It's a bird, it's a plane, uhh Jacky ??

  I don't really have any news to share right now but I thought you might enjoy this story. Although no effort was made to verify it's validity Our family takes it for the truth.

  I suppose I come by my love of speed and motorcycles honestly enough. My daddy had an Indian that he used to deliver for the drugstore with on weekdays And on the weekends he and his buddies chased girls and raced their motorcycles. But this story isn't about my daddy or me it's about my cousin Jacky. His stories always sounded a bit like a truck driver story ( you ain't gonna believe this stuff ) but his wife Sharon was always there to nod her head grimly and knowingly. This story as related by Jacky of his last ride.

    Now Jacky had two vices in this world. One was alcohol and the other was a motorcycle. Not just any motorcycle though. It had to be a Harley. And it had to be full dressed with fringe on the handlebars and saddlebags on the back. Jacky was a bit of a tinkerer too so it was pretty near the fastest thing in town. And at the very least it had to be faster than any of the cops in town. On this night he had been out with some of his cronies. To hear my aunt tell it they were all no good hoodlums. In truth these guys were all hard working farmers who just happened to have their own private beer joint out in the back pasture of one of the guy's acreage. It was a pretty good deal because you would bring your beer or whatever and put it in the fridge or a cooler and everybody would proceed to get good and drunk and not bother anyone but themselves. A stereo served as the juke box. Closing time was whenever you ran out of booze or if you were the last one out.

   This particular morning it was about 2:30 or so and Jacky had decided it was time to see if he could sneak home without waking up Sharon. No small task because he was on his Harley and the Lake pipes he had on this particular motorcycle had a tone to them that would rattle the glass out of it's panes if you weren't careful. Now the most direct route home would carry him right past the sheriff's house. So he knew he was going to have to stick to back roads. The best route would take him about a block and a half from the house but he figured if he coasted the rest of the way he could coast it right up into the driveway and no one would be the wiser. The one thing he didn't figure on though was Roy the local highway patrol was doing a late night shift watching for drunks on their way home.

   Enter Jacky. Jacky was never really known for his sneaking ability because usually the only one he fooled was himself. He was cruising about 80 mph when Roy first heard him. At first Roy didn't know who it was and lit it up code 3 after the nights bad guy. As soon as Jacky saw the lights he knew two things immediately. First he could out run Roy. The second was he had only done it sober once. He took off to the side roads and headed for the highway to put some distance between the two of them. He figured he would take Roy out on the highway and then cut back into town on the back roads so as to lose him. The one thing Jacky couldn't know however was that Roy had gotten a new car two days ago and had been dying to try it out in a high speed pursuit but that the little farm county he was assigned to rarely afforded that type of chase. Jacky's Harley would hit 150 easy enough but Roy's new Fury was supposed to hit over 165. So the race was on and after a bit when Roy started to gain on Jacky he could tell it was him seeing the fringe flapping in the extra lights Jacky had on his Harley. At this point Roy cut the siren so as not to wake any more people than necessary knowing that Jacky's pipes were doing quite well in that department by themselves. Then Jacky turned off onto a side road knowing that if he couldn't outrun a car he could darn sure out corner it by a long shot. Taking side roads back he was about two miles from home when he came up with a plot to outfox Roy. He would cut right and then left onto dirt roads so as to create a dust cloud that Roy couldn't see through zigzagging back to his house. As the plan was later explained the way it was supposed to go was he would take a hard right go about a a half of a mile, cut the engine and coast up his drive, grab the cover he kept for the Harley, cover it up and go in the house. And as I said that was the plan. That all went awry when he glanced down at the speedo and saw he was going 110 coming up on that right turn. Now he knew he had taken that turn before at nearly 90 and made it. But he had been sober. And he was going 110. He had a decision to make and in a hurry. He could either try to make the corner knowing that he would have to lay it down to the pegs to make it. Or he could keep going straight across a farmers field and a quarter mile or so he would be on another dirt road and Roy wouldn't stand a chance in hell of catching him then. So with his mind set on outrunning Roy he decided to keep it straight. The thing Jacky couldn't know however was that the field in question had been plowed and furrowed that day with furrows about a foot tall and a two feet apart. So when he left the road at somewhere over a hundred miles an hour he was standing on the pegs like a cowboy in the stirrups. And at first he thought he was going to be alright. Until he saw the furrows. Then he knew better and went into damage control mode. As he hit the first furrow it sent him up into the air and the words of Evel Kneivel came to him. Stay with the bike. So as he came back down on the first of five bounces that was what he was saying to himself. He had been somewhat prepared for the first jump since he had been standing on the pegs. But the first one took all of that away and on the down side of the second jump it pushed the saddle up into his testicles and he began to have doubts about the sanity of Evil's words. Never the less he stayed with the motorcycle. But after the third time with it crushing his groin even worse he said to hell with the motorcycle, let it fend for itself and he let go. He stayed with the bike for two more jumps before it threw him and he wound up wrapped around a telephone pole out in the middle of the field. The wind had been knocked out of him and he appeared dead. Roy came running up and stumbled down and began crying because their rivalry had always been in good fun. He said “ Damn it Jacky all I was gonna do was give you a ticket.” and that's when Jacky started to get his breath back and croaked “ If you'll get me in the back of that car and take me to the hospital you can write the whole #@! book at me. “

