I’m settled in my last home, Just waiting to die. All my life I have lived well, I have lived voraciously, I have loved eternally But It is time to die.
I have always been driven by curiosity, Let me see, let me feel, let me eat something new A new street, a new neighbourhood, a new country Don’t go back, keep going Keep seeing, keep knowing, keep loving
I have always loved here. But I want to go there. Every pasture is greener Even if dirtier, poorer, grimier. I have been there. I have lived there, I have loved there There is always something new to learn
There is no oxygen there now. Not for me, Only here.
In this last abode my inmates wait. We are all waiting to die. At meals we often note an empty seat. We ask. Is Alice ok? More often than not We are told Alice passed away last night. One by one we are picked off.
Oddly, I find a secrecy around each passing. No celebration, no acknowledgment, nothing! Only the whispers. Perhaps it is considered too distressing for the living To realize how fast we are dying off.
We always knew we would die but now it’s the imminence, That is the difference. It’s a remarkable feeling to know That today we exist, But tomorrow we are but a memory.
Every morning is a surprise anew. A joy that each new day brings, Reading, being with one’s lover, Sharing intimacies, being intimate, Watching offspring flourish from afar. Enjoying earths nature, anew.
Two score and twenty years ago We pledged till death do us part. We wait,. . . Joyously, without regret.
Past my best before date. How I lived beyond my expiry date
I was advised in January 2021 by the cardiac team at Sunnybrook hospital that it was unlikely I would last the year . As is oft quoted from the Princess Bride, “My name is (Dr) Carlos Montoya, Prepare to die” I didn’t and I think I know why.
This is a very technical medical report. I include it because some of you may have a loved one with some of my co-morbidities. Read or pass
Dr Stephen Strum, adopted me medically last year after discovering some of my Jisei poems online. He has monitored my tests and clinical reports from all my specialists with meticulous care. He is a renowned oncology/hemocology specialist with a special expertise in prostate cancer. His book is considered the best book ever written on prostate cancer for patients (google Stephen Strum on Amazon for title) One of his recommendations was to follow the protocol used in a crataegus 1442 trial. (See attached case report). Essentially, half the research participants who took the study dose of crataeguss 1442 had increased exercise capacity, improved left ventricular ejection fraction( LVEF) and increased longevity. I realized crataegus 1224 was a Hawthorne extract, used for centuries for heart conditions. So I went to my local health food store and bought a recommended Hawthorne extract. I emailed Stephen with a photo of my purchase and was immediately reprimanded roundly. “Jerry , when I recommended crataegus 1442 I meant crataegus 1442 not some American shit know one knows what is in it. Crataegus 1442 is a superior German product and their approval system for drugs and supplements is far more rigorous than the FDA. Any serious research on hawthorns only uses the German product because of its consistent purity.” I started on it and two months later I noticed the difference in my exercise capacity and strength. ( see also SPRITE trial)
Dr strum espouses the theory of “inflamaging”. Eg inflammation is typical of aging. everywhere in the body. Everything is interconnected. His approach is truly holistic and he backs it up with research. In a chapter of his book he shows how prostate cancer just doesn’t exist in the prostate but affects other things in the body. For example he outlines the connection between prostate cancer and loss of bone density, as well as heart and neuro-degenerative changes. Two of my friends with prostate cancer read the chapter I sent them . ( let me know if you would like it) neither of their urologists ever mentioned the risk of loss of bone density. They are now both getting a bone density test.
One way to fight ‘inflamaging’ that Strum feels is important is to monitor omega 3 and 6 fatty acids in your blood , one good, one bad. He argues they play a huge role in regulating inflammation. He advised getting tested for all my fatty acids at the MAYO clinic(very expensive) or the EL lab in Florida. I tried both but neither will send kits in mail to Canada . But kinda by accident, I googled “omega 3 tests in Canada” and bingo! Life labs does a big part of it for $77 . I ordered it online, was given an online receipt and a requisition for my healthcare worker to sign. I took it to life labs on hwy 7 and got the result 2 weeks later. (see report below). It showed my AA /EPA ratio at 18. But Strum says it needs to be below at least 4 for maximum protection. He cites that many Americans on a high fast foods diet ring in at over 40. The report also notes that my ‘omega 3 whole blood score’ was 5.64%. But if between 6% -10%. There is an 80% lower risk of heart events! My ‘omega 3 index’ was 5.64 but a reading of 8%- 11%. offers the greatest protection from myocardial infarction . . . and in Stephen’s writings it affects a while range of inflammatory issues everywhere in the body. He thinks of it as a kinda inflammation “thermostat”. I asked the technician at the lab if many doctors prescribed this test. “Rarely” was the reply.
