cancer patient diary - blog lymphoma patient

Section 162 Entry 0001. Date: 2005 September 13 Tuesday.
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The text of this web page will ultimately form part of the non-fiction medical memoir CANCER PATIENT, which will probably be published, both online and as a print-on-demand book, some time late in 2005 (or, if not then, early in 2006.)

        Summary of this web page:-

        The author, Hugh Cook, learns that there are no second chances. The cancer is in remission right now, but if it comes back then the probable outcome is death. This is both good news and bad news. Bad news, in that reality is fragile. Good news, in that we only have to do this once. The author receives a visit from his baby daughter, who then returns to Japan. The author intends to follow in December.

        Read on ...

        Today, Tuesday 13 September 2005, I received a phone call from radiation oncology. The requested CD holding a copy of the latest MRI scan of my brain was ready to pick up. Would I like to come in and pick it up?
        "Pick it up?"
        I was dismayed. In the aftermath of my daughter's return to Japan, I have no slept well. Today I was feeling weak, exhausted. An extra trip to the hospital to pick up a CD seemed out of my range.
        "Or we could post it out, but only to the address we have on file."
        I checked the address they had for me. Yes, correct -- an address in Devonport, in the city of North Shore, in the Auckland area, in New Zealand. Just across the harbor from the hospital, in fact.
        "I would be very pleased if you would send it to me," I said.
        I need this MRI scan for when I go back to Japan, probably in December of this year. I have already seen the MRI itself on Dr. Gillian Campbell's computer screen, and I have already read the MRI report, so I already know the outcome.
        The first couple of MRI reports that I saw were pretty cryptic documents which appeared to be written in some kind of language not known to me, perhaps Revised Technical Klingon or something like that. This report, however -- which I saw a few days ago in Dr. Campbell's office -- was amazingly short and stunningly clear.
        The key point was this:-
        "There is no sign of lymphoma recurrence."
        (I'm quoting this from memory, because, somehow, I have already managed to mislay my copy of the MRI report, which I only got into my hands a few days ago, on 9 September.)
        Anyway.
        I'm now looking forward to receiving the copy of the CD, and I'll be very interested to find out whether I can view this on my own computer. If it's a series of picture files, sure. If specialized viewing software is required, I'll be out of luck, but no doubt the doctors in Japan will be able to open the files.
        Dr. Campbell was very pleased to be able to show me the pictures of my brain on her computer. A little scarring here -- look, this whiteness -- and a little scarring there. But no lymphoma.
        A golden moment, my wife there to share it.
        But not baby Cornucopia, who, on the day of my meeting with Dr. Campbell, was at home in Devonport being looked after by my mother.
        For some months now, baby Cornucopia has been living in Japan, pursuing her education at the local daycare center, where she has learnt, amongst other things, that we wash our hands before we have dinner.
        But, recently, back toward the end of August, baby Cornucopia got on a plane at Narita and flew out from Japan to New Zealand, bringing her mother along for the ride. Baby Cornucopia spent eleven days in New Zealand demonstrating her rapid cultural and intellectual development. The high point of the visit, I think, was baby Cornucopia's demonstration of her Advanced Banana Ingestion Technique, of which more later.
        What follows are some notes on baby Cornucopia's visit, plus a little more detail on my latest meeting with Dr. Campbell, and my prospects of living (or, alternatively, of dying.)
        At the start of my notes there is a cryptic list, unexplained. It is as follows:-
        "Milk ... banana ... bread ,,. oranges ... kiwifruit ... chicken ... yasai ... Cornucopia chan ... Mallowpuffs ... wine."
        What does it all mean?
        My first naive thought is that it might be some kind of shopping list, but "Cornucopia chan" (which translates from Japanese to English as something like "Cornucopia the cute") is my baby daughter, and, as far as I remember, we didn't buy her at the supermarket. We got her at the hospital, I think.
