Chemotherapy 2: Don't Read If You're Squeamish about Bodily Functions

       

From: http://www.driddings.com/cancer-centers
I've got one exactly like this!

       Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that since beginning the chemo, I have not been nauseated at all, which is great!  I've been taking Zofran, an anti-nausea drug that appears to really work.  I was supposed to take one pill morning and evening for four days, and I dutifully did that.  I believe they also infuse you with Zofran while they are giving you the chemo drugs.  After four days, you're supposed to take it as needed, and since I didn't seem to need it, I haven't taken a dose since yesterday morning. 

       It's been a week and one day since I had the first chemo treatment (it seems like fifty years!) and I do have a problem.  It's constipation.  It started immediately after the treatment.  After the anesthesia for the port implant, I had a slight uptick of constipation, but a couple of Dulcolax did the trick, with no cramping or other side effects.  After the chemo treatment, I took two Dulcolax and I had terrible pains in my stomach all night.  Finally I got up at 3:30 AM and ate breakfast, because for me that usually jump-starts the digestive system.  It worked, but the results were rather strange.  I won't go into nitty-gritty details.

       I called the nurse in my doctor's office and she told me I wasn't following the proper laxative protocol, which involves using Senakot-S because it doesn't cramp so much.  So I tried that, but I'm bad at swallowing pills, and the Senakot pills are a little too big for me -- and chewing them is atrocious!  They have a hideous taste that lingers as a bitter aftertaste for an hour, and actually they start to dissolve the minute you put them in your mouth.  Furthermore, you're supposed to take two and if that doesn't work, you take two more, and that doesn't work, then take three and even on to four.  In the meantime you're miserable because nothing is working.  I want something that works fast!

       I did get a slight result after taking four pills, but nowhere near enough, so I called the nurse again and told her I was going to try taking one Dulcolax and see what happens.   Well, nothing happened.  In total annoyance, today at midmorning, I took two more Dulcolax and then for lunch I ate a really big bowl of All-Bran cereal and an 8-ounce glass of prune juice.  And I thought, if this doesn't work, I'll have to go to the ER

       Then I got to thinking that maybe I'd better call the doctor's office again, because the weekend is coming up and somebody ought to know what I'm doing in case it kills me.  The same nurse wasn't there, so I talked to a different person.  Of course, that means getting differing advice.  I had asked about using a suppository because the laxative protocol said not to do either that or an enema without the doctor's OK. The nurse said, no, don't do that because you have a low immune system right now. (Not sure how that applies -- I suppose the idea is, you might introduce some bacteria into the body on the suppository.)  Anyway, this new person I talked to said I should use a suppository.  I told her what the nurse said, and she consulted some other people and said, "No, it would be fine to use a suppository."  You know, it's a wonder anybody survives.

       So I told her I intended to wait and see if the two Dulcolax and the bran and prune juice gets anything going tomorrow morning -- if all that doesn't produce, there has got to be something else wrong with me.

But that's not the whole story!

       I asked my adviser if Zofran might possibly cause constipation, and she said, "Yes, it could."  Arrgh!  If that's the problem and I don't need to take it, maybe once I get through this siege, I'll be OK.  Maybe I never needed Zofran in the first place.  I have another drug called Compazine (also an anti-nausea drug) that she said is much less constipating, which I can just take as needed.  So far, no need.

       I asked a friend who had chemo 30 years ago about her reactions, and she said she was nauseated but never constipated.  I don't suppose they had Zofran in those days.  Anyway, I'm not a happy camper right now.  I just can't focus on anything creative, although I did do some work yesterday on Fathers and Demons.  We'll see what happens tomorrow.

And if that isn't more information

than you ever wanted to know,

I don't know what is!

But maybe this will be useful to somebody else

in the same predicament.

By the way, I still have my hair.

