Home Again

Well, I’m home. I’m due for a painkiller pretty soon, and I suppose once that happens, I won’t feel like sitting here and typing.

At this point, before we actually have a pathology report, we believe that the cancer was contained within the kidney, and it has been successfully removed. I see the surgeon tomorrow, and there is some chance that the pathology report will be available at that time. The immediate, post-surgery report he gave to my wife indicated the cancer had not spread anywhere else. I’ll qualify that because he removed some lipid ducts that appeared enlarged, and we didn’t hear about that until later. I’m hopeful that was just the conservative thing to do.

I did have a couple of post-surgical complications, however. That means I didn’t return home until yesterday afternoon, which was Memorial Day and two days later than we expected. Waiting to be released that last day, I spent way too long watching CNN, which had very touching tributes from family for soldiers who had died in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Then I got the okay to be released. As my wife drove us off the hospital campus, I told her how happy I was to be headed home. “Happy, happy, happy,” I said.

Around bedtime yesterday evening, my six-year-old son, still very pleased to have his dad home, comes to bed to snuggle. “I’m happy your home, dad.”

I said, “I am, too. I told your mom how happy I was to be in the truck, headed home from the hospital. I was outdoors for the fist time since Thursday.”

He replied, “It’s nice to be outdoors. There’s fresh air, cool breezes and birds chirping.”

I believe that I could not have written a better description.

On Liquids

It’s Tuesday. I’ve started my clear liquid diet for surgery on Thursday. I’m just a little hungry. Jello isn’t quite filling me up. My daughter had her school music recital this evening. Earlier today, my wife and I went to my son’s kindergarten class for a long-delayed story-time for being star student. I helped serve cupcakes. I’m not a big fan of sweets, so serving food wasn’t as bad as it sounded. I only had a little lick of frosting off my finger.

Friday night, we took the kids to Family Swim Night at the pool where my son takes lessons. I felt strong in the water, and there was no pain in my side. A couple of times, my daughter and I raced across the pool. I sort of cruise, but it won’t be long before she can beat me. I hope surgery doesn’t keep me out of the water for the whole summer.

Afterwards, we went down to the kitchenette, the collaborative artspace that I am a member of, to see Patrick’s show. He is showing big, beautiful color prints around the idea of monuments. They were shot at interesting sites. The scale of the work is appropriate for the subjects, and his toying with focus makes the emphasized detail ironically more important than the sites themselves. It was worth the trip.

My TIME magazine came. Richard Lacayo brought to my attention two notable arts events happened this last week that I didn’t even know about. The first is the republication of two pivotal volumes of photography: Robert Frank’s The Americans and Robert Adams’ The New West. I might argue long and hard that Robert Frank is the most important photographer in the latter half of the 20th century. And since I grew up in the high plains below the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, I’ve always responded to Robert Adams’ observations of the Denver metro area and the surrounding area. Read Lacayo’s homage to these two great books in the article, ‘Homeland Insecurity.’

The second event of note was the passing of Robert Rauschenberg. One of the artists that bridged the gap between the Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, my own interest in photomontage owes no small debt to Rauschenberg’s appropriation and re-contextualizing of news images and found objects.

Saturday, I didn’t walk.

Sunday, I caught the first southbound bus out of my neighborhood. I was in downtown Phoenix before 7:00 AM. With only 3/4 of a cup of tea in me, I wasn’t finding much. Downtown is being developed, big time, and the techie veneer is less than interesting to look at. The light was nice.

Near the end of my walk I came upon 4 guys with metal detectors searching a vacant lot near 7th Avenue and West Lincoln.

I spoke with one, who said they like to call themselves urban treasure hunters. Having searched around downtown for what ultimately are fairly trivial images, I thought they were not unlike what I had been doing all morning. We were both using technology to explore the world in a way that others typically don’t see it, which is a basically solitary activity, with a small, like-minded community, and there is a kind of curiosity about what is under the surface.

Which recalled the NPR story about 1st Lt. Nate Rawlings, a IED hunter in Iraq. The article called ‘Bomb Squad’is Whitney Terrell’s Washington Post story about him..

The NPR story had a moment where Lt. Rawlings speaks about listening to his iPod and being where he was among other people, but simultaneously being completely alone. That happened here in the States as well as when he was serving in the Middle East.

I thought about that and walking with a camera – and of walking with cancer. I am nowhere close to being the hero that Lt. Rawlings is; it is presumptuous of me to even begin to think my experience is anything like his. However, I think about that moment when photographers find themselves in the position of observer, rather than participant. That moment, when one who steps back to tell a story, or just to look, is about a kind of separation.

