A Notice to all of Ann's friends and followers

Dear Friends of Ann, from here in Los Osos and around the world - If you are trying to contact Ann, it is with deep sadness and regret that I must tell you that we lost Ann to a rapidly advancing pancreatic cancer on Thursday July 9, 2015; she had to stop writing as the illness progressed and she may not have had any time to say her goodbyes to you.

I have posted her obituary, a facebook notice and an invitation to all of her friends to attend a potluck dinner and memorial celebration to be held on Saturday, August 1 from 2-6 pm at the Los Osos Community Center (2160 Palisades Avenue). Please bring your favorite dish, and stories, photos and memories of Ann to share.

 

Also within the obituary, you will find the address of her favorite charity, "SLO-4-Pups/SLO-Post", where donations can be sent in her memory, in order to help support the continued operations of the first off-leash dog park that Ann, along with her dog loving friends, founded.  The dog park is located at El Chorro Regional Park, on Highway 1 across from Cuesta College and was a place very dear to her heart. 
 

Thank you from Lisa Schicker, one of Ann's many, many Los Osos friends.

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a great picture of Ann and her beloved basenjis

 

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Ann's Obituary
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Ann Calhoun

Ann Calhoun lost her battle with pancreatic cancer on July 9, 2015, at age 72.

Ann was born in Sacramento in April 1943 to Marvin and Mary Hughes.  The family moved to Coachella Valley when Ann was five years old and she attended school there through high school, majoring in art during her high school years. She receiving many awards for her art and was class salutatorian when she graduated from Coachella Valley High School in 1961.

After high school Ann attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. During that time she met a soldier named David Calhoun and married him in 1965. David was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where they lived until David left the army. The couple returned to Los Angeles, and David became a county probation officer. Ann stayed home and became a gourmet cook. After David's sudden death at age 39, Ann decided to go back to college at California State University, Long Beach. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1982.

Ann became Manager of the Simard/Haim Gallery in Los Angeles (no longer in existence). The gallery specialized in works by emerging artists from culturally diverse Southern California. One of the artists featured by the gallery was John Valadez, a graduate of CSU Long Beach. Ann purchased a work by John called "La Butterfly," now a nationally famous painting that has been shown all over the United States. Ann bequeathed "La Butterfly" to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Eventually Ann tired of living in Los Angeles, left the art scene and moved to Los Osos. Switching careers, she became a writer. She helped to start a local newspaper called Bear Facts in 1985, as a writer and editor.  A few years later Ann began writing a column titled "Calhoun's Can(n)ons,"  which was first published by the (now defunct) Morro Bay Sun Bulletin, a biweekly newspaper. After 1992, the column continued in the various resurrections of the Los Osos Bay News, Bay Breeze, Bay News (again), and Bay News-Tolosa Press.  

In 2005, the Can(n)on was added to the Central Coast News Mission blog site. The address is calhounscannon.blogspot.com. Ann posted her final entry on June 17th.

Ann became very active in her community and was more than generous in helping others. She helped to paint three of the Los Osos murals, became an Elfin Forest Weed Warrior for Small Wilderness Area Preservation (SWAP) and joined in many other community projects. Her greatest loves were her dogs: a clan of basenjis, three greyhounds, a whippet and a sloughi. Seeing the need for an off-leash dog park, Ann, Nancy Conant and other like-minded dog lovers founded SLO-4-Pups, a non-profit organization with a mission to encourage dog parks. They were successful in establishing the first off-leash dog park located at El Chorro Regional Park.

Ann is survived by her sister, Joan Hughes, of Fresno.  

There will be a potluck celebration of Ann's life at the Los Osos Community Center on Saturday, August 1, from 2:00 to 6:00pm. Please, no flowers. Donations in memory of Ann to SLO-4-Pups will be gratefully received and will help support the park she loved. Make checks payable and mail to “SLO-4-Pups/SLO Post”, P.O. Box 573, Morro Bay, CA, 93443. For details about donating, call 235-5949.

Please Sign her guestbook at sanluisobispo.com/obituaries

thank you!