Link to Chemotherapy 1 

Chemotherapy 1

A Saga of My Cancer Treatment

       On a happy note, the nurse who was administering the chemotherapy asked me what I had done for a living and I said I was a retired librarian.  She said, "I might have guessed a teacher, because you're so well organized!"  And I said, "But since I've been retired, I've become an writer!"  "Oh, what do you write?"  "Science fiction.  I'm an independent author and I've published eight books.  Here's one of my cards."  "Oh, wow.  Maybe we could read one of your books at my book club."  "That would be great!  They're available at Amazon as both ebooks and paperback."  "Nook?"  "Oh, yeah, Barnes & Noble, too!"  And away the nurse goes to do her work.

       Probably she immediately forgot all about the exchange and when she pulls the card out of her pocket tonight, she'll say, "Where'd I get this?" and throw it in the trash.  Sigh.  But one can always hope!

       Some background:  In response to a sudden appearance of post-menopausal bleeding (should you ever get that 21 years after menopause, don't delay in visiting your gynecologist) I had a D & C and was diagnosed with a form of endometrial cancer designated as serous papillary, which is a more aggressive form than ordinary endometrial.  Wouldn't you know?  I was referred to the local GYN Oncology Group (two surgical oncologists) and after a CT scan and other tests showed no evidence that the cancer had spread, I had a hysterectomy on Dec. 18.  They used the DaVinci robot -- only got a brief glimpse of it before the anesthetic kicked in, but that's pretty cool.  I ended up with a horizontal incision and five little slits midway up the abdomen where lymphs nodes were removed.  I was absolutely miserable for three weeks, but finally I started feeling halfway normal and then pretty normal again.  So it was time for chemotherapy -- they don't want you to feel good for very long!

       First I had to have one more surgery, however - to implant an IV port beneath the left shoulder blade.  It's semipermanent -- the doctor said they leave it in two years in case you need more chemo later.  It goes into the subclavian vein and thence into the superior vena cava.  This is so the chemicals can get into a vein with fast blood flow so they won't sit in one place and irritate the vein.  They can also draw blood from that port.  The port has a diaphragm under the skin through which a needle can be inserted.  They use a topical deadening again so you don't feel the needle going in.  You might think this port would be uncomfortable, for example, when you lie on that side, but you know, it doesn't bother me a bit.  I can feel it under the skin and of course I have a two-inch incision.  But honestly it isn't so bad.

       The good thing is, there was no evidence that any cancer had spread to the lymph nodes.  However, chemotherapy is recommended because of the aggressive nature of this form of cancer.  There could be some wandering cells.  I have to have three to six sessions, depending on how well I do, spaced three weeks apart.  And so yesterday I had my first treatment.

       They scare you to death, you know, with descriptions of all the horrible side effects.  The truth is, there is no way to know how any given individual will be affected.  The doctor said he had a 93-year-old woman with ovarian cancer who was tolerating the chemo fine, while a woman in her mid thirties was not doing well at all.  So I was nervous about the whole thing, but I certainly want to kill off anything that may have escaped.  They monitor it by blood tests, particularly the CA-125, which shows a certain antigen that is shed from the surface of cancer cells (if I understand it correctly).  Mine is elevated now.  They'll test for it two weeks after each chemo session and it should begin to go down.

       They sent me to the Rocky Mountain Cancer Center, which is located conveniently in an adjunct pavilion at the same hospital where I had the surgery and where the oncology group has their offices.  The session was supposed to last 6 hours, and I had to get there early to fill out paperwork, which they had neglected to mail to me.  It turned out that I only had to fill out part of it because "we didn't realize that you were being treated by the oncology group [well, didn't they do the referral] so we have all the data from them."  Duh.  Anyway, you get assigned a different doctor at the Cancer Center, a medical oncologist, who sort of monitors what happens to you over there. 

       You are allowed to eat before and during the administration of the chemo, but you have to bring your own lunch!  (They do have a refrigerator for storing perishables.)  The doctor said they see a hundred patients a day and they can't really afford to feed them all.  I guess I can understand that.  You know, I hadn't fully realized how many people in our society have cancer.  At 8:00 AM the waiting room was crawling with people!

