A gorgeous night for the Rick Springfield concert at Savage Oakes Vineyard and Winery, Union, Maine, 08.30.2019. Not a bad seat in the house!
It occurred to me recently that yesterday (August 30, 2020) marked two important anniversaries in my life: the 20th anniversary of the surgery to remove my pituitary tumor, and the one-year anniversary of the Rick Springfield concert my brother Jonn and I attended.
In 1998, I started having these ungodly headaches out of nowhere, and I know they weren’t migraines, but I didn’t know anything else as to why they were happening. A CT scan of my brain revealed nothing, so the mystery of my mysterious headaches continued. And when they happened, it was like I was the worst version of myself. And I didn’t know why.
In the year 2000, I started losing hair. Not the hair on my head or the hair on my face, but armpit hair, arm hair, leg hair, and chest hair. And, back in the 90s, I had a full chest of hair. In 2000, it just disappeared.
I saw my doctor, who referred me to an endocrinologist, which, prior to 2000, was a word I had never used, or never had to. After some lab work and mostly from the results of an MRI, it was revealed that I had a pituitary tumor. For those who don’t know, the pituitary gland is this tiny gland situated at the base of the brain, and is responsible for so many things in your body.
The tumor was, thankfully, benign, but was the size of a quarter, which itself isn’t very big, but on the scale of a normal pituitary gland, it was enormous, and it was bordering my optic nerve. And if it wasn’t operated on, I would have gone blind.
This was taken post-surgery in Portland, Maine, in September 2000. It seems like forever and a lot of pounds ago. Thankfully.
So, on August 30, 2000, at Maine Medical Center in Portland, I was in surgery for 3 1/2 hours to remove the tumor. I had to take two months off from work to recover.
They performed what is called a transsphenoidal hypophysectomy, which basically means they went through my nasal passage to get to the tumor and remove it through there. I’m sure in 20 years, pituitary tumor surgeries have advanced phenomenally, but that’s what was available at the time, and it was certainly a much better (and less invasive) option than cracking open my skull.
Unfortunately, they could not get the entire tumor out, and it grew back to its original size. So, I decided to go with radiation therapy. A “helmet” was created, customized to accommodate my ginormous melon, and to hold my head in place during each radiation session.
Maine Med gave me the most radiation they could without it affecting my vision. And for five weeks between Memorial Day and Independence Day 2001, I had 25 10-minute radiation sessions. It was unpleasant and exhausting (some days, I would have to leave work early because I was so tired), but in the end it worked out, and I went from having MRI’s every month to every two months, three months, six months, a year, two years and so on. The tumor was still there (a non-active tumor), but, it remained at 4 millimeters, which is pretty close to the size of a normal pituitary gland…and not a worry.
I went many years without an MRI, and had one as recently as 2017, and I am happy to report that the tumor is still non-active and at 4 millimeters!
So, the radiation therapy thankfully proved successful, but the tumor changed my life forever. It killed my adrenalin, my thyroid, my testosterone, and I am on medication for each and for the rest of my life. Before the tumor, I was a morning person, but every day since, for 20 years, I start each day from zero. Some days are better than others, but I always get up, regardless of how tired I might be.
Post-tumor, I ballooned to a now-unimaginable top weight of 326 pounds. I became a Type II diabetic, was very unhappy and closed off for the most part, and it took a long time before any weight started to come off.
In 2012, I rediscovered swimming. I swam more that summer than I had in the previous 10 years or more combined! In 2017, I started running again for the first time in 30 years! I lettered in Cross-Country my Senior year of high school, and Maryhope introduced me to this app called C25K (or Couch to 5K), which, in eight weeks, gets you off the couch and running the equivalent of a 5K race! Maryhope and I did the program together (and we are doing it again this year!), and I have been running ever since.
In the past few years, I have also been eating better, trying new foods from multiple cultures from multiple parts of the world, plus doing yoga, kettlebell and meditation for the first time in my life, and I couldn’t have done this without Maryhope’s love and support and her constant belief in me, a belief that has never been paralleled in my whole life by anyone else in this entire universe. I’m forever grateful!
