A silly place for a mole

By Lorraine Scally as told to her son, Bernard Scally

Twelve years ago while visiting my optometrist, Dr. William Putterman, I told him that my right eye was seeing zigzag lines from top to bottom where I should be seeing straight lines. He sent me to Nova Care who sent me to Wills Eye Oncology. I had something on the retina of my eye but neither Nova Care nor Wills Eye knew what it was.

After four years of 3 to 6 month visits and numerous testing, the thing (not yet officially declared a tumor) started to grow. The doctors came to the conclusion that it was cancerous. Oh how I cried, I mean who ever heard of cancer of the eye?

Nine days after this prognosis, I was admitted to Wills Eye Hospital. I had my eye cut open and radioactive chips were placed on the tumor. I was kept in an isolated room for five days then returned to the operating room to the chips removed. As a result of this surgery, I lost about 75 to 80 percent of the vision in my right eye.

Soon now, the waiting game began. The six-month follow after my surgery showed that the tumor was shrinking and continued to do so for the next six years. Then two years ago, the doctors saw some changes and decided to give me a treatment with a nuclear laser. Six months after this treatment, I was informed that there was a very small bleed in my eye but there was nothing to worry about so we continued our visits.

Sadly, this past January, I had a vision in my affected right eye that scared me greatly because it occurred while I was driving. I can only describe it as my eye looked like it was kaleidoscope but all in back. Four days after this incident my eye returned to its normal condition. During my February visit this year, I was informed that the blood was a cause for concern. was referred to Dr. Joseph I. Maguire who felt it best to leave the blood alone as there was not enough to extract and the bleed may sort itself out.

On May 7, 2011, I obtained a massive headache and complete blindness in my right eye. Thinking that it would clear itself up, I tried to ignore it but after two weeks without abatement I returned to Wills Eye Hospital. Immediately, oncologist Dr. Carol Shields recommended removing the eye because it was full of blood and the likeliest source of the bleeding was the diminished tumor. I was stunned but I refused to relinquish my body part until I knew that it was the tumor for sure. I returned to Dr. Maguire within a week. I was again in surgery to remove the blood. When I returned the next day, everything seemed to be well but two weeks later, my eye again filled up with blood. It was also discovered that the tumor had grown even bigger than it had been eight years ago. There was no choice anymore; my eye had to come out.

While I had this tumor in my eye, I had headaches all the time. Since my eye was removed on June 30, 2011, I have had one had headache because I did not take my medications. Thankfully, the cancer was contained solely on the inside of my eye. my advice to all would be to keep a check on your eyes. Have your eyes tested as often as you are able. After some cursory research, I found that eye cancer is more common that I first thought. If you suspect something and your doctor doesn't listen, find a new doctor.

Now that I have a new prosthetic eye from Dr. Kevin V. Kelley, it is a new challenge for me but with the help of my family, friends and church, I will survive.

Photo credit: Bas Slabbers/for www.newsworks.org

We are 'Occupied'...but what next?

I admit that when I first saw the "Occupy Philly" protest. I was not so impressed with the gathering itself but with the traffic snafu it had caused that day. A few days before I did sign an online petition asking that Student Loan Debt be forgiven. It seemed pretty reasonable...until I was getting emails of every leftist MoveOn.org petition thrown at me later on. So my vision might have been a little skewed when I visited City Hall on Oct. 6. The one thing I knew for certain is that if I ignored it, I would have definitely regretted it.
I did not. I was impressed with the conduct of the protesters and the police. I narrowly avoided the 2001 Fat Tuesday Riot on South St. because I saw the signs of something bad about to go down. I never felt that vibe during the whole time I was at City Hall. I have a few humanitarian concerns such as food, shelter, toliet facilities. After speaking with my uncle, I also wondered who was paying for the police overtime because of the protest. Of course, we know the answers to that now. We are, in effect, paying for this.
It was after seeing some neighbors, Susan and Don Simon, who lived through the protest of the 1960s and walking around with my buddy Hugh Giordano, that I started to appreciate the goals, though unfocused, of this particular protest.
My friend, Lisa Lutwyche, puts it more succinctly:
(Note: Bolded emphasis are all hers)

""Occupy" is trying to expose this: there is such an enormous gap, growing every day, between the corporate bosses and bankers & the rest of us, that my kids who are in their twenties might NEVER know the comfort and stability I USED to know (before the bottom dropped out of my career). And, no matter how many jobs my husband and I have, we might NEVER again know financial comfort or stability in our lifetime.

