Close to Me

This is the last of the entries I made during the period of time from when I first learned that I had become eligible to be placed onto the kidney transplant list to receiving the actual transplant on October 18, 2004.  I do not know why I stopped adding to the journal what turned out to be well over a year before the waiting ended.  It could've been that nothing was progressing and the waiting continued unabated.  It could be because I worked with my transplant doctor to aggressively pursue any effort to change my body in order to be a better fit for a donor kidney match.  This means that I was placed on immune suppressants and given bi-weekly treatments of IVIG to cleanse my blood of antibodies that could prevent matches.  The net result was that my health deteriorated quickly as did my level of hope.  In the end, I will never know if this attempt to push the matching process along was a factor for the kidney I did finally receive, but I wouldn't change a thing.

Monday, August 25, 2003.


Over the last weekend, I had a dream. I was in Forest Grove (or the Frosty Grave) with my friends Jeff and Steph. Jeff and I went to college at Pacific University (or P-U) in the Grave years and years ago. We were roommates at one time. Now, somehow we are still friends and he has since married Stephanie and the three of us found ourselves in a bar that in the dream was apparently located in FG. My beeper started to go off. I began to hyperventilate. It was finally my chance! The beeper meant that a kidney was waiting for me and all I had to do was go claim it. I ran out of the dark bar into the daylight on the sidewalk. There was a phone booth handy, but it was missing the phone. I looked at the number to call on the beeper’s tiny display. I kept looking at it. The people at the transplant clinic have told me that I would have about an hour to respond to the page, or else lose the kidney to the next person on the list. Steph ran after me outside. She was nearly as excited and bewildered as I was. I began to sweat bullets trying to figure out what to do next. My mind was a complete scramble. Steph was trying to help me calm down. She explained to me that she had a cell phone I could use. I looked into the open front door of the bar, where Jeff was standing. He was at the bar trying to pay our tab. He kept pulling losing lottery scratch-its out of his needlessly overstuffed wallet instead of money and the bartender was looking perturbed. I glanced back to the cell phone that Steph had handed me. I attempted to dial the number, but couldn’t punch it in properly. If the number was 2-9-3, I would tap in 2-4-3, and have to begin again. Serious panic set in and I began screaming my frustration as I fucked up the numbers again and again. I could hear Jeff getting lectured about ordering food and beer knowing full well that scratch-its aren’t currency. Jeff’s voice sounded confused and despondent as he tried to explain that his wallet did have money before, but is now filled with used losing tickets. Steph snatched the phone from my hand and punched in the correct number. The beeper began to beep anew. This was it!

I awoke to my alarm. That beeper in the dream was my alarm, and presumably my alarm again, after hitting the snooze bar in my sleep.

Today I purchased a cell phone. I hate cell phones. I have never wanted a cell phone – until now. My paranoia led me to it. The beeper is not enough. I need to be able to be able to speak directly with whoever may wind up calling for me, when (or if) a matching kidney becomes available. The notion of calling a number that appears on my pager, never knowing who they will be, bothers me, especially since my experience has always traced its way to a wrong number. At least wrong numbers or prank calls can be dealt with immediately. I will still have dreams of missing this most important call. I was even startled during dialysis today with a startling ring shortly after giving the transplant coordinator my new cell number. As I should’ve expected it was some chick looking for a Ted, or some such dude that I am not. I wonder how many wrong number calls people normally receive on their phones, because this feels ridiculous.

I wonder how I will actually feel if I actually do receive a call for a kidney. It will mean that someone has just died. The reality of this strikes me often and it fills me with guilt and sadness. Somehow I have placed myself in a position to hope for some stranger’s death. It makes me feel sick to my stomach, or maybe that’s the stomach ache I’ve had for the last two years. Either way, I don’t like what I’m facing.

Sinking or 'Grease' is the Word

This is the second to last 'kidney journal' entry, before I gave it up for good.  What amazes me most about reading through these again after so many years, is how far technolgy has come in 9 short years.  So many things I reference in here were outdated long ago.  Forgotten relics.  Some things never change though, and that is my dislike of that guy in "Grease."

Friday, August 15, 2003.