        But, for some reason, "Cornucopia chan" is on the list along with everything else. Maybe the list is actually some kind of coded message from Assassination Command or something like that, and I've done a data dump deliberately.
        My inability to clarify the exact meaning of the list, and my inability, likewise, to remember the exact context, is a reminder that all memories are fictional. The world we possess is a kind of improvised story, scrambled together from moment to moment by way of hints, notes, suppositions and theories, my version of this story never quite the same as yours, even if your life is lived only one skin distant from mine.
        I am a fiction maker. It is part of my nature. And it is part of the nature of the kind of animal I am.
        Even so, I want to leave, in this memoir, a trail, if I can, not of fictions but of facts. I lived. I loved. I wept. The room was sacred. There was a golden moment. I wept alone, fatigued by sleeplessness and mortality. And I was at the airport to meet her, my baby daughter, Cornucopia. who arrived asleep, asleep in her stroller, which rather suggests that the negligent people at immigration control made absolutely no attempt to interrogate her, but, rather, accepted her claim to be who she claimed to be on the evidence of that ridiculously out-of-date little baby photo on her passport, which looks nothing like her at all.
        Anyway, with that preamble, what follows now are some notes from the days of my baby daughter's visit. Some notes from the pages of what we might think of as "real life" -- husband, wife and baby.
        Starting on day one of the eleven-day visit.
        Day one.
        Baby Cornucopia showed no fear of me and voluntarily brought me fridge magnets she had found while foraging in the kitchen. However, when baby Cornucopia's mother disappeared from sight (to have a shower, for instance) baby Cornucopia screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. And screamed.
        A random note here on clothing: baby Cornucopia came to New Zealand with a "sleeping quilt", a kind of one-piece garment padded with down, a bit like a sleeping bag with arm holes.
        This day one (have I established the time frame -- I forget?) was at the end of August in the year 2005. Not, I hope, the last year of my life. With a bit of luck, the first of many.
        Baby Cornucopia's vocabulary at the age of sixteen months proves to consist of the words "mama", "papa", "momo" (peach), "wan-wan" ("doggy", or, if you like, "bow-wow" -- the Japanese for "dog" is "inu") and "hapa", meaning "leaves". Of these words her favorite is "momo" -- peaches are presently in season in Japan and have become baby Cornucopia's favorite food. However, her use of "momo" is not quite accurate: she uses it to denote any fruit-shaped object which happens to be in sight. She also uses the English word "More!" -- together with a vigorous pointing gesture -- to demand anything edible that happens to catch her eye.
        All in all, impressively bilingual for sixteen months, I thought.
        No sign as yet, however, of the first novel.
        Day two.
        My parents got in the car and drove away, heading south, bound for the tourist area of Waitomo, the plan being to stay away for three nights, giving me the chance to play house with wife and baby.
        My wife and I went shopping with Miss Wonderscream 2005, who went to sleep in her stroller. Cute Cornucopia that day, persisted in screaming whenever she was separated from her mother. Later in the day, Cornucopia started attacking me, yelping with glee as she buffeted into me, which I took as a step forward.
        Day two, Cornucopia demonstrated her Advanced Banana Ingestion Technique. Put a piece of banana in your mouth. Hold it there so the banana can meditate on its fate. Spit out the banana on the high chair. Repeat this process as many times as is necessary until the banana, grown soggy and war weary, finally realizes that resistance is futile. At this point, the banana may safely be eaten.
        I was enormously impressed by the verve, energy and originality of this technique. But my wife, I regret to say, was negative. She did not share my unbridled enthusiasm for our daughter's wonderful achievement. It seems my wife wants baby Cornucopia to sit there and eat her banana, one piece at a time, without spitting it out -- not even once. When it comes to bananas, then, my wife would like Cornucopia to be entirely conventional, like Barbara Bush or some other incarnation of good taste. Still, so far, the child's gung ho creative genius has survived the blanding effects of the socialization process.