Maybe when the photograph works, it’s about bridging that separation. That is too much to think about right now.

More to the point, though, is my perception that this 800-pound gorilla in the room looms over all my conversations. It just seems to me that if my friends don’t ask me about the cancer, I shouldn’t bring it up. But it helps me not feel alone when I talk about it, which is, I guess, why I’m writing this blog.

This site was in a dead end alley, which had a dumpster blocking access to the end of the alleyway. This is just as I found it. It appears that three people could sit around the array of sheet metal duct work.

Yesterday, I climbed Piestewa. A couple of guys my age or maybe a few years younger reached the top shortly after I did. I’d passed them on the way up. I got the feeling that one of them didn’t hike a lot and sort of struggled to get to the top. They asked if I was I was in shape. I shook my head, and said, “No.” I hesitated a bit and said, “But I’m in better shape now than I was a month ago.”

“Good for you,” came the reply.

Indeed.

Today, I walked my 3 mile route around the canal. I’m a little preoccupied, which means I’m pretty unfocused getting out of the house. With some serious, triple digit heat upon Phoenix, the walks today and yesterday were later in the morning than ideal. I’m not sore, though, and walking provides a clear structure and goal so that I’m focused for the 50 minutes it took to do it.

And I hope that makes me more focused on what I really need to be focused on, right now.

3 Walks in 3 Days

A Street Advertisement for the PBS series ‘Carrier.’

Many friends and relatives have sent very kind notes of support. I am truly gratified with the words of encouragement and friendship. I’ve been on the phone a little bit. I spent yesterday morning writing a couple of e-mails and checked the college account for the first time since graduation. I’m glad I did, although I also am glad I didn’t check it earlier.

I went for a long walk today. We’ve been putting off some repairs to my wife’s Honda, so after dropping my son at school, I drove it over to the shop. I turned down a ride home saying I was going to walk up to the bridge across the freeway. The artist who was involved in the bridge's design did the community based work at the school where my wife teaches. My wife had helped with the project. We had connected the artist with a person to cut mats for the prints she had made. I’d never walked over the bridge.

I made a couple of photos and noted that I should come back when the light was more interesting.

From there I walked to 19th Avenue where I caught a bus going south. The Red Line bus I caught went east on Camelback Road and didn’t turn south on 7th Avenue as I expected. A guy in a U.S. Postal Service shirt with three backpacks and bags and a cheap guitar got on and sat in the next seat. He was just learning to play. Or maybe he was just pretending to play because he couldn’t play much.

A stop or two later, a drunk Native American got on and sat between the musician and I. The drunk had long black hair, a scraggly goatee and reeked of alcohol. I should note that the first two of those three items describe me.

“Play me a song, dude.” It didn't take long for the postal worker to move his bags and himself to another seat.

So after a bus stop or two he turns to me and says, “Hey longhair, how’s it going?”

I look him right in the eye, hold his gaze for a moment, then say “It’s going great.”

Wednesday and yesterday were good days. I climbed Piestewa Wednesday. I felt good before starting and early in the climb. However, I wasn’t so fast getting up to the top. Even though the temperature was probably still just 80°, climbing at midday is draining with the direct sun on the entire trail.


My hand on the last outcropping at the summit of Piestewa.

Yesterday, I just walked my 3-mile loop along the canal. Later, I went to help a friend straighten out a printing workflow issue. It was nice to visit.

Two Signs Merged

I figure that holding the drunk's gaze for a moment worked because he seemed to get the idea that I didn’t want to talk. So he turns his attention back to the musician, who is now halfway across a fairly crowded bus. The musician ignores him and after a few more stops the drunk gets off.

I do the same at the next bus stop.

Wednesday night I started feeling a very slight pain in my left side, which is where my affected kidney is. It may just be the stent the doctor left in my ureter after the biopsy. The stent is a tube, about 1/16th inch in diameter and maybe 18 inches long, which had a few holes in it toward the ends. It tends to curl at the ends, and the curls are what keep the ends in place. One end is in the renal pelvis, which I believe to be the urine collection part of the kidney and the site of the tumor, and the other end is in my bladder. A few little holes toward the stent’s ends allow urine to move through the stent to the bladder.

Putting the stent in after the biopsy was standard procedure. The biopsy had to this point been the most discomfiting moment in this process. The doctors did a ureteroscopy, which is a procedure using a this lighted tube to look inside the bladder, ureter and renal pelvis to check for abnormal areas. I had to have a general anesthetic for that. When it was over, I got an infection. That was no fun.

A Rock on a Square

So after wandering generally east on the streets south of Indian School Road, I end up on 7th Street across from the Veteran’s Administration Hospital. I decide it's time to catch a bus home. A guy in his twenties rolls up to the bus stop in a chair. He says to me, “I can’t believe she did that.”

