BonsaiNurseryman

Halfway

First, let me thank each of you for your support and sympathy. I am deeply touched by your comments here and all the emails I have received. I was especially moved by Evan's comment to the last post. If you haven't read it already, you should. My experience is a toothache compared to what this poor fellow has survived and his endurance is a model for us all. Thank you Evan!

Today marks the halfway point in my chemo and radiation therapy. So far, I have had no side effects other than fatigue. It is amazing how far advanced treatment is now compared to the 'old days'. We have a little "Breakfast Club" of patients who get their radiation treatments about the same time every morning. I'm the only guy and the only one that has to sit in the waiting room in my clown suit (gown) open all the way down the back. All the ladies are there for breast cancer radiation and thus to get to wear most of their clothes. Their strength is remarkable and all of them, like me, are determined to get through this and go on with their lives. Natalie is in treatment for double breast cancer and has already lost her son to cancer. She is our cheer leader and says that if she can live through her son's dying, she can live through anything.

Everyone is amazed that I manage to drive almost two hours to get there every morning at 9am for fifteen minutes of treatment only to turnaround and drive home again, but I really don't mind it other than losing so much productive time. I have finished three novels on CD and started my fourth today. Mostly Tony Hillerman stories. I love the way he weaves American Native folklore into the mystery stories.

Dr. Bob, who you may remember was my apprentice until he moved to Watsonville, was here this week for several days and did a yeoman's job of potting up last spring's rooted cuttings for this year. Other friends have volunteered weekends for April, and with the help of a part time 'grunt' worker, Mary, we hope to muddle through this period. So far, we have kept up with the orders by working all weekend. Now that the weather has turned warm and dry, it is not that much of a challenge. Pulling plants in full rain gear in rainy 45F weather with a 30 mph wind blowing is not my favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon.

My portable chemo pump is quite remarkable. It stays with me, and on me, 24/7 except for when I take a shower, then it hangs outside the shower door but still attached. I have to be careful not to get wrapped up in the tubing. It pumps 0.6 ml an hour of 5FU into a port in my shoulder that goes into a catheter under my skin into the vein in my neck. I get a refill and recharge every Wednesday. It has a series of warning sounds if things go wrong. This week, I was on the freeway on my way to the clinic when I heard one of those high/low sirens that European ambulances use. I could just barely hear it. I turned off the CD, looked in the mirror, no emergency vehicles. Then I scanned the dashboard to see if the car was trying to tell me something, nope, no warning lights. Finally, I realized it was me! The pump was empty and giving out this constant siren sound. Not quite sure what to do, I drove the last twenty minutes trying to ignore it until I got to the clinic where the nurse said, just take the batteries out...Oh. I can do that? Sure, it's empty, you can do that at home if you have to.

Here's  a pic of me in my clown suit next the giant radiation machine. The two halves that you see here are attached to a massive yoke so the the whole thing can rotate around your body as you lie one the table in the foreground. I am standing next to the "beam stopper". There's about a thousand pounds of lead in that big round disk. The other side is the business end that beams high energy x rays into a tight pattern that irradiates the tumor but little else. It's a fascinating machine that actually has a linear accelerator to speed the electrons into the tungsten target to generate the x rays. The doctor told me they really wanted a bigger one, but the engineers said the floor foundation wasn't strong enough to hold it!

Keeping up with the email has been a challenge, but I can do it, you just might not get a response as quickly as you are used to. Orders should not be a problem until surgery this summer, and we will just cross that bridge when we come to it.

Brent

Death, Dying, and Now Disease Continued

Friends

In my 2009 Message, I talked about what a difficult year 2008 was and how I was looking forward to 2009. Well, it seems the difficulties are not quite over yet. In January I was diagnosed with fairly advanced rectal cancer. It will be a long battle, but the outlook is actually good that I will make a full or nearly complete recovery. Of course nothing will be certain until I have surgery, sometime this summer.