 

In memoriam of our dearly departed friend Ann Calhoun, a potluck and celebration of her life will be held at the South Bay Community Center - 2180 Palisades Avenue in Los Osos on Saturday, August 1, 2015 from 2-6 pm - everyone is invited - please bring your favorite dish and memories and stories of Ann, who left this earth way too early! Please pass this message to others, thank you and hope to see you there! http://www.southbaycommunitycenter.com

 — with Ann Calhoun at Los Osos Community Center.

This was posted by one of Ann's many Los Osos friends, with love and compassion from

Lisa Schicker  (lisaschicker@sbcglobal.net)

Mas Parting Shots

Since my last posting, I've entered the Wilshire Hospice Program, which is to say that things have sped past the speed of light and slid down into absolute down-time, all at once. In other words, neither the brain nor the computer seems to be working properly.  But then, as some wag would say, "How ever can you tell?"

True. 

But here's an update on my recent Grand Pre-Estate Sale End Times Garage sale, we managed to raise $1,182 for the Wellness Kitchen, They have a wonderful "pay-it-forward" program to help reach and teach people facing health issues who can be helped by way of of good nutrition.  They can be located at www.TheWKRC.org or at (805) 434-1885.  And for all of you who help me with this project, I can't thank you enough.  I'm am so blessed with so many kind neighbors and friends who were ready to step in at a momemnt's notice. My thanks to them all. 

So many of those same friends have also been there to help get many things settled as my house, like Penelop's loom slowly comes unspooled. (I'm still trying to figure out just how in hell I ended  up with 4 table cloths all the the same color.  Yes, it's a nice peachy-pink, but, c'mon!)

In the meantime, life, even in Hospice, goes on.  As a matter of fact, that's the credo and while it'll be a bit of a puzzle and a bungle, well, that's about right as well. My hugs to all of you.  The precious, fragile  thing you hold in your hands every second, well, that's it.  Life.  Treasure it. 
,

Parting Shots: The Penultimate Papers

I Need a Nap

A friend sent me a copy of Tom Brokaw’s “A Lucky Life Interrupted.” (A good read by the way) And I was oddly comforted to read that pancreatic cancer strikes one in seventy-eight men and women.  My peeps! It seems like I’ve got a lot of company.  He also notes the one devil fact about the disease – how sneaky it is.  How low it flies under the radar which means that by the time it’s discovered, it’s almost always too late.

 

It sure must have taken my Docs by surprise.  They must feel awful, as in Well, Dang!  But then, maybe not. So far, I have refrained from calling them up to say, “I told you I was sick.”   That would be churlish.  And, realistically, who’s to know, with a disease this sneaky.  You'd  have to run tests every 24/7 since if you missed even a month, a week, a day, you'd likely still miss the seeding.  In my case, all my blood tests were “perfect,” and since doctors are trained to look for horses, not zebras, when doing diagnostic workups, this is one of those diseases that can get past even the best gatekeeper. (Not to mention the cost of various tests, and with tests involving radiation, there's the problem of the test causing more harm than giving any benefit. 

But the thought is still there, like the cancer itself.  A poisonous variant on the old whine, "Why Me?" Or, it's deadly cousin: "If only." Perfectly natural, but not helpful.  I have had a lot of such thoughts lately. Plenty of time to ruminate in the early morning hours. 

I am absolutely sure that my one-in-78 Peeps have had the same thoughts.  And well-meaning friends are now coming to tell tales of many such caught-too-late medical horror  stories.  The tales make me angry and sad and cynical.  And something of a fatalist since life itself is constantly turning on just such missed moments.

In my case, there were additional wrinkles that made the ultimate diagnosis a sort of Max Sennet comedy of errors since the symptoms were coming in wrong – are we looking for a kidney stone? kidney disease? some bowel problem?  Whaaat?  Add in an overall physical system constantly disordered from the in--and-out middle-of-the-night emergency room stress, a poorly handled initial "solution, no sleep, and generally lousy pain management, by the time I left the French Hospital radiology office with a print-out of my MRI diagnosis in hand, I was already deep into PTSD. 

Add in more exhausting maelstroms of replaced kidney stents, an actual biopsy, MRIs and PETs to come, my brain was stumbling along in exhausted "D'oh" mode.  But instead of resting like a normal, sane person would do, in front of my sister Joan's horrified eyes, I turned into grim-lipped Brunhilde preparing for a Viking funeral.

