Blood, Sweat & Trail Mix

Every year there are certain events cemented in my calendar.

My fantasy basketball draft.

My fantasy football draft.

My fantasy baseball draft.

My annual physical exam.

Fortunately, all four of those events have brought very positive results in the past.

But not every year.

Like the year I drafted Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony.

Or the year I passed on some guy named Jerry Rice. 

Or the year that I released Roy Halladay. 

Or the year that my blood test came back with a high ferritin count.

When the doctor told me my ferritin level had exceeded the limit, I thought she was making a joke about the little weaselly house pet.

Oh.  Ferritin.  Not ferret.  My bad.

Biology was not my strong suit, either time I took it.

When the doctor starts reading off the results to your blood test and there’s no punch line at the end, you listen loud and clear.

Ferritin is the protein in the human body that stores iron and apparently I was storing too much.

She had me go to a local clinic for a follow up with a specialist.

Not that I needed a wake-up call, but considering the facility had “Cancer” and “Clinic” in their name it made me sit up straight.

Fortunately my concerns were erased fairly quickly when the specialist said that the level should be cleared up by giving blood on a regular basis.

Done.

I had donated before, once in college -- 20 years earlier -- but I hadn’t ever thought to do it again.

Until now.

Since that nudge by the good doctor, two-and-a-half years ago, I have given blood every 56 days or so.

That’s the amount of time they make you wait between donations.

Monday morning I made my 17th trip to the local blood bank.

And for the 17th time I made a joke about, “good thing my blood is red.”

I think the score is five chuckles, nine smirks and three do you really think I am interested in hearing that joke AGAIN.

It takes eight visits to donate a gallon, so today I started giving my third gallon of the good stuff.

In addition to donating for me, I’m also doing it for a bunch of other people who REALLY need it.

You see, my blood type is O- (oh negative), which only 7% of people have AND as a bonus, my blood type can be used by anybody else.

My stuff is the real deal.

Blood it is, Red Gold, Texas Tea.

I arrived at the center at 9:20am and by 10 O’clock I was back in my car, 470 milliliters lighter.

I’ve been so many times now the nurses know me as hey you.

The first item on the menu is a 49-question survey.

The same kind of questions you get at a job interview or so I’m told.

In the last XX months, have you had a piercing... a tattoo.. a transfusion... accidental needle stick... malaria... hepatitis... sex with a prostitute.

Whoa.

Where’s my attorney?

Did you spend three months or more in the United Kingdom from 1980-1996?

Do my teeth look that bad?

Have you ever received money or drugs for sex?   

Have you had sexual contact with a male, “even once”?

I love it that they put the last part in quotes to make sure that everybody knows we are playing without mulligans. 

Once you pass that test, next is a check of your pulse and blood pressure.

68 on the pulse.  96 over 70 on the blood pressure.

I guess unemployment has been berry berry good to me.

Then it was on to the tricked out, extra padded, chaise lounge chair.

There must’ve been a sale somewhere, because the clinic was stocked with at least ten of them.

Once the nurse confirmed it was me, I had a needle in my arm faster than you could say, YOUCH.

Actually it doesn’t hurt that bad and it’s for a good cause.

FREE GIFTS!

In the past they’ve given us donors everything from t-shirts to ice scrapers to water bottles and pins.

Today we got a beach towel.

To wipe up any extra blood I suppose.

But wait, there’s more.

When your are done giving blood, they encourage you to sit in the waiting area for 10-15 minutes and enjoy free treats.

Trail Mix, cookies, ice cream sandwiches, water, juice...

Where am I, Costco?

Giving blood has never been so much fun.

Now if I could only get Roy Halladay back.

What's the Deal with Cancer?

I have smoked two cigarettes in my life.

The first came at a party during my freshman year in college when I capped off a night of underage drinking by losing my tobacco virginity.

I know, I know, two wrongs don't make a right.

The second cigarette came about a week later when a girl space friend offered me a menthol.

Have you ever had a menthol?

It really is the cure to quit smoking.

It did it for me.

Now, I'm not claiming to be any type of health nut and I certainly enjoy eating straight out of the Ben and Jerry's pint as the clock strikes midnight, but fortunately tobacco has not been part of my diet since that night in 1985.

I can remember my dad puffing on a cigar from time to time.

And I can remember my mom sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom.

But fortunately I didn't come from a family of chain smokers.

Then again, my mom and dad had no brothers or sisters, so there really wasn't much of a sample.

It's always amazing to me when you walk through an airport and there is that smoke filled room with the closed glass door where the smokers are sent to cross pollenate.

How bad is this addiction that you actually WANT to open that door and walk into an ashtray?

So what's with all this smoke talk?

Well I got a call a couple of weeks ago from one of my closest friends who told me that his 72-year old father had just been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Of course, the first question out of my mouth was, "did he smoke?"

According to the American Cancer Society:

• 90% of lung cancer patients come from tobacco smoke 
• 70% of people with lung cancer are 65 years or older   
• One out of 14 people will get lung cancer at some point   
• 2009 Projections: 219,000 new cases, 159,000 deaths

So why does anyone still smoke?  

Try a menthol people.  You can thank me later.

"He smoked 30 years ago," my friend said.

He said that his father's tumor was the size of a tennis ball and that he was beginning chemo in a week and that they think the cancer has been growing for about three years, but the one piece of information that I really locked in on was that the doctors expected a full recovery.

And really that was all that mattered.

But that's not where this story ends.

You see my friend's father was driving around his hometown after the diagnosis and saw a bus with an advertisement on it.

It said something like... "if you have lung cancer and you don't think you should have lung cancer, give us a call."

It was probably a better slogan than that, but you get the point.

So he called.

The law office asked him a series of questions.

