Emaill to Suport Group Feb 4, 2017

I sent this post to my support group on February 4.

Hi, I saw both my GP and my oncologist Friday, Feb 3. The results of the meetings were not unexpected though a bit stark. The GP told me that I would be in ‘ascites management’ from now on. In other words the stomach issues are caused by ascites and are not going away. Periodically I will have to have a ‘drain’ or paracentesis. I had three in January, the last one being January 26. I am taking an anti nausea pill, ondansetron, three times a day. Currently it is helping quite a bit. Last few nights I even had cake and ice cream.

The oncologist was more bleak. In line with what he has been saying since November he now thinks that I have 1-2 months left. In November he thought 3-4. That was hard. He based his conclusion on the change in my physical state since November. I am now 20 pounds lighter than I was then. He also reviewed some clinical trials and suggested, without a lot of enthusiasm, that I could apply to several at the university of Minnesota. I will do so on Sunday or Monday. If those don’t work out, I might still try Houston, but I am not sure about that. He did say that if I am going to get into a trial that I need to do it quickly.

We had already come to the same conclusions that both of them gave us, but having them say it puts a kind of no-doubt-about-it on those conclusions. It is hard to say that those visits gave peace of mind but in a way they did. Things are clear to me. I have a few important decisions to make and will do so in the next few days. 

To end this on an upper note, this past week the photo group had an opening party for me at the Barrel Room. Almost everyone was there. We stayed for an hour and a half and had a wonderful visit. Several people wanted one or the other of the photos and so we gave them to them and marked them as sold.  It was such a fun evening, so full of love and giving. In my new sense of things, it was very spiritual. And if you want to see the photos of a guy who also did a 365 project, google That Tree and Mark Hirsch. He took pictures of the same tree for a year. They are fabulous.

I love you.

Dad Dan Doc

What I Learned From My 366 Photo Project

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What I Learned From My 366 Project

Dan Riordan

November 1, 2016

The photos from my 366 project can be viewed on Facebook, "Early Morning 2015-2016" https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101079650804782.1073741857.185105701&type=1&l=d2f0949e9c

In October 2015 I was diagnosed as having one year to live. I decided to have a project and settled on one that had long resonated with me—a 366 Project. I would take and post one photo a day for 366 days (2016 is a leap year). Actually I took between 3 and 15 photos a day and Mary, my wife, chose one for me to post. I selected Facebook as my posting site. I was comfortable with the process of posting there, though it is possible that Instagram would have worked as well. Regardless, I am happy with the decision. 

I set some parameters for myself. I would take the photos only on my iPhone 6, take them on the morning of the day I would post them, and take only photos of things I could see in or from my yard or along one of the three routes I could take each morning to buy the morning newspaper. If I were not in Menomonie, I would do the best I could with whatever was at hand in the morning. Most of the photos were taken within two miles of my house. The others were taken in Minneapolis, Waukesha, Cincinnati, Austin, Seattle, Port Angeles, Victoria, West Glacier and St. Mary, Montana. I tried to mix up the images so that I presented a range of topics, to avoid using the same locale over and over.  Some, however, like one of the hilltops along Rudiger Road just outside Menomonie, became favorites. Those I tried to present in various seasons and lighting.

The easiest place was our yard. We live on a high hill looking east over Lake Menomin. Sunrise pictures quickly became a staple for me. In the summer I often got up at 5, took the photo and went back to bed. In winter the sun rises about 8 making the dawn much easier to capture. Also we have a large native perennial garden with many species. Those became an interesting source of images in the summer, though I found pictures of blossoms more difficult to present than I had expected—I wanted more than a guide book shot of the plant.

I learned many things during the year, both about myself and photography. I think that the most substantial change was the way I “look.” I notice things differently. I notice form, lines, composition, story, compelling images. I am in the world differently than I was a year ago. A good way to say it is that I participate more. I see trees outlined against the sky. I see patterns, in clouds, in fields, even in flocks of birds. I don’t just see trees but notice their shape even the way the ends of branches interact with the sky; I don’t just see clouds but notice the patterns of light and dark, thick and thin.  