We DO work. I work in excess of 50 hours many weeks, combining all my jobs, to say nothing of the 24-36 hours per week of graduate school work that I do...My husband has no health insurance, mine is 44% of my income (but I can't give it up if I ever want treatment or testing for cancer...since I had the audacity to survive cancer in the past), we have NO savings anymore, we drive cars that have both exceeded 200,000 miles and there's no end in sight.

THAT's what people are "marching" and "occupying" about.

Who made this happen? What became of the people who created this? They are better off than ever before, in most cases, and we are worse off than our grandparents were...and if our kids weren't born into families of corporate executives, bankers, or derived wealthy inheritances from the death of someone...they have little hope of a future.

We, as a country, don't MAKE anything anymore. Our manufacturing has all been sent overseas, and it's NOT the fault of the unions, it's the fault of the GREED of the the companies who used to make things here.

WE need to let "Wall Street" and "Corporate America" know that they are responsible, as citizen of a democracy, to the other citizens of that democracy.

Otherwise, who are we as a country? We are that wall of NYC cops, all in dark clothes with handcuffs dangling from their belts. We are the Cadillac Escalades, pushing in front of our 18-year-old Ford Tempos because "that's just the other half and I'm better because I have more money.

Enough. Can't we, please, get our equality back? Narrow the margins of net pay between the people who do the work and the people who profit from it? Can't we make things in America and get some faith in ourselves again?

That's what the people are trying to say.

Is anyone listening?"

There are people listening and who sympathize. Giordano repeatedly called this protest 'Democracy in Action" (I call Hugh Giordano, my favorite 'Watermelon Communist', because he is the spokesperson for the Green Party in Philadelphia.) But even he agreed with me that when all of this is over and the protesters go home was it all sound and fury signifying nothing?

Getting back on track

After a Plimpton-esque debacle into politics, I have come to realize that journalism and the media are my true passion. Informing the people is a nobler and more rewarding profession than having an office in City Hall.

Lately, I have been writing up a storm. Most of my freelance work recently has been for WHYY’s NewsWorks.org. Here's a list of stories either written by me or about me can be found right here. But it is time that I branched out a bit again and do a little bit more. Really get back into the "Gentleman's Odd-yssey" that I once promised. So in the next couple of days, I'll touch on a variety of subjects humorous, topical and deeply personal.

Enjoy.

The Hit List

One of the great thing about being raised by a pair of punks was an appreciation for great music.

In Praise of the Library...

Chris Satullo's piece a few months ago in Newsworks titled "If books fade away, can we call the iPad progress?" made me realize how doomed certain things we take for granted might be. In his piece, which I have linked to, Chris laments that he and his wife haven't indulged in a favorite pastime: browsing a book store.
While I am partial to perusing purveyors of the printed page, I was left feeling that there was something missing from Chris' musing. I struck me a few days ago when I visited...my local library.
(Author's note: I looked at some readers comments while finding the link to Satullo's piece and found someone pointing out the library as well.)
After borrowing an acquantence's copy of 'I, Claudius', I found it was one disc short. So I sallyed forth to my local library branch and found the item I need to complete my viewing pleasure. After leaving with said item I realized how empty my life might be without the library.
My life has been sort of a love affair with the library and stories. Thankfully, my mum and dad would read to my sister and I when we were little. We always saw them reading something; books, magazines, newspapers. The internet was still something out of Star Trek.
Growing up in Manayunk, my first introduction into the library was in elementary school, the late St. John the Baptist School, the library was inside the convent until it found a roomier spot in the upper school building. I admit in those earlier days, I picked out books for being big and lots of pictures.
It was Mum who got me my first library card at my local branch. A card that I put to good use borrowing books, books on tape and sometimes videos...and it was all free, provided you brought it back on time. I would renew my card when I had too. (Though a few days, I discovered that they no longer expire) Throughout elementary school and high school, the Roxborough and Andorra branch library were I would do much of research for school projects or simply pass the time especially during those long summer months.
My University had it's own extensive library system so my use of my local library waned. By the time I graduated, the internet was the place to get whatever you wanted.
But the library isn't completely out of my life. My own massive book collection came from clearance shelf of the big box stores, gorgeously shelved second-hand book shops and yes, library sales and giveaways.
While I hope to enjoy with brave new world that we live in; for those of us who can not afford iPads, Kindles or Nooks, there is one last refuge for us to go but I wonder how long it will last.

"We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are...There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches." -Ray Bradbury

New beginnings, or will the third time be the charm for regular posts?