    After Sharon got to the hospital and was sure he wasn't going to die she swore to Roy and Jacky that he would never ride again if he wanted to stay married to her. Many years later when I was visiting him and he related this story he asked me to come outside. As we went out I saw a Harley sitting in the driveway. It was solid white with white saddlebags, lots of fringe and lots of lights. He had gone to an ag auction about 50 miles away to buy a tractor. Sharon hadn't gone so when he saw this Harley he figured why not. He could have one of the hands drive the pickup back and he could ride the Harley. What he didn't know was one of the hands had called Sharon and by the time the auction was over she was there and told him he could have the thing but it was going to have to go home on a wrecker. So to add insult to injury he had to hire a flatbed wrecker to take it back home.

And so Jacky never rode again.

And a great gnashing of teeth could be heard ( if I had any )

    7-21

    Just a quick note to let everyone know that although I'm generally weak and can't do much other than watch TV or play on the computer, I have a few appointments coming up that may shed a bit more light on my situation. The situation now is cautiously optimistic, but I'm still waiting for one more doctor to give me his evaluation before I start to breathe easier.

    Now if everybody's ready let's get on to an old fashioned rant.

   Last week our refrigerator decided to do it's every other yearly thing of freezing up. The only cure for this is to unplug it for a day or two to let it thaw out. Your only warning for this is that the temperature readouts on the front start reading temps that are nowhere near right. I don't know what braniac engineer decided that the fridge side of the unit needed a defroster to make it work right, but I would like to sentence him to 5 years of replacing the heater units in every one he/she designed. Normally I don't get all PC with the he/she thing but I wanted to make sure I included every one of the possible braniacs that may have had some input on fridge design. This particular unit is a Samsung and when we got it we were assured that with a six year warranty that it was of very high quality and we would get many years of service out of it, which I was very glad to hear at $ 1400.00. Yep, we got 6 years and a month before we had to call the Geek Squad to fix it. The first thing he told us was we were probably running it too cold. It has a temperature readout on the front of it and we had the freezer set at -10 degrees and the fridge set at 36. Of course he also said that the heater on the fridge side had to be replaced and would take a week for the part to get in. In the meantime he defrosted the fridge side and said it would be fine until he could get back with the part. He said what caused the problem was opening and closing the fridge door allowing moisture in and then to freeze. Back to the design engineer, uh were y'all not aware that we were going to have to open the door a couple of times a day ??? And we don't even have kids at home anymore to leave the door open for 30 minutes at a time. I realize that it's kind of high tech to be able to set your temps on the fridge, but the fridge side IS NEVER MEANT TO FREEZE. So tell me oh brainy one why does it do it and why can't you figure out how to prevent that ??? At a cost of over $200.00 to have a tech come out and defrost the damned thing every two years it gets old kind of quick. The repair process calls for emptying out the fridge completely, taking all of the shelves out, and then dismantling the air handler at the back of the fridge. This involves taking out about a dozen screws and using a steamer or a hair dryer to thaw out the air handler enough to get it apart to be able to finish thawing it out. This whole thing takes about two hours and another 45 minutes to put it back together. Replacing the heater takes about 5 minutes after its all apart and thawed. The only other option is the afore mentioned unplugging since the brainy ones also forgot to put an on/off switch in it. I remember all too well having to defrost the Kelvinator that I grew up with. Funny thing though it was always the freezer.