An aside here: Many, many years ago, when my sister was visiting, I looked around at the book and-art-and-stuff-filled living room (and, mindful of the filing cabinets and boxes of Can(n)on fodder paperwork in the den), I wearily said, "I can't face sorting all this out. When I die, I want you to invite all my friends into the house for a Zorba the Greek giveaway (I didn't have a parrot, but if you've seen the movie, you get the drift, have them take what they can use, then put my body on the dining room table, light a match and run away. Viking Funeral! 

Then, months ago, I can't remember, maybe it was like a New Year's resolution and long before any of these health issues were on the radar, I did my usual, "Gosh, I've got to seriously sort all of this out." ( I have no doubt my body was telling me something I wasn't ready to hear out loud)  So, I started looking around the house and asking myself such questions as: "How will my poor sister, Joan, know what to do with all this crap when I die?" Or, after opening a closet door looking for a towel, "Why do I have  four lamp timers in here?  Seriously?  Four?"  

Live in a house 31 years and you'll know the feeling. One of those annual spring cleaning projects that usually last a day and a half then peter out with you stumbling upon your childhood winkie-bear which you couldn't possibly bear to part with. So winkie-binkie bear gets put back in the closet along with the amp timers until . . . next year.  

And so I started going through all of the stuff with serious intent.  At first I found it hard going.  So many decisions.  Like, Do I think my niece or great-nieces would like my childhood photo album?  Look how cute I was.  Surely they'd just love to have that valuable piece of the family tree? Answer.  NO. Well, what about my high school yearbook?  NO! NO!  Not even winkie-bear?  NO!NO!NO!

When I started the process, it was all sad-faced review, a spotty walk down memory lane but soon it became a gleeful rout.  Out! Out! Don’t need any of this. The photo albums were filled with people, half of whom I couldn't remember, while others  too often brought up memories of sadness and loss,  so why keep photos that make you sad?  The few images I wanted to keep were already burned into my memory, so I sure didn’t need any albums.  And so it went with photos, papers, mementos.  All of it.  Yes, I was seriously, deliberately erasing a life -- mine --but soon the act became a pretty wonderful, liberating experience because it finally occurred to me that the life I was tossing into the recycle bin was a life that didn't exist any more.  And since it didn't exist any more, why dust it?

After I received the diagnosis, but before I had met with the oncologist, that's when I turned into Brunhilde before Joan's horrified eyes.  I didn't then (and still don't know), how much time I had left, but through my exhaustion, pain and fear, I was determined that there was no way I was going to say, Fuck it all, and leave this mess to my poor sister.  

Therein started the Great Pre-Estate Sale, Viking Funeral, Zorba the Greek Garage Sale of the Century. Out! Out! Out! Like mad warriors and with the help of friends, when sleep wouldn't come, as pain allowed, we boxed and tagged and hauled.  I had years before made certain arrangements for earmarked items to go to specific places, so that paperwork could be turn-keyed, while the rest of the stuff was slowly being transferred to the garage, stacked and ready to go. 

So, come Saturday June 13 at 7 in the morning, the Stuff will head out into the universe to become treasures for somebody else to enjoy. With an additional mad scheme attached: I'll be donating all the proceeds from the sale to the "pay it forward" part of The Wellness Kitchen  (www.TheWKRC.org), a great group of folks who teach as well as cook prepared super-nuient dense foods (think "bone broths") for "individuals facing serious life-altering disease."  Their classes are for caregivers and patients alike.

Looking back on it all, it was mad.  I was mad.  But it  also turned out to be excellent therapy.  Not only did it keep me busy, but it was a daily reminder not to get mired in the past, not to stop, to keep moving forward.  It was also a daily discipline, a firm reminder of the impermanence of it all.  Nothing was mine.  Not even my life.  All of it was (and always had been) on temporary loan to be enjoyed, then let go

It also turned out to be a good way for friends to process what was coming.  Once you hear bad news and say, I'm sorry, the next questions is What can I do to help? Seems like garage sales are a pretty good answer.

Bill Frye: In Memory

Yo, Rush, Can I Borrow Some of your Oxy?

