Graves

In December of 2003, I gained 13 pounds, seemingly overnight. I could no longer get to sleep at night; I just couldn’t shut my mind down long enough to get any rest. I became anxious about everything, even about things over which I had no control and even no personal knowledge. I worried about everything and began to obsess. And then I began losing weight. Rapidly. 35 pounds over six weeks. Now, I have never been considered "normal", but I made an appointment with my primary doctor because I knew there was something wrong with me. I just didn’t know what.

During that visit, my blood pressure was 170/100 and my pulse, at rest, was 102. I was having occasional chest pain from heart palpitations. And I was scared. I am a single mom.

The good doctor sent me for blood work, which showed my thyroid hormone was being suppressed. Off to an endocrinologist I went, and finally got an appointment for April of 2004.

My diagnosis? Grave’s Disease.

“Grave’s Disease,” I said. “You mean, ‘grave’ like in ‘dead’?” Sure enough. Also known as hyperthyroidism. The doctor told me to do as much research as I wanted to do to obtain as much knowledge as I felt comfortable with, and he would answer any questions I have.

I read everything I could get my hands on, from Thyroid Balance by Glenn S. Rothfeld and Deborah S. Romaine, to Thyroid for Dummies, by Alan L. Rubin, M.D. and Rich Tennant. I checked out websites like http://www.webmd.com/ and http://www.ngdf.org/ (National Grave’s Disease Foundation).

I got my Will in order. I got Tapazole.

I stabilized, but in April of 2005, the doctor decided I should have Radioactive Iodine Therapy. I went off the Tapazole for two weeks, and then went in to have another thyroid scan and set up the appointment for the Day to Kill the Thyroid. I had spontaneous remission. I figure the whole idea of RIT just scared the Grave’s right out of me.

As it turns out, remission was temporary. I gained 12 pounds during the month of March, an instant tip-off. And then in June, my blood pressure shot up to unhealthy levels again. I’m on Altace. I’m not overly anxious about anything yet, and I’m still sleeping at night, but doctor assures me that might not last. And I might also gain more weight before I start to lose again. He’s just a ray of bitter sunshine, that one.

Spontaneous remission is possible again. I believe the mind is a very powerful thing. I will set my mind to remission. I will have it.

Positive thinking never hurt anyone.

Baseball

I love baseball. There is no place I’d rather be than sitting three rows up from the field on the third base side, feeling the warmth of the sun sink into my bones, sipping a Labatts Blue, watching the boys of summer play. There’s a rhythm to it, activity in its leisure, that is as exciting as it is relaxing. Watching the manager sending signs, looking for the hit and run, and occasionally witnessing the two most exciting things on the planet - the suicide squeeze and the in-the-park homerun - it’s a wonderful way to pass a Sunday afternoon.

I always want the season to last forever. This is Buffalo, New York, after all, and fall is coming, and on its heels is snow. It is only 67 degrees here now, and I have goosebumps from the chill.

But no, I can’t think about that now. Not with the smell of Coppertone fresh in my nostrils and the memory of a 7 to 6 win fresh in my mind. Yet I’m not the first to want the game to last forever.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, the former commissioner of baseball who banned Pete Rose from the game, wrote an essay entitled, “The Green Fields of the Mind”. I read with a heavy sigh...

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.” [link]

Could we write this poetically about football? I think not.

I just love this game.

(Above photograph of Miguel Ian playing t-ball, copyright 2006 by Michael Tabor)

Shakespeare

I’ve been a fan of Shakespeare since my senior year in High School. That year I had to take two English electives, and over my father’s objections (“Shakespeare. Nothing but 18th Century Porn, that’s all that is.”), I chose to take Shakespeare.

Our field trip that semester was to Chautauqua to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted more.

Our senior play that year was MacBeth. I not only played Lady MacBeth; I understudied the scenes I wasn’t in. I memorized most of that play. Definitely my fondest memory of my senior year.

One of the courses I had to take last semester was Sociology. I struggled with it, and discussed this course with my brother at length. One of the topics we discussed was the prison system, which led to a conversation about revenge, which led to a conversation about Shakespeare. He suggested that if I wanted to see a movie that was directly relevant to my studies, I should watch The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. [Movie Photos]

I rented it. I don’t think I moved during the entire course of the movie, except to grab a box of Kleenex. Al Pacino was phenomenal as Shylock, the Rich Jew. I forgot it was a movie and became completely engrossed in the story. (It's spoken entirely in Old English, but I found that wasn't a problem. After about a minute and a half, your brain sorts it all out, and you don't even hear the dialect.)