Ever since beginning dialysis, I started watching a lot more television. Not that I already wasn’t glued to the set for more hours a day than I would ever want to admit throughout my life, but now, it’s not comparable. It started with the addition of two new Law and Order spinoffs. Throughout the 90s, I only had one show that I felt compelled to tune into each week and that was the original Law and Order. I got hooked on it when my Mom and I watched a few episodes of the first season together before she passed away. Now there are three of them to keep tabs on! Since I am now tired, weak, and sedentary from being sick, and slowly working my way to stuffed animal status, I see lots of TV at home every evening in addition to the four or so hours of barely interrupted time during dialysis. Currently, at dialysis I have figured out how to watch four straight episodes of Perry Mason on three different channels during my stint. If I tire of the courtroom drama, I can always watch the eight episodes of M.A.S.H. that are spanned across two different channels. During the evenings, I have started watching the two CSI: shows and I love the new show Boomtown and especially the new version of Dragnet with the Married with Children guy. I actually get frustrated when they schedule “my” shows against each other. It really is disgusting. But now that it’s been summer re-runs for some time, I have been left with nothing, because I have seen all of the episodes already. Life becomes empty when it’s based on a TV schedule. That’s how I wind up watching Debbie Travis’ home improvement show Facelift late at night, when I could care less about that shit.

The other evening, I was tuning in to watch TNT’s nightly run of old Law and Order episodes hoping to see one where I don’t remember the outcome. This night, however, TNT decided to show the old musical Grease. I have seen Grease many times, but found myself excited to see it again anyway. The thing that I noticed about the movie that I had never noticed before, and I’m sure that it had everything to do with these new (to me) surround sound TVs and the weird sound separation that they seem to create - every time a song scene came on during the storyline of the movie, the vocals sounded as though they were being piped in from a giant hangar or spacious old train station. The vocals echoed at me as if Olivia was singing into a toilet paper tube from behind me. The reverb was downright silly. Unfortunately, every time I’ve watched Grease, I am reminded of my dislike for one of the extras. It’s a guy that’s in most of the song and dance sequences and he bugs the living shit out of me. He’s the one near the end of the movie, during that closing song (wompa lamma lamma ding dong?), who is wearing a light green short sleeve shirt and tan pants. He does a Groucho Marx inspired dance for a moment. Next time you run across it, and that’s really the only way anyone watches this movie, you’ll see who I’m talking about. At first, you’ll say to yourself, “that’s funny that Chris doesn’t like this guy.” Then, the next time you run across the movie, and you will, you will begin to see this guy running about throughout the entire movie, like during the “Grease Lightning” scene, and during the entire dance contest stretch, and even during the “Summer Lovin’” extravaganza near the beginning. I do not know why his presence irritates me so much, but even as an eight or nine year old watching that film for the first time, he made me angry. Every time I see him, I want to turn away. I threaten to hunt him down and torture him the way he has tortured me for years. Yes, I talk to the TV. And, no, I wouldn’t want to hunt him down.

After watching Grease, and running the gamut of practicing my “hickey from Kenickie” impersonation, my terrible Travolta singing, and trying to avert my eyes from the evil extra, later that night I came across the pilot movie for Hawaii Five-O. This is the first episode of one of the best shows ever and I had never seen it before! The pilot has a different Danno. This Danno chain smokes and doesn’t have that weird hair or the childlike run, and the dialog is more free and intriguing. Plus the pilot introduces us to the dreaded Red China agent Wo Fat, and of course, Steve McGarrett – the Lord, Jack Lord. We get to see the blue suit, his freakish skeletal face, and that hair. We get to hear him tell Danno to “BOOK ‘EM” for the first time as he arrests CIA agents just for being a nuisance to him. McGarrett commands and coerces people who are supposed to hold more power than him, though we all know better. There is nothing else quite like this show. There is nothing quite like wasting one’s life away by watching television all hours of the day and night. It’s no wonder I can’t sleep anymore.

The Baby Screams

This is an odd post.  The next entry in the 'waiting for the tranplant' journal of 2003 found me delving into more details of the reality that is being a dialysis patient.  One might think it would be a great time to reflect.  And for someone who finds writing therapeutic and conscious clearing, it would be a great time to write.  How many people get 4-5 hours of blank time 3 days a week?  Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to do anything.  In reality, it is a time to tune out.  For the most part, I kept this world to myself.  I rarely shared stories and discouraged visitors after the first few months as a patient.  However, I did write a few bits and pieces about dialysis and I have already swiped this particular entry for this very blog a few years ago. 

