Is It Really That Bad?

It must be.It has to be. My sister asked me a few days back whether or not I had seen the VH1 reality show (and I use that term loosely) "Love and Hip-Hop". I hadn't, so one evening it was on and I was bored , so I turned to it. I will never watch it again.

I've heard it before, and continue to hear it. Black women stating how difficult it is to find a "decent black man" to date. Many black men take umbrage with this, and dismiss it as a form of negative-attention seeking on behalf of black women. I personally have been indifferent about it at times. I cannot be any longer, black women are right. You know how I know that they're right? Because, black women(or at least one black woman) have now taken to asking a man to marry them-that means it's pretty bad out here. Not only did Jim Jones'(of "Ballin'!" fame) girlfriend of six years propose to him, but when seeking the counsel of close girlfriends about the move (another black woman) she was supported, and told to "go after what you want". I don't have a problem with a person seeking what it is their heart desires, but I do have a problem when a woman who should be the "prize" has to essentially chase down a grown man. It was awfully clear to me that Jones wasn't really interested in spending the rest of his life with or at least committing through marriage to be with her. Truthfully, I felt bad for her. Truthfully, I feel bad in general, for all our black women.

Now-I'm not sitting in judgement here like I'm perfect and am not guilty of "playing games" and "foolin' around". Believe you me; I've done my fair share of dirt and haven't been at my best at all times, but with age I grew out of a lot of foolishness. Plus, as a father, I want my son to see and understand his importance as a black man within our community. I have to do that by modeling positive and appropriate behaviors.

Black women have been the cornerstones of the black community since day one. I am filled with pride when I see our First Lady with all of her elegance and grace, but I know that if President Obama ever got out of pocket and started to trip on Michelle, all that Leader of the Free World stuff would be out the window and she would put him in his place! I've seen black women stick with us through thick and thin and support their men throughout the years no matter what. There is a bond there that can never be broken. Don't fool yourself. If there is one thing I know about black women-its that they love their black men. I don't mind making that pejorative statement.

But black men have arrived right? One of us is President! We're actors, high-paid athletes, doctors, lawyers, etc.! Unfortunately, that's far and few between. There are a large segment of us locked up, on the down-low, not doing anything with our lives, or too busy playing games to be taken seriously. Yet and still, they won't and haven't totally given up on us. There are still a lot of black men out there who are "good catches", unfortunately, their numbers aren't keeping up with the number of available black women. Black women are surpassing men both educationally and professionally. But I know a lot of black women who are willing to date or be with a man based off of his "potential". I've never heard a man having to use that term in regards to a woman he's with.

Let me state that the fact that black women are portrayed as being mad, angry, fighting "b's" aren't the black women that I grew up around. That's a gross generalization that society has offered up to the masses, and a few "sell-outs" have happily re-enforced the negative stereotype for some cash. The women I grew up around like my Grandmother and Mother were loving and nurturing. They seldom got mad, and when they did, they didn't curse and start throwing fists!

I feel bad for Jim Jones' girlfriend and all other black women that so badly want a man in their lives that they're willing to sacrifice their on