“Did what?”

“I told her to turn right and she turns left!” His cell goes off and he starts yelling and calls the person on the other end a bitch and tells her to get her ass over here now.

Seeing visceral anger in a wheelchair, I wonder if he is a veteran of Iraq. I’m quite sure I shouldn’t try to stare this guy down to get him to leave me alone. He rolls to the other side of the bus stop, and continues his complaints.

She comes. He leaves. The bus arrives. I leave.

Chance Meeting

Today, the high temperature in Phoenix was just 76 degrees. That was WAY cool for mid-May – so to speak.

Anyway, it was such a nice day, I figured I’d climb Camelback Mountain instead.

At the Cholla Trailhead.

I feel the need to write a few words about these photos. Some of you that might be checking here are photographers, but some are family and friends. The Piestewa climb in the 35 Minutes entry and the images with this entry were made on my wife’s old compact Nikon digital camera. We just bought her a little Canon digital SLR (little – with more megapixels than my camera), so she is generously letting me use her old camera.

It has an interval timer feature. I have been setting the camera up to shoot an image every 30 seconds as I climb. On today’s climb, I had a much better feel for when the shot was actually going to be made. That means today’s shots are sort of aimed at something, although I am not looking at an LCD screen or through a viewfinder. The pictures are of whatever I happen to be next to, every 30 seconds or so. As such, there is a large degree of chance involved.


At any rate, there were 100 shots in 49 1/2 minutes, and that’s approximately how long it took me to get to the top of Camelback.

I’ve been walking with a GPS device. It said that the Cholla Trail was almost 1.9 miles from the trailhead to the summit. From where I parked on Invergordon Road, however, the walk was almost 2.5 miles. The elevation gain on the trail itself is about 1285 feet. It is not as consistently steep as Piestewa, but because of the length, the time in the sun and the scrambling required at the top, I’ve always felt Camelback is the more difficult climb.



Today’s story is about a picture I didn’t make. On the way down, I was walking near a man in a Kansas Jayhawks T-shirt. A couple on the way up, seeing an approaching dark cloud, asked him if there was rain on the other side. He said no, but as we walked on he asked me if I thought it might rain on us. I told him I thought we’d be down before it got close enough, but if I was that couple, I’d be more worried about lightning.

He laughed and said now I have two things to worry about.

So then I see a nun in her habit, also climbing up. I smiled and said hello, and she had a large, friendly smile and said hi back. It’s a beautiful day, and I see a pretty smile in the desert wearing a symbol of God, with the potential for the dark cloud in the distance. I didn’t ask for a picture.

I’ll just say that I don’t like accosting total strangers for an image.

But I did think to tell the Jayhawk T-shirt guy, “She doesn’t have to worry about being struck by lightning.”

Circles Around Goals

So I am walking everyday before the surgery. I had told my friend, Craig, my goal was to do the Piestewa summit trail three times this week. The real goal is to get some abdominal muscle tone before surgery. The idea is that the better my abs are, the shorter my recovery time. This X-Ray should tell the story – I am not the owner of abs of steel.

This image is probably more information than anyone really wants. I called my doctor the same day I saw blood in my urine. The first CT scan and IVP were inconclusive, so we had to re-image about 3 months later.

The surgery to remove my kidney, the ureter and part of my bladder is going to be laparoscopic, which means that the recovery time shouldn’t be too long. Of course, if the doctor finds something unexpected, the surgical team will have to open me up. That would mean a longer recovery.

A pathology report will be done on the carcinoma once my kidney is out. The results of that test will determine whether chemotherapy will be required.

Today, I walked 5 miles in about 90 minutes. I carried Teri’s old camera, but discovered I had forgotten to re-insert the CF card. I never do that. That means that today’s images are cell phone images. The image above is graffiti on a block wall with protruding mortar near Dunlap Road and the Arizona Canal, my halfway turn point.

Some landscaping has been completed on portions of the Arizona Canal where I walked. This canal brings water for lawn irrigation to some older neighborhoods in Phoenix. The tree shadow looks like blood veins or a river’s drainage. The round concrete looks like a vessel.

This year, in the Salt and Verde River drainages, the snow-pack levels were well above average. I’m sure that most people in the Valley are unaware of the droughts hitting other parts of the country. Dams and reservoirs above Phoenix provide storage for relatively dry years the city has had recently. The irony is that places where water is typically more reliable lack the infrastructure to store water for two years. Here, where water is scarce and dry conditions are the norm, there are more long-term contingencies for drought.