Jeremy Irons played the merchant, Antonio, who had nothing but contempt for Shylock and would even spit on him in the street. When Antonio needed to borrow a sum and sought it from Shylock, Shylock saw an opportunity for revenge. He gave Antonio the loan interest-free, but should Antonio default on the loan, Antonio had to repay with his flesh.

Shylock’s need for revenge so completely unbalanced him, as the story progressed I felt bottomless pity for him. For example, when rumor had it that Antonio lost a ship at sea, Shylock often said, “Let him look to his bond.” Salarino asked him, why would Shylock take Antonio’s flesh? What good would it be?

Shylock said, “To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and ... what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, ... If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

I wept through that entire speech. Wept. He was so angry, so hurt, and so hell-bent on vengeance that he was mentally ill. And in the end, before the Court, he lost everything. In the end, his unbalanced, unreasoning need for revenge cost him everything he had.

There are many more layers to this story. I was surprised to discover that The Merchant is one of Shakespeare’s comedies. I have no idea why; I didn’t find it funny. It made me think.

It’s best to let things go, isn’t it? Vengeance gets us nothing, and grudges are weights that only hurt our own backs.

If you haven’t seen it, grab a box of Kleenex and watch. It is immortal.

Michael said...
There is an idea in our family that Shakespeare was merely pornography for the seventeenth century. For example, “Hamlet” is usually cited as a story of incest, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Danish Prince was on the verge of murder while in his mother’s chambers, and in fact commits one.

The classics are known as “The Classics” for a reason – they contain the archetypes and mythos of our culture. You can read “The Merchant of Venice” today, learn from it, and then read it in ten years and learn a new set of lessons. The story doesn’t change, but we do, and so the lessons we extract are changed through the lens of individual perception. I think this is one of the things that makes life worth living.

One of the first things I did after I left home was to begin reading the classics. Shakespeare, Coleridge, Hemmingway, Steinbeck… It is a process of absorption, adaptation and growth that will never end.

Rowing

I have just learned my father can row a boat like it's nobody's business.

I was on the phone with my brother tonight discussing my father, as we have done quite a bit since my mom's ultimate demise. Dad’s a multi-talented guy.

When my brother was between 20 and 30 years old, he and my Dad went to Red House Lake in Allegheny State Park to fish. They rented a row boat, and my brother thought, ‘I should row this thing. I’m younger, (whatever) I really should do the rowing,’ or something along those lines.

He spent a while figuring out how to do it, what angle the oars should be in the water, does the angle make a difference when you pull the oars out and put them back in, etc. It was obvious that he was struggling; they weren’t moving very fast, and after a bit, my Dad said, “Here. Let me do that.” Not judgmental or sarcastic or anything, just matter-of-fact. “Let me do that.”

Dad took over, and the next thing you know, they are FLYING across Red House Lake, like Where’s The Motor FLYING.

My brother remembers it like it was yesterday. It completely amazed him, and up until that point, he didn’t realize rowing isn’t as easy as it looks. Dad learned to row as a teen. There was a lake near his home that they spent a lot of time at as kids, so he perfected it.

There are so many stories I’ll bet my Dad could tell. Hopefully, now, I’ll get to hear more of them. I've got to remember to ask him if he remembers taking my brother out. It would be interesting to hear his thoughts.

Independence Day

I spent Independence Day with my nephews Jeff and Eric. They hosted their own show...perhaps not the most legal thing to do, but definitely FUN! Jeff said the best thing about doing your own is that it is 'custom made', you buy what you want to see, and you don't get stuck watching things you don't want to see. Jeff bought some sparklers for the little ones, too. My son had an absolute blast!

Modified 7-21-06: To hear my son tell it, the sun rises and sets on Jeff and Eric now. Not only did they have Fireworks, they had SPARKLERS!

I was going to give credit to the photographer for the above photo of fireworks, but I googled it and found it on no less than four websites. I have no idea who to give credit to. If you are the one who took it, thank you so much for sharing!