This actually works out well considering that this is the eve of a National holiday.  It's a re-run!

The Tuesday, August 12, 2003 journal entry can be found here.

In Between Days

Here's another entry in the 'waiting for the transplant' journal.  What strikes me most about this one, is that this entry arrives nearly a full eight months after the first.  My guess for the gap is that I am really bad at keeping journals consistently, and because that year was my best as a dialysis patient.  Much of 2003 was the one year where I was fairly stable and managed to start to live a little again.  I find that I'm more likely to write, if I'm not feeling well and am less active. 

Some other things that stand out is what seems like the prehistoric use of the beeper.  This is only nine years ago!  I cannot imagine that they still use those things.  Also, the flat, nearly fond way I remember coming to in the ICU after having my kidneys removed is striking to me.  I certainly did not enjoy that experience, as evidenced by the blog I posted another time describing more bluntly and dramatically how that experience went down (this can be found here).  And finally, I cannot believe that people have started using the nasal tube (as feeding tube) as a method to lose weight quickly.  What a horrible idea!


Thursday, August 7, 2003.

I have a beeper now. Things are really moving along. Seven people have tested their blood to donate for me. Unbelievable! The generosity of my friends continuously amazes me. Why do they even care? I am so grateful that I cannot put it into words, but I also wonder if I deserve such kindness. I am such an asshole most of the time and have become even more tedious to be around since losing my kids. Maybe they offer in order to shut up my stupid mouth. Somehow, however, no one has been a match. Same blood type, but the old “positive cross-match” rears its ugly head every time. I’m not sure what this means. The “positive” must mean that my blood reacts negatively to the potential donor’s blood. The consensus seems to be that this is happening because I’ve had too many blood transfusions in the past (eight units in one sitting one time after bleeding internally for a few days post surgery). Yet, the lab cross-matched my blood to their 20 test samples on hand and they were all “negative cross-matches,” which apparently is a good thing. And there it is again. A sentence I have continually heard since this disorder (VHL) was discovered in my body: “I have never seen anything like this.” This is not something one wants to hear from a doctor. I hear it at appointments all the time. Every time I try and believe that I am somehow normal, I get reminded that I am a freak mutant without the fun super-powers that all good mutants are supposed to have.

Carrying this beeper is really crazy. It could go off at any second. In fact, it has gone off. It seems to “beep” on occasion for no apparent reason. One time I called the number on the display and it was a guy looking to get his car detailed. I don’t really know what that means, but it felt like a cruel joke. Other times, the number has led me to a non-stop ringing when I phone in. No one home. Wouldn’t that be a kind prank over at the transplant office? Or maybe unused or dead phone numbers come alive and contact other phone numbers. Maybe there’s an entire culture of zombie phone numbers out there hunting down other numbers to feed off of. Or maybe this is part of the Matrix that everyone is so afraid of nowadays.

The beeper is attached to me at all times. I play with it and check it and supply it with fresh batteries every few weeks to make sure that it’s fully empowered when it comes time to alert me when a kidney becomes available. It’s all the hope I have in the world jammed into that little plastic box.

I had a dream the other night that I had lost the beeper. Everyone around me had their cell phones and pagers ringing and beeping, while I was without. I was frantically trying to remember where I’d left it. Was it stolen? Did I drop it into a storm drain? Those storm drains have been daring me to accidentally drop my keys into them for years, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Was it going to alert me, when I couldn’t hear it? Was I going to miss my chance for a transplant, because I was without? Would I be dropped back to the bottom of the list? To search for it, I decided to climb into my Dad’s van. His cat Demando was driving. We were off to find the beeper. It began raining and the cat was struggling to keep the speeding van on the wet road. I was in the back seat, but leaning forward watching this cat work hard to turn the wheel around sharp corners, while wondering how its tiny legs could reach the pedals. We suddenly turned 90 degrees onto a side street that rose steeply uphill and then drove inside a Taco Bell. The cat ordered some food at the counter from the driver’s side with several “meows” and I paid for the food, when Demando and the kid working both glared at me. My friend Wil was already in the Taco Bell and climbed into the van with us. I woke up to my alarm at that point. Not to the beeper.