My composition clearly got better. I developed a finer awareness of leading lines, blocks of color and blocks of form. I learned to position those in the image so that they worked together to make a unified whole. As I got better at this aspect of my work the images became more meditative or compelling.

Coupled with expanded awareness, I found a willingness to stop, even go back, to select an image. When I began, I just passed those scenes, thinking, “Too bad I missed it. Maybe next week.”  The other day I backed the car up several hundred yards to get back to the correct position to take the photo with the effect I wanted.

I learned to accept the challenge. A year has a lot of cloudy, rainy days. It would be easy to just say I’ll post something from yesterday or skip the post all together, but I made myself seek those images and I found them. After a while I enjoyed the challenge of those days. I found puddles, drops running down windows, wet leaves and rocks all ready to be photographed.

I realized the value of the people who liked and commented on my photos. I could tell by likes and comments what type of images played best. I tried to repeat some of the things people liked: sunrises, lonely roads, people doing morning things (though I didn’t have all that many people because most of my photos were landscapes), flowers in dance step with one another, repetition in architecture. As the year progressed an interesting thing happened— I started to take photos with my audience in mind. They became something I offered to the audience. The photos were for them. No longer were the photos something to check off on my day’s list of duties. As this sense developed another change occurred. The audience became co-creators. As I took the photos I felt the audience looking at the scene and the camera screen. They were watching to see what I was doing. We took the photos together.

As my sense of creating for and with an audience changed, so did my sense of what I was doing with the photos. I started to render the mornings. The goal of the shots became to create a sense of the meaning of early morning. How could I catch that something present only in the morning, at sunrise, in the garden, on the road, over the hills, in the fields, in the clouds? I had moved from morning snapshots to, well, morning poems. I found my self driving around choosing a route because I figured that I would find the image--the poem--for this morning on that route. Often I passed up a scene because I could sense that it was wrong. It couldn’t present the core, she soul of the morning. I remembered those scenes, though, so that when the light was right, I could return to the scene to find it was the right one for the day.

My sense of connection changed. I am not really sure how to discuss this phenomenon. Connection means various things--aware of, joined to, emotionally moved by, part of. I have not worked out the complexities of this new realization. It implies a spiritual dimension that I discuss below. I do know that I feel closer to my locale and the things in it. I have had to find new subjects, not just repeat taking the same shots. I often thought that I had recently taken enough of the lake or the sunrise or the flowers and turned to other subjects, which I had to find. I had to develop a memory for what was out there on all the different routes. I learned the nooks and crannies of the routes, where I could safely stop the car, where the coots flocked on the water, where the perennials put forth new blossoms. Through the searching they became my hills, my roads, my lake, my geese, my blossoms.

As the project came to an end, I began to work with meditation. I took a course here in town led by friends and I have done some reading about meditation and about the relationship of photography to meditation. Meditation calls for awareness and a temporary release from external concerns to contact with inner worlds. As I experience meditation I am regularly reminded of the practice of photography. I can only take photos if I am aware, in the moment. I focus on the intricacies of the item, its internal lines, forms, tensions. Like breath I draw them in, snap the shutter and exhale them out. I find somehow the statement the item makes, the connection that it makes with me. This experience reminds me of walking meditation but I am not clear on the way this works. And while I can see how taking photos could be a meditative practice, I often take photos not thinking about how they are meditative. Viewers sometimes commented that the photos are meditative. Some even called them a manifestation of spirit or God. I intend to explore the possibility that these photos have a spiritual dimension, another power.

I feel satisfied. I have accomplished a goal, and the process has clearly given people delight. I have been asked to put all these images into a book. I would not put all of them in unless I could find a cheap way to print the book, but I might create a book that contained my selection of the best. I will have an exhibit this winter at a local bar/restaurant with another artist. She has chosen a number of my photos to render in paintings and I will display the originals. Our work will hang side by side or at least in the same room. I am quite honored by this exhibit because my partner is the former chair of the UW-Stout Art Department and she approached me to do this with her.

