The last post
Here it is. I'm dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message...
Penmachine - Derek K. Miller
Penmachine.com: words music comment since 1997 from Derek K. Miller, a writer, editor, web guy, drummer, photographer, blogger, and dad in Vancouver, Canada.
Latest posts
I can speak, but in a squeaky way
Today my voice returned, after more than two months. Some tight scheduling in Coquitlam prevented a planned appointment here, so my dad, Air, and I drove to Surrey. There, an ENT doctor injected one side of my vocal cords while...
Jean-Hugues
My friend Jean-Hugues discovered he had the same cancer I do at the same time in 2007, in Paris, France, where he lives. He and his wife Laurence found this blog, and together we made our way through treatment in...
To vote
Today was one of three days of advance polling for the upcoming Canadian federal election, formally held at the beginning of May. My wife Air urged me to go, so we did. She drove us down to our local high...
Sometimes
I'm still here, with a list of things that sometimes happen. But first, I have three new rules, things that always happen, no matter how annoying... Derek's Rule #1: There's always more poop. Derek's Rule #2: There's always another phone...
The American junk food situation
Now that we have the trivia out of the way, I'll get to what you really want to know: what's the situation with the Diet Cherry Coke and Easy Cheese? In short, you guys are great. I've had so many...
On the gravel road
I'm at the point with my cancer that the car has finally bumped down off the pavement and we're driving on gravel now. What I mean is, the end of the road is somewhere up ahead, not too far, and...
So much for being diaper-free
Back in 2001, when my youngest daughter toilet-trained herself at 18 months of age, I thought we'd be a household free of diapers for decades to come. Sure, there'd be (and has been) the occasional night of babysitting, but we...
Bring me Diet Cherry Coke and Easy Cheese!
As my health has taken a sudden decline, some of you (thanks especially to my parents, my in-laws, and Beth) have offered to cook us food that we can freeze and reheat, and that has been quite helpful. But not...
The time will come
Not many people have seen me in the past two or three weeks. If you had, you'd probably say, "Derek doesn't look so good." And you'd be right. After the high point of my living wake early in March, I...
Tsunami video
In case you missed my brief mention a few weeks ago, and its original posting back in 2008, here is a video that three Vancouver Film School students made explaining tsunamis (like the recent one in Japan) in a couple...
Worse and better in Japan
When I wrote about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami the day they happened, my post was optimistic, despite the obvious catastrophe. In many ways, things have turned out worse than they first seemed. Surely the situation in Indonesia and around...
Twenty years on
In 1991, I had finished my Marine Biology degree and was part-way through a non-fiction writing diploma at the University of B.C. On Spring Break in March, I visited my parents, who were then living in Toronto. I didn't feel...
Better when busy
It was shockingly quiet here in the house all week, just me and Lucy the dog. I hardly went out, since I was pretty ill most of the time. My parents dropped by to check on me, walk the dog,...
The usual whisper
When Dr. Anderson, the ear-nose-throat (ENT) specialist I saw today, grabbed his nasal endoscope (which I fondly thought of as his "nose cam") and took a look down my throat—an interesting experience for me, certainly—he was surprised. As a result,...