       I had watched a YouTube video on how they access the port and it led me to believe that the chemo was administered in a private room or cubicle.  So I was floored when the nurse led me into this gigantic room like a dormitory, crammed with recliners and nurses' stations and nurses and patients and noise!  I was given a chair and assigned a nurse who was really nice (the same one who asked about my writing) and we got started.  I got two pillows, one under my knees and one behind my head, and a nice warm blanket, and a chair on which to place all the junk I had brought with me (home away from home, you know).  I brought a pair of woolly house slippers (next time I think I'll just wear them from home).  Heck, I think you should go in your PJs, but maybe that's stretching it a little bit!

       I recommend that anybody going for one of these sessions wear a buttoned shirt.  The nurse agreed.  In the video that I watched, the girl had a t-shirt, which she had to pull down and hold while they inserted the needle.

       Anyway, they give you a whole mix of of medications, included a whopping dose of Benedryl.  The nurse said, that's to minimize allergic reactions, but the effect is to make the patient really groggy and sleepy.  I brought some reading material, but most of the time I just dozed or stared into space.  They give you Zofran intravenously, which is to combat nausea.  They give you a steroid.  And then they start the chemo.  I'm having Taxol and Carboplatin.  The nurse said it's a standard combination.  The Taxol took three hours to administer, but the Carboplatin took only 40 minutes.  I ate my snack (banana and yogurt) and my lunch (canned chicken with bread and butter, cottage cheese with tomato cut up in it, and three canned apricot halves), but I was finished with the treatment by 1:30, so it didn't take the whole six hours. 

       I had no reaction to anything.  The nurse said the steroid might make me feel tingly in my extremities, etc., but I felt nothing.  (Maybe I'm not alive!)  After I got home, however, I was really tired, and I also felt first cold even though the day was warm, and then after I went to bed at eight, I got to sweating.  My stomach hurt a little, too.  The upshot was, I didn't sleep very well last night, even though I took my ibuprofen PM (I take that primarily because of my arthritis).  I've been sleeping really well lately.

       Outside of that, I've had no reaction yet at all.  I'm taking Zofran in tablet form twice a day, and it must be working, because I don't have even trace of nausea and I'm really hungry.  I felt much worse in that regard right after the surgery.  I had been planning to have chicken soup and crackers for supper, but when I got home, I thought, I want something solid and substantial, so I cooked a piece of Foster Farms Crispy Strips chicken in the toaster oven along with about 10 (mostly small) french fries, slathered it all with ketchup, and ate it up!  I'm quite certain that is not something they would recommend as a meal following chemo!
       I feel completely normal today.  However, they say that it takes a few days for the reactions to kick in, so ... we'll just wait and see.  I keep pulling on my hair, but it's still firmly attached.  It's not supposed to start falling out for a couple of weeks.  Oh, yes, one other thing: the nurse said they had a bunch of free hats for bald people that they were giving away, so I took three of them!  I'll try to get some pictures of myself looking like the thing

that came from outer space!

I wonder -- 
why do the little gray men never have hair?

Too much treatment with chemicals, I guess,
in order to keep their aging DNA from blowing up.

      

       I'm planning a series of these posts to keep everybody informed of my progress or lack thereof.  At the moment I'm optimistic and hopeful that I can take the full course of treatment and

kick those little bugger cells' asses!

      

 Footnote: It's now the second day (Jan. 31) and I slept good last night, but I'm very groggy this morning -- feel really out of it, so the reaction must be beginning to kick in.  I still have no nausea, though.  I'll get this posted and plan to do another post in a week or whenever I feel I have something to report.

      

This Blog Is Not Defunct! A Preview of the Sequel to the Ki'shto'ba Series

      

The Launch of Mor'gwai on the
Quest for the Golden Fungus
at the beginning of v.6.
(click for larger view)

Actually, I'm not defunct either.  I simply lost interest in a lot of things after being diagnosed with uterine cancer and having to go about preparing and enduring surgery (hysterectomy).  Recovery wasn't as fast as I expected.  Fortunately, the cancer hadn't spread, but I'm still going to have to take a preventive round of chemotherapy, which doesn't make me very happy.

