{"id":2373,"date":"1979-02-28T00:01:30","date_gmt":"1979-02-28T08:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/?p=2373"},"modified":"2022-12-04T10:51:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-04T18:51:44","slug":"1979-february-14-letter-from-marcy-to-gh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/1979\/02\/28\/1979-february-14-letter-from-marcy-to-gh\/","title":{"rendered":"1979, February 14: Letter from Marcy to G&H"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Six-page handwritten letter, on 7\"x9\" unlined paper.<\/p>\r\n

This letter includes the first time that Marcy used the word leukemia<\/i> in any of these letters. I still don\u2019t know when she was diagnosed. She had mentioned anemia two years earlier, but that may have been metaphorical; she had mentioned something that might\u2019ve been related to cancer in May, 1977, and blood issues in May, 1978; and there were other mentions of tiredness and prayer and various other things that may have been references to leukemia. But this is the first time she used the word.<\/p>\r\n

Note for clarity: when I say Peter<\/i> in my insertions and notes below, I\u00a0mean my father, not the other Peter who\u2019s mentioned in this letter.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n
\"Small<\/a>
Small drawing of a heart.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

14th<\/p>\r\n

Waal, hyar tis, folks, a letter for February and it\u2019s not even the end of the month.<\/p>\r\n

The valentines were great - they arrived, right on the dot - I was interested to read the history of St Valentine ^^in Peter\u2019s writing:<\/span> (me too)^^; I\u2019d heard a slightly different story - and the kids had a good time with the animals. I fell asleep over the ones I tried to make last night, and Peter came in to find me leaning back with scraps of paper all around me and holding my hands over his (valentine) in a last act of secrecy before losing consciousness. Got up early and finished them for breakfast delivery. The Hungarians (did we tell you about them?) had never had valentines before. Jed made a neat one - something like this (see image below)<\/span> and said<\/p>\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n
you<\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n
+<\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n
Joaquin<\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n
+<\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n
me<\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n
\u2014\u2014<\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n
us<\/td>\r\n <\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

- I believe.<\/p>\r\n

\"Drawing<\/a>
Drawing of a valentine that Jed made.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Our Hungarian family is really neat. The baby (he\u2019s 2) is a perfect mimic, and can xxx<\/strike> repeat all sorts of things, but remembers mostly \u201cbye-bye\u201d and \u201cOur dog\u2019s name<\/span>\u2019s nose\u201d - I am learning \u201cn\u014f\u014fm\u201d (=no) (that\u2019s written as a single curve\/breve mark over both o<\/i>s)<\/span> and \u201chum\u201d (x<\/strike>baby talk for \u201ccan I have a bite\u201d) and Peter says \u201cgood morning\u201d ^^in Peter\u2019s writing:<\/span> (yore-a-girt)^^ but I haven\u2019t got it yet. His name is G\u00e9rzhon, the mother is Fr\u00fazhina, and the father is Peter! (So far not much confusion.)<\/p>\r\n

In the margin, in Peter\u2019s handwriting:<\/span> Peter is a PhD research asst. in computer sci. dept. at Stanford...<\/p>\r\n

Kids are taking Aikido & really doing well - Jed also has a weekly math class with an advanced group at another school but some of what I hear about doesn\u2019t sound real advanced.<\/p>\r\n

In margin, in Marcy\u2019s handwriting:<\/span> Also violin lessons for Jed.<\/p>\r\n

Joaquin is starting Little League this month - he\u2019s terribly excited about it. I\u2019m not very - these things are terribly competitive and they learn to do that chatter stuff that sounds so yucky. But I\u2019ll fork over the $22 (with lots of groaning and moaning and exclaiming so he\u2019ll feel sacrificed-for) and go see his games* - wish you were here to do that for us, G\u2019pa*. You\u2019d even enjoy it. Hey, you could be the coach! When will you get here? Can you stay the whole season?<\/p>\r\n

In Peter\u2019s handwriting, apparently applying to both asterisks:<\/span> *Tony, a programmer at work, can get free tix to A\u2019s games \u2019cause his father\u2019s chief physical plant manager at Oakland Coliseum...<\/p>\r\n

I am learning alot, working with a woman who is teaching visualization techniques that have proved highly effective with tumor cancers. It\u2019s a method that was developed by Dr. Carl Simonton, an xxx<\/strike> army physician at the Hamilton Air Force Base near Novato. He found that this system, used in conjunction with traditional medical treatment, worked far better than the treatment alone, and even convinced the army of it. He now has a clinic in Houston. Works on mobilizing the body\u2019s pain-fighting and immunization resources so they xxx<\/strike> can work - by picturing them working - either the actual cells or images that represent them - such as a<\/p>\r\n

