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Nuge

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Everything posted by Nuge

  1. Nuge

    Fuck Cancer

    They've moved him to palliative care with a DNR. He was ok a week ago. Fuck!
  2. Nuge

    Fuck Cancer

    It sucks to have to come back and add to this thread. As I type this my BIL, Joe, is in the hospital unresponsive. He's getting worse by the minute and I fear the end is imminent. He had melanoma 10+ years ago and thought he had beat it. It reared its ugly head again in January of 2023. My son, mom, father, and I traveled down (from Portland) to Houston to see he and my sister for Christmas and to spend some time on the coast fishing. They have a house in Matagorda and go out fishing in the bay a lot. Joe got my son hooked on fishing and it was a great bond between the two. We fished for two days and then the crazy freeze happened and temperatures dropped to 14 degrees. Shortly after that trip Joe started feeling ill but being the big tough guy that he is he disregarded it until he passed out one day. He and my sister went to the hospital and ran tests. Cancer. All over. He's been fighting it for the past year and had good success. Had a PET test that showed 95% of it had disappeared but that last 5% was another story - it just wouldn't go away. He was put into a trial at MD Anderson where they remove his T-cells, kill off his immune system, and reintroduce them into his body to combat the cancer. It had the opposite effect and the tumors exploded everywhere. Eventually he was diagnosed with LMD, Leptomeningeal Disease, where the cancer invades the meninges and spinal fluid. At that point there wasn't anything really to be done. The funny thing is I was in Texas last month for the eclipse and stopped by to visit. Joe appeared fine, strong, if a bit irksome, but otherwise looked healthy. He and my son went fishing on their lease by the Trinity river. It was a good day. I'm glad that will be my son's final memory of his uncle Joe. The LMD prognosis and lack of success with the trial made Joe realize that he wasn't going to beat it and he started to deteriorate pretty quick. They had planned on inserting a port into his head to release the chemo drugs directly onto the meninges but it would have interfered with his other nephew's graduation. Joe was the only male figure in his nephew, Michael's life and helped raise him. He was determined to see Michael graduate and walk the stage. Michael asked if Joe would host a crawfish boil for his graduation party. Joe agreed and it gave him another goal. The ceremony and party was last weekend. During the party Joe started feeling ill and weak and went into the house to rest for 15 minutes. He never made it back out to the party. He started throwing up and couldn't stop. Stopped eating on Sunday and is disoriented. My sister took him to the ER and they said he was having seizures. He doesn't recognize her or his family and can't talk. He's dying. I don't know if he'll leave the hospital. I've been doing a lot of crying today. Fuck Cancer
  3. Gonna see Wine Lips Sunday. Looking forward to their opener, The Macks, too.
  4. Jeff is playing at my friend's house in Detroit this Friday 5/17. Small world
  5. First hot weekend of the year in the PNW so it's time to swim.
  6. The hops are coming along nicely.
  7. I'm really excited to host Loch Lomond. They have a pretty large following and are going to embark on a European tour shortly after playing in my back yard.
  8. Saw my cousin's band, The Black Doors, last night. Sounded great!
  9. Nashville guitar and fiddle aficionado Colin O'Brien will be performing in the backyard on July 27th.
  10. Damn. RIP He certainly left his mark
  11. Got $25 tickets to The National w/ The War on Drugs and Lucius. Also picked up two for Kings of Leon. $25 all in is a great deal. Seeing Brainstory tonight. Gonna check on those Johnny Marr tickets
  12. Funny timing - seems almost intentional...
  13. Better, he turns his head when the ball is in the air. I'm sure we'll coach that right out of him
  14. Nuge

    2024 NFL DRAFT

    Is Cousins healthy? Didn't he just have achilles surgery in November?
  15. First show of the season is booked for the backyard stage.
  16. I wish - I live in the Portland area (Vancouver, WA). I'm also hosting a concert in my backyard that night.
  17. Thank you
  18. Why isn't the upper peninsula of Michigan just part of Wisconsin? It's connected by land to Wisconsin. Someone plant a flag in it and said, "mine"?
  19. I wish I was in Austin - I'd definitely take you up on this.
  20. Went old skool last night and saw Helmet with Cro Mags as the opener. Great show - those old guys can still bring it. I really appreciate earplugs.
  21. Speaking of Chick-fil-A... https://www.oregonlive.com/dining/2024/04/portland-approves-chick-fil-a-location-at-strip-club-site-of-recent-shooting-homicide.html
  22. Been working out in the garden all day. It's time for a beer.
  23. Nuge

    2024 NFL DRAFT

    Hopefully Vegas doesn't draft him.
  24. At least we were in a bowl game...
  25. I saw this posted on facebook but thought that it would be appreciated here too. This is a letter that Fiona Apple posted to her fans/ticket holders about her reasons for delaying her South American concert tour. It's 6pm on Friday, and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I'm writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later. Here's the thing. I have a dog, Janet, and she's been ill for about 2 years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then — an adult, officially — and she was my kid. She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face. She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders. She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist. Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We've lived in numerous houses, and joined a few makeshift families, but it's always really been just the two of us. She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head. She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album. The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks, every 6 or 7 years. She has Addison's Disease, which makes it more dangerous for her to travel, since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death. Despite all this, she's effortlessly joyful & playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is. I can't come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference. She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore. I know that she's not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That's why they are so much more present than people. But I know she is coming close to the time where she will stop being a dog, and start instead to be part of everything. She'll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go. I just can't leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I'm afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out. Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed. But this decision is instant. These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love & friendship. I am the woman who stays home, baking Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable & comforted & safe & important. Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life that keeps us feeling terrified & alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments. I need to do my damnedest, to be there for that. Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known. When she dies. So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and I am revelling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I'm asking for your blessing. I'll be seeing you. Love, Fiona
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