 

       However, I'm back to attempting to write a little bit everyday on the sequel volume to The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  This post should be over on the Termitespeaker blog, but at least I've been posting reviews over there, so I'm putting this excerpt here.  I can't talk a lot about the new book because that would inevitably give away the events of v.6, The Revenge of the Dead Enemy.  However, the following excerpt doesn't do that.  It includes my interpretation of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth in Greek myth.  If you've read v.6, you know something like this was foretold by the Seer Ko'zim'tuk'zei.  In this excerpt, a tattered old Seer/Sorcerer has just given Is'a'pai'a a bag of reptile teeth - and she has a tale to go with it.

 

       “Mighty Captain-Leader, once long ago there are fortresses in all the great lands of the South, ruled by a great Champion named Pai’grin’a [Warrior (of the) East].  In those parts it is the custom to seek out holy springs and bring water to the fortress to bathe the Mothers at certain festivals.  A Seer tells Pai’grin’a to go to a particular spring for the rites of lat’nol|, but when it gets there, it finds an enormous reptile guarding the spring. ...

       “This reptile kills many of Pai’grin’a’s guards, but the Champion will not give up and fights long and hard.  Finally the reptile says to it, ‘Yield to me, Warrior fool.  You cannot kill me!  I am sacred to the War King!’

       “But Pai’grin’a does not yield.  ‘This water must be taken to the Mother, and if I return without it, I am disgraced and as good as dead anyway.’  And it fought on.

       “Finally it senses that the reptile is weakening and it picks up a huge boulder and bashes the reptile’s head.  ‘Ai-i-i, now you kill me!  You are the mightiest of Champions, and so before I die, I will give you a gift.  Cut off my head and pull out my teeth, and sow them in the soil as if you were planting the fungus spores or the seeds of fruit trees, and I promise you a great wonder will result.’  And the reptile expires with a great thrashing that in itself almost kills Pai’grin’a.

       “Pai’grin’a’s companions advise it not to accept the reptile’s gift, because such creatures are notorious for their devious natures.  But Pai’grin’a, swelled up with its own prowess, scoffs at his companions for being weakling cowards, and it pulls the many many teeth and sows them as if they were the seeds of fruit trees.  And immediately the ground begins to heave and then it opens up and out leap burly, bristly Warriors with huge jaws and a terrifying smell of invincibility about them.  They begin to attack Pai’grin’a and its remaining companions, but these Tooth-Warriors are not very smart and have little strategic sense, and when Pai’grin’a throws a stone at one of them, they do not know who threw it and they all turn and begin to attack one another.  Gradually they kill each other until only five are left, and these realize they would do better to surrender and to offer their services to Pai’grin’a instead of dying for no reason.  And that is the origin of the Tale of the Sown Warriors, who still live to this day in some part of the Lost World of the South.

       "A few of the reptile teeth are not sown, however, and as time goes by these teeth pass from Champion to Champion and fortress to fortress, until no one knows what has become of them.  But, good Easterners, one day I was foraging in a distant land – yes, I have wandered far, even as you have – and I came upon this bag in an abandoned cave-shrine, where the sea goes in and out and makes great spirit-music.  As I picked it up and peered inside, a ground-quake struck and I rushed out of the cave even as its ceiling crashed down behind me.  I brought the bag out with me and I stored the words of the cave-music in my remembering – ‘These are the seeds of the Sown Warriors.  One day you will give them to another Easterner.  Until that day comes, you cannot die.’  And so I have lived longer than any other Sorcerer ever on this world.  Do you have any more of that wonderfully delicious yellow berry that you gave me just now?”

Prepare to read the sequel to

The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head

by reading the previous volumes.

See the sidebar or go to

Amazon

Smashwords

(I would love for somebody to buy a book

at Smashwords because I just need a 10-cent purchase

in order to get a royalty payment!  Normally I use

Smashwords mainly to giveaway free books.)