        My wife told me that, while in Japan, Cornucopia suddenly had an allergic reaction to kiwifruit, something she had eaten several times previously with no bad effects. Apparently the skin of her forehead went red and her eyes also turned red. A doctor, consulted later, advised that she not be fed kiwifruit again until older.
        At about sixteen months of age, Cornucopia is pattering about confidently, walking and running, occasionally taking a fall on the floor, which is unforgiving stone -- my parents opted for a slate floor in the kitchen and living room as part of a solar heating system. So far, the occasional low-speed collisions with the stone floor have proved harmless.
        Day two, my wife gave me a belated birthday present, a watch, Alba brand, mechanism made in Japan, case made in China, a watch with an extremely clear face that my hazy eyes can cope with. A timepiece watch: no bells and whistles. No date, no altimeter, no alarm for setting off your backpack bomb. An hour hand, a minute hand and a second hand. Metal bracelet, presumably steel.
        Since I am a mechanical idiot, my wife adjusted the metal bracelet to fit my wrist, which involved taking out one of the links with a special tool. Years ago I tried to buy a watch with a metal bracelet in a watch shop, but they had trouble adjusting it to my size, so I gave up and walked out. This time, however, the fitting process went perfectly.
        I was very pleased with my new watch and happy to have been confidently attacked by my baby daughter. But the day did have one unhappy moment.
        Some time ago, some of my wife's friends gave her a baby book package. This consists of a template for text and photographs. You write the text then deliver the text, plus your selection of photographs, to the baby book company, and they give you back a properly printed copy of a book about your baby's early days.
        It had been difficult for my wife to find the time in her extremely busy schedule to writer the text and to gather together the photographs, but she had done, and the result was very pleasing. I was enjoying my way through the book, the Japanese text of which was easy enough to understand, when I came to the part about the birth, and there I saw something which made me very angry, and that was "Doctor's name", with the name of some doctor attached.
        My anger was instantaneous.
        What the hell was one of the hospital's doctors doing with his name in our baby book? The hospital birth: any doctor even remotely involved with that debacle should be down on his knees sucking exhaust pipes in Hell, not enjoying a life of ease and leisure in our baby book.
        But I concealed my anger and focused on the amazing thing featured in the book, the amazing baby Cornucopia.
        Day three, in the darkness of early morning, my baby daughter, the amazing baby Cornucopia, began to cry, loudly and without reason. I waited for some animal of suitable size, drawn by her cries, to emerge from the darkness and devour her alive, but no such thing happened. There is, obviously, an unfilled niche in the local ecology.
        I am pleased to say that baby Cornucopia did not wake me up on subsequent nights. However, my wife informs me that the reason for this was not that the baby did not cry, but, rather, that I slept happily through her crying.
        Anyway.
        Day three ...
        Breakfast as a Devonport cafe where, for my benefit, my sister read out the menu written on the chalkboard. I could see that the chalkboard existed but, for the life of me, I could not make out a single thing that was written on it. On the way home, I distinguished myself by walking slap bang into a street sign, much to my wife's alarm. Fortunately I did not suffer any serious damage.
        As I gradually (well, not so gradually, really) go blind, I must somehow be developing mannerisms which are characteristic of a blind person. A woman in the post office put a purchased stamp into my hand even before I started groping around for it. And, in the supermarket, while I was trying to decide whether I could or could not see where the shopping baske4ts were stacked up, a man, a complete stranger, saw my need and cheerfully volunteered one into my hands, saying "Here you go!"
        The downside is twofold. First, life becomes more effortful. Proofreading written work on a computer screen which is in the process of receding into the unfathomed infinities of haze is a major hassle. And crossing the road has become dangerous, particularly at one place where, in the late afternoon, the glare of the sun dominates the road. Oncoming cars are lost in the haze of that glare, and the sounds of their approach are masked by busy traffic on an intersecting road.
        The upside?