What he advised me was to take Vascepa as prescribed in the “Reduce-It” study. ( see link). He advised take it for a month then re-test my omega 3 acids. If it is not in the sweet spot adjust dosage. I have been taking Vascepa since this lab result below and will take the the test again in a month and hope I get into the sweet spot . Dr Strum argues that rebalancing these acids isn’t only heart healthy but affects inflammation everywhere in the body. My cardiac surgeon asked why I would take Vascepa because it only helps patients with congestive heart failure and I don’t have that. It illustrates vividly the difference in two methods of medical practice. My cardiologist sees everything in terms of connecting one dot to another dot. Dr strum connects on dot to a a hundred dots. Vascepa was proven effective in the dramatic research in the REDUCE-IT study of 8000 patients with the half taking Vascepa showed a stunning result of a 28% reduction in heart events compared to the control group. There are far more heart benefits than my cardiologist suggested. Read about it here https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/omega-3-fatty-acids-and-the-heart-new-evidence-more-questions-2021032422213
I’m convinced I have foiled my Sunnybrook medical prognostications by following Dr Strums advice. I have a new lease on life.
Crataegus 1442 study
Efficacy and safety of crataegus extract WS 1442 in comparison with placebo in patients with chronic stable New York Heart Association class-III heart failure Michael Tauchert, Prof Dr med Leverkusen, Germany Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate whether long-term therapy with crataegus extract WS 1442 is efficacious as add-on therapy to preexisting diuretic treatment in patients with heart failure with a more advanced stage of the disease (New York Heart Association [NYHA] class III), whether effects are dose dependent, and whether the treat- ment is safe and well tolerated. Methods Exercise capacity was assessed by use of seated bicycle ergometry with incremental workloads. Scores for subjective symptoms and complaints made by the patients were analyzed. Efficacy and tolerability of the treatments were judged by both the patients and investigators. Safety was assessed by the documentation of adverse events and the safety laboratory. Results A total of 209 patients were randomized to treatment with 1800 mg of WS 1442, 900 mg of WS 1442, or with placebo. After 16 weeks of therapy with 1800 mg of WS 1442 per day, maximal tolerated workload during bicycle exercise showed a statistically significant increase in comparison with both placebo and 900 mg of WS 1442. Typical heart failure symptoms as rated by the patients were reduced to a greater extent by WS 1442 than by placebo. This dif- ference was significant for both doses of WS 1442. Both efficacy and tolerability were rated best for the 1800 mg of WS 1442 group by patients and investigators alike. The incidence of adverse events was lowest in the 1800 mg of WS 1442 group, particularly with respect to dizziness and vertigo. Conclusions The data from this study confirm that there is a dose-dependent effect of WS 1442 on the exercise ca- pacity of patients with heart failure and on typical heart failure–related clinical signs and symptoms. The drug was shown to be well tolerated and safe. (Am Heart J 2002;143:910-5.)
In my travels in Africa, Middle East and Europe, my most striking sociological observation was the thousands of young men (16-30) hanging out at street corners, markets or bus stations. There is an over 30% young male unemployment rate in Italy spain and Greece. In Canada, this January 2022, there is a 15% unemployment rate among men in that age group. Young men are living at home in greater numbers in North America than ever in our nations history. Young men drop out of high school in far greater numbers than women and 60% of college enrolments are women, while only 40% are male. What’s wrong with this picture? imagine the spin-off. What hope do these males have in finding a mate and raising a family. Dating profile reads “Hi ladies, I’m a handsome unemployed high school dropout living in my mom’s basement. Care to take me out to dinner? ” It’s not surprising these young men commit suicide at 3x the rate of employed men. I explored some of the reasons for this in my Huffington Post article, Reading and Life Success. Read the section on the gender gap. I look at the effect of hours playing war games on computer, among other issues. I’ve also added todays USA Today article that reminded me of my strong feelings about this issue.
I woke up startled in a cold sweat last night. I had just relived, in a vivid dream, a startling moment in Tehran Iran in 1962, I had long forgotten. The dream was even more vivid than the reality it seemed. I was dreaming about a drug incident of alarming consequences. And it was all true! I was on my way around the world in 1961 and had made it as far as Tehran for under a dollar for transportation and accommodation. Using my dad’s honorary Toronto police shield badge, I had inveigled my way across Iran by being passed by one city police chief after another all the way to the Tehran. Each police chief then, in the time of the Shah was also the Governor of their state and dressed accordingly with flamboyant uniforms with enormous gold epaulettes, flashing scabbards and swords and wedding cake hats. With my first letter of introduction from the Chief in Zahedan on the Baluchistan border, each chief passed me on to the next on free bus transportation. In my free hotel room I invited a couple of other fellow travellers to share the extra bed and floor. Johnathan was a road weary Dutchman from Amsterdam who had been on the road for 3 years! He had more stories than a hundred travellers.