Something Maryhope would prolly say (and has) is that I finally gave myself permission to take care of myself and be healthy and realize I am worth it! This year, I even dropped down to my lowest weight in 25 years, which 20 or 10 or even five years ago may have seemed unrealistic. Thank you, Maryhope, for everything you do, and everything you are!! I absolutely love you!!!
Taken at Fort Halifax Park, Winslow, Maine, 08.30.2020. I may be 20 years older since my surgery, but I feel younger, I look better than I did back then! And I’m certainly happier!!
On August 30, 2019, my baby brother Jonn and I saw Rick Springfield perform at the Savage Oakes Vineyard and Winery in a small town called Union, Maine (about 30 miles from where I’m typing this). Jonn had won a concert package from a local commercial radio station I briefly worked for 12 years ago. Along with five other pairs of concertgoers / package winners, we all took this cool limo bus to and from the venue for the outdoor show.
The limo bus that took me and my brother Jonn to the Rick Springfield show! Noice!
Jonn was born six years after “Jessie’s Girl” had been a huge hit, so, even though Rick Springfield had 16 of his 17 Top 40 hits from 1981 through 1988, that one song was basically the extent of Jonn’s knowledge of Rick Springfield, who himself turned 70 just the week before.
The best shot my phone could get of Rick Springfield performing in Union, Maine, 08.30.2019. He was amazing to see live and worth the 38-year wait!!
I had always wanted to see Rick Springfield perform, and I had no idea how the show would be, or how if Jonn would even be into it, but we ended up having an incredibly fun time that I will forever be grateful for, and I will treasure forever.
Just five weeks and a day later, on Saturday, October 5, 2019, I decided to take a day trip for myself to my birthplace of Bar Harbor, Maine, and go running as well (I was very close to running my first official 5K race ever and had been looking at races for later that October in Massachusetts.).
A pano I took on a beautiful day at Agamont Park, Bar Harbor, Maine, 10.05.2019.
Well, on my way back from a wonderful day in Bar Harbor, I got a call from my sister, Beth, that was the absolute last thing I expected to hear that day: Jonn, my adopted baby brother, had died unexpectedly that afternoon. He was just 32 years old, and I had just been with him the night before, at the elementary school playing Bingo with him and his two young girls.
I was devastated beyond belief. It had been less than two years since I had lost my biological baby brother, Mark, and now my adopted baby brother was gone too.
2019 had already been a hard year, as Maryhope had lost her dad, Dennis, just a few months earlier (almost to the day) to cancer, at the age of 77. Dennis was an amazing man and one of the strongest men I have ever known and will ever know. I miss him every day.
Back in the late 70s through the early 90s, my parents were foster parents for the State of Maine, and over a five-year period or so starting in the late 80s, my folks ended up adopting six of the foster kids, two of them biological sisters. Jonn was born in 1987 and was the youngest of the six, and one of the last two to be adopted by my parents. So, I went from having two sisters and a brother to having six sisters and three brothers early in my adulthood.
With 20 years separating me and Jonn, there was a generational gap between us, which was prolly most noticeable with our tastes in music and movies, but it usually wasn’t an issue. If anything, it brought us closer.
Me and Jonn hamming it up at the Raymond compound on Thanksgiving 2017.
One of the things I admired most about Jonn was his unwavering ability to say whatever was on his mind. He was a straight shooter, telling it like it is, and didn’t hold back. Sometimes I kinda wish he hadn’t been so vocal about everything, and we always didn’t agree, but I always respected that he said what he meant to say, instead of having the tendency to freeze up and avoid confrontations like his big brother.
Jonn joined the United States Army not long after graduating high school, and he was a gunner on a Black Hawk, serving two tours in Iraq. He got married and was the father of two amazing young women — Alex and Emmy. Jonn was a computer genius and one of the smartest people I ever knew. Emmy especially reminds me so much of him. Watch out for that one — she’s gonna rule the world someday! I guaRONtee!
For most of my life, I never smoked pot because I always thought I would become addicted to it, but in 2014, inspired and encouraged by Maryhope, I tried marijuana for the first time. It wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t feel anything. That is, until July 4, 2016.