This week I met my oncologist who told me that I have already lived longer than he thought I would. This project helped propel me through a difficult year, kept me focused on something other than that depressing prognosis. I don’t know how long I have to live and I don’t know what my next photo project will be, but that project will help me fill my remaining time with joy and creativity.

A look back at Autumn

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November 15, 2016

Since my last post much has happened. My PSA has done a roller-coaster set of readings. Down to about 30 and most recently (Nov 1) up to 37.  Part of the decline to 30 from earlier 45 was that I got chemo and a Lupron shot at the same time. Lupron helped some, which means that some of the cancer in me is still susceptible to hormone therapy but obviously quite a bit is not.

The round of chemo has kept my PSA down so I have continued past the originally scheduled 6 sessions. I now have had 8 and will have the ninth on November 28. It is not clear that there will be a 10th but I expect that there will be.

This round has been hard on my stomach and lower GI. I have had stomach discomfort, diarrhea, and some constipation. These side effects are draining. They take the oomph out of me.  Usually they occur about days 7-12 of the cycle. I work hard to maintain some exercise, trying to get in 2 miles walking a number of times a week. I am skipping it today in order to write this.

I found myself buoyed up when the PSA dropped from 45 to 30. I know not to count on that drop as an indication that further drops are coming, but it was a relief. I had spent much of the autumn working on end of life things and that task is also draining. But we have most of that set now, my end of life celebration, our money, the house, clarity with the kids and immediate family, cars, house repairs, yard changes both completed and ordered from the landscaper in case I am not here in the spring. I have felt less down these past few weeks and that is a fun feeling, sort of like the feeling I used to have about how good it felt not to have a migraine.

During these weeks I get rock climbing when I can, no longer once a week but still every other week.  And as I have said in these pages many times, I can’t let this condition turn me to, well, a pity party. We have a grand Thanksgiving weekend coming up, visits from old friends, from family and a meal on Thursday at one of Minneapolis’ finest restaurants, Mannys, in has now become a tradition. I keep up with my German, though right now it feels like I am at one of those plateaus that I would like to rise up from, but that is not happening quickly. Our Christmas plan is to spend December 23-30 with all the family in a villa in South Padre Island. What a kick that will be. We have never done that before at Christmas. I am really looking forward to that. 

The work with spirituality has also plateaued. I have read some fine books and have a new perception of religion in general though I am still working on the meaning not just of spirituality but of living spiritually. One of the touchstones of such living is connection, which I am finding hard to define and realize. It is easy to define connection but what does it mean to be connected to others and other things? The answers of course can be worked out rationally and easily but the emotional (or realized) meaning of those answers is much harder for me to achieve. I have enjoyed meditation which I began about 2 months ago. In the short term it is pretty amazing in its ability to effect calmness. I like that. But I am not sure of the long term goal of meditation. Is it supposed to lead to the traditional mystical experience? To the dissolution of the ego? Are there plateaus in the practice? I am certainly a beginner and I have no answers to these questions.

Oh, the photography. What a joy. I have completed my 366 project. I certainly received many supportive comments and I have posted all 381 photos in an album on Facebook. I have also written an essay about what I learned from the project and probably will post it on this site in the near future. I loved the awareness and sense of harmony with the seasons that the project caused. Preparations continue for the show I will have with a local painter who is rendering a number of my photos. I think that show will open in the mid winter. My photo group is a great source of satisfaction. I love the discussions of each other’s photos. I am amazed and delighted with what we see in each other’s work. Our work is available on Flickr as Red Cedar Photographers if you would like to look.

Photography is a kind of meditative practice. The practitioner must be aware of and focused on the image, which is akin to breath. I have a ways to go with this thread of thought, but I enjoy it and will get there.

Enough for now. Thank you for reading.

     

My photo project--one way I spend my time and energy

This blog has often had passages about engaging death. Frankly it gets a bit overwhelming at times. There is more to daily life than worries about an end I know is coming within a year. So I wrote the following. I hope you find it a respite from some of the more difficult topics in this blog.

