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May 26, 2011 (This certainly requires NO acknowledgement. It's one of the final updates on my Lupus War which has taken the better part of a decade of my life -- time that I have spent in both positive reflection and writing very productively. H.) Thomas, grandson/son and his good spouse, Mimie [Yirengah}, are visiting here from their current base in Iowa City where Thomas, an M.D., is entering his third year of residency -- internal medicine and psychiatry -- at the University of Iowa Hospital and Mimie, having now secured her Masters in Public Health, is deep into her academic work toward a Physician's Assistant degree. Accompanied by their two furry family members, Chocolate [a Husky/Chow mix and Kronos, a Pomeranian], the quiet ethos of our house has been significantly altered -- very pleasantly. I didn't know much about Pomeranians but Thomas tells me that they, Icelandic in origin, were once very large dogs but, via careful breeding, have been reduced to small entitities. "Physically, that is," he added, "but their egos have remained the same." A couple of nights ago, with the family favorite of Navajo Tacos as cuisine centerpiece, we had nine family members present. I was the oldest and babies Aidan and Finley [Josie/Cameron] were, at two years and almost eight months, respectively, on the other end. Throw in our two dogs and the two visiting canines and our two cats and -- you have a recipe for chaos. But everything remained remarkably laid back,with harmony interrupted only slightly by a very few inter-dog disputes over treats tossed from the table, See some -- some -- family members here, ca. 2009: http://hunterbear.org/PHOTOS%20SOME%20FAMILY%20OF%20OURS.htm Thomas, back in the day, and an undergrad at Idaho State University, had accompanied me faithfully and consistently at every juncture in the Lupus War from 2003 into 2005, usually with varying other family members with us -- and has remained closely interested in all developments. He was almost always initially ignored by the doctors with whom I was involved. But when he occasionally asked a very sharp question or made a quite insightful comment, they suddenly paid much attention to him. Now he plans a substantial medical paper on my Systemic Lupus saga. To that end, he and I traveled yesterday over to the other side of Pocatello to the brand-new and extremely large Portneuf Medical Center. The day was bright, sunny with a turquoise sky, cool. Dark green has replaced winter hereabouts but snow is very visible on the mountains around. We were seeking the basic medical records covering roughly four months -- September through December, 2003. This was the Fire Fight epoch with three substantial hospital incarcerations [each time, much of this in ICU] -- a period that saw me very close indeed to bodily death on those occasions. I really had no idea what the documents would indicate -- but Thomas recalled hearing one doctor tell another back then that mine was "Really hot Lupus." A photo of me in that time period shows an apparently very old man, super thin and gaunt with the exception of badly swollen feet and legs, wrinkled face under his Stetson hat, sitting and looking into the Cosmos. A few years later, I had once said of the photo, "Throw the Goddamned thing away" but I'm now glad to have it, following my eventual resurrection and restoration. It's a kind of stark and revealing record from a genuinely surreal and Hellish time. Portneuf is a huge hospital -- state of the art. We can see it away off from our home. But powerful elements of accrued Dine' [Navajo] tradition always lead me to see those places, in which I've been incarcerated personally a number of times over decades, as "Chindee" -- and taboo. Inside, we were immediately taken in tow by a friendly "senior citizen" lady who guided us to a higher level and a great picture window displaying much of Pocatello from a cushy lounge containing a self-playing piano. Just as we walked past, it obligingly burst forth with a favorite of mine, "The Call of the Far Away Hills" from a great film favorite, Shane. Sitting next to the piano was a very large harp -- but sans an Angel. We entered a very small room -- Medical Records. I completed a couple of legal pages releasing the documents to Thomas and, within twenty minutes, we had 68 pages of distilled small type material. Thomas, immediately engrossed in the packet and frequently exclaiming genuine awe at the dire progression, walked past the piano where an attractive earthly lady was now playing the harp -- and without noticing her. Headed home, we stopped along the way to make copies for myself. We both read through the documents, written in matter of fact fashion by a number of physicians of varying specialties -- and almost in the manner of impersonal military dispatches. They're chock-full of medical names and nouns and laboratory stats. Thomas, who easily translates this mysterious language, remarked "I knew you were very, very sick -- but Wow! -- I never knew it was this bad." "Seems like a quiet horror story," I said. And that it truly is. I had thought I might read it in detached fashion but, given the circumstances, was almost immediately carried back into Another Time. The initial physician in the emergency room, after giving me, withered and emaciated and unsteady, something of a physical, and exclaiming, "You have no blood!", wrote as his opening statement in his intake report, "This is really a quite complicated picture." And it rapidly became a great deal more complicated. At that point, a True Life Experience commenced in venomous earnest -- similar to a rodeo cowboy on a bucking horse. Quite unaware then of any Lupus possibility, and after I was told graphically that my red blood corpuscles were eating up my white ones just as soon as they were produced, the focus became, not explicitly known to me at that point, probable cancer. I had mentioned my long, early morning treks in the high hills above our home. "We will hope to find a lesion that we can cure," wrote the then primary physician, "and return this man to his fine way of life." But a colonoscopy in the context of this strange anemia, which produced nothing amiss, gave me two profound cardiac arrests with death very close by. In that experience, I sensed that I was in a kind of small dark tunnel -- sort of like a hard-rock mine "drift" -- stationary, very peaceful, unconcerned about a strange distant pounding far, far off. Eventually that came closer and closer and I finally emerged into