 



Two Weeks' Worth of FREE Books!

Sorry, folks!  The coupons have expired!
But the regular price on all my ebooks is only $2.99
except for Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder,
and it's only $1.99!
and if you buy a paperback, you get a Kindle FREE!
Amazon

I don't want to commit a lot of time to a Christmas promotion because I have no idea what I'll be required to do over the next few weeks, so I'm having a SMASHWORDS COUPON GIVEAWAY.  Starting Monday, December 1, 2014, I'll be publishing coupon codes for different books each day.

I've changed my mind!  I'm going to be tied up for the rest of the week!
So I'm adding all the codes at the end of this post.

 

Back and front cover of v.1

 

Monday and Tuesday, I'm featuring both volumes of
The Termite Queen,

because, since it's a two-volume novel and not a series,

you really need to acquire both volumes of the book.

All coupons will expire on 12/14/14!

 

Codes

 

Volume One: The Speaking of the Dead

SC86E

 

Volume Two: The Wound That Has No Healing

LA29P

 

Go to Smashwords, buy the book,

enter the code at checkout,

and voila! 

You are the proud owner of one of my books!

Here are the rest of the codes,
which make all the books free!

You can find all the books in the series
The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head
in the Smashwords series entry:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/1028

v.1: The War of the Stolen Mother
MJ62Y

v.2: The Storm-Wing
VF99S

v.3: The Valley of Thorns
XA28F

v.4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear
KM63V

v.5: The Wood Where the Two Moons Shine
EQ75F
v.6: The Revenge of the Dead Enemy
HW33T

Again, offer will expire on 14 December 2014

Download the books, read, enjoy, and review!

 

Curse You, Health Insurance Bureaucracy!

      

http://designstutorial.com/facebook-smileys-winks-and-emoticons/

 

       I decided I wanted to drop my AARP Secure Horizons Advantage Plan and switch back to traditional Medicare plus a supplement.  The only advantage to the first one is that there is no premium; the copays don't make up the difference.  However, it's an HMO so you have to get a referral from your primary care physician to see other doctors.  And that's a hassle and it's easy to forget to do it, and a constant source of annoyance to me at present.

       I used to be in traditional Medicare, so now during the open enrollment period, I decided to switch back.

 

       I just spent two hours on the phone.

 

       First, I had to call a couple of my doctors and verify that they take traditional Medicare; I really had no doubt but I needed to be sure.  So that took about 20 minutes because the oncologist's office didn't open on time and they had a new menu that didn't include an option for Stay on the line for a representative, so I had to call two or three times before I figured out which number I was supposed to punch.

 

       Then I called the AARP Medicare Supplement phone number that I got off their website.  They said they couldn't switch me to regular Medicare; I would have to call a Licensed Healthcare Representative at a different number.  O-o-o-kay.

 

       That person said I couldn't switch at that line and I needed to call Medicare and re-enroll in Medicare.  When I got to that number, the automated thingy said that in order to do that I had to call Social Security.  And Social Security is impossible -- after making me sit through this long lecture on the various benefits of SS, they said they were too busy to answer the phone right now and call back at a less busy time.

 

       You understand, each one of these numbers tortured the listener with a long menu of options and "answer this question" and "answer that question ... " and "Hold for a representative," etc., etc.

 

       So then I was thoroughly confused and tired and out of all options.  So I called Secure Horizons, which has always given me trouble in the past, and lo and behold!  I quickly got a human being who knew what he was talking about!  His name was Ray! 

 

Ray, wherever you are, you're a terrific person! 

 

      He said he would disenroll me from Secure Horizons and when that happens, you automatically revert to traditional Medicare, which is what I thought all along ought to happen -- but not according to all those other imbeciles.  I stay in Secure Horizons through Dec. 31, and in a week or ten days I will get a disenrollment form in the mail to fill out, and I'll fill it out and send it back, and then I can sign up for a Medicare supplement plan, just like I used to have.  There will be plenty of time to do it, and I think it can be done online.  Let's hope so!  I think the websites are less ignorant than the phone representatives.  I know what plan I want, and I really understand traditional Medicare much better than I ever understood the Advantage Plans.