I have somehow convinced myself that I will miss catching the beeper if it does actually go off with the big news. Logically, I know the transplant people will try and contact me via phone at home or at work or at dialysis, before resorting to the beeper, yet I continue to believe that if I set it down or fall asleep or listen to music too loud, I will miss my chance to receive a new kid.

*****

I’ll never forget coming to in recovery after the surgeon took my kidneys. There’s that first question they always ask after shouting your name repeatedly to get you conscious: “How do you feel?” and/or “Rate your pain.” In this case, my pain rating on a scale of one to ten was something around “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

The second memory I have is waking up in the ICU. I had missed my chance at being in the ICU the year prior when I had that giant cyst removed from my brain stem. The ICU was too full, so I spent the entire night in recovery with an ICU nurse nearby. ICU is the coolest place. You can receive complete nurse attention at all times along with a very private room and you’ll be surrounded by all kinds of high-tech equipment that beeps and squawks and hums all the reading things that your body is doing. It is difficult to move around in ICU, not because of the pain from surgery, but also because they have so many tubes stuck in all kinds of places. One wrong move and something serious could go haywire. My personal favorite tube was the one they stuffed into my right nostril. I didn’t know what it was or could be for. It made my nose itch, so I found myself scratching around that tube frequently very carefully. As my consciousness grew, my aggressiveness with the scratching the itch did too. It didn’t take long before I realized a correlation between my movements of the nose tube and the soreness of my throat. When the nurse caught me fiddling with the tube she strongly advised against doing that. I asked her what it was for and she explained that the tube is placed through the nostril and down through the throat and into the stomach. The idea is to suck out any bile that one could otherwise throw up, in order to avoid any disastrous events from the trauma that a violent vomit would cause to my freshly wounded abdomen. Well, that made sense, but her warning did not stop me from scratching carefully at that itch. The irritation was too much for me to avoid constantly thinking about it. I had nothing else to do in that dark room. Every time a caretaker of some sort entered the room, I would beg for it to be removed. Unfortunately, the act of removing such a device is exactly how one might think it would come out. Someone comes in and yanks it out through your nose. And, yes, it burns, the entire way and for a long time after. It was a relief to have it gone, but it didn’t seem worth it for a long time after it was gone.

Once some of the tubes and wires and machines were dumped and dragged from my room in the Hotel Intensive Care, I tried my best to enjoy the peace and quiet of the quiet room in the secured wing. They had all of this advanced technological equipment in there, but somehow the TV was awful. Every channel was fuzzy and shaky on the screen and the volume was set so low all I could ever hear was a low buzz or mumble. Maybe it was time to move to a regular room. I don’t know if I would be ready to face the world again. I knew I’d never be the same again.

Push

Here is a second entry from the randomly kept journal I began once I found out the news that I had finally been given the chance to be placed on the transplant list back in 2003.  Looking back, it's odd for me to try and figure out what moments were worth chronicling, and what weren't.  I was pretty single minded at that point, so that may explain why the entries are so few and far between. 


Thursday, January 16, 2003.


Sitting at my desk at work, shuffling papers around, in an attempt to organize into piles what stuff I want to work on and in what order I want to do it. Some of the stuff is constantly being rearranged to the bottom of the pile. If it’s eternally in my to-do stack, then maybe it will solve itself and never have to be addressed.

It’s early. I am having troubles staying focused. I found out the other night that there might actually be a chance of one day finally receiving a kidney transplant.

I pull out a blank sheet of paper, once my desk has been straightened to my liking. I grab a KING SIZE marker pen and take a sniff from the tip. Whatever happened to those fruit smelling marker pens from childhood? Those were cool. I especially liked grape, or the purple one, which gets me to thinking about our societal approximation of grape. Though I enjoy grape gum and candy, it never tastes anything like any grapes I’ve ever had. They should give up the rouse and rename it “purple.” It’s not fooling anyone. I wonder if Grimace tastes like “Purple?” I shake my head to erase this thought, since Grimace would most likely not be an acceptable food for my dialysis diet.

