September ended in December, and now it's February

[This was written two ... no, three years ago, actually a little more. I was tempted to, and tried to update it, but could not remember what it felt like to be me back then. I am older, now, though I doubt any wiser, and I wonder why what Dylan recorded three days after I turned 13 still says something to me three days before I'm closer to 63 than  62.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w95sbCUBG54&feature=youtu.be&t=24m38s

There was a very strange thing in the last post, though I doubt anyone noticed. It was my saying, at the very end, that I still had to figure out who I wanted to be when I grew up. Strange for someone on the cusp of entering their sixth decade, but there is a back story.

In the post, I talk about my returning to my workplace for the first time after cancer treatment on September 11, 2009, the day my friend Chris was saying goodbye to make way for new people at the head of the network. And I talk about how desperately I wanted to get back to my (old) life, once treatment was over and its effects began to subside. And how that all got tied up emotionally for me with Green Day's song, "Wake me up when September ends," even though Billie Joe Armstrong's September had been at the beginning of the 1980's, and mine at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century.

And in the post four months ago, I say that I had wanted to go back to my pre-cancer life, but could not, but don't say why.

The implication is pretty clear that the reason is simply that the experience had changed me so much that there was no going back to the old me. True enough, but ... there was an added dimension.

CNN's Spanish language services, which had been my professional home for more than two decades, were being transformed, to abandon what was considered a repetitious, breaking news-oriented format towards one that placed the greater emphasis on talking with guests instead of repeating reports from professional journalists, and sought to branch out from the narrow politics-and-business concept of "news," with a bit of science/technology/medical news to evoke the "gee whiz" factor and garnished with sports, weather, and this weekend's movies. The most heavily promoted shows of the relaunched network being a nightly interview show in the style of what Larry King had been doing for nearly half a century, a relatively safe, non-confrontational space for politicians and other celebrities to promote their wares or present their case; a daily mid-morning women's "news" show; and a daily hour-long "entertainment" (in reality, gossip) show.

Honestly, there's two --or perhaps three-- people I can be. The hard nosed and cynical reporter, a doubting Thomas who wants to put his fingers in the holes. The acerbic commentator. Or the old activist, driven by love and rage and the conviction that one day there will be a better world -- or none.

Those three people, in turn, can staff any number of positions --and have-- in  media and communications. Writer, editor, interpreter, translator, announcer, analyst, producer, manager and so on. But the one thing they could not be is purveyors of  "be scared ... be very scared" crime/terrorism propaganda ensconced in happy talk. Opposites though they may appear, their social function is essentially the same -- to distract people, draw attention  away from the individual and collective problems, the challenges and opportunities they face in everyday life.

Happily, I was spared the choice between being true to myself and abandoning a secure job and salary. I was the most senior employee in the newsroom, having been there for 20 years. And I had two decades of journalist experience before that, going back to when the president was Nixon and the scandal du jour was Watergate.

Not much call for that if the aim is never to come close to twitter's 140-character limit or make someone in the audience feel you know more than they do just because you were there and did put your fingers in the holes. Especially if the employer put a premium on knowledge and experience, which CNN does, or did, and paid accordingly.

So after "abolishing" my position, and "inviting" me to apply for the same sort of job, the most junior guy in the new "management" told the most senior guy on the staff that he had not been chosen. I came out of the session with mixed feelings, but mostly thankful that I hadn't been the one to get 30 pieces of silver out of the deal.

It will be a long time before this post sees the light of day. I got the best severance package of anyone at CNN en Español because I'd been there the longest, but it was on condition --among others-- that I don't say anything bad about them. Once the package runs out, I'll try to remember to post this.

[Well, remember I finally did.]

One day more

[This is from March, three or four months ago. I'm fine; it was just a scare due to having talked myself into believing I had a recurrence or new primary].

For weeks my unease has been growing. I've not been feeling well Queasiness has blossomed into nausea, listlessness into drop-dead fatigue, momentary wobbles into falling down with drunken dizziness even though I haven't had a drop.

"In a real dark night of the soul," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day."  But it is worse when it is actually three AM. As it is right now.

Thursday a week ago I went to the Emory University Winship Cancer Center for one more regular screening: They drew blood ("labs"). They did a neck and chest CT scan. It always makes me nervous. Monday morning early their phone call woke me up. Could I come in so they could draw more blood?

"Sure," I said. "Let me get to my calendar."

"Oh that won't be necessary, sir." They wanted me down there three mornings in a row, as early in the morning as possible. Starting that day. Or if that wasn't possible, the following one.

So I went from nervous to frankly worried. But when I pulled into the valet parking at Emory on the second morning, panic hit. There was something about being there two days in a row: suddenly I felt I was back 4 years ago, in my lost summer of 2009.

Lost, not because I regret what it took to get me cured --I guess I should say, "cured for a time"-- but because I remember so little, except the dementia at the end. The worries. The desperation. Waking up and it was three o'clock in the morning, and I'd only had two hours sleep. Like tonight.

Well, not quite. Tonight there's been no sleep. At all.

Yesterday afternoon I'd  almost had a heart attack. At about 5:30 I answered the phone, and it was the  Emory Clinic Department of Otolaryngology. "You have an appointment with Dr. Wadsworth on July 3, but we have to see you before then," she said, and in an instant my heart rate shot up, I could hear the blood rushing in my ears and did not hear what else she said. Dr. Wadsworth had diagnosed the cancer initially. This was it. Relapse or a new primary?

I asked her to repeat what she was saying. "Dr. Wadsworth will not be in that day, so we'd like to move your appointment to the week before, or later in the month," she said, as I tried top stop myself from hyperventilating. I felt dizzy. I told myself I was going to pass out. The moment passed.

It's not one day anymore. Hours.


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