Dragonfly fireworks, Winslow, Maine, 07.04.2016. At least that’s what I saw.
On Independence Day 2016, Jonn gave me a peanut butter pot cookie he had made, and with my love for peanut butter cookies (and not thinking), I gobbled up the entire thing right before the fireworks display across the street from my parents’ house.
I saw an 80s record album cover in these fireworks!
After the fireworks, I was going through the pictures I had just taken (I like to take non-trad photos of fireworks), and then the cookie kicked in. OMHFG! I went through every pot stereotype there is! The paranoia, the mad munchies, a different kind of creativeness than I was used to. I saw things in these fireworks photos I might not have seen otherwise! Luckily, I documented all of it at the time. I’ll never forget that. Or those cookies! Holy cats!
Ain’t no firework high enough! Somehow I saw Diana Ross in this shot, not her face, but mainly her hair and her arms raised to the sky. Although I do see part of a face in there!
I thought of Jonn the first time I bought legal weed in Northampton, Massachusetts with Maryhope in February 2019. He would have loved the communal experience. The store had just opened, people were patient and kind and talking with each other (despite the cold), and even helped one disabled customer navigate around the line to his car. It was beautiful! I hope that kind of communal experience (not to mention the kickass selection) is what it’s like when Maine starts selling legal weed in October 2020.
Maryhope and yours truly, proud owners of our first legal weed, outside of NETA, Northamption, MA, 02.02.2019.
I don’t know what Jonn would have thought about legal weed in Maine. He really seemed to love growing his own. That crafty little bastard even managed to grow pot in a closet in his bedroom at my parents’ house while he was in high school! My mother was not thrilled. Prolly because it took her awhile to figure it out.
The last few years of his life, Jonn and I got to be very close, prolly closer than we had ever been. He was the one family member I could truly confide in, and vice versa. These last few years were especially hard for him, and he was in a lot of physical and mental pain. I was there for him as much as I could be.
In September 2018, I had the worst health scare of my life (even worse than the brain tumor). I called out sick from work (which I didn’t do often), and that afternoon, Jonn drove me to the hospital without us knowing what was going on. The best way I can describe it was that it felt like I was on every drug there is, but I wasn’t on anything. I had never ever felt that way before, and I was really out of it; awake, but out of it. My blood pressure was 64/30. There were several people in the ER, but I couldn’t tell you how many. Jonn saved my life that day. He stayed with me in the emergency room, texted Maryhope when I couldn’t, and stayed the entire time. I am forever grateful he was there.
My awesome post-ICU haircut, courtesy of Maryhope, 09.22.2018. I don’t think my hair had been that short since I was a bebe!
It was later determined that my ER visit was septic shock, and after four days and four nights in the ICU, Maryhope (who had traveled up from MA to be with me) and I learned that the septic shock was caused by a blocked colon (I had had three unsuccessful colonoscopies in early 2018, with no explanation as to why). While in the hospital that week, I finally had a successful one, and another in early 2019, and don’t need another colonoscopy until 2024! Huz to the ZAH!
A week and a half later, it would be me taking Jonn to the same hospital ER for a a health scare of his own. And this time, I ended up saving his life.
Jonn and I had such fun at the Rick Springfield concert, but sadly no at-concert photos to share, because they were all on his phone, which is gone.
After the show, we were at Applebee’s in Waterville having post-concert snacks, where he confided in me that he didn’t feel like he had a lot of time left to live. He didn’t elaborate and he didn’t want me to be upset. He had cancer, but everyone at Togus (the Maine VA hospital located about a half hour down the road) who worked with Jonn couldn’t figure out where the cancer was. Like my brain tumor, his cancer was non-active. I just wished they could have found out where it was, and what was causing him such physical pain.
Me and Jonn, Bar Harbor, Maine, 04.06.2019.
My trip to Bar Harbor in October 2019 was my second trip there of the year. During the off-season (in April 2019), Jonn, his girls and I went up there (or down and east there, ayuh) for the afternoon, and had such a great time. And, we even tried to catch the sunset at Seawall (part of Acadia National Park) on the southwestern part of Mount Desert Island, but as it turned out, the sunset was on the other side of the island! We managed, however, to get some nice shots of the post-sunset sky in nearby Bass Harbor.
