Before moving to L.A., I had lived in New York, Amsterdam and San Francisco. In L.A. I discovered something unique to this city. People ask you to invest in their films. It's insane because "invest" is the wrong word. It means you give them money for the film and then you write it off as a tax loss. I avoided that ugly world for the whole time I lived here.
I get up at 4 am and slave away at the computer all day. I consider myself lucky that I can take some time out to swim and hike and do some errands. I still haven't found the time to do my taxes. But when a neighbor told me one of her dearest childhood friends was doing badly with a lung disease and couldn't eat or sleep I took them both to an above board medical marijuana dispensary.
Last October-- a month short of a year ago-- I started treatment for a rare form of cancer. The treatment ended, successfully, about a month and a half ago after a month in the hospital for stem-cell transplants. Today I spent the entire day at City of Hope's day hospital getting maintenance treatment, something I'll probably be doing every few months for the rest of my life. I've kept a sporadic running diary of my adventures in the world of medicine that you can check out here if you'd like.
There are a lot of routine questions you get asked-- sometimes over and over and over-- by hospital staff. When I first started going to City of Hope to get treated for cancer, one of the questions they asked everyone every time you walked into an office is if you had been to West Africa in the last couple of months. I said "no" every time and so did everyone else. Once I told the sleepy clerk I had been in Mali and he ignored me.
I spent much of the summer in the hospital getting stem cell transplants so that the cancer I was treated for since November-- now in remission-- doesn't come back. I still have peripheral neuropathy, but I'm feeling a lot better overall now, and my doctor at City of Hope seems astounded how rapidly I'm recuperating from the intense treatments. Brutalism's music (above) was part of my get-well therapy. I'd blast their songs, especially "Friday Night," in the hospital and the nurses would come in and dance. What more could anyone want?Well...
by KenHowie hasn't authorized me to say anything, but on July 3 he did share this information about the current stage of his treatment for mantle-cell lymphoma (a rare form of lymphoma) with his Facebook fans:
The year 1970 saw marijuana's exit from my life-- or so I thought. (A little background here.) But because of the pain and side effects from 6 months of chemotherapy, I've started a program of medical marijuana every night before bed.