On the blank paper I scrawl out a “Wanted” sign, which reads:

WANTED:

O+ Kidney

Right or Left

Take 6 weeks off!

Call: 503-413-XXXX

I stare at the paper for some time, as the glare of the bright white sheet reflecting the fluorescent beams above begins to burn my eyes. I see the rectangle now with every blink. The words blend together. Maybe I sniffed the toxic pen too much. I wonder what these things are made out of.

They’re only a couple of people in the office this early in the morning. One of the benefits of coming in so early is the gradual nature of beginning the day. The energy of the business picks up about an hour in, so by then I have a chance to try and wake my sorry ass up.

I wander downstairs to the bulletin board near the front desk. I look for a place to tack my sign. This seems like a bad idea. The sign will only confuse anyone that looks at it. I kept it vague, because I don’t want to be involved with picking my hopeful donor – but this is really more of a joke - a joke that no one will understand, because it's not funny.

Instead of tacking it up onto the fabric covered cubicle partition wall, I toss the paper into the recycling bin underneath the receptionist’s desk. A few actual work tasks get accomplished, and then another blank sheet of paper comes out. I scratch out another message:

LOOKING FOR:

O+ Kidney

Male or Female

Right or Left

Willing to take 6 weeks off?

Maybe I should mail this off to Willamette Week’s personals department. I’d rather have a date with a new kidney at this point than one with a hot blonde. Let me rethink that. I wonder what kind of responses such an ad would draw. Probably none, but if it did, they would undoubtedly be weird and scary. But, would it actually work?

I keep thinking to myself, how in the hell do other people find living donors? After dating a transplant patient last year, I learned that she received her kidney from her Mom. My Dad offered to donate, but the doctor’s almost laughed him out of the room, which only filled him with rage – like most things do. Apparently, he’s too old for his health to have a kidney removed without a lot of extra risk for both of us. So, that leaves out anyone in my immediate family. I’ve seen those feel good news stories about some random stranger donating a body part to someone simply because they are that damn generous and have been touched by the needing person’s story. How do I get my tragic story onto the local news? How do I get one of those sweet talking beautiful reporters outfitted in a bright turquoise pantsuit to tell my story so that some saint can give a chunk of their flesh to save my pathetic life? Is there a network out there somewhere that I am unaware? Is there a special store where news people buy their clothes? Maybe it’s because my story isn’t particularly tragic and it’s definitely not interesting. Still, for someone who has been strapped to a dialysis machine for over a year now, constantly inundated with kidney news and trivia and networks, I seem to be in the dark about how things work.

I toss the second sheet away and head back to my office upstairs. I really need to give my wonderful spacious private office up and move downstairs. It is becoming a struggle to climb these stairs several times a day. Somehow I always knew that cracking the age of 30 meant that I was officially old, but this is ridiculous.

Back at my desk, I bring up the Willamette Week personals page online. I do not see any ads for body parts. This is discouraging.

Typing “Kidney Transplant” into my search engine, I discover a website named Transweb. “Take the transplant journey,” it says. I couldn’t look any further.

Maybe a cadaver kidney is the way to go. I can handle another year or two or three of dialysis. Plus it would so exciting to be on call for a kidney. Maybe they’d give me a beeper, so they can reach me at any moment. Would the beeper call come while I’m sitting on the toilet, like all of my phone calls do?

A Hand Inside My Mouth

For the past week or so I have been completely without energy.  My body has felt sluggish.  My limbs have felt heavy and difficult to drag around.  I do not know why, and considering my history, I should probably contact my doctor.  The feeling has reminded me of my days as a dialysis patient.  For three years, like many, I struggled mightily through this method of staying alive.  I wanted to remind myself what it was really like, because I shouldn't throw around such bold statements about my current condition now so far removed from what was the worst period of my life.  After the first day I found out from my nephrologist that I may one day get a transplant, I started to write down occasional thoughts of my experience (and I mean occasional).  Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to be incredibly self-indulgent and post these writings.  To share more of my neurotic inner dialog and to remember how much happier and healthier I am now.  Thinking back now, I realize that even though I am not feeling that well physically at the moment, it was and can be so much worse.

Here is the first entry:

Friday, January 10, 2003.
I’ve been cleared for a transplant! Great. What now? What does this mean?

