Our homes in Magnolia, like much of the rest of Camden County, are situated upon thick layers of Pleistocene marl and sand, laid-down by ancient inundations over an enormous piece of rock called the Reading Prong.
One can actually see outcroppings of the Reading Prong jutting above the surface by looking left while traveling north on Route 95 just after passing over the Delaware River on Scudders Falls Bridge into Ewing Township.
The problem with that enormous slab of metamorphic rock is that it is suffused with huge amounts of highly radioactive isotopes of Uranium, which constantly release a halo of deadly, cancer-causing Radon gas. Underground, north-to-south, the Radon gas halo permeates and saturates the gigatons of thick, wet sands and marls resting upon it, so that the sands and marls of Magnolia and other towns in Camden County have zero shielding effect. They may as well not be there, as far as protection from radiation is concerned.
And so, many will recollect that beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, real estate transactions began to warn buyers to beware of Radon gas.
Warnings which I did not take seriously enough -- no, I never installed the little fan to constantly change the air in our basement.
In any event, probably sometimes in 2015, something in my body's 62 year old immune system gave up the fight for survival, and a single Radon gas isotope sticking to a single particle of dust was inhaled by me. It rushed down into the left lobe of my lung and sat there and -- boom -- it spontaneously split into either Thorium or Lead, slamming a neutron into a nearby cell in my lung, altering the DNA in it in a way that mutated it into a single, energetic little bastard which we refer to as a metastasizing adenocarcinoma cancer cell.
Suddenly, the Devil, himself, was on the loose in my body, and my life began to be in mortal danger.
In January and February, 2016, an unhappy coincidence occurred. My wife Rise` got the flu, and she began to cough. I began to cough at the same time, and our coughs sounded the same. The doctor said that she had the flu. Rather than go to the doctor myself, I assumed, "I've got the flu, too." Rise`'s cough stopped. My cough continued -- and changed.
I had made myself the #2 champion stair stepper on the Stair Masters at LA Fitness in Somerdale, second only to an amazing black girl there named Marcella whom Rise` calls one of my "gym wives." My weight was down to 220 pounds from 260. In March, 2016, something changed. My breathing on the Stair Masters was fine, except when I stopped.
Though my flu coughing had stopped, every time I ended my Stair Master sets, I had coughing fits, of at least one-half hour. Here, I should have gone to the doctor.
But then a bad coincidence distorted my understanding of my problem. In an ill-advised attempt to lower my systolic blood pressure -- I argued to the doctor that he should leave my systolic alone, that my systolic was the product of a simple feedback loop in my physiology because my body, probably my brain, demands a high systolic, perhaps to push my blood through decades of residual damage in my brain from years of transient ischemic attacks, beginning in 1978 or perhaps earlier -- the doctor, over my objection, changed me from Norvasc to Benazepril.
I can feel higher blood pressure in my forearm skin, if I have it. I immediately felt my blood pressure skyrocket upwards in response to my Benazepril doses. My new blood pressure medicine was paradoxically increasing, not decreasing, my blood pressure, for some reason. I also began coughing around the clock.
I reported the same to my doctor one morning. He told me that I was "crazy." I said, "Okay. 'Litmus test:' I'll lay off my dosage till I come in for an exam tomorrow. Your staff can do before-and-after BP checks. The effect is nearly immediate. My BP will skyrocket. And, they will see me start coughing, coughing, coughing." The doctor took my dare. He watched my systolic skyrocket after taking Benazepril, as I began coughing, coughing, coughing -- really deep, scary-sounding coughing. Shocked, he took me off Benazepril and put me back on Norvasc.
It was then -- in March of 2016 -- that I discovered, finally, that my cough came from neither the flu nor medication. It got particularly fierce, and it just kept happening, for no apparent reason.
