energy. Prolonged medical treatment, for whatever condition, necessitates adjusting one’s schedule to accommodate doctor visits, procedures, and recovery. Diminished energy can be ongoing. For me, consequently, treating kidney cancer has meant curbing some travel, though fortunately not all and not permanently. 

A peripatetic childhood as the son of a career Army serviceman permanently engendered in me a love of travel. Traveling, for all that it can be exhausting in the moment, is wonderfully energizing for the senses. I prize the mental stimulation that comes from encountering unfamiliar people and places. I am never more fully alive than when I take on the role of foreigner, navigating the unfamiliar with my wits stretched to ingenuity.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m actually in another country or merely away from familiar surroundings by only a few miles. There’s still an intriguing “foreignness” in being the stranger. Travel encourages independence and broadens my outlook. Over the years travel has given me many good memories, adventures to be recounted, incidents and characters to be woven into my own writings, and sights to inspire drawings and paintings.

The diagnosis last spring that my renal cancer, to which I lost my left kidney seventeen years ago, had returned forced my then fiancé and I to cancel a planned tour of Italy. Later, in the fall, I had to cancel another trip, this time to Kansas, because of some fairly severe side effects. With that period behind me, however, and with a new targeted therapy regimen in place and working well, I have now cautiously begun to travel again.

Initially I stuck with short, local excursions. There was a convention trip that required a few hotel nights in Indianapolis, only fifty miles from home. That November trip was followed by a pre-Christmas trip to St. Louis in December to visit my daughter. And there have been several day trips. All of these outings were done by car, which served as a kind of security blanket. Whether alone or traveling with my now spouse (we married in mid-August), driving has allowed me a measure of control. Driving on my own has helped to reestablish my sense of self-confidence.

Of course, like anyone with a chronic condition, I travel with my own pharmacopeia, which largely fills a separate overnight bag with the pills, solutions, salves, and devices that treat the cancer, various side effects, and the usual complement of conditions, such as high blood pressure, that seem to come with aging. My rattling bag of pills is a necessary nuisance. I wondered until today if it might cause some holdup at airport security. Happily it did not. You see, I am flying for the first time in many months.

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated my sixty-eighth birthday. This trip is an extension of that celebration. I’m writing this post on an American Airlines jet on the second and final leg of our trip south to sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico. Neither my spouse nor I has been to this destination. Technically we aren't leaving U.S. territory, and the Condado Lagoon resort will probably be more relaxing than adventurous. But it’s another step toward reclaiming my passion for travel. My spirit is already soaring as high as this airplane.

Postscript: The getaway was excellent!

New Side Effects

For readers who follow this blog, I mentioned in the previous post (“Attitude,” December 10) that I have switched to the targeted therapy drug Afinitor, or Everolimus. I’m now closing in on four weeks on this regimen. As I said in that earlier post, the side effects have been fairly minimal, which is good because unlike taking Sutent, with Afinitor there’s no “rest” week between cycles.

Google side effects and you can find various lists. From those lists, here’s what I’ve experienced so far:

More common

•   abdominal or stomach pain, usually minor

•   change in taste, slightly less aware of sugar or salt

•   dry skin, but I had that before, especially in the winter

•   pain in the arms or legs, read joint and muscle pain, particularly joint, as if the drug intensifies arthritic pain somewhat

•   unable to sleep, which given that I struggle with insomnia has been one of the more annoying side effects

Less common

•   back pain, especially lower back

•   bumps on the skin, read pimples (do I really need to revisit my teen years?)

•   passing gas, always a treat as one ages anyway, it seems

Among the “not noted” is dizziness, which I can only attribute to the Afinitor, though who knows, really? I woke up one recent morning feeling like a drunken sailor and proceeded to reel about the house for a couple of hours until that sensation passed away. It only happened once—so far.

This morning there was a new side effect, which wasn’t entirely attributable to Afinitor. About 1:00 a.m. I awoke to the sensation that my upper lip was swollen on the right side. I’d bitten my inner lip during dinner the previous evening, and so I initially thought it was possibly a reaction to that, exacerbated by the Indian food we ate. I iced the lip only to find that the swelling then spread across my entire upper lip. (People pay good money for collagen treatments that have this effect!)

By 7:00 with no resolution in sight I was sufficiently concerned to go to the hospital emergency room. The doctors concluded that the swelling was a side effect of one of my blood-pressure drugs, Lisinopril. Apparently this effect is well-documented and can occur even after taking this drug, as I have done, for a number of years. However, taking Afinitor is known to increase the probability that this side effect will occur. Two hours later I emerged from the ER, having been given Benadryl and Prednisone and a new blood-pressure prescription (Losartan). Over the course of the day the swelling substantially subsided and by bedtime my upper lip was pretty well back to normal.

Again, for the most part the side effects I’ve experienced with Afinitor have been fairly mild. On the plus side, I have been able to decrease the amount of narcotic painkiller I need to take, which I regard as a signal that the Afinitor is having the desired effect on the cancer tumors.

Attitude

How does one live as though life will go on forever and, simultaneously, as if death awaits tomorrow? I ponder this question fairly often. The positions seem to be opposites, but actually both are facts of life for everyone. After all, neither is a certainty. No one lives forever, but it is self-defeating to live on the verge of death. Equally, except in rare cases and barring the unforeseen, most of us aren’t going to die tomorrow.

The diagnosis of a potentially fatal disease can quicken appreciation of the here and now. Today. Carpe diem, as the saying goes. That’s my answer to the question. It’s easy to get caught up in the grind of daily life and forget to step back and view each day through a longer lens and be grateful for the opportunity to live it. Some days the knowledge that my body is fighting cancer hangs over me like a storm cloud, poised to drench me in despair. I have a family tendency toward depression at the best of times, and such feelings can be hard to shake.

Readers who follow this blog may recall that I developed problems related to the targeted therapy drug Sutent, which I had taken since last spring but had to discontinue it a few weeks ago. I recently completed the first week on another targeted therapy drug called Afinitor. So far, the side effects have been fairly minimal; however, two have been irritating. One is that this drug increases my insomnia. Most of my adult life I’ve struggled with what is often termed “early rising insomnia.” I fall asleep readily enough but have difficulty staying asleep. Several of the days during this first week on Afinitor I have turned in about my usual time of 11:00 p.m. only to awaken around 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. to find it difficult if not impossible to fall back to sleep.

Another effect has been nervousness. Several days my nerves tingled for much of the day, which also made me aware that this drug tends to bring out minor muscle and joint aches. But it’s the jitteriness that is most annoying. Both that and the insomnia increase depression and lead to irritation and impatience, which I struggle to contain. Add in the cancer pain, managed (sometimes only barely) with a generic version of Percocet, and it can be challenging to step back and appreciate any given day. I like to turn that storm cloud overhead into an umbrella, but it’s not easy.

Three things help. First, being active. I try as best I can to set aside the pain, the jitteriness, the fatigue, and all the rest and just get on with living. Whether it’s writing, baking, painting, shopping, or some other activity, I find that doing something invariably feels better than doing nothing. Second, and just the opposite, purposefully doing nothing also can provide relief. Meditation, mild exercise, yoga—all turn the mind purposefully inward. Finally, being with family and friends, talking and laughing together, provides relief. All three of these things are distractors, of course. Dwelling on problems, fretting, projecting negatively about the future—these in themselves increase the awareness of pain and nervousness. Healthy distractions provide relief. This is something I’ve written about in earlier posts, but as I begin taking this new drug I needed to refresh my memory.