Another Biopsy

 Last Thursday I went to my dermatologist for a scheduled periodic visit. It was a couple of months late because I had canceled it twice before for scheduling reasons. Not that it mattered in the long run.

It's been several years (three?) since the last time I went and had a biopsy that turned out to be basal cell cancerous. Since then I've gone every six months with no problems. 

Except I have noticed that some of the scaliness on the tips of my left ear was not going away. I had applied the cream, but still, it remained. Maybe I didn't do the cream as religiously as I should have, but it always burned when I did.

This visit she decided to take a biopsy. Results will be back in 7-10 days she said.

She's taken two previous biopsies. Both have come back positive. She has a good track record. I hope she is wrong this time.

I'm Baaack!

 I'm finally back to writing. I've had several weeks' worth of reading to do for my two book clubs as well as just some personal reading that I felt I owed myself. Consequently, my blog has suffered. Additionally, we were finally able to take a few days earlier this month to travel to New Jersey to see my oldest daughter and her family. And we finished it off by seeing our youngest daughter on our way back through PA and taking her to dinner one night.

Reading-wise, as I said, it was busy. Six books in June from my last post on the 10th of June, and nine more this month - finished the ninth one just yesterday. Of those fifteen, nine were nonfiction, and six were fiction.

It wasn't always comfortable reading. We have had very hot weather - 90 degrees plus for over two weeks - and again our air conditioner has been broken for most of that time. Oh, and did I say I got no reading done on our 4-day trip north?

But I have been diligent in writing reviews on my Goodreads account. They are getting better. Not great yet, but a few readers do respond by hitting the thumbs-up icon. 

And I watched most of the 2021 Tour de France and am still watching a fair amount of the Tokyo Olympics. Remember, I carried the 1984 torch on its way to Los Angeles. And I watched the U.S. Open and the (British) Open in the last two months. So I have had a few things other than blogging to do I guess.

Notable nonfiction during this period: Nuremburg: Infamy on Trial (Joseph Persico); The Sixth Extinction (Elizabeth Kolbert); Season to Taste (Molly Birnbaum); Essays After Eighty (Donald Hall); Gallopoli (Alan Moorehead)

Best fiction: Before the Poison (Peter Robinson); The Last Bookshop in London (Madeline Martin); Angels in the Gloom (Anne Perry); Flashman (George MacDonald Frazer)

Dreams

I am reading Oliver Sacks' book, "Hallucinations", for our July book club meeting. That has got me to thinking about my dreams; not that I believe my dreams are hallucinations. But they do have recurring themes or things that appear in most of them.

Most of my dreams consist of me doing some kind of military activity. It is not a war or fighting; usually just some kind of training exercise. It usually takes place in some unidentified location that looks like a military post with many barracks. Several common threads are running through each dream: running late, not packed for wherever I am going (and I am always going somewhere), and being out of uniform.

I see myself rushing to catch my train - my usual more of travel in my dream. If not a train, then it is a military jeep. I haven't packed well. Sometimes I am carrying my suitcase bulging with clothes hanging out, not zipped closed, and I am struggling to hold on to it as I run to get on the train. 

When I travel by jeep, it gets dangerous because I am usually not driving and the driver is speeding and reckless. 

I often do even get that far. I've got my gear laid out on my bunk and haven't even begun to pack when someone runs in and tells me to hurry or I'll miss my ride. I look at myself in the mirror and see that I am out of uniform. It's always BDU's. Never a dress green uniform. That's interesting in that I seldom wore anything BUT my greens for the last 11 years of my active career, and that continued for 17 years while teaching JROTC at Xavier. 

Sometimes though, the dream takes place at Xavier where I taught for 17 years. When that is the case I do seem to recognize people who I worked with at the school, but not their faces or names. I just know they are not strangers.

When I am at Xavier, I am in the building and running through the halls and different floors. I don't go outside.

I usually wake up before I get to where I am going.  

Dink or Beanie?

Cleaning my magazines this weekend, I came across the latest issue of W&J Alumni Notes. Among the articles, which mostly don't interest me, was one about the Freshman beanie, or as the article called it, the Dink.

The Dink was a small felt cap that the Freshmen wore their first year until about Easter. By the time I went to 'Jay, it was only the first six weeks. But that was long enough.

The beanie - what we called it - had changed as well. The design was now alternating triangular felt panels of black and red. It still had the "W & J" logo in black. As the article said, the freshmen had to doff the beanie and hit the sidewalk making a clicking sound with the metal button on top of the cap. 