After a Plimpton-esque debacle into politics, I have come to realize that journalism is my true passion. Informing the people is a nobler and more rewarding profession than having an office in City Hall. I am been useful for the folks at Newsworks. Here's some links to my recent stories for them, here and here.

Now that I am blessed with a bit more free time. I hope to be able to bring some more commentary on to this blog for your enjoyment. In the next couple of days, I'll be bringing you more thoughts on books, life and the pursuit of happiness....maybe.

The Hangover

It is by far one of the most colorful traditions this city has to offer. Weather permitting, of course, thousands of people greet the first day of the new year at the annual Mummer’s Parade. Despite not having a club based in the Northwestern part of the city, there are plenty of people of Our Town who participate in all the ‘Mummery’.
“Keep an eye out for me, I’ll be wearing a purple hat,” said Carl Pfefferle.
Pfefferle, of Andorra, is a member of a Comic brigade. Pfefferle went on to name other Roxborough/Manayunk Mummers but I withhold their names to protect the guilty. According to Philadelphia’s Office of City Representative, Mummery dates back to ancient Roman laborers who ushered in the festival of Saturnalia by marching in masks while exchanging gifts and satirizing the issues of the day. Locally, during the 1600s, Swedish settlers to Philadelphia dressed up, chanted and fired weapons in the air to honor Christmas (Author’s note: how little things have changed.). The Swedes would also entertain their amused neighbors in exchange for desserts of beverages.
This tradition eventually moved to New Year’s Day and evolved into a series of neighborhood parades. As immigrants moved to the area from Ireland and Italy, each group added their own cultural flavor to the local customs. In 1901, the tradition began in earnest with the first recognized and judged Mummers Parade organized by the City of Philadelphia on Broad St. Established with just a few hundred revelers, today more than 10,000 participate in the parade.
The famous term ‘Mummer’ is German and means ‘to costume or masquerade’ and boy, do they ever. Mardi Gras notwithstanding, it is probably the only event on the calendar in Philadelphia when a man wearing a dress, feathers and/or sequins is never questioned about his masculinity. It was also the one event on the calendar I looked forward too as much as Christmas.
When I was a child, my grandfather served as Municipal Court Administrator and would snag us a prime viewing spot from a judge’s office in City Hall. After the departure of that judge, we went on to view the parade for the City’s Law Library annex. But the real reason I looked forward to it was not the parade entirely; I got to hang out with all of my younger cousins.
When I became a teenager, this tradition of going downtown was replaced with staying at home and visiting friends. In fact, I would go a whole decade without seeing the parade live. And only once in my memory (which admittedly isn’t what it once was) has the parade ever postponed. (That parade in 2007 led to an interesting incident of meeting Fox Sports commentators Troy Aikman and Joe Buck on Sansom St. But that’s another story entirely.)
It wasn’t until I started working at The Review did I hear about the party at “Two Street”. Even then it took the invitation of my cousins to get me to go. Naturally, it was collectively our first time at this, for lack of a better term, after party. The comics, the string bands and fancies, after being judged, march south on Second Street and revelers continue long into the night.
“I remember we used to let them do what they want and we’d hose down the beer and blood down the street afterward,” said a police friend of mine.
To be sure, there was lots of beer, bile and mud, to which my unlucky shoes can sadly attest. There was plenty of police around in case things got out of hand. It was certainly a less-family oriented event than what occurs on Broad St. but it maintained a gentle bonhomie that I sometimes rarely see. (I survived the 2001 Mardi Gras Riot of South St. which had all the charm and grace of a rabid, claustrophobic wolverine.) On the whole, most people were genuinely pleasant and respectful to one another. Revelers wished each other “Happy New Year” and high fived or shook hands. At one point, an admirer of my mustache offered me a beer. Through a short conversation, I learned he was the son of Sam Katz. It is a small world after all.
My mustache was a popular feature, especially among the ladies. But one reveler did not have such luck.
“All these male mummers keep wanting to touch my mustache,” he said. Poor fellow but he was not the only person who felt the need to confess to me. (Apparently, I look like someone people like to talk to.) During the Fancy Brigades slow march down Second St. it was a regular dance party. A costumed Mummer and a lady were closely dancing in the street.
As the song ended the Mummer looked at me and said, “And I am doing all this on a torn ACL, I am really going to regret this tomorrow.”
Having done a lot of walking that day myself, I knew his pain well.
But that’s a challenge for another day.
Happy New Year.