(This was where I fell asleep, pen in hand) such as picturing the white cells as chess pawns or resistance as the fierce Indian goddess Kali fighting and destroying the bad guys - or those very bad guy, the too-many, too-immature, white cells, as a xxx<\/strike> gang of juvenile delinquents, being destroyed, or jailed, or disintegrated, or digested. Other people sometimes use this technique for fighting pain - picturing it, for instance, as a hot poker, xxx<\/strike> burning the body, and gradually being cooled or lifted away. This is a way of mobilizing certain substances in the body called endorphins that get rid of pain - very effective for folks with chronic x<\/strike> or long-term unrelievable pain.<\/p>\r\n

Anyway, these are my x<\/strike> front lines in dealing with leukemia:<\/p>\r\n

prayer<\/p>\r\n

Johrei<\/p>\r\n

visualization<\/p>\r\n

diet<\/p>\r\n

This somehow doesn\u2019t include medical treatment in the front lines, though I give it a lot of energy. My veins are developing scar tissue from so many punctures. My doctor is really great - he thinks all this stuff I\u2019m doing is very important & highly instrumental in how well I am - what a wonderful situation!<\/p>\r\n

Off to work on a financial history, prior to getting a car loan.<\/p>\r\n

Thanks again for the neat cards.<\/p>\r\n

We\u2019re glad you\u2019re there*.<\/p>\r\n

love,<\/p>\r\n

M. & P<\/p>\r\n

In Peter\u2019s handwriting:<\/span> * a big 10-4 on that!<\/p>\r\n

In Peter\u2019s handwriting:<\/span> * Amen! to that<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Notes<\/h2>\r\n
\r\n
Hungarians<\/dt>\r\n
After Ken and Suzanne and Jezra moved out, we subletted the extra rooms to the Hungarian family described here.<\/dd>\r\n
One thing Marcy doesn\u2019t mention here is that that family brought a neat toy with them from Hungary, and gave it to us. It was a cube, made up of 3x3x3 smaller cubes, with colored faces, and you could rotate each face\u2026 Yep, it was a Rubik\u2019s Cube, invented five years previous but not widely sold internationally until 1980. So I was probably one of the first kids in America to get to play with one. Pretty sure I no longer have that one they gave us, alas. I didn\u2019t figure out how to solve it on my own; in 1980, I learned to solve it from instructions that my father acquired from a math professor<\/a>.<\/dd>\r\n
Aikido<\/dt>\r\n
I eventually got a white belt (the beginner rank), but was never very good at it. We stopped attending for reasons I no longer recall.<\/dd>\r\n
\u201cweekly math class\u201d<\/dt>\r\n
The only thing that I remember from that class was learning the wordgame that I call Fives<\/a>. Which I\u2019ve created an online version of<\/a> if you want to play it.<\/dd>\r\n
violin lessons<\/dt>\r\n
Huh, I forgot that I had started violin in 5th grade. The word lessons<\/i> makes it sound like I was taking private lessons or something, but no, this was just orchestra class in school.<\/dd>\r\n
(One of my earliest violin memories: I put my finger on the string where the teacher said to put it, but the violin didn\u2019t sound like it was supposed to. So I pressed lighter, but it still didn\u2019t sound good. I touched the string as lightly as I could and it still didn\u2019t work! Eventually, the teacher explained to me that I needed to press harder<\/em>, not lighter.)<\/dd>\r\n
Simonton<\/dt>\r\n
Wikipedia<\/a> says that Simonton was \u201cmost notable for his unproven cancer treatment methods.\u201d It adds: \u201cMedical health experts describe his therapy as dubious. [\u2026] Physician Edward R. Friedlander, who investigated Simonton\u2019s techniques in depth, noted that although some patients found his approach helpful, his case histories are \u2018very poor evidence\u2019 for the claim that his treatment controls tumours.\u201d<\/dd>\r\n
But I\u2019m very glad to see Marcy say \u201cused in conjunction with traditional medical treatment.\u201d<\/dd>\r\n
\u2026I keep getting upset over seeing Marcy talk in these letters about all the non-medical treatments she was into; so I keep having to remind myself that there was no cure for leukemia, and thus that relying 100% on Western medicine would not have given her a better outcome. My impression is that she lived significantly longer than the doctors who initially diagnosed her thought she would (the family story says that she was told she had six months to live, but then lived six more years; that \u201csix years\u201d figure is clearly not true, based on these letters, but she may have lived for three or four years after diagnosis, I\u2019m not sure), so I ought to celebrate those alternative treatments; one way or another, it seems like something gave us a couple extra years with her.<\/dd>\r\n
juvenile delinquents<\/dt>\r\n
Marcy\u2019s description of visualization techniques here strongly reminds me of Norman Spinrad\u2019s 1967 short story \u201cCarcinoma Angels,\u201d originally published in Dangerous Visions<\/cite>; I read it a few years later in my father\u2019s copy of Spinrad\u2019s collection The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde<\/cite>.<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A general-life-updates note, plus the first time Marcy used the word leukemia<\/i> in a letter. \u201cJed also has a weekly math class with an advanced group at another school but some of what I hear about doesn\u2019t sound real advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-marcy","category-palo-alto"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2428,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions\/2428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/pmjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}