Post-sunset pano shot of Bass Harbor, Maine, 04.06.2019.
Out of all of the songs we played from Spotify that day in a makeshift playlist for the car, I don’t think any song was played more than “Baby Shark” (I think the most popular version by Pinkfong; yes, I had to look it up). The night before Jonn died, after I had dropped him and the girls off, I stopped at the local Walmart and saw “Baby Shark” cereal. Knowing Jonn would appreciate it, I snapped a picture with my iPhone, and sent it to him. His last text to me (that following morning) was in response to the picture – “Haha.”
I know he was in pain, I know he had issues he was working through, and I know he wasn’t ready to go just yet, regardless of what he told me that night a year ago.
Jonn excited about being in Bah Hahbah, Maine, 04.06.2019!
Jonn was so full of life, and he loved Alex and Emmy more than anything in the universe.
Right before Jonn died, we were talking of spending the second weekend in October 2019 in Salem, Massachusetts, one of their favorite places, and talked of meeting up with Maryhope there (also one of our favorite places). It would have been an amazing and magical weekend.
Halloween was, by far, Jonn’s favorite holiday. In his honor, my niece Cheyenne (and I think my dad, too) put up some of Jonn’s Halloween decorations in the front yard of the Raymond compound.
At Jonn’s military memorial service, it broke my heart to see 7-year-old Emmy and 11-year-old Alex without their dad, and when Alex was handed his flag. I think this was the first time I had seen them since Bingo night a few weeks before. My heart still breaks to think about it, and as I type this.
When Mark died just before Xmas 2017, I went through the “year of anniversaries” — the year without Mark on holidays, birthdays, etc. I’ve since gone through that with Maryhope for her wonderful dad, Dennis, and with Jonn.
For almost a year, I’ve been going through some variation of the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I know Jonn wouldn’t want me to go through this, and some days are better than others, but I can’t help it. I just miss him so fucking much!
I visit him at the Maine Veterans Cemetery as often as I can and I talk with him, usually while crying. I can’t fight it, I won’t fight it. And I always tell him how much I miss him and miss his laugh and his energy and how I always hope that he and Mark and Dennis are all hanging out, maybe even sometimes hanging out with Prince or Mr. Bowie. Just the mere thought of that makes me smile.
It also makes me smile at how happy he was for me and Maryhope, how he knew how much she makes me happy, and how much I know he loved her. One of the things they had in common was their love for the Douglas Adams classic, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY!
One of my favorite shots of Jonn, from Thanksgiving 2017.
I’ve had this blog post in my head for a very long time now. With the losses in my life of three extraordinary men in less than two years, I just haven’t been able to write as much as I’d like. And, with the shirt show that has been 2020, I’ve lost any concept of time I did have. But, when I realized the double anniversary of my brain tumor surgery and the Rick Springfield show with Jonn last year, I realized it was time to write about it.
When thinking about a song to coincide with this blog post, the only song that was even considered was Rick Springfield’s 1983 hit, “Human Touch.”
From the album LIVING IN OZ (the album I brought to the show on the off-chance Jonn and I would get to meet Rick; we didn’t), “Human Touch” reached a respectable No. 18 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 in September 1983. Over in the U.K., somehow it was his only Top 40 hit, reaching No. 23 (the U.K. was prolly the only place in the world where “Jessie’s Girl” was NOT a hit, reaching No. 43 there).
And though “Human Touch” was far from Rick Springfield’s biggest American hit, it was always my favorite of his, and it was actually the most-requested Rick Springfield song in the history of my WMPG radio show, STUCK IN THE 80s. When Rick played it at the show in Union, Maine a year ago, Jonn and I were both jamming to it as if Jonn had been a fan of the song as long as I had been. And, like Jonn, it’s something I will treasure forever.
I love you and I miss you so very much, my brother! Please give my love to Mark and Dennis when you see them again…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo0uTu2uLtI
My baby brother, Jonn, and I, waiting for the limo bus to take us to the Rick Springfield show, 08.30.2019.
FOREVER YOUNG 