One evening he rolled a fresh cigarette, but inside the tobacco on the paper he placed a muddy green ball the size of a small alley and rolled up the cigarette. He lit it, took a toke and passed it around. Within minutes I was unconscious, floating in a sea of bliss. At some point in this drugged state I remember I declared to the others I wanted a cream puff and with an insistence, despite their admonitions I stumbled out onto the streets of Tehran well after midnight. The street lights and shop lights streaked across the sky like a lazer light show blinding me with their brilliance. I next remember lying on my bed back at the hotel munching down on tender luscious cream puffs. Where I found them I’ll never know but I thought they may have been a mirage. It was like biting into a piece of heaven. No words can capture the rapturous experience of this drugged culinary experience. I didn’t question the veracity of this experience until I came down from my high and was alert again.
Further into my drug experience while still being virtually comatose, disaster struck and I began to defecate uncontrollably in a steady stream of diarrhea It wasn’t just one defecation, it went on, and on, and I seemly was floating in my own very liquid feces. My body was incapable of moving or getting up. I finally fell asleep afloat in my own shit!
Sometime in mid-morning I awoke, immediately remembering my nightmarish bowel movement. I reached to my sides and patted the bed. It was bone dry. I rolled over and patted my bottom. I was bone dry. It was all a drug hallucination. I remembered the cream puffs assuming they too were a hallucination after all where could anyone get cream puffs in Tehran at midnight. But as I cleaned up the room, I found two pastry papers with whipped cream on them. I had found cream puffs. Jonathon was gone but his backpack was still in the room.
I had to stay in Tehran for a few days. I had to go to the Canadian embassy to obtain an affidavit stating I was a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. My next major objective was Jerusalem and to get there I had to cross several Arab borders including Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. I needed to have conclusive proof I was not a Jew. The Canadian consul made me a very official one page document with wax imprint, a Canadian stamp and a fancy signature. I still ended up having problem at one border because the agent thumbed through my one guide for my world trip; A copy of the Oxford Canadian School Atlas, stamped, property of Richmond Hill High School. On a map of Asia I had tracked my trip from Singapore to Jerusalem. I managed to convince him that my line led to Jerusalem but did not cross over the border from Syrian Jerusalem into Israel.
All during this time Johnathon never showed up. When I left heading for Turkey his backpack was still in the room. I never ever saw or heard from him again. Very mysterious. The odds for his safety were slim.
In my dream last night I woke up at the point in my memory when I voided my intestines onto the bed. ( I’ve worn a diaper every since. Lol. )
Photo. My crossing of Iran in 1962 . Between Zahedan and Meshed, our rickety old bus had 2 well armed soldiers to protect the bus from roving pirate gangs. When our bus broke down one soldier climbed up to this hilltop to have better sightline for possible invaders. I joined him . He took my picture. ( well marked on current maps as Mt. Diakiw. LOL)
In my college years I was remarkably innocent and naive. Not wanting to be exposed I tried to cover it up with a poser debonair persona that was far from the real me. I discovered alcohol much later than my peers and when I did, I indulged with gusto. A lush would not be an inappropriate label. I joined the Zeta Psi fraternity known on campus as the “drunken Zetes”. I was a stellar model of the Zete frat-boy, eligible for the most drunken zete of the year, if there was such an award. I dressed fastidiously with the latest fashion I obtained at “Perry’s”, a renowned men’s fashion store, noted for clients like Bill Cosby when he was famous, not infamous. On reflection I’m sure my cloths affectation was a strategy to cover up for my feelings of “not ready for prime time”. I thought my black and grey stripped corduroy jacket was “it”. My beige trench coat displayed a bright red MacIntosh clan lining. I wore a tweedy Frank Sinatra fedora. I smoked a knarly black pipe and smoked an expensive specialty tobacco that filled a room with Chanel No 5-like aroma. I acquired the habit of wearing all my shirts with the collars turned up thinking it was so cool and “Bloor Street” -the fashion center of Toronto. ( A habit I unconsciously still wear today. ) At 60, I remember waiting to defend my doctoral thesis and my thesis advisor, Ardra Cole, half my age, turned my collar down, like my mother would and I resisted wanting to say, “Don’t do that!” I drove around town in a red Triumph 2 my father let me use, at will, with my British private school scarf blowing in the wind. Such a poser!