 

       The only thing I didn't like about that last one was at one point, Ray had to go away and get some information, and during that time they played a piece of 18th century chamber music, maybe Hayden or Mozart.  Now, I like 18th century chamber music, but this piece was very short and repeated endlessly, the same thing.  After hearing something fifty times, the most artistic piece of music can drive you crazy! 

 

       The reason I changed in the first place was that my erstwhile PCP sent out this letter saying he was going to drop any patient who didn't transfer to an Advantage Plan.  Even though that didn't seem right to me at the time, I didn't want to have to find a new PCP, so I switched.  Now the same practice, which that doctor has now left, says, no, they take traditional Medicare.  *#$*#@!

 

 

Oh, the joys and conveniences of our contemporary civilization!

 

 

 

 

Ye Olde Grammarian (No. 6): A Hodgepodge, Plus Some E-Book Formatting Tips

Otherwise known as a potpourri, pastiche, melange, mishmash, or gallimaufry!

http://www.copyediting.com/gallimaufry-word-game
(you can find a word game on this website!)

       I recently read somewhere about certain conventions of print books that I realized I had been flagrantly violating.  (I checked a bunch of books that I own and by golly, both these things are true.)

       First, don't use "by" on the cover and title page.  Unfortunately, I have done that consistently, until the last two books in the Ki'shto'ba series, where I dropped the "by" on the cover.  I did, however, retain it on the title page, again for the sake of consistency. 

       The other convention is that the first paragraph of a chapter or chapter section is not indented.  Sometimes they even use a few letters in all caps.  After I learned this, I tried not indenting, but it just didn't look right to me, so again for the sake of consistency I persisted in indenting the first paragraph.

       So I make my mea culpas.  In my next publication, I may amend my ways.  In the meantime, if it really bothers you that I use "by" on the cover and t.p. or that I indent the opening paragraphs, I guess you just can't read my books, or you can read the e-books, where clarity is the only rule that really applies.

 

       I am very much aware that a writer should italicize the names of ships.  I didn't do that in v. 5 and 6 of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  Somehow I thought it seemed artificial.  I think the Shshi consider their ships as something more than inanimate objects, so, since one does not italicize the names of individuals, it seemed wrong not to treat ships the same way.  You'll notice that I did italicize the name of the human ship in v. 6.  And that's saying more than I should.
       So I don't want to hear any complaints that I don't know that rule!

 

       Now I want to talk about backward apostrophes.  In Word, most people use curly apostrophes  and when you type a single apostrophe, it comes out like this: He said, ‘I see you.’  An initial single apostrophe always opens to the right, which is correct for a quotation mark.  But when the apostrophe signifies an omission, it shouldn't open to the right -- it should open to the left.  Wrong: Eat ‘em up!  It should be Eat ’em up!  So how did I make it go the right way?  I type this: Eat ‘’em up! and then go back and delete the first apostrophe.  I get irked every time I read a book formatted by somebody who doesn't know you can do this.

 

       So what's with the word or words "alright" and "all right"?   Here is the Usage Note under "alright" in Dictionary.com:
"The form alright as a one-word spelling of the phrase all right in all of its senses probably arose by analogy with such words as already and altogether. Although alright is a common spelling in written dialogue and in other types of informal writing, all right is used in more formal, edited writing."
       It may be becoming common to spell it "alright," but it still irks me when I encounter it in an otherwise well-edited book.