   Now with all of this being said, Teresa decided she had had enough of this and went to find another one. After we had gone to 3 places she had worn me out so a friend of hers took my place and off to Ft. Worth they went to find one. A couple of hours later a phone call said they had indeed found the perfect one but it wouldn't fit in the friends Tahoe. It was decided we would pick it up the next day in my pickup. It had to lay down due to the camper shell I have and had about 2 inches to spare. That was the easy part. When we got it home a friend came over to help get it in the house. After taking off the door to the fridge, the door to the house, and rearranging the living room furniture we finally got it in. Evidently another engineer figured out that if he made the thing a half inch bigger it would require you to disassemble your house to get it in. I imagine them sitting at a screen much like the one on NCIS in the MTAC room where they are watching by satellite someone try desparately to get one in their house while one of the helpers goes to fetch a chainsaw to make the door big enough to get it in. But after much groaning and grunting and more than a little swearing it was in the house and many hours later it was cooling, loaded, and in place with the water line hooked up and all. It has a lot of pretty lights inside and one to show you when you didn't leave the glass under the ice dispenser long enough so you can see the last ice cube go shooting across the floor.

    Engineers have long been overlooked as someone to throw rotten tomatoes at. I think it's because as we grew up we heard the name engineer and immediately thought of the train engineer. And a lot of boys had dreams of becoming one some day. But these are not the types of engineer that I have a problem with. The type I'm talking about is the one that designs a Kia that has to have the top end of the engine taken apart to change the spark plugs. What, you say, surely I'm exagerating. Nope, a Kia Sorento requires that you take off the intake manifold to change the plugs introducing a whole other level of possible problems. I'm sure that the original idea was to make sure you took your vehicle back to the dealer since no one in their right mind would tackle that under their own little shade tree. Or how about a Chrysler product ( and here I must apologize as it's been over 14 years since I saw it and I don't remember the exact model ) that requires you to pull the engine to change the starter. It was a front wheel drive car, but the engine was mounted in such a way so as to make it impossible to work on without pulling the engine.

    These are the types of engineers I'm talking about. These people should be watched from an early age and when an instructor sees this type of behavior a note should be made somewhere that will follow them through their education and on into their career. These notes individually wouldn't mean much, but as they added up over time one could see where it would be headed and the person could be warned. Warned of what ? Warned that if they continued to put out designs that required ridiculous amounts of labor to fix a problem that would inevitably come that they would have to be sterilized to prevent future generations of braniacs. Of course this could never happen but I can dream.

  

You're just gonna hafta read it

    7-14

    I guess I'm supposed to take the bad with the good but today about stretched that line to the limit. When you call in to make an appointment you get a recording like in a lot of other places nowadays. The big difference here is that the recording tells you that if you are feeling depressed or maybe thinking of suicide etc. you should call an 800 number that they give you. We went to the clinic in Ft. Worth today to see my primary care doctor. Mine is a woman, which I have no problem with the gender. What I don't suffer well though is someone that does not listen to what you are saying and continues to repeat the same crap over and over. One of my complaints today was my right shoulder that has a really tight knot in it, I can't lift my arm over my head, and is painful if I lift it over my head which I have to do with my left arm. When I had my PET scan the other day I had to keep my arms over my head for a little over 20 minutes. By the time I got out and was able to move my arm down I was almost ready to cry. They talk about your pain number all the time. At that time it was somewhere around an 8 or 9. When I talked to her about this her answer was to take more pain meds. Gee, and I always thought that when you told your dr. about some pain their first concern was what was causing it. No, it's take more pain meds. Who knew ? She went on to say that it was not her concern, it was the ENT clinic. If I remember the song right “ The shoulder bone's connected to the neck bone “ which means it's the ENT clinic's problem. With that logic my swollen knee is their problem too. I told her my knee was swollen and hurting and she said take more pain meds. I'm beginning to think what she's trying to get me to do is call that 800 number and tell them I'm about to murder my doctor. Either that or she's trying to turn me into an addict. Well, good luck on that because I haven't met the pain med yet that I could get addicted to. Don't get me wrong, there are several I like because they do the job that they're intended to. But the side effects of most of them are worse on me than the temporary pain relief. I have a fairly high tolerance for pain but along with that comes a high tolerance for drugs that relieve pain. That is, it takes a lot to do the job. And I'm not one that enjoys the doped up feeling when you take enough to feel high.