They learned that he was not a long time smoker.  They learned that he used to work in construction.  And they learned that he used to work in a building that contained asbestos.

Bingo.

Apparently this wasn't the first case of lung cancer without a smoking gun.

The lawyers told him that since he had developed lung cancer AND he worked in the building with asbestos, his settlement would be worth somewhere between 50 and 100 thousand dollars.

I guess that's good news.

My friend's dad shared the news with one of his former construction colleagues, who had been diagnosed with a mild case of Mesothelioma several years earlier.

Mesothelioma is also referred to as Asbestos Cancer.

As it turned out, his friend had spoken with a lawyer a few years back about his situation and he has been getting checks in the hundreds “from time-to-time.”

So let me get this straight -- if you are unlucky and you get lung cancer from a building with asbestos, you get one of those big Tiger Woods type checks in the neighborhood of 100 geeze.

But if you are unlucky and you ONLY get a mild case of Mesothelioma, you get dinner at Morton's.

Let me add that to the list of things that makes no sense.

Like smoking.

Brotherly Love

When it comes to Black and White, two things immediately pop into my mind:

• The classic music video of Michael Jackson’s song where the faces of all different people morph into one another, implying we are all the same

• And the Seinfeld episode where Jerry describes the classic Black and White cookie as “two races of flavor living side by side… nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate and yet somehow racial harmony eludes us.   If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved.  Look to the cookie Elaine.  Look to the cookie!

Before I get to how this relates to today’s story let me take a step back.

A few days ago, I had lunch with my brother, who is fourteen years older than me.

He lives 1,000 miles away, but for 90 minutes, we just happened to be in the same city at the same time.

My brother is a human, not a cat, but he has lived nearly nine lives.

A year out of high school, he moved to Hawaii to quench his thirst for surfing.   He bussed tables so that he could afford to ride the waves.

From there is was off to college where he would graduate a couple of years later with a degree in Liberal Studies.

Before putting his degree to work, he had one more hobby to conquer and that was skiing. 

He moved to the mountains, where he worked as a chairlift operator at a Ski Resort.

That job gave him the opportunity to ski for free in his free time.

As you can tell, he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth.   He worked hard so that he could play hard.

After he got tired of playing, he joined the working world.

At age 25, he moved back in with us.

Not because he was out of money.   It was because he had cancer.

Clearly, the games were over and it was time for reality.

That’s where the black & white comes in.

At lunch, 30+ years removed from his battle with the big C, my brother told me that while he was fighting the disease, he looked at life in two simple terms – black and white.

Black=bad.  White=good.

The goal was to make sure that you didn’t allow any black thoughts to consume you, instead spending your time on positive possibilities.

Negative thoughts were not only a waste of time, but a tremendous waste of energy -- something in short supply when you were battling what he was.

I was in my early teens when he was sick and I can clearly remember my brother being a very positive thinker, but I had never heard him put life in the black and white terms, until now.

Since we don’t see each other in person very often, it was really great to spend some quality time with him, even if it was only an hour and change.

He is older than me and wiser than me and definitely someone that I have always been able to count on for taking me down the right road.

I don’t know if he had a formal agenda for our lunch, but I could tell that he wanted to take advantage of our face-to-face time for a little unemployment pep talk.

Even if he never mentioned the “u” word.

After all, he does read the blog, so he knows exactly where I’m sitting these days.

Considering his success rate as a black and white thinker, I’d say that he is someone that I can really learn from.

He beat cancer.

Years later he beat a brain aneurism.

He has helped raise a mother with a bipolar disorder.

All the while running his own successful business.

I’ll have what he’s having.

An Extra Shot of Reality

In the last decade, Starbucks has taught us more new words than Webster.

There’s Baristas and Frappuccinos, Tazo and Vivanno.

During final exams in college, I drank “a lot” of coffee, but a latte, never heard of it.

Of course, if you are looking for a lot of coffee now at Starbucks, don’t order a tall or even a large (grande).

You’ll need to get the Venti. (For the record, there is no result for Venti at dictionary.com.)

During this time of unemployment, I have done my best to stay away from Starbucks. If I am ordering a $4 drink, I want a little umbrella to come with it.

But this week, I decided to meet an old colleague for coffee at Starbucks to catch up on the good ole days.

Little did I know that I would learn another new term -- Ulcerative Colitis.

For those of you scoring at home, Ulcerative Colitis is a form of inflammatory bowel disease.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is my friend was told that this could be the early stage of colon cancer.

That announcement woke me up faster than my Skinny Extra Hot Soy Sugar Free Vanilla Latte, with an extra shot.

My buddy is in his early 40’s with a great wife, two fantastic children and plenty of money in the bank.

He’s just starting the second half of his life -- this can’t really be happening.

This can’t really be happening?

Wow, the same exact thought I had when I became unemployed.

Did I just compare unemployment to Cancer?

Talk about a reality check.

In the last year, I have thrown a pity party or ten because I had lost my job.

Unemployed? Me? How could I ever survive?

A real kick in the gut.

Well, not literally -- it’s my friend with the REAL kick in the gut.

He says that no matter how much he eats, he’s always hungry. And whenever he feeds that hunger, it’s ALWAYS a trip to the bathroom.

It sounds like the circle of life, but hopefully not death.

Anytime a doctor throws out the c-word, Cancer, everything comes to a stop -- I don’t care if it’s an early stage or the final phase.

To think, while I was surfing through the job sites, my friend was getting a colonoscopy. I was eating humble pie, he was drinking barium.

REALITY CHECK!

All of a sudden, unemployment was not that scary.

The truth of the matter is, my friend only has one life to play with. For me, there are plenty of jobs in this world.

I could always be a Barista.

I’m praying for you buddy.