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.