I have tried to keep up the blog posts, but now I am in full treatment mode, receiving both chemotherapy and radiation concurrently to shrink the tumor prior to surgery. Amazingly, at least to me, this won't be the ordeal that it used to be, but it will still require devoting at least half my time to treatment for the next three months. I have a portable pump that I wear around the clock that continuously injects the chemo drug 5FU into a port that accesses a vein in my neck. This should greatly minimize the side effects of getting one whopping dose every week. However, I have to have 28 days of radiation (5 times a week) which will take about six weeks. This means I will have to drive four hours a day to the nearest clinic, effectively wiping out my morning work hours. Listening to books on tape and CD does help the hours speed by, and it is a pleasant drive.

I have hired a part time helper, and with the help of friends as well, I should be able to keep the nursery open and functioning throughout most of the ordeal. The doctors want me to stay active and continue doing light work, which I intend to do. So please keep the orders coming; I also need to make a living even though insurance will cover the majority of the medical expenses. Unfortunately, this does mean that there will be (once again) a delay in getting specimen plants ready for sale at the website. But I will do the best I can and there are some plants currently in the pipeline that will be available this year.

I should be able to write the occasional blog post, but most likely I won't be posting everyday. I would also like your feedback on whether or not you would be interested in receiving periodic updates on the progress of the disease and treatment, since these are more on my mind now than bonsai. You may find it fascinating and I promise it won't be gory. Somehow, and I am not quite sure why, I have remained remarkably upbeat so far. Maybe it's because I am only going through the emotional shock so far and not much pain or discomfort yet. Otherwise, I am still fit and healthy, so I have a lot going for me.

I appreciate your support and patronage, and hopefully this will be just another bump in the road.

Brent

Posts Today by Brent

From BonsaiTalk on airlayering Cedrus libani 'Green Prince':

http://forum.bonsaitalk.com/f14/air-layering-cedar-32693.html

The decision to airlayer or not at this point is premature. You would risk losing a valuable tree for a problem that most likely will not exist five to ten years from now. Unlike many other species, grafts on cedars will rarely present a problem, and in some ways make care easier.

This is a new graft even though it is four years old. 'Green Prince' is extremely slow growing and will need about ten years to get to a stage where you can actually start doing some work on it. During this time, the trunk will thicken and the understock will also thicken making the resulting graft union nearly invisible.

As on virtually all cedar cultivars, the scion was grafted to Cedrus deodara understock. This is actually quite a bonus since C. deodara has far fewer root problems than the other Cedrus species. Transplanting and root pruning will be much easier and less risky on this root stock.

Sit back, be patient, this will be a long ride. Give it maximum growth opportunities, including putting it in the ground at some point if that is appropriate for your area. Digging it up again won't be the risky affair that it would be if it were on its own roots.

Brent

And on treating hard water from BonsaiSite:

http://forums.bonsaisite.com/index.php?showtopic=17181&hl=

I agree with Alex, in most cases you don't want to go there. Trying to treat water will likely cause more problems than it solves.

If you are convinced that your water is too hard, and by convinced, I mean checking the water analysis and finding a TDS (total dissolved salts) of over 600 ppm, THEN you may want to lower the TDS IF you are actually experiencing problems. Normal filtration will remove virtually no dissolved salts, no matter what the advertising says. To accomplish this, you must use a Reverse Osmosis (RO) filter. An RO filter is not cheap and requires plumbing into your system since it requires line water pressure to function. Small household RO systems cost about $200US and will only give you about 20 to 40 liters a day max.

RO filters remove nearly all salts and actually make water too pure for plants, some dissolved salts are beneficial to plants. In most cases you would want to dilute the RO water with your tap water at 1:1. This would put you back in the normal range.

In the US, all municipal water companies are required by Federal law to provide the results of such water tests to customers free of charge. I don't know about the UK. Of course if you have a private well, you are out of luck and such tests cost about $100.

Using soluble chemical fertilizers that have a high ammonaical source of nitrogen (see the label) are acidifying and in most cases will help keep salts from building up in the soil. Watering from above with large amounts of water to daily flush out the salts also helps.

Brent