Wow, just…. wow.

My friend Chris asked me what I had done to piss off a Witch Doctor*.

I think he has a point.

I recognize that it’s been a long time since either Zina or I have posted on Al’s Kidney Ride. There is a reason. Several, actually.

On May 16, just six days before her birthday, my bride was diagnosed with stage 2B breast cancer.

Her initial MRI depicted two lumps: a two-centimeter main tumor, and a five-millimeter satellite lump. Her sonogram indicated that 2 of her lymph nodes were enlarged.

In the following two weeks, we had close to a dozen office visits: three oncologists, two surgeons, lab visits, scan visits, and biopsy visits. It was very busy and hard to keep track of where to be and when. Fortunately, even with the shock of the diagnosis, Zina is organized and under control.

Zina’s family has a long-standing relationship with Pine Street Clinic in San Anselmo. They are her trusted practitioners of Chinese medicine. She asked for a reference for an oncologist from Pine Street, and they recommended Dr. Garrett Smith, in San Francisco. His office is beautifully decorated with Western art, African art, antique medical artifacts, and much to Zina’s pleasure: succulents.

After visiting Dr. Smith’s office, we visited an ordinary oncology office in Oakland. The doctor was a bit off-putting to me… socially awkward and seemingly lacking in confidence. I perceived a surprising amount of discomfort over Zina’s rapid-fire technical questions regarding her treatment. She was, after visiting Dr. Smith’s office, openly hostile toward this particular office, and walked out without allowing the doctor to do a physical exam.

I guess a decision was made based on succulents, but I can’t argue that Dr. Smith is not a warm, compassionate professional who’s business model is to treat the whole person, not just the cancer.

Zina’s first chemo came on the same day as her chemo port installation, which required a full anesthetic. That was a rough night for her. Even though medical science has done a lot to advance the state of the art of anti-emetic drugs (that’s a nice way of saying drugs that help to keep you from puking your guts out), Z was sick as a dog. Every time she ate or drank anything, it came back out. She was sick for two and a half days.

I put in a call to a friend in the neighborhood who I was absolutely sure smoked a lot of pot. Turns out that he quit smoking in high school, but put in a call to another neighbor who does smoke. BAM! In less than 15 minutes, we borrowed a cup of dope and some rolling papers from a neighbor. Oakland… she provides in times of need. I had to dust off my very antique joint rolling skills, which I mostly acquired by watching, not doing. It took me 3 tries to roll a respectable joint.

Z, on the other hand, needed remedial smoking lessons. She’s so wholesome and naïve, sometimes I wonder how she gets through life. She was puffing the smoke into her mouth, while I was bellowing “INHALE” as I watched most of the joint turn to ash without producing a benefit. Having smoked cigarettes for 25 years, it remains unfathomable to me that anyone would not know how to smoke. She did finally inhale (and cough like crazy like the noob she is). I’d like to go on record as saying dope is a miracle drug for nausea. I wish I could have convinced my Mom to try it.

Oh, backstory time. When I was 18, my Mother was diagnosed with cancer – they found a 5 kilogram lump in her abdomen. The particular type of cancer was rare, and has the interesting property of being the same density as regular flesh, making it invisible on X-Ray. My engineer Father had to demand that the doctor send her to have a sonogram at the OB/GYN office (they were the only ones to use this technology in the early ’80s. It was the size of a K2 football.

In total, she had five surgeries, two rounds of chemo and two rounds of radiation. At the same time as my Mom was going through chemo & radiation, my Father was suffering acute kidney failure from PKD. There was a lot of vomiting in my home, especially at dinner time. Being in my late teens, of course I knew how to get cannabis. I volunteered to get some for my Mom, but she declined, I suspect out of some Victorian sense of propriety, or some ’50s era Gov’t/Hollywood misinformation about how dope-smokers were all depraved lunatics with switchblades. In retrospect, it would have been a huge service to her to just bring some home and tell that she could make brownies with it.

After her second surgery to remove a second huge tumor just a year after the first surgery, she was admitted to NIH, who happened to be doing a study on her cancer. They were really, really good to her. She had an abdominal fungal infection that nearly killed her. She was in a bed in NIH for 18 months straight. I was in college, and saw her 3 or 4 times a week. She died when I was 23.

Of course, Zina being diagnosed with cancer brings all that back up for me. Fortunately, I spent 7 years in therapy, so I am better trained to deal with my anxieties. I figure I am either handling this really well, or I’m not handling it at all.

That’s not to say I’m not stressed out. That’s because Z’s health isn’t the only thing happening. My business partners in Motorcycle University, Gabe and Kenyon, have been having deteriorating relationship troubles over the last 6 months.  This came to a head almost concurrently with Zina’s diagnosis. Gabe insisted that he exercise his sell-out clause in our contract, leaving us without a lead instructor and financial officer.

In the same meeting, Kenyon disclosed that our landlord, a Pentecostal Church, informed us that we had 30 days to vacate our range in Hayward because they aren’t making enough money on their thrift store.  Church management blames us because we “restrict access” to the thrift store.  Maybe they aren’t making enough money because they are selling 1970s shirts and cassette decks.

So, we either allow our business to be murdered by a greedy Pastor, or we find a new parking lot to conduct business.  Anyone who knows me probably heard the stories of how difficult it is to lease a usable parking lot in the Bay Area. At least, not for a metric shit-ton of money. I recently read this story about the demise of Jimmy’s Old Car Picnic, a San Francisco tradition for a quarter century. In a nutshell, the point of the story is that SF Parks & Recreation raised the permitting fee for the event 1000% (one…. THOUSAND…. percent…. against a charity event? WTF?!) in five years from 2008 to 2013. It’s indicative of the mindset of what government and businesses think their piece of land is worth.

But wait, there is more. Kenyon and Gabe are partners in CityBike Magazine. CB is one of my clients. I am, honestly, probably a little too enamored with the romantic idea of working in the motorcycle publishing industry for my own good. I don’t earn much money from CB, but I like having it in the portfolio simply because it’s cool. There used to be more swag and fun events than recently, too. But to be honest, I haven’t paid for a helmet in 4 years, so there are definitely perks.

The heat from Gabe and Kenyon’s friction are threatening to burn down CityBike as well. I have been putting a lot of effort into diplomacy and guidance to save this 35-year San Francisco tradition. I think …I hope… the toast is probably landing butter-side-up in this case. The toast is still on the floor at the moment, but I have yet to see how palatable the toast will be in the long term. Regardless of the outcome, I will be happier when all the acrimony and intrigue is finished.

As if all that weren’t enough, our dog Escher has stopped eating breakfast. We took him to the vet, and she says he might have food allergies, parasites, or irritable bowel syndrome. Close to $400 in tests and meds later, I have to do the bridging diet – home-cooked hamburger and rice — until he feels better. He certainly has better appetite, who wouldn’t, it IS hamburger, after all… but the rice is making him not poop.

So, happy Fourth of July. I think I’m going to go for a motorcycle ride this Sunday and not think so much about all this shit that is weighing on my mind.

Don’t forget to visit Zina’s blog at Shvabra Files.

*Click the awesome lede art to visit the profile page of the artist.