a room with a dozen frantic heart doctors standing about -- and I immediately went into ICU. I learned that Thomas had, upon hearing a Code Blue, attempted to enter the room but had been prevented from doing so. In ICU, next day with many family members present, I wrote out a will. Even weaker by then, I could scarcely walk. Some wild heart rhythms obligingly corrected themselves in some helpful way. I was characterized "a 69 year old male. Married. Four children, half Scottish, half Indian, bear clan." A "retired sociologist" who "does not smoke or drink." It was noted in my "Family History" that "Mother died at the age of 95 and father 80 with no specific diseases, alcohol contributing to their demise." I went home for a few days while the increasingly complicated situation was examined. The focus then became blood cancer -- but one of a now myriad of diagnostic tests including scans and such -- the Bone Marrow Test -- eliminated all cancers and any infections. Via the documents it was now clear that a number of my internal organs were profoundly and very negatively affected by Something and a number of specialists became involved. There was discussion of a possibly chronic Thing. Finally, a punch-out biopsy by a dermatologist of my increasingly bright red chest rash, indicated the strong possibility of Systemic Lupus -- something confirmed by specialized blood tests managed by a hematologist. The Cornering of the Quarry was noted thusly [if laconically] via a Surgical Pathology Report: "On 10/16/03, a punch biopsy from the upper chest was interpreted as interface dermatitis with hyperkeratosis, degenerative basement membrane consistent with subacute lupus erythematosus [WB-03-3346]." By this time, huge red sores covered my face and elsewhere and there were large black sores and Thrush in my mouth. Back again in ICU, hospital administrators brought students in to view me. The hematologist informed me that he -- and more than a dozen other physicians -- "are all agreed that you have a full-blown case of Systemic Lupus." Unknown to me, there was speculation that I also had a horrible disease called "Steven-Johnson Syndrome" which completely destroys skin. Although the documents are a bit vague and non-committal on the actuality of that, I did retain my badly messed up skin -- and these garish external and mouth things gradually faded. "Weak and shaky", "unsteady" were not uncommon characterizations of me -- along with "the patient is clearly uncomfortable." The documents continued to travel calmly and methodically onward in time -- stats, medical nomenclature, summaries, physicians' names. The fairly effective steroid, Prednisone, was given me -- and produced diabetes and increased alarm about kidneys. Thus I was fighting on two medical fronts. By this time, it was into December. At one point, suddenly in a very near coma in our home, I retained enough of something to walk to our Jeep but soon lost all consciousness well short of the ER door. My blood sugar count was in the 900s. There was a cat scan of my brain which indicated All OK -- about the only organ that was. Back in ICU, it was discovered that I also had lupus pneumonia which proved resistant to conventional anti-biotics but a heavy dose of super stuff, termed "the cobalt bomb", did end that problem. I rejected Rehab and I rejected all chemo drugs. And then I was back home, for good as it turned out -- and the hospital documents end with the formal designation of my already somewhat involved and to-be long term physician, the good and medically conservative Dan Jones. By now, it was cold and bleak weather-wise, well fitting my personal ethos. One night I had a very strange and fascinating dream that I was traveling down my most favorite place in the Universe, the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area in Northern Arizona. http://hunterbear.org/ghosts.htm The initial Firefight was over and the long, long siege was underway, years of it and most of that in the context of perennial uncertainty. In time, Prednisone was replaced by the much less problematic Plaquenil and the diabetes faded away. Well before that, two visits to my physician per week finally became one visit, then two visits per month became one -- and then a long stretch of a visit every three or four months, and finally a visit each year. I never planned to die and obviously didn't. But while the hospital documents don't exactly say it, it seems clear, from those and my recollections of those extraordinarily grim times, that most physicians were not especially hopeful of my survival chances. Mimie recently heard a lecture from a genuine Authority who indicated that remissions in the case of profound Systemic Lupus virtually never occur. But that's exactly what's happened with me -- full remission -- and I now have nine pages of very, very recent detailed lab reports to prove it. http://hunterbear.org/shooting_lupus.htm The wizened "old man" is long gone and I look very much as I did in the years before this assault began. When Thomas and Mimie return to Iowa City, they'll be carrying with them the classic massive work on SLE: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Robert G. Lahita, Editor. A gift from me, it's the 2004 edition, 1343 large pages, with dozens and dozens of essays and many photos and much more. In his opening paragraph, Professor Lahita notes of SLE, "Moreover, it is a deadly disease." When I finished the sixty-eight pages, I placed them on top of the very recent lab all-clear "remission" packet. Then, I re-thought that arrangement and placed the Hospital Horror under that of Sunny Remission. I put the Fall 2003 photo of the "old and decrepit man" in a manila envelope for posterity. In the Mountains of Eastern Idaho. Nialetch / Onen Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear] HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands. Our Hunterbear website is now eleven years old.. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm See our new Somewhat Heretical Thoughts -- a mix of some of our recent, favorite posts (2009 / 2011) -- all with a social justice focus: http://hunterbear.org/absolutely_heretical_thoughts.htm See our substantial Community Organizing course (with new material into 2011): http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm And See Outlaw Trail: The Native as Organizer: (updated 2011) http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm [Included in Visions & Voices: Native American Activism (2009) ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
