Urologist Redux (#20)

I sing the body electric

                for Pirate Jenny

How nice to have a body part functioning properly—uh, well, no, I wasn’t really talking about that one!  I had my regular, annual checkup with my urologist this morning and did all the disgusting things one does while at one’s urologist’s office:  the little sample cup, the blood draw to check PSA, and, sliding quickly past this, the digital exam (Ha! We are in a digital age, just not that digit!).

My urologist is the man who removed my right kidney more than twenty years ago.  Why?  Because it had developed a little tumor nestled in the lower lobe–completely encapsulated.  No real problems after it went into the biowaste container.

The urologist did take a look at the PetScan the Doctors Onc had ordered before pronouncing my prostate cancer-free.  It’s nice to have a clean prostate, perhaps some day I’ll write it an ode of its own.  I mean, if Lucille Clifton could write an ode to her cramps, then it should be okay to write an ode to a prostate, no? And Ann Sexton delighted in writing poems about, uhm, penises.  Private parts have not been private in poetry since, well, since George Gascoigne sang goodbye to his little cock robin back during the renaissance in England.

And so, my lovely prostate, stand thou firm / against the winds of time / no Flomax need invade thy space / no spattering thy bowl.

Well, perhaps not.  But still it is to crow about some things, no? “I grow old, I grow old / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”  Younger, I might have other things let move to the fore but you’ll have to read my Vietnam blog for that!  Well, perhaps the beginning of one really bad bad poem:

A few stanzas from my epic-length, (100 stanzas so far) and yet incomplete "Jenny " poem (Part 1 is just SOOOO inappropriate for this blog!):

2.

When as in silk my Jenny goes

a diamond sparkles in her nose

and all that's known of pain and grief

in her aspect gain relief.

3.

Jenny is a joy, Jenny is a dear,

Jenny makes the boys groan

whenever she comes near.

4.

Jenny wears the tightest jeans—

they slip down to her hips

but I'm the only one who sees

her tattoos when she strips.

5.

Jenny dances in the club

and dances in the bed, but

I can only dance and sing

when Jenny's in my head.

6.

Jenny walks in beauty;

Jenny is the night. All hopped

up and in her jeans,  the music’s

made for her delight.  And

all I know of beauty’s this:

that Jenny dances when we kiss.

Jenny is a muse of sorts.  I never had a real girl friend named "Jenny," but when Allen, Don and I lived together in Austin, in a duplex off 38 1/2 Street, a young lady named Jenny lived in the other part of the house with her boyfriend Dave.  But, no, that's a very different Jenny. 

I am, on the other side, and returning to the medical trade, trying to avoid my gastroenterologist.  Digital exams are one thing; colonoscopies, my friends, quite another.  My best guess is that the chemo should make that exam moot.  How can even polyps survive Alimta and Carboplatin and Avastin.  I am not altogether certain that I shall!  What a threesome of drugs!!!!

This best blog entries are short blog entries.  Why?  Because they have nothing, no nothing, really nothing, to report.  Thanks again for reading this.