        The world which the blind inhabit is a kinder world than that in which the fully-sighted live.
        One thing I've noticed is that the words "I can't see" are instantly comprehended, and people will, thereafter, willingly help me with whatever task it is I am trying to accomplish, whether it is hunting down a block of paper in a stationery story or finding my way through a hospital which is signposted with signs which I can no longer read.
        Nobody I've met so far has had any problem at all in instantly wrapping their head around the notion that they are in the presence of someone who cannot see properly. And everyone I have met so far has seemed perfectly at ease with that situation. The general reaction seems to be a cheerful "Oh, I can help!" reaction.
        All going well, an eye operation some time in September 2005 will restore my vision. Two operations in one. A vitrectomy -- a jelly-removal operation -- to get rid of the junk of dead cells, cancer debris, which is floating in my field of vision. And, at the same time, a lens replacement operation, the natural lens, degraded by cataract, to be replaced by an artificial plastic lens.
        It is the right eye, all going well, which will be fixed. The left, the optic nerve badly damaged, is usable, up to a point, but cannot, at this stage of human civilization, be fixed by any technology currently available to the human race. Them's, as the saying goes, the breaks.
        Anyway, I got home alive, and, later in the day, late in the afternoon, in fact, as my wife cooked ginger pork, baby Cornucopia approached me voluntarily for the first time to play, and we played with some of the books, blocks and plastic stickum-togethers which live at my parents' house but which actually belong to Cornucopia's cousins, who are somewhat older than she is.
        I found my end of baby play to be more tiring than anticipated. Having a lively baby in the house reinforces my understanding of the fact that my recovery has some way to go yet.

Miss Success

Climbing and falling,
Miss Success
Is pink enthusiasm
With angel wings:
White petals of angel wings.

        Day four.
        My handwritten notes for day four say, cryptically, "Cut my to emails, working more by touch than by sight, a procedure which felt considerably dangerous."
        I did e-mail somewhere?
        Having looked at this in bafflement for some considerable time I finally click. Yes! That's it! Toenails! I cut my toenails! And I couldn't see where the scissor blades were, not exactly. That's why it felt dangerous. I kept expecting to slice into my living skin.
        If you go totally blind, who then cuts your toenails? You? Or someone else? And are there maybe possibly perhaps special safety scissors for cutting toenails that you can't actually see? Unknowns which, all going well, I will never have to explore.
        My notes for day four continue:-
        My wife, who has never previously experienced spring in New Zealand, is suffering from some hayfever symptoms, eyes a little itchy and nose irritable. And mouth dry. My image of August in New Zealand is rain and mud, unrelenting rain, dampness and misery, but today has been gloriously blue and sunny.
        I have been made aware of the fact that one of my supporters, who is in direct communication with the angels, has been interceding with the angels on my behalf, and perhaps this heavenly weather is part of the result. (Seriously: I am not a person of prayer, but, to those who did pray for me, and I know that there are people who did, my gratitude.) (And, seriously once again -- has someone really bee interceding with the angels on my account? Answer: yes, indeed. Absolutely.)
        After dinner, my daughter, evidently recognizing an obligation to provide practical support to her aged father in his declining years, brought me, one by one, a series of food offerings gathered from the floor: limp scraps of broccoli and tiny, tiny shreds of orange peel which it would have been impossible for me to find by myself with my dim vision.
        Day five.
        Baby Cornucopia is running around gleefully with a piece of cardboard clutched in her fist, evidently a fragment which she has succeeded in tearing free from the spine of some unsuspecting book.
        "Cornucopia is endless," says my wife.
        Never stops. Never ceases.
        Before lunch, baby Cornucopia did reality TV training in my father's garden, and I got to practice the art of prising open her baby jaws to extract pieces of (possibly poisonous) green vegetation.
        In the afternoon, I slept and the baby slept also. That was in the early afternoon. Later in the afternoon, my wife cooked chicken.