My buddy Butch Powell and I were avid jazz fans and we were regular habitués at the Town Tavern with its regular rotation of well known Jazz musicians. Our favourite singer was Anita O’day. On one of her visits I was seated next to an attractive vivacious woman my age. After 5 years at an all boys high school, with no sisters or female neighbours my age, I was incredibly awkward with women. She helped out by initiating a conversation. By the end of the evening I was smitten. I asked her out for lunch the next day and she accepted. I arrived at her apartment the next day and when she opened the door she was naked! I mean stark naked! I had never seen a naked woman before. “I’m just getting dressed” she said, nonchalantly. In my car she asked me if I would mind driving her to the Don Jail to visit a friend. I parked in the jail lot and she jumped out and said she would just be a minute. An hour later she jumped back in the car all fired up and ecstatic. “I can’t believe it, I just ‘copped’ a joint in the Don jail, How great is that?” She waved a big fat marijuana cigarette almost the size of a cigar in my face as I pulled out onto Dundas street. The top was down on my car and at stoplights we were beside street cars with passenger looking down into my car as she fired up the joint as if it was just an ordinary cigarette. In the 1950s getting caught with any marijuana would end you up in jail. I didn’t have the nerve to tell her to put it out of sight. I drove along nervously, resisting her offers of a toke and glancing up at passengers watching her emitting great clouds of blue smoke. She was in heaven with not a care in the world. I was a man of the world. Ha! She was too much for me. We never dated again.
This is a story that was never to be told. This is a story I buried deep in my mind. I am so ashamed of my negligence and irresponsibility that like a trauma, my mind tried to destroy the memory. and bury it . It lingers. It returns at the least expected moment. It’s time to tell this story. In the first summer of my service with the Department of National Defence Schools (DND), in our Volkswagen camper-bus when Lindsey was 5, and kate 1, we travelled from W Germany to Athens Greece, through what was then called Yugoslavia, now the Balkan states. We dawdled at our own pace along the Adriatic coast to Dubrovnik.
Along the way I was fascinated by the number of Roma ( gypsies) people we observed travelling in caravans or camped along the road. I have since learned that they still are the 3rd largest ethnic group in the Balkan states, with large populations in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria as well. They were as vigorously sought out and exterminated by the Nazis, as were the Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Roma are included in the total number of 6 million Jews exterminated during WW2. They are still persecuted in many countries, especially in Hungary. Canada accepts Roma refugees today from Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. They have even been discriminated here in their refugees applications in Canada as well. For example recently 70% of recent applications are positive in Ontario from a low of 20% a few years ago. They were over 5000 Roma living in Canada in the 2011 census they common name Gypsies has become a stereotyped as a culture of cheater’s and thieves. I was “gypped” at the market. Rumours persist that they steal children this terrorizing neighbourhoods when travelling through. As a young pre-school boy I was mesmerized by the strip of closed retail stores on Queen St. West of University Ave where a small cluster of Roma had settled in Toronto.
Travelling along the coastal road to Greece ended at the Albania, almost impossible to travel through at that time. It was a closed off communist state and few travellers entered, so we turned off the coastal road and up over the Pindus mountains. For miles we travelled through a vast empty stretch of rocky scrub land with nary a sign of human activity. Suddenly coming around a curve a in a flat field there was a large encampment of Romas. Dozens of tents and carts formed a big circle. A large fire was raging and sounds of accordions and guitars could be heard from the road. I parked the bus, grabbed my camera and raced off to the encampment blindly, inspired by my dream of recording a rare culture in its most natural environment.
As I came close enough to the group around the fire, I pointed to my camera, visually asking for permission to take pictures. Some elders all signalled together with out-stretched palms. “Dinar, dinar”. I handed a fistful of dinars and began shooting. Some men pushed forward a beautiful teen and told her to dance for me. She danced, I took photos. They asked for more dinars and I had none left. I signalled with empty palms, thanked them and bowed. I turned to return to Ann and the girls who I left in the camper-bus. The blood drained from my body at the scene I observed. The bus was surrounded with teenage Roma boys who surrounded the bus and were all banging on all the windows trying to break in. My first thought was the rumour that the Roma steal children. I exploded across the scrub gap and as I approached the bus I emitted a roar that would cower a lion, I never knew I was capable of, swinging my camera from its strap like a mediaeval flail. Turning to my bloodcurdling roars and screams, with my weapon a blur, they backed off and I was able to get into the drivers seat and relock the door. Ann was in the passenger seat with Kate and Lindsey huddled in terror. I put it in gear and roared off. I immediately felt shame. How could I have raced off so thoughtlessly. So irresponsible. What audacity and rudeness to enter the enclave so brazenly. I have always felt guilt for both digressions. I never expected I would ever tell this story.
Note 1. The Roma emigrated to europe in 800. They originated from the Punjab and Rajasthan and still speak a version of Punjabi and Bengali though they have adopted Eastern Orthodox or Islam depending on their current location. They were thought to come from Egypt originally, hence ‘Gypsies’. While mostly considered a pejorative, some groups proudly call themselves Gypsies ( note 2. photos ; the dozens of photos I took have long been lost in numerous moves. These two photos are closest I could find on the free internet access that approximate my memory of the people I photographed )
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