The last 14 months have been completely dictated by my dialysis schedule. Three days a week – close to five hours each session. It’s all I know now.

They tell me that my body is 100% clear of cancer cells. That it’s been well over a year since the tumors have been removed and that they now believe that they got all of it – that the cancer must’ve been contained inside the kidneys they removed. They tell me that a living donor is the best option, because a cadaver kidney generally only lasts half as long as a living donor one.

How the hell does one go about finding a living donor? I don’t remember seeing any ads in the paper for people needing kidneys, nor ones for people offering their organs for usage. Sure, I’ve had several good friends tell me that they would be willing to give me one of their kidneys when the time came. Well, that time is supposedly here. The time is now. I am so fucking sick of dialysis that I can barely take it anymore. I am so sick of being sick, but how does one collect on such lofty and generous offerings?

“Hey, uh, dude! Hey man, what’s going on? How are you feeling? You feeling pretty healthy these days? Good. Good. So glad to hear it. Uh, do you think you could take six weeks or so off from work? Um, you feel like having a kidney removed? I can tell you from personal experience that the surgery is pretty damn painful. It shuts down your body. But hey, you’ll get to experience the joys of catheter usage and you’ve been talking about how much you’d like to get away and get some rest. Well, I cannot guarantee a lot of actual productive sleep, but you’ll have to lie around a lot.”

How does one come to someone that you care dearly for and ask them to go through that? I don’t think I could ever ask for such a favor. Yet, at the same time, I am dead set on getting a transplant now! I am so ready to stop dialysis - to stop the constant itching and total discomfort. I so want to be free of the sore muscles, constant fatigue and heavy limbs. And the diet and fluid restrictions! Don’t get me started on those. Eating food, especially food with any sign of nutrients and/or flavor, is strictly prohibited because it acts like poison in the body when you are without kidneys. The same goes with drinking any beverage.

Dialysis keeps me alive and for that I am thankful. However, there is the sense that living is all I am doing. Many of my fellow patients sit in their chairs during dialysis sessions completely immobile, staring blankly ahead. There may as well be a stuffed animal sitting in the chair instead. This disturbs me, because I too often find myself devoid of thought and focused on nothing. This lack of productivity weighs heavily on me. Do I offer anything to anyone anymore? Did I ever? Besides being a constant hassle to my giving friends and family by requesting rides to and from dialysis, because I am too frail and weak to handle the trip on my own, I don’t provide much else. I still consume shit, but I don’t really do that the way I want, how I want, or when I want. The cost of my care alone is astronomical. Am I worth it? Am I worth it, if I provide nothing to anyone or anything? Plus I am constantly whining about my situation! Who wants to hear it anymore? I know I don’t, but it’s all I have. My complaints are a sign of the only fight I have left. This is why a transplant is necessary. I need to regain some semblance of my life as it was. Certainly, I will never take a clean bill of health for granted again.

What the hell to do?

Now, the next adventure begins. I have a small lease on life again, because I have been cleared for a transplant. There may be a light at the end of the long tunnel. I may once again taste the freedom that life can offer one day - when or how or if this will happen seems abstract to me though.

Only in Dreams

Recently, I was lucky enough to see my first Dum Dum Girls show.  It turns out it was the finale of their big tour for their spectacular second LP Only in Dreams released early last fall.  It was a huge album for me and I wound up ranking it in my Top 5 for all of 2011 (#4 to be exact – see brief overview here).  I absolutely love their sound.  I have always had a soft spot for the 60s girl groups (I loved the Shangri La’s as a little kid!) and over the last few years a lot of great new music has been heavily influenced by these classic sounding pop groups.  I think it was the fun-loving Pipettes who first suckered me back into this exciting sound, but now we’ve got Best Coast, Vivian Girls, and The Ravonettes, among many others.  And the Dum Dum’s manage to capture that fun vibe and overhaul it with some updated punk energy and a huge amount of heart.  It’s a mix that makes me dizzy with delight. 