        I sat in my father's big black leather revolving armchair and baby Cornucopia, working away industriously like a small pink mouse on a treadmill, pushed me round and round and round and round until I grew dizzy.
        That day, she eats what we eat, pretty much, including yoghurt (which I don't eat), cheese (which I don't eat either), white bread and bananas.
        When Cornucopia drinks milk, it's real cow's milk. She was breastfed (partly breastfed, baby formula always there to supply what nature could not) until shortly before coming on this trip to New Zealand.
        Day six.
        Dinner for two at Sigdi's Indian Restaurant, with wine and funds (a birthday present) provided by my brother Charles. My mother, back from Waitomo, volunteered to watchdog the One Who Screams.
        Tomorrow, a hospital appointment, originally scheduled for September 8, but unexpectedly rescheduled by radiation oncology for September 2. Those planning to attend are me, my father, my wife and my sister. Oh, and a doctor, presumably -- I think Dr. Campbell, Dr. Gillian Campbell.
        Anyway, tonight, Sigdi's. Tonight's wine, a sparkling white called Nautilus. Eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow ... who knows? Tomorrow, I get to learn the contents of the mystery envelope: the results of the latest magnetic resonance imaging scan. There is going to be no way to rewrite what has already been written, what is waiting inside the mystery envelope for me. I know, basically, what it is, though. One of two options. Life. Or death.
        One of these already chosen for me.
        Well! Dinner!
        Our curry options are mild, medium or hot. We both choose medium. For me, "medium" proves to be fairly mild. For my wife, by contrast, "medium" proves to be fairly hot. Japan is not a land of hot curry eaters, and, although curry is fairly popular in Japan, it tends to be very much on the mild side.
        There are, I am happy to say, Indian restaurants in Japan, real Indian restaurants which, like Sigdi's, are run by real Indian people, and part of my plan for my return to Japan involves dropping by at a cheap Indian eatery in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo.
        Revisiting the familiar world ...
        Reactivating my life ...
        If I have a life to relive and reactivate. A question which is, until we know the results of the latest MRI, pretty much up in the air.
        Day 7.
        Heavy fog and a smash on the motorway (that is to say, on the freeway, the autobahn, the multi-lane motorized traffic only (no pedestrians, no cyclists, no dung carts pulled by water buffalo) threaded through the city of Auckland and the surrounding territory.
        Given the combination of fog and an auto wreck, there's no knowing what to expect on the motorway, so we go to Greenland Hospital first by an old-fashioned method called "walking" (left foot then right foot, repetitively) (memo to self: would it perhaps still be possible to patent this eco-friendly method of transportation?), then by ferry and then by bus, a "bus" being a passenger-carrying vehicle which, if you are lucky, will show up in accordance with the times printed on a semi-mythological document called a "timetable", a document which tends to have a decidedly uncertain relationship with the real world.
        Today our bus did turn up on time and managed to find its way to Greenland Hospital without getting lost.
        The journey gives me time to think of my illness and convalescence. As a consequence of which, the following lines make their way into my notebook:

Convalescence
Stars
Plugged with buttons of mud.
Serrated spiders.
Serrated spiders.
The auditor
Notices the absence of laughter,
The shorn silence
Of the fractured ting machine.

        We report, as ordered, to one of the reception areas, and, shortly, Dr. Campbell comes to collect us, and we follow her to an office. There is a desk. There is a piece of paper on the desk. It is the MRI report. It is very short and it is very simple. It is good news. There is, for the moment, no sign of lymphoma recurrence.
        "Which means," says Dr. Campbell, "we are starting to think of Hugh as one of those for who we feel optimistic."
        And note the key word here: "starting". After all I have bene through -- surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, physiotherapy -- this is just a start. The end of the story has certainly not been written yet.
        Someone is in the process of loading the MRI images onto the computer, and, after a short delay, this has been accomplished, and Dr. Campbell, evidently happy to be the bearer of good news, shows we picture after picture of my brain, some scars ... here ... and some more scarring ... here ... but, basically, a functional brain.