I heard through the grapevine that a kind friend wanted to loan me her old laptop so I could continue to write no matter how crappy I was feeling while the Cancer Crazy Road Trip gets underway.  It was such a sweet offer and immediately conjured up visions of The Artist all tucked up under the coverpanes (pink with flower sprigs, a nice rosy checkerboard pattern, maybe a stuffed white woobie-rabbit under an elbow) while the Muse dictates.  Tap, tap, tap, wondrous insights about Life and Death flowing easily from under my fingertips.

It was such a lovely picture and I thanked the friend of a friend who put the idea forward and said I'd certainly keep that option in mind but for now I was still able to shamble out of bed and sit at the compute, a crazy dog lady wandering around the house at the odd hour.

The problem with writing while sick is that sick always takes precedent. When it's a choice between a trip to the toilet or the mot juste, the crapper wins out every time. That's the one iron rule of the human body.  It's wishes will be heard.  The rest is just icing, illusions that we are in control of our fates and masters of our souls. 

Souls? Maybe. But toilet time? Ah, not so much.

And pain.  Can't forget that little demon.  It's the great interrupter -- one constant, stuttering "D'oh!" in the brain.   The slap upside the head that stops the mot juste search in its tracks and substitutes inspired verbiage for getting up and stomping around for a while muttering, "Ow, Ow, Oh, crap, Ow." 

The Docs like to speak of "pain control," nowadays.  Or "Pain management."  That's a new field of study.  A welcome one to be sure, since for too often pain just hasn't been effectively dealt with or understood as the killer it can be. Truly.  Pain hammers the body something awful, adding insult to injury.  Both physical pain and psychic pain.  It's all hard.

But our allowable drug formulary in our weirdly drug-addled country is totally inadequate to the job. (And, to be fair pain medication carries with it its own tricky damages as well.  Tough needle to thread.)

Even "imaginary" pain is an amazing hammer.  When I ended up in the emergency room with the first inkling of what was coming down on me, the CTs indicated a ureter blockage and the Docs thought, "kidney stone's stuck." The pain, they said, was as bad or worse than childbirth pain.  Real knee-buckler stuff.  And out of curiosity (once the morphine IV was making life bearable again) I asked the Doctor about this and was told that the kidney, per se, didn't have any nerves.  Neither did the ureter.  Not like other organs or parts of your body.  So I asked him how in the world a little thing like a ureter tube, a tiny bit of wibbly flesh could generate such hideous pain? 

Well, turns out that the ureter isn't "in pain," but the inside of the human trunk is absolutely bathed in nerve networks, all surrounding all the vital organs. And when the body, in it's "gut wisdom," senses that something life-threatening is amiss inside you, all the nerves start firing off like claxons. So even though the ureter in this case wasn't actually being "harmed," i.e. cut or damaged, the nerves figured that something was up to no good and all hands better get on  deck. Which they did.  Loudly.

Later this morning I'm headed in to see a Nurse Practitioner (the coming thing on the medical front due to the lack of doctors in our brave new world) to see if we can come up with some practical "pain management" that keeps me "comfortable" without turning my brain to mush. 

Which is going to be a trick since I've lived with some degree of  pain for so long I really don't have an idea what "comfortable" means any more.  I suspect on the scales they use -- Zero being no pain and 10 being OMG! -- my zero would be somebody else's 2-3.  Like what an luxury to be able to say "zero."  But you don't get to a certain age without carrying with you all the dinks and donks and blows and falls you've inflicted on your body.  Rattling bag of bones and ouchie tendons grumbling along making the best of it.

Which, let's face it, is about all we can do.  Grumble and open our bag of tricks and see if any of our nostrums help ease the way -- eye of newt, way cool hemi-sync earphones and glorious new age hemi-sync music that's supposed to reset your brainwaves or maybe bring in some short-wave messages from old Earl out there in Hog Hollow West Virginia, yoga, tai chi, meditation, or lovely aroma therapy.  

And if it works without exacting too high a penalty, it's all good. Including getting out of bed at odd hours and scribbling into the quiet morning.  Or snuggling down in the coverpanes with a laptop, though using that that platform might be too tempting to get distracted by a e-book or a movie.  Sitting upright at my computer in the office/den does have the added benefit of resembling "work," so I can claim I'm not frittering away my  time.