       I have always had problems knowing whether to use "a while" or "awhile."   Read what Grammar Girl has to say about it -- it's basically what I finally came up with on my own.  "Awhile" is an adverb.  "I stayed awhile."  "He stared at the girl awhile and then approached her." 
       "A while" is simply an article plus a noun, and that construction is required when an object is involved, for example, in prepositional phrases: "I stayed for a while." "He left after a while."  Grammar Girl gives this example, which may confuse some people.  "It's been a while since he visited."  The reason you use the noun form here is that "to be" in a copular, or linking, verb and takes a predicate nominative or a predicate adjective rather than an adverb.  (You wouldn't say, "He's been quietly for a while,' would you?  You would say, "He's been quiet for a while."  "Quiet" is an adjective modifying "he.")  Esoteric, you say?  You should have heard my mother expounding on linking verbs!  Some other linking verbs are "to become," "to feel ," to smell," etc.  If you're interested in pursuing this further, go here.
       



       I'm going to reiterate what I said in an earlier post about using commas in terms of address.  It's the old "Let's eat, Grampa" vs. "Let's eat Grampa" dichotomy.  In my earlier post I said this: "The use of the vocative (i.e., an instance where you are addressing someone) is related to this.  ...  Here is another [example] as to why you should set off the name of the person addressed with a comma:

       What don't you want to tell John?

       What don't you want to tell, John?

       I recently read a book where the language got really confused because of the omission of commas.  I was always having to stop and go back and figure out what the author meant.  I think it's a British tendency to omit commas in this sort of construction, but I do wish people would return to the old rule.

To read my other Olde Grammarian posts, go to

http://termitewriter.blogspot.com/search/label/Grammar

 

Summary of how to do ToC links on Smashwords

       Now I'm going to add a bit on e-book formatting using Word -- how to easily create a linked Table of Contents.  Smashwords insists that you do this, but Kindle doesn't care.  I get irritated when an e-book doesn't have a ToC linked to the chapters and also chapters linked back to the ToC, because it's so easy to lose your place in an e-book and this way you can always skip through by chapter.  I recommend that everybody do this on all their e-books.  It takes a little time, but it's not difficult and your readers (or at least I) will thank you.

       Make your Table of Contents (remove all links based on style, e.g., Heading 1 or ToC1, etc.)

       Select each chapter heading in the text and create Insert Bookmark (on Insert menu).  Remember, no spaces in bookmark names; abbreviate as much as you like as long as it’s clear (e.g., Ch1 for Chapter One or Note for Note to the Smashwords Edition).

       Go to ToC list and select each Chapter designation.  Then add a Hyperlink, using the Insert menu or the right-click menu.  Click on “Place in this document.”  Select the corresponding bookmark and then click on OK.

       Then make a bookmark for the heading “Table of Contents.”  Smashwords suggests using “ref_ToC” 

       Go one more time through the document text, selecting each chapter heading and making a hyperlink using “ref_ToC.”  This will link each chapter back to the top of the Table of Contents.

       Double check to make sure the ToC entries link to the correct chapters.

 



“So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.” - Ender's Game

THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS ESSAY!

 

Just a few days after I finished Ender’s Game, I ran across an article in the Colorado Springs newspaper (The Gazette) about how some people were trying to get the book banned from use in a Mesa County school district language arts program.  They didn’t succeed, but the reason a particular parent wanted the book banned was that she “was appalled to read swear words and passages about characters renouncing religion and killing each other.”  (Where has this parent been all her life?) 

The article goes on to state that the book is “an anti-bullying tale.”  I found this a little befuddling; I would have never characterized the book in that way.  It oversimplifies the themes to a really naïve level.  For one thing, when the book was written in the 1970s and ’80s, bullying wasn’t a big topic of interest, and in any case, I don’t think murdering the bully is a valid way to deal with the problem.  The article does also go on to say “Reviewers also called it a message about tolerance, empathy and coping under pressure.”

Some of those statements are true, but I think they miss the point.  And honestly I don’t think the book is particularly appropriate for 10 or 11 year olds, not because of the reasons the parent gave above but because I think it would terminally bore them.  

For me the essential point of the book is how terrible things can happen when communication is non-existent.  People seem to have little interest in the buggers, who are an intelligent species looking for a new place to nest and not nearly as evil as they are portrayed in Earth’s future social context.  The irony is that the buggers weren’t even intending to attack again, and the lengths Earthers went to in order to destroy them says something about humanity – paints a really bleak picture, actually.  Perhaps this point gets de-emphasized because it is made so late in the book.