        Then we get down to some details.
        I am planning to head back to Japan in December, following an eye operation, and I would like a list of the tests the doctors in Japan should be running on me, with an indication of when these tests should be carried out. Can do? Can do. Basically, MRI scans at three-monthly intervals for (if I remember correctly) the first year. Plus blood tests, including a test for LDH, which, if I follow what I'm being told correctly, is a marker for lymphoma.
        I have a query on itching. I am having intermittent outbreaks of itchiness, including, on occasion, itching in my ears. Is this normal? Dr. Campbell confirms that, yes, itchy ears are a common side effect of the aftermath of radiation therapy, the reason being that the skin has dried out (and I, of course, had very dry skin to start with, since I am, naturally, a dry-skinned person, my skin perfectly happy in the torridly humid Japanese summer, but always unhappy in the dry Japanese winter.)
        The itchiness can be expected to last for perhaps twelve weeks after the end of radiation therapy.
        It is suggested, perhaps jocularly, that I do have the option of pouring warm olive oil into my ears. I'll bear this option in mind, but I think I'll probably pass on it.
        And now my big question.
        "What are the chances of the cancer coming back?"
        I listen carefully to the answer and take it down verbatim in my notebook.
        "For the majority of people it does relapse ... it is really the next five years that are the high-risk period."
        The majority?
        My thoughts go back to a meeting with the Porter team, a meeting at which I was told that my chances of still being alive five years out were forty percent.
        "And if it recurs?"
        If the cancer recurs, there will probably be more chemotherapy. Not, however, more radiation therapy, because there are "significant downsides" to adding more radiation. The nature of the "significant downsides" is not spelt out, but, by this stage, I figure I've read enough about radiation to be able to make a rough and ready guess.
        At this stage, my sister, a sometime oncology nurse who has had the experience of attending the funerals of a number of her patients, has a question.
        "If the cancer were to recur then I would be right in understanding that any chemotherapy would be palliative?"
        Dr. Campbell confirms that this is so.
        "You might beat the statistics, of course," but, statistically, if the cancer comes back then you are dead.
        If the cancer came back then chemotherapy would be tried. You are likely to get a response to a second line of chemotherapy but the lymphoma would not disappear.
        If the lymphoma recurs then the progression can be very swift, resulting in death in a few weeks without treatment to a few months with treatment.
        "In general, it is not possible to achieve a second remission."
        Essentially, then, a recurrence would mean that there would not be much time before a fatal conclusion.
        "So," says Dr. Campbell, smiling. "Seize the day."
        A Roman sentiment, unless I am mistaken. A sentiment appropriate for the moment. A touchstone for living by.
        And this whole process of revelation, of confronting what is (I am alive) and what may be (the future is a chance, not a promise), this whole process is, really, one extended golden moment. And I find myself, at one and the same time, both intensely sad and yet glad.
        I go through a moment of the most enormous sadness as I contemplate the prospect of my own death.
        During the course of this siege of illness, I have been through a number of emotions, but this is my one moment of utterly inconsolable grief. I think part of the reason why I am liberated into this experience of grief is because I am not actually dying, at least not for the moment. It is a kind of movie theater grief, a spectator's grief. A spectator's emotion, not a participant's emotion. If I'd actually found myself to be dying, then such a wholehearted grief would have been a luxury I would have been unable to afford. I would have needed to conserve my emotional resources for facing up to the prospect of my endgame.
        In addition to my wave of extravagant grief, I also feel a kind of gladness. Win or lose, at this stage the game is essentially over.Really, we only do this once. I am not going to end up spending a substantial proportion of the rest of my life going through an unending cycle of treatment, remission, relapse, treatment and remission.
        The die is cast.
        The outcome has already been decided, and the nature of the outcome will become clear enough in time. Five years from now, at the latest, I will know, one way or the other, pretty much for certain.