And then the cough mutated again. As I reported above, at L.A. Fitness in Somerdale, where I was #2 champion on the Stairmasters after my "gym wife," that amazing African American lady, I began to cough with genuine ferocity for about one-half hour after one-to-two hours on the Stairmaster. Staff at L.A. Fitness clearly began to think "tuberculosis," and implied that I might want to get a diagnosis before continuing. I.e., "Leave us, if you don't have a doctor's note diagnosing you." Since I had recently awakened in bed at home without my usual cough drop between my cheek and jaw, the thought occurred to me that I had inhaled a cough drop. Finally, when the cough just wouldn't go away, I went to Dr. Schachter, our GP in Somerdale. He arranged for carefully done x-rays and a full physical, called me in, and said, "Pete, with you I know that I need to be direct. There's no doubt about it. You have lung cancer. And it's not just lung cancer. It has already metastasized."
Schachter is a good doctor. I knew that he was right. I said, "Ah, f - - k." And then, "Poor Tiny. Poor Tiny. Poor Tiny. Poor Tiny. Poor Tiny." "Tiny" is my nickname for my wife Rise`.
I went home and told Rise`.
Since then, I have gone through full-skull radiation for the growing brain tumors. On 10 occasions, my head was bolted to a table in a radiation machine in a plastic mask
And now I have begun Chemo for all cancer below the neck -- carcinomas in the left lung, right adrenal gland, liver, and all through my bones. The bone cancer is the worst so far. On three occasions, cancerous bone tissue in my upper left quadrant spontaneously snapped during absolutely necessary coughing -- I simply absolutely, positively have to clear the bloody, cancerous discharge which slowly gathers at the top of my left lung and trachea, with coughing. The first break was the worst. It completely disabled the coughing function -- each cough generated absolutely astonishing pain -- and the stuff gathering in the lower quadrant of my left lung clogged things up and gave me "walking pneumonia." The medical assistant who first saw the bloody discharge of cancerous lung tissue in a test in a doctor's office freaked-out in response. I angrily said, "Calm down ! It's why I'm here ! It's why people come to doctors ! What -- do you only want to test healthy people ?! Just bag the gauze with the bloody tissue on it, note the discharge in your notes, and continue the test!"
The other breaks in the same area generated almost the same pain, although I developed a technique of coughing very difficult "gentle coughs" voluntarily all day long to clear the cancerous crap out of my lung at keep it from gathering. This gives me some sleep at night.
However, the lung cancer and bone cancer breaks generated a second less obvious problem ...
We are pre-wired -- well, at least I am pre-wired -- to flip over in my bed at night in my sleep about 10 times, left to right, right to left -- for comfort.
Suffocation from the lung cancer makes it impossible to sleep on my right side or back. Crappy, cancerous lung tissue in my left lobe touches other lung tissue, when I lay right or on my back, in my sleep, and I get less O2, and I'm up in a flash. (One pulsox check caught the plummeting O2 in action, so far.)
Also, the breaks in my upper right quadrant of my back are comfortable only when I sleep in my left side.
So, I'm stranded. I had been sleeping on a hard floor in the family room at night to escape as much as possible the increase in the suffocation sensation when I lay on a mattress, but bone breaks made it too difficult for me to climb to my feet from the floor unassisted to get up in the middle of the night, as the urges to flip sides (or to pee) awakened me. So, I had to return to my proper place, in bed next to the most wonderful woman in the world, my wife, "Tiny-ness." But that meant foisting my cancer problems on her, too -- helping me in-and-out of bed in the middle of the night, coughing jerkily next to her, and so on and so on.
Yech!
At any rate, this is the kind of thing which drives sane people to "putting things in order."
Among other things, Rise` and I have done something fascinating in connection with preparing for our -- and especially my -- death and burial.
A few years ago, one of Rise`'s beloved nephews, a smoker, died, of lung cancer. His family happened-into and chose for burial a cemetery in Cape May County, New Jersey called Steelmantown Cemetery where green burials are permitted. A green burial dispenses with all but basic biodegradable (non-formaldeyde) embalming, with casket and concrete sarcophagus, and transports the body in a shroud to the point of burial by wooden cart. We -- well, at least I did -- went a little bit afraid that the burial would comprise "something funky."
I was dead wrong (an approriate pun !). Instead, I found the burial, divested of modern accoutrements of human burial, to be HOLY, to be MORE BIBLICAL !
So, BE BALLSY ! Pre-purchase cemetery lots for yourselves and your families at Steelmantown Cemetery, at
http://www.steelmantowncemetery.com/
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