Most of the book deals with the training of the six-to-eleven-year-old Ender to be the commander who is going to save the world from the next bugger attack.  Personally, I have trouble suspending disbelief that young children could do what Ender and his siblings did, no matter how carefully genetically engineered they were.  This training consists of game-playing.  I am not a game player, so I found the endless dwelling on the “game” of warfare to be quite tedious at times.  I can imagine, however, that this would appeal to inveterate game players.  It’s a very masculine book – it has only three female characters (not counting the bugger Queens, of course) and of those only Ender’s sister filled an important role (a kind of token female).  I think if you’re a guy and you’re a gamer and you think warfare is cool, then you would eat up all those training sequences.  The view and use of gaming was amazingly modern to have been written in the ’70s and ’80s – I thought the use of the “desk” (like a modern laptop computer or tablet) and the sophistication of the games held up well against the evolution of modern technology. 

The one part of the gaming sequences that I found fascinating was the psychological game that Ender played for “recreation.”  This was totally a computer game, not the physical workouts of the Battle Room.  I’m always interested in psychological interpretations of character, and the way this fed into the conclusion of the book was brilliant. 

On the whole, however, I found the story to be gloomy and downbeat, with almost no humor or comic relief.  (I do like some humor in my science fiction.)  To me, it feels unbalanced and depressing.  And the pace of the story is uneven – we have all those endless training sessions and then at the very end of the book we suddenly accelerate into covering several years all packed into that final chapter.  I think the author lapsed into telling and not showing at this point because he had a lot he needed to cover.  The plot suddenly becomes filled with exalted idealism as major revelations are rapidly detailed.  I’m sure Card was preparing the way for the second volume.  In spite of the change of style and pace, however, I found the sequence revealed on p. 321 (where Ender speaks for the annihilated buggers) to be most satisfying and exhilarating part of the book.  It wouldn’t have hurt to shorten the earlier parts by about half.

I did have a couple of other problems with the end of the book.  It seemed all the Queens of the buggers were on one planet, and all of them were killed.  Now even though the buggers could read Ender’s mind, I don’t think they could read the future, so how did they know which planet he would colonize and so where to leave the game recreation and the egg?  Maybe they left a recreation and an egg on all their planets?) Also, it’s stated that the buggers cared for their offspring as they were working their farms.  But if the Queens were all on one planet, why were the offspring on different planets?  I would think they would be kept in nurseries near the Mother until they matured.  I don’t think Card thought this out totally.  However, I was reading the end pretty fast and I might have missed something.

I want to remark on the use of the term “ansible” for a device that allows for rapid communication across light years.  I thought it was pretty neat that he borrowed the word from Ursula K. LeGuin, who invented it.  Here is how the term is explained to Ender: “Somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere and it caught on.” (p.249)  Isn’t it nice to know your books will still be around a number of centuries from now?  In fact, LeGuin coined the word ansible in her 1966 novel Rocannon's World, and her 1974 novel The Dispossessed narrates how the technology happened to be invented.  According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible Le Guin states she derived the name from "answerable," as the device would allow its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of time even over interstellar distances.  Fascinating stuff!

Of course, since I write about giant insects, I’m especially interested in the buggers, and the way things turned out only makes me more interested in them.  My purpose in my books is not only to show that giant insects don’t have to be evil – my purpose is also to show the importance of learning how to communicate with the extraterrestrial lifeforms we are sure to encounter one day.  And of course that’s the most important theme of Ender’s Game as well, even though it seems to get lost in the shuffle.  One of the most important pages of the book is p. 253, where Col. Graff finally tells Ender how the buggers communicate mind-to-mind instantaneously, in a way we can never hope to de-code.  And Ender says, “So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.”  That sums up the theme of the book in one sentence.

 

         [References above are to the mass market paperback edition, published by Tor Books in 1994.]