        I say nothing, and my moment passes, but my father has something to say. He wishes to express his gratitude for the manner in which Dr. Campbell has leveled with us. Because, when his sister Joyce was suffering from lymphoma, it was never possible to get her survival chances clarified.
        And I remember years back to a date some time in the Twentieth Century. My Auntie Joyce, her lymphoma then in remission, had come to New Zealand from England on holiday. As a group -- me, Joyce, my father and perhaps one or two others -- we drove to the top of the miniature volcanic cone known as Mount Eden.
        From the top of Mount Eden it is possible to look down into the crater. At that time the slopes were rough and grassy, a bit slippery here and there, the footing not quite stable. My Auntie Joyce conceived the ambition to go down to the bottom of the crater. Was this doable? I thought it was, so we took a chance and went down together, Joyce and me, very slowly, very carefully, and then ascended again. Another tiny unwritten triumph in the long history of eternity.
        Later, for her, the lymphoma returned.
        My aunt's treatment, I gather, was suboptimal; mine, however, I cannot fault. And my father expresses his gratitude for the way I have been treated, for the good care which has been taken care of me. He says a special word of thanks for the performance of the reception staff at oncology at Auckland Hospital, always cheerful, always expecting me and recognizing me and greeting me by name.
        We move on to business.
        It is now early September. I have an appointment with the Porter team in October. In November, I will have my next MRI, here in New Zealand. By early November I should have an appointment. If this does not materialize for some reason, then I should ring Wendy. Do I have Wendy's phone number? I do.
        Before departing from Dr. Campbell's office I received into my hands the copy of the MRI report, mine to keep, and before losing the copy (which didn't take me very long) I succeeded in copying down into my notebook the key passage, which says "There is no evidence of lymphoma recurrence ... The eyes appear normal."
        (The eyes most definitely are NOT normal, but, as Dr. Campbell says, the MRI does not pick up fine detail.)
        Just to wrap up, by the time I head back to Japan I should have copies of all my key medical documents, plus, additionally, some kind of simple list of what tests should be done when. Dr. Campbell said "we" back in Auckland, New Zealand, would be interested in receiving reports of my progress. Then realized "But of course they'd be in Japanese!" I said if I got my hands on any reports in Japan I'd happily get them translated and forward them to New Zealand.
        Day 8.
        Sunny again. Coffee out with wife at a Devonport cafe. We looked at crayons in a toy shop, but, according to the packaging, the starting age for using crayons is about two: Ms. Picasso is still a little young.
        Day 8 continued with a visit to the zoo, where baby Cornucopia enjoyed, in particular, her jam sandwich.
        Baby Cornucopia seemed very happy at the zoo so I thought seriously about leaving her there to pursue a hunter-gatherer existence. But I was dissuaded by the two shoes that I saw and photographed, one an abandoned baby shoe lying on the path, the other a teenager's shoe floating, sans teenager, in the hippo pool. Something too sad about those shoes of abandonment.

The Shoes of Abandonment
The shoes of abandonment
Reinforce
The fragilities
Of the loyalties of life.

        Day 9.
        Baby Cornucopia amused herself by pulling tissues out of the tissue box, one by one, and putting them in the waste paper basket. This was fine by me but my wife disapproved.
        Today we all felt a little slow and dull after yesterday's big day out at the zoo. The brilliant weather continues.
        This evening, for the first time in her life, baby Cornucopia was confronted by ice cream, a substance which, though it exists globally, has never before found its way to her dinner table in Japan. After three extremely thoughtful mouthfuls, baby Cornucopia came to the conclusion that ice cream is a Good Thing, and began to eat with velociraptor enthusiasm.
        Today I came up with the idea for a new video game, to be called THE BIG EASY. You are a survivor in the toxic wastelands of inundated New Orleans, surrounded by the rotting corpses of your neighbors. You win points for robbing, assaulting, raping and murdering other survivors, and for shooting at police and rescue helicopters. Win a special megabonus for actually shooting down a rescue helicopter!