Normally, I do not spend a lot of time writing about all the shows I’ve seen over the (gulp!) last 27 years. I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of bands live and have cherished most of the memories along the way. The problem with writing about live music is that it’s fleeting. It’s a ‘had to be there’ sort of thing. Sure, it’s nice to get a feel of how a band might be perceived in a live setting according to a trusted music writer beforehand (maybe I could’ve avoided a few of the disasters I’ve encountered), but circumstances change from night to night – one never knows, unless they go check them out for themselves. I can be heard chattering on and on endlessly about the shows I see to my friends who choose to miss out – in order to remind them that they indeed MISSED OUT. This was definitely the case earlier this year when the occasionally reunited early 90s band Swervedriver rolled through town and blew the doors off the venue and exceeded my already high expectations from four previous experiences dating back over 20 years, or the angry Bob Mould show supporting Black Sheets of Rain in 1990, or that Echo and the Bunnymen show in ’88 after they’d had a spat with the club owner and proceeded to shred through a fiery set at the Starry Night, or that time that Jeff and I went ‘against the grain’ down in front at La Luna for Bad Religion in 1994, or that weird show at the Madrona Hill Winery that featured a bunch of Slumberland Records bands where I was smitten with the aggressive drumming of Amy Linton (who would later become a favorite with her mostly solo act: The Aislers Set) of the schizophrenic Henry’s Dress (also in ’94), or, or….

So, why am I writing about the Dum Dum Girls show? Maybe it’s because of all the shows I’ve attended over the years; this one has left me lost in a daze of a lingering sadness. I’ve experienced emotional moments before while seeing/hearing a gut wrenching song performed, but I left this show amongst a group of people giddy and energetic and satisfied with the elevating renditions of much of their catalogue, while I slowly strolled out melancholic and stunned. After parting ways with my accompanying friends and hearing the Only in Dreams CD continue its repeated rotation quietly in the background of the road noise during my drive home, I was on the verge of tears - fighting back an overwhelming urge to bawl my head off. What has made this especially powerful for me is that this feeling has not really dulled since the show nearly two weeks ago.

The Dum Dum’s bandleader Dee Dee Penny lost her mom to a fatal illness, since writing, recording and releasing her debut album (2010’s promising reverb drenched mostly solo home recording I Will Be) a fact that I neglected, or chose not to mention in my previous write up. I do not know Dee Dee, beyond her wonderful music, but I would imagine that she and her mom were incredibly close, since a picture of her mom graced that debut album, as well as a 2009 EP. By the results of her songwriting for the follow-up album, the one that was an immediate favorite last year, Only in Dreams, she was indeed very close to her mom. At least half of the songs on the album and I would argue that seven of the ten are directly about witnessing the effects of her mom’s illness and trying to cope with her passing. It is a heavy album. It is a sad album. It is an emotional and insightful look into the mind of someone trying to come to terms with the unanswerable questions regarding the pain, suffering and death of loved ones. It is absolutely heartbreaking.

The album starts out innocently enough, as the opening song “Always Looking,” picks right up with a moment of excitement from an early spark of a love affair. It’s loaded with energy and fire and handclaps and a refreshing surf guitar fill that carries the song. The second song and first LP single “Bedroom Eyes” comes in with a timeless sound and a serious aching for a loved one during a time of separation. Interestingly enough, the third song, “Just a Creep,” turns out to be a big kiss off. The handclaps and surf guitar return, but so does some spite (“poor thing / it must be hard / to be yourself each day”) as Dee Dee smoothly tells some creep off. Then, like most albums, we get bounced back to the longing love song. Much like the sentiment of “Bedroom Eyes,” this one finds another lonely moment, where Dee Dee is in need of loving company (“I can’t live without your warmth / I just wanna be adored / oh, I’d do anything to bring you home / tonight”).

This is where the album turns and it turns ugly. Five of the final six songs are painfully forthcoming and wallow in the freshness of deep sorrow - clearly the sorrow from losing her mom. Most people would not notice the bleakness within, as the songs continue to pound away with the same classic pop and finger snapping upbeat music, other than the epic, slow burning “Coming Down.”

The first song to get to me emotionally was also the first one that made my spine shiver, when I first heard Dee Dee’s voice trill during the closing moments of “Heartbeat (Take It Away).”  Here she pleads for an end to her sorrow and to find the strength to continue living life (“how can I tell myself / if I can’t tell anyone else / I’ll stick my thoughts on a shelf until tomorrow”).  This sentiment rings strikingly true for me, since when my mom passed, I could not talk about it at all for years.  My only coping mechanism was complete avoidance.  My only survival was to pretend that nothing happened (“Take it away…Where can I go where sorrow will not find me?”).

