She shoots, she...doesn't score. Sigh.

So last night Deanna, Jillian and I went to the Blackhawks home opener, where I industriously started scouting around for pink foods as soon as I got there - I’m nothing if not dedicated to my cause, whatever that is. With mai tai thus in hand (they’re CLOSE ENOUGH, okay?) we found our seats and practiced our heckling, though “Nashville sucks!” doesn’t sound nearly as good as “Detroit sucks!” Oh well.

Anyway, we’re watching the Jumbotron during the second break, after the Kid, the Geek, the Bimbo shootout, and lo what do we see, but an announcement to the effect of “Hockey Fights Breast Cancer!” Obviously just by being at the game, we’re doing our part in the fight, and I can practically feel the cancer cells being vaporized out of me as we sit there sucking down our frothy alcoholic beverages. I decide that my having had a hot dog (non-pink) was in fact okay since it was within the protective buffer zone of the United Center (anti-cancer zone, apparently, when hockey is being played), plus everyone knows hot dogs are one of the “super-healthy” foods they keep yammering about, way up there with oat flax and cranberries. Except those taste like crap and hot dogs don’t, which is why I try to stick to them whenever possible.

Anyway, today Deanna emails me to tell me that next Wednesday’s game, on the 22nd, is officially a Breast Cancer Awareness Month game, so naturally we should attend, in our goal of partaking in all things pink in this most pinkish of months. Unfortunately, all the hangers-on and wanna-bes and Johnny-come-latelies who’ve glommed onto the Hawks this season have BOUGHT UP ALL THE TICKETS! Yes, for MY game! Oh, the humanity! Well, they’ve snapped up all the tickets that are $30 or less, for 3 people, and hey, some of us have medical bills to pay here. So I’m a little annoyed. Where were all of you in these many years past, when there were tens of us in the UC, so few that you could hear the echo of our tinny voices yelling “ref, are you BLIND?” Hmph, and now you decide to come to the party, in time to ruin it for the rest of us. Thanks a lot.

I also spoke to my brother Andrew earlier yesterday, who wanted to know how treatment was going. As usual, I told him that radiation treatment was no big deal, pretty uneventful as far as the actual treatment was concerned, though I get to worry about burned skin and extreme fatigue at some point. He wisely noted that what with the holidays coming up, it might be in my best interest to play up the whole radiation thing – you know, make it sound a bit better and all, rack up sympathy points. Hmm.

So I’d hereby like to note that my brain injury was affecting me earlier and I didn’t recall what radiation treatment was actually like. In fact, what they do is.....they put me upside down in a big tube, and......it’s really hot and steamy and dark in there and I feel like I can’t breathe......and it’s DAMP, yeah, that’s it, because there’s water trickling in from somewhere, and I sit there for a long time while they tinker around, practically forgetting about me, and then.......they start zapping me with these radiation beams everywhere, and damn, it’s SO PAINFUL. I can feel every neutron and particle beam as they burrow into my skin, like shards of glass pelting me from every direction. They don’t call them supercolliders for nothing. And then, umm.....this goes on for a long time. And the WORST part is that they’re playing this really loud music the whole time, the same thing every day, and it’s Jefferson Starship's “We Built This City” and every godawful song by Huey Louis and the News, in a continuous loop. It’s pure torture, torture.......

(Note – I mentioned this sequence of events to my friend Keith, aka "Fred" since he wants to be anonymous, and he wonders if it’s the radiation or the music that’s killing the cancer cells. Now, that’s a good question. One thing’s for certain – a continuous loop of “We Built This City” and death by basically anything else would start looking pretty good.)