        America's finest hour is, at this writing (early September 2005), dominating the media here in New Zealand. George W. Bush, leader of the most powerful society on planet Earth, takes another huge step into the pages of the history books. George is a real [supply epithet of your choice here, e.g. "hero of forward planning"].
        [Later: news eventually trickled through to us concerning the fates of the very few people we know in the Mississippi area, and they, it seems, got off lightly. The family living in Slidell, very near the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, evacuated to the state of Alabama at the invitation of neighbors who had a holiday home there. As it happened, their house in Slidell came through the hurricane just fine apart from one problem: a large tree came crashing down on the roof, demolishing its way into the house. As for Marie, whose hospitality I enjoyed years ago during the course of one of my visits to the States, her house in Laurel, Mississippi, was only very slightly damaged.]
        Day x.
        What day this is I can no longer determine, but, amidst the shambles of my notebook, I have some out-of-sequence notes on the work that Cornucopia, early in her visit, did in my father's garden. Voluntarily, of her own free will, uncoerced, she spent quite a bit of time employed in agricultural work, vigorously harvesting things. She harvested pretty much everything that was in sight, including hapa (leaves), flowers and lemons.
        The lemon tree in the garden is roughly baby height and is rich with lemons, and, by grabbing one of these with both hands, Cornucopia was able to haul it off the tree.
        One of the lemons turned up on the dinner table that night, to be used as a condiment for fish, and baby Cornucopia demanded it, pointing at it and saying, again and again, emphatically, "Momo, momo!" ("Peach, peach!")
        I sampled a small piece of the lemon and found it incredibly sour. Someone said that these were "New Zealand lemons", which, supposedly, are sweeter than "ordinary" lemons. Be that as it may, to my palate this lemon was as sour as sour gets. However, when the pieces of one half of a rather large lemon were presented to Cornucopia, she avidly gorged herself on them. She then demanded the second half of the lemon, but at that point we adults lost our collective nerve and, fearing the sudden reappearance of all the ingested lemon, decided that enough was enough.
        The story of how Cornucopia got introduced to ice cream has already been covered, above. Another thing that baby Cornucopia had never eaten was honey. And, if I remember correctly, my wife told me that, for some reason, honey should not be fed to babies under the age of one. Having attained the glorious age of sixteen months, baby Cornucopia was indulged with honey for the first time in her life. Another success.
        She did not, however, get to share our wine.
        Such, then, was the story of day x.
        How quickly the days jumble themselves into the blurred collage of "the past"!
        Day ten.
        It is now some months past baby Cornucopia's first birthday, but, even so, today she had a party to celebrate her first birthday. Someone kindly gave her a mouth organ: her first musical instrument. A star is born! No recording contract, as yet, but she will be able to entertain the other passengers on the flight back to Japan tomorrow.
        A major bargain, the baby ticket: for ten percent of the adult fare you get a bassinet (ten kilos maximum baby weight), a ten kilo baggage allowance, free (additional) carriage of a stroller (a pushchair), and proper baby food meals in little glass jars.
        All in all, baby Cornucopia's visit to New Zealand has been a success, with the familiarisation curve not too steep. Though I must admit to having been tired. I still have some months of recovering (and a serious eye operation) ahead of me. That said, things are looking pretty good at the moment.
        Day 11.
        In the last hour of the night, we are driving to the airport when suddenly, without warning, without reason, my father pulls in to the side of the road and stops in a nowhere place, and I have a desolating vision of abandonment and loss, of abandoned shoes, of addled waters, of smoking silences.
        "Blurred," says my father. "Need to clean my glasses."
        And he does so. He cleans his spectacles and then we drive on, into a world poised uncertainly somewhere between darkness and dawn.

Section 162 Entry 0002. Date:
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