By striking it hard on the pavement, eventually, the felt on the button would wear off and make a metallic sound. Initially, the sound was obviously muted. Being bright young men of some repute, it didn't take long for us to realize that if we scraped the felt off the buttons, we would be seen as respectful and dutiful Frosh.

I don't remember anything about the Lex Ultimo, or Freshman Court. It may have still been in existence, but I was never found not doing the right thing. 

I don't have my beanie anymore. It now resides at the home of a past friend of the opposite sex.

A Visit to the ER

 This has been a month of reading and book clubs and doctor visits with a short detour to the emergency room. Not much writing got done. My handwriting especially has taken a dive. 

Let's begin with the ER visit. Two weeks tonight I woke up with the worst shaking I have ever experienced. My whole body shook uncontrollably. I had to go to the bathroom where I threw up in a bucket while I had diarrhea on the toilet. Once I ejected things from my body, my shakes stopped, but I had an upset stomach the rest of the night and into Sunday. 

Monday I was still not feeling that good, but did not have any more shaking or upset stomach. When Lisa came home from work, she came over to where I was sitting in my LazyBoy, saw my legs, and said, "You need to go to the ER". So we went.

Once the ER people ran an Ultrasound and ruled out a clot in my leg, they pumped me full of antibiotics in an IV and said I had cellulitis in my left leg. They gave two antibiotic prescriptions and drew a blue line on my leg so I could watch whether the infection was retreating or still advancing.

Fortunately, it retreated. The redness is almost completely gone as is most of the swelling. Oddly, I never had any pain.

Andrew

I have been spending some time this month online looking for old friends who served with me in the military. This all started when I got a daily notice on FB for who's birthday it was. It was my first platoon leader, Sonny, from Vietnam in 1969. I happened to remember him posting a couple of years ago about having cancer from Agent Orange. So I went to his post to see what his status was.

The first post I saw was "Happy Birthday in Heaven". I didn't have to read more. I knew he had passed away. I read a few more and then decided to look at his friends' list. I found my second platoon leader, and through him, one of my medics. I have found five so far from Vietnam. I decided to look for more.

I had gone to a British Army school in England in 1971 for 13 months. It only had 30 army officers in my class: 24 British, 3 Australian, 2 US, and 1 Canadian. One of my friends I always remembered well was an officer in the Household Cavalry. This is one of the mounted units that protected the Queen. Andrew was a captain and belonged to the Life Guards. This unit wore bright red tunics (the Blues and Royals, the other mounted unit wore dark blue).

When I googled his name, it was a hyphenated name, I found him quickly. He had evidently died in 1985. Searching a little more I found that he was murdered in a botched robbery attempt in his house where he lived in Zimbabwe. He discovered the burglar, shot at him but missed. During the ensuing fight, the burglar wrestled the pistol from Andrew and shot him twice. A trial two years later found the man guilty and he was hanged for Andrew's murder. 

I plan on writing more about Andrew in the future, but for now here are a couple of photos that show him in our class. Not the best but the only ones I have. He is in the upper right corner.

As you can see, the Household Cavalry soldiers were selected for their height as well as other attributes. A lot like our own Old Guard who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns.

More later.

Return of the Missing Blogger

I have been busy though not on the blog. I have been reading. With one day to go, I have read 11 books. I may have another by the end of the month. IN any case, this has been a good month for reading. I have read books for simple enjoyment; I have read for my book clubs, and I have begun reading for my monthly classic challenge (see my March 21 post).

Breaking them down-

For the book clubs: 1

For the monthly classics challenge: 1

For learning/study: 2

For enjoyment: 7

Another way of looking at them-

Fiction: 8

Nonfiction: 3

I am actually in the process of selecting my next monthly classic. After reading The Warden I decided I wanted to read something from the 20th century. I was looking at five books when I came across this Facebook post from one of my reading groups:

So I decided to see if that might help me. Here are the first sentences of each book. See if you can identify any of them.

"Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down."

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"U Po Kyin, the Subdivisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, in Upper Burma, was sitting in his veranda."

"Hughes got it wrong, in one important detail."

"Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes."

Before I give you the titles and the names of the authors, try to see if you know any of them, have read any, or can just guess from the first line. (Note: I will tell you that the fourth one is not by an author on my original list of the March post, so it doesn't really count. It was in the pile just I could decide if I wanted to begin reading it.)

So here they are:

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell

Burmese Days by George Orwell

Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser

Animal Farm by George Orwell

I'll choose by Saturday. Any suggestions before that?