“Caught in One” is the opening song of side two and it begins with a nice sing along vocal, until we realize what we’re singing:

“Death is on the telephone

I lie and say she isn’t home

If only he would make a move instead

He sleeps in her bed…

“I waste away my days with you

I’d rather spend them like you do

All skin and bones

But in your eyes, I say to you

You’re still alive…

“You can tell me time will heal

But you don’t know the way I feel

I never had imagined death

Beyond the vague and cold last breath

But now I see his many forms

The way he builds up like a storm

And all the pain and all the sighs

The world I’m in…

My mother’s eyes”

“Coming Down” gives a reprieve from the sadness by giving us another break up song. This time it’s more dramatic as she seems to be leaving an abusive relationship. Instead of flippantly dismissing her victim like in “Just a Creep,” she gives us redemption by beautifully holding the note, and once again melting my heart, with the triumphant line “there I go!”


At first listen, “Bedroom Eyes” felt like a ‘missing you’-style love song, but the more I listen to this album, the more it feels like a precursor to the more open and stabbing “Wasted Away.” The belting and gut wrenching line “fear I’ll never sleep again” on the bridge of “Bedroom Eyes” can take on a different urgency when interpreted through the eyes of the album as a whole. “Wasted Away” meanwhile, presents us with the frankness of Dee Dee sifting through her mom’s possessions, while struggling with the idea of losing her memories of her mother and the guilt of not being able to take her pain away while she was still alive. It’s absolutely crushing and the onslaught continues on unabated with the penultimate song “Teardrops on My Pillow”:

 

“My nightmares have a sudden tone

It’s dangerous to be left alone

I wander blindly through my fears

It’s strange and dark and you’re not there

Cause you’re gone

You’re gone…

“Heartbreak washes over me

Like moonlight soft I cannot see

I’m angry I recall your face

Now there’s nothing in its place

Cause you’re gone

You’re gone”

“Hold Your Hand,” the old fashioned sounding closing ballad, tries to wrap up the messy and irresolvable feelings that come about from such loss by proclaiming that “You’d do anything to bring her back … Oh, I wish it wasn’t true, but there’s nothing I can do / except hold your hand / ‘til the very end.” 

I think the live show brought this emotional trauma into focus for me.  Up to that point, despite knowing all of the sadness inside these songs, I had managed to still listen to the songs and bop my head around and sing along without a care in the world.  It must have been seeing Dee Dee sing some of these horrifyingly tragic documents in person that brought everything to a head.  Seeing the pain in her eyes as she sang these hurtful words, after so many performances in so many cities around the world, led me to absorb the sheer power of her expression.  There were moments while I stood amongst the crowd and with friends – near the front – I was overcome.  I felt like I was a sponge that could only soak up sadness.  The Dum Dum Girls came and ripped my heart out, stomped on it repeatedly and shoved it back in with no expectation for recovery.  And yet, I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world.  The show wasn’t doom and gloom at all.  They played all kinds of songs from their early material, all of which sounded much improved from the recorded versions with the full band.  They played a short burst of a song that I did not recognize that I am hoping beyond all hopes is new material, because it was stunning!  Then during the encore, they pulled out an amazing cover (damn these gals have great taste!!) of the old Pale Saints tour de force “Sight of You,” which put a huge grin across my face as I felt that  irresistible bass-line vibrate through my chest.

This was a cathartic experience.  It has opened up all kinds of lingering emotional wounds from when my mom passed away so long ago now.  I miss her today as much as I did when we first lost her.  It has made me realize that I am still avoiding and not addressing my grief.  This lingering sadness from what is normally a celebratory experience has forced me to reflect and stew and to look inside my heart and to make an effort confront my sorrow.  This music has given me an understanding voice that I can relate to and that I can learn from.  This is the power of music.  Oh, and by the way, if you weren't there, you MISSED OUT.

photo by Nicki @ Doug Fir Lounge 5/27/12

Thank you Stephanie