    7-16

    On to a better day. I went to the ENT clinic today and they gave me the full results of the PET scan. ( Is everyone holding their breath ? It's OK you can breath now. ) After getting through all the mumbo jumbo of technical medical jargon it seems I'm fine now. They aren't ruling out future problems mostly due to what the radiation may have done. But for all intents and purposes I'm in the clear. I have to go back for monthly checkups for the first year and every two months after that for the next four years. Another PET scan will follow in a few months. Thankfully the ENT doc listens and is willing to talk about your problems and offer any guidance necessary. She also agreed with me that more pain meds is not the answer to the problem with my shoulder and that it's not related to the neck. She said I may have to go for physical therapy to get my shoulder back to normal.

Well I know this has been a short one but I wanted to get the news out because I know a lot of people wanted to know. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. Please keep them coming “ cuz I ain't outa here yet .”

Hi Ho Hi Ho a writing I must go

   7-12

   After several weeks of trying to return my life to normal the stuff that the chemo people warned me about has finally come to pass. A loss of strength, energy and a general feeling of malaise. This past week I have slept more than I can remember since I don't know when. Without being too graphic Monday was just horrible and the rest of the week has been playing catch up. Friday was a clinic day that started with labs. I was more than a bit dehydrated and I was afraid that the blood draw was going to be a battle. The vampires in the lab are professionals though and had success on the second stab. Of course they also handed me two containers to fill with urine and they're still waiting on that. One of the clinics I had to see was Nuclear Medicine and I had to be fasting for that. Since I was still feeling nauseated the fasting didn't really bother me so much but it added to the general feeling of weakness and the dehydration level. The only good part of the visit was after the nurse had injected me with some dangerous looking stuff I was allowed to take a short nap all while being covered in very warm blankets. I realize that it's summer and everyone wants the AC on but the average temp in there is around 72 and I know that I'm not the only one in there that was wanting something to keep warm. Most of the nurses had a sweater and I usually have mine but when you leave the house and the outside temp is nearing 90 with predictions for 100 it doesn't really occur to you to grab your sweater. We keep our thermostat at the house set on 79 and there are times I even have a sweater on there but I know that's just my internal thermostat going crazy again. Maybe someone ( one of the doctors there maybe?) should remind them that going in and out of a cool building and into the heat isn't very conducive to good health.

The visit to Nuclear Med clinic was a bit weird and I almost felt like I was on a set from some sci-fi movie. The nurse spoke with a what I believed to be a heavy Hungarian accent. ( I wasn't about to ask, she had needles and I was too weak to put up much of a fight anyway.) After she started the IV she left the room and came back with a box approximately 12 inches long and about 5 wide and 5 tall. She set it down and by the way she handled it I could tell it was very heavy. It turns out it was lead lined as was the syringe she pulled out of this box. This syringe was almost two inches in diameter although it was mostly just lead shielding. Then she injected me with this stuff which I almost expected some weird science experiment to transform me into something. Exactly what I'm sure I don't know. Even my imagination has a hard time coming up with what to do with a 6'9” skinny toothless old guy. The only thing still functioning worth a darn in me is my brain and there are more than one person lately that would debate that. ( And probably many more that have always debated it. ) As I said earlier then she wrapped me up and I got a nap. Then on to the torture chamber. Actually it was the PET scan machine but my right shoulder has a knot in it and when they had me lift my arms over my head to get me in position for the scan it felt more like I had a knife stuck in below my shoulder blade trying to come out at my shoulder. The technician said it would take 20 minutes and when he came on the intercom and said “ Nine more minutes” I wasn't sure I was going to make it. When they finally pulled me out of the tube I had to take my left arm and lift my right arm back down. Then they had one more to do but luckily my arms didn't have to be up for this one. Needless to say by the time I got out of there I was wiped out. I hadn't had anything to eat all day and very little to drink. I wasn't sure I would hold anything down so I waited till I got home to try. When I did sit down at the house I took one can and a big glass of water and let that sit for a while. Finally later that evening I was able to take two cans. For those of you that haven't been following right now nearly my only source of nutrition is from pouring two 8 oz. cans of liquid, similar to Boost, into a tube inserted into my stomach. I am able to eat some things by mouth but it has to be the consistency of baby food.

   Monday I go to see my primary care Dr. and Wednesday I go back to the ENT clinic and I'm supposed to get the results of the PET scan so I'll sign off for now and let y'all know how all of this goes next week.