Since October 24, 2015, I have been engaged in a photographic “366” project.  I post a photograph on Facebook every day and will do so for a year; it is 366 because I am doing this through a leap year. The series is called Early Morning. I try to take the photos before 9 a.m. I decided to do the project because it sounded like fun and a challenge. I set some rules. Photos can be taken of anything I can see from or in my yard or along one of three routes I take to and from purchasing the paper every morning. Or, if I am not home, then photos can be of anything I see near where I have spent the night. The photos must be taken on my iPhone 6.

Almost all the photos have been taken in Menomonie or surroundings (one of the routes is a circuitous one through the countryside). However, some illustrate spots near our apartment in Minneapolis or in places we have traveled to, like Waukesha, Wisconsin, or Cincinnati, or Austin, Texas.

On a few mornings I take only one photo, but most mornings I take 5-10. Then I give them all to Mary who chooses one which I place on my Facebook site. The response has been satisfying. Usually about 10-20 of my Facebook friends ‘like’ the image, sometimes less and sometimes more. Often friends will comment on the photos, perhaps 6 or so comments. These comments range from “wow” and “nice” to “my favorite so far” or “top 10” to comments about spiritual value and worth. Recently someone called them “optimistic.” I love those deeper interpretive comments, but the truth is that I don’t think ‘spiritual’ or ‘optimistic’ when I take the photo. I take what ‘grabs’ me.

Often when I run into someone at a store or other public venue I will receive a nice compliment about the series. It is clear that a lot of people watch for it. I have been asked several times whether I will publish a book of them—what a great compliment. And, speaking of compliments, an area artist, someone in Stout’s renowned art department has invited me to co-exhibit with her. She will paint versions of some of my photos and we will display them side-by-side. I am just amazed by the request and delighted to take part in the show.  When it is finally up, later this year, I will add a link to it from this blog.

The photos are mostly nature scenes. By far the most popular ones are sunrises. But I try to mix up the images. I have flowers, buildings, fields, country roads, rainy windows, ice on windows. We have a nice native plants garden so I use all of those flowers a lot in the summer.  If I am lucky, I am up for the summer dawns and will get the sunrise, though it is much easier to get a winter sunrise at 7:30 than a summer one at 5:15. Our bedroom faces east and has a large window. Often the sunrise wakes me and I run downstairs to take a photo, then return to bed for another hour or more.

The challenge of the project engages me. I like looking for the images and I like trying to mix the images up, so that I am not just doing flowers or sunrises all the time. Over the months my eye has sharpened considerably. I see the images as I drive—and I am willing to stop and take the shot. I can tell that my recent images are better composed than those I began with in the fall.

Dealing the Void and Finding Joy

I just found this piece that I wrote some time ago.  I find it accurate to what I experience, though I am now working my way into an understanding of spirituality, as I have explained in previous posts.

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The void and joy

June 14, 2015

I know the void. It is behind everything. I became aware of it when I learned I had a serious cancer that will probably kill me. Here is how the void works: It makes everything pointless. Suddenly questions like Why should I do that? or Why do I care? or Why should I make that plan? or buy that? or work on that project? all take on a different meaning. In my pre-cancer life those things were impinged upon by other cares and needs. The question was answered by considering the impact of a ‘void’ question--whatever it is--against that other thing that I had to get done or wanted to get done in my life. Suddenly with this new reality the projects can seem like whistling in the graveyard. What difference does anything make? If I have a project, say my genealogy, am I just killing time until I die? Is that life? Basically, Who cares?  The void exerts enormous pressure. It impinges on everything. It is present in all decisions, all moments. It is a huge blanket, fog, dullness. The response to it is to sleep. On bad days the void makes itself present, very present. Or perhaps it is that on those days, whatever protection I have against it is thinner. weaker, less able to stand up for itself

It seems to me that for many people the answer to the void is God.  God is as large as the void. God offers the hope of life after. God allows you to avoid the void because you have something as big on your side.