The Valley’s reservoirs are nearly full, though. And knowing this, most everyone in the Valley is using water in the same old wasteful ways. There is no change in behavior to prepare for what might happen tomorrow.

It’s supposed to be unseasonably cool tomorrow. I have a morning appointment, so I can’t climb until after 11:30 AM or so. Midday in May is typically not a good time to climb Piestewa. We’ll see.

35 Minutes

This image is at the trail marker at the bottom of the Piestewa Peak summit trail, which I climbed this morning. The images that follow are in chronological order.

Piestewa Peak is a mountain near my home that was renamed for Lori Piestewa, who is believed to be the first Native American female soldier killed in combat on foreign soil. Piestewa was friends with Jessica Lynch and died on March 23, 2003, in the battle that Lynch was taken prisoner. This pair of images are about 3 and 4 minutes into the walk.

Just one month ago, the U. S. Board on Geographic Names made the renaming of the peak official. Formerly known as Squaw Peak, the renaming was something of a controversy in the Valley.

This image is at 10 1/2 minutes into my hike.

The renaming story literally relates anatomy and geography. I am of the belief that language is formed by its users, not just the academics. Without describing the entire incident, I will say that people that know better still refer to the mountain by its old name – a fact that makes me quite sad.

It is just over a mile to the top. The challenge is that the elevation change in that mile is nearly 1150 feet. I had only gotten about 5 hours sleep. Today being Mother’s Day, I had the idea that I would climb and be back to the house before the day had really started. The climb made me very tired, and I was a slow mover for the rest of the day.

The last two images are at 17 minutes in and at the 31 1/2 minute point. The latter is just a few minutes below the summit. It took 35 minutes to get to the top.

Car-Sin-No-Da

I am an Asian American. I live in the Southwest. I am 53 years old, an artist, teacher, husband and a father to a six-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl.

I have recently had a positive biopsy for high grade, transitional cell, renal carcinoma.

This week, during final critiques, I shared that bit of information with my students. I feel good about having done that. In doing so, I realized I am learning things about my body, and about cancer that should be shared. So this blog will be that sharing.

I’ll state at the outset that my interest is in addressing this in the same way I address most things: visually. But there will be my words.

So I’ll start with a few words about the name of the blog. The word carcinoma has been recently filling my thoughts. Other things have as well. The prognosis for my particular cancer is quite good. However, over the last several months, while we were looking for the source of my gross hematuria, I have been thinking a lot about my own mortality. In particular, I have had many thoughts of anger, loss and fear related to the possibility of not being there for my family. They would have, I thought, no Dad – No Da.

The Car-Sin part is a little more complex.

Like many Americans, I am very concerned about the war in Iraq. And like most Americans living in the western United States, I own cars. In my family’s case, the vehicles are 1994 mid-size sedan that still gets about 20.5 miles per gallon and a mid-size SUV that gets about 19.5 MPG. We like these vehicles. However, it is quite apparent that young men and women are laying their lives on the line for some crazy notion that we can use the military to force democracy on people that don’t really want it – people that just happen to have a lot of oil.

In my mind, this is connected to a larger idea that the places we inhabit (our planet and our bodies) are sites that we must take care of. We have to inhabit these places, and how we do it determines the quality of our lives. Our planet is clearly polluted, and Phoenix is a big, dirty city. On a relative scale though, Phoenix seems immaculate compared to Jiangmen City, a city I know well, which is in Guangdong province in the People’s Republic of China. My point is that our ability to minimize pollution is largely a result of economic wealth.

Just like the idea that large numbers of people live with cancer only in relatively wealthy countries, where life expectancies are long.

So who knows why I have carcinoma? I live a comfortable life. Always there has been food and shelter. I have a loving family. Prior to cancer, there was more stress in my life than I care for, but less than most people I imagine. As a teacher of photography, I am around more than my share of chemicals. I eat meat. The idea here is that I make no claim to be perfect – nor do I desire such a state. Perfection, a mentor once told me, is the root of all evil.

But since I have no need for perfection, one could say that, to a certain degree, I live in sin. I would certainly argue about that, but for my purposes here (making language to describe a train-wreck, or something like that) I'll say one could say that. And the car is maybe the one I feel most guilty about because Americans are dying in a country that has a lot of oil. The sin of the car – Car-Sin.

Carcinoma – Car-Sin-No-Da.

So, maybe that’s what this will be about. Maybe it will be impossible to stay positive when I make it so complex. It’s just that when I walk in the morning, I have a lot of time to think.

The walking is taking care of myself. This morning, it was 3.1 miles in about 50 minutes. The walking is being on Earth. It is feeling what distance is.

It is time.

I hope you'll read more.