But I am not really able to subscribe to that possibility. Where can I turn?  My answer for now is Joy. I enjoy a lot of things. Photography, rock climbing, eating, and on and on with a list of all the things I am involved with in a day.  The void would have me think ‘How foolish. Who cares? This is not significant.’  The presence of cancer has taught me that I can't accept that. I have to find a grasp on joy. I have to see joy as not some momentary incident (my team wins a baseball game, I see a grand child, I stop at a particularly fine building, I solve a genealogy research issue, I climb a difficult route). Joy or it, close relative engagement has to be permanent.

Where does Joy come from? Right now my only answers are my history and my present. For instance I have a history of rock climbing. When I get better at it the presence of my history of not being good at it feeds my joy. The same for the meal I eat that Mary cooked. But what about time wasters, like digital solitaire? If the void could dictate I would play meaningless solitaire until I die.  With joy solitaire is a connection between events.

There is also joy in the present. That joy has to come from acceptance. Since I have begun these thoughts, I have realized I have a different view of people I meet. I often found it easy to dismiss people--for all kinds of reasons. I won’t detail them. But even total strangers.  It is easy to poke fun.  Now I find that poking fun is ridiculous. Each of them dwells with the

Void. They have to find a way to deal with it.  Dealing with it requires attention to both the present and history. We have to find strength to maintain that attention, that engagement.

I wish I could tell you where that strength is.  I can only say that you have to find it. I found mine when the doctor told me I had cancer, bad cancer, and I realized that I was not afraid. That is my basis. From that I can look at meaninglessness and go forward. It is actually a bit odd, because I have been frightened by other things in my life, like the time I thought I would lose my sight or the various times when I worried that I could lose my job.

I am reminded as I write that when I taught literature, in particular lyric poetry, I told students that for any poem they could diss it or explore it. To diss is the voice of the Void.  It is easy to not realize that if you don't have the sense not just that you will die but that you will die in the foreseeable future.  Without that sense of death the Void is just another abstraction. It is only when it becomes the kind of reality that it has for me that I have found that I have to consider it and find a way to keep it from controlling me, or at least derailing me.  I suppose I am controlled by it.  The Hmong talk about the sickness having you rather than you having a sickness and that seems true to me now, though it did not when I first heard the concept.  In that way, yes, cancer has me. But I am not rendered helpless by that fact.  My friend Joe said when he turned one of the milestone birthdays, perhaps 75, ‘What am I supposed to do? Wait around to die?’ And the answer is no. However, the path forward from the point at which that question enters your life is not a flat paved trail or sidewalk.  It is a rocky mountain trail.  It is hard to negotiate, but if I look up it is also the place where I can see, now, beautiful sights, mountain ranges, glacial lakes.  It is the joy that happens when you explore a poem or a painting and suddenly it pays back with insight.

From a letter to a friend on spiritual reading

Thanks for the long email and the discussion of spirituality. More on that in a moment. I have been so long to write because the last chemo went after my stomach and lower GI. First diarrhea, then constipation, all accompanied by stomach discomfort (as in rice and apple sauce sound about the best for this meal) and weak legs. I was reminded of the ditty in Steve Martin’s Parenthood where the kid sings When you’re sliding into home and your pants begin to foam—diarrhea.

Tomorrow it is the oncologist and then chemo again on Wednesday. How often do you meet your doctor(s)? Today I had a blood test to determine my PSA level. Down from last time is good, up is really bad. I find it quite stressful to wait around to hear the number. It often reminds me of the time I opened the letter to tell me whether I had passed my qualifying PhD exam.

To offset the side effects I have begun acupuncture once a week.  I enjoy the sessions but I am still not sure that the procedure is working. One nice thing is that after the needles are inserted, I am left alone in a darkened room with woo-woo (as I call it) music, usually something that sounds like South American flutes. I find it easy to drift off into a quiet revery.

Well, on to spirituality. I have a way to go I can see. I read some of Honest to God by John A.T. Robinson, some of the Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, the Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton and the material you sent me including the last half of Life After Death and the excerpts from the Gita that you sent me. Merton’s story is an interesting one of the long experience of conversion and the difficulty of finding something to commit to, but, lord, it is old school Catholicism. All the world is evil and only the God experience is worthwhile.  I am not there. (Merton though seems very close to your view of the world as hell, the abode of senseless suffering.)

What I see in all the others is the sense of two worlds (or orders of being?) that are actually one, or can finally, with work in most cases, be perceived as one. Well I am not there yet either. I can understand the perception, the sense of meeting something other, of entering a timeless, noetic world, but I guess I have no faith. If faith is the evidence of things unseen, and if on the basis of that evidence, you commit, well, fine. But I have a ways to go, a long ways.

As I read I became more aware that spirituality can be active or passive. Passive is the openness to the experience of awe and wonder (as a good friend put it). So it is the sense that beauty, say the pattern of clouds yesterday, that engages not just an “oh pretty” or even a metaphor of some kind, but just that sense of wonder. Active is to seek the spiritual experience. That seeking appears to run the gamut from saying prayers or having some kind of regular thought/action about the spiritual world, to doing the kind of extreme actions designed by saints and recorded in various Ways of the Spirit rules.  So I got that far. But all the intellectualization of the issue seems to me to be the wrong path. I am still looking for the something inside me that will make itself known and that I can feel comfortable with, or at least willing to explore more. I have to reflect on the Upanishad excerpt you sent me.

Thanks for listening to that. I know you have worked on this part of your life for years. I am so impressed by that.

You mentioned in an earlier letter or email that you have started to write about your life, a memoir or an autobiography. I hope you are continuing with that project. You have so much to tell the world.

Progress report after 3 sessions of chemo

Hi, my PSA has gone down to 30 from 47. Nice. And thank you for all the good thoughts and prayers sent my way. As usual it is a relief to have the number go down, and a disappointment not to have it down to 2 or so. But so it goes.

The doctor is satisfied with my progress. I will have my 4th chemo tomorrow and then two more, one late in August and another near the end of September. It is possible that I will have more treatments but that decision will be made in September. The doctor is also interested (I think that is the best term) in my entering a clinical trial for “ippy” (Ipilimumab). His view is that I should wait until the chemo fails, as it inevitably will. In other words chemo will only reduce my PSA so far and after that it is classified as failed. This sequence happened with my last program of chemo where the PSA reduced to 14 then went no farther. It is a harsh term, but the term is failed. Anyway, after that chemo event, he feels that would be the time to enter the clinical trial. Currently that sequence is not clear and I urge you not to worry about it. I am simply trying to report to you what I heard today.

This last chemo session three weeks ago left me with more stomach lower GI issues for longer. Ugh. Or Puha. I will use some different strategies to combat those side effects after tomorrow. Among other things I will, at the Dr’s suggestion, stop taking aspirin and niacin every day. Hopefully this change will help with the stomach issues. We’ll see. The other side effect is tiredness. I am more tired this time and so, to my annoyance, I am not working out or climbing. The best I do is get in as many two-mile walks as I can.

So enough of the doctor report. We leave for West Glacier, Montana, next week to attend the wedding of my brother-in-law Steve’s son’s Jackson to Claire. I can’t wait. I get to visit with many of the relatives and also spend time in our beloved mountains. We met in Glacier Park in 1964 and have returned to hike many times over the years. The kids and grandkids want to see the room where I first laid eyes on Mary and in that instant became the proverbial ‘goner.’ Hopefully I will feel well enough in the fall to travel. I have no shortage of destinations—New York, DC, Seattle, Germany, and today I added Ecuador after talking with a good friend just returned from there.  We have a new apartment in Minneapolis. We moved from the 5th to the 1st floor and have a place with high ceilings, lots of interesting angles, our own front door and a patio. Lately, as seems befitting for someone in my position, I have started reading about spirituality. If you have a suggestion, I would be delighted to hear it. So far I have read James, Robinson, Merton and Chopra.

Once again, I thank you for your support. I could not do this without you. I love you so. While there are clearly clouds on my horizon I am not worried and not afraid. You be the same.

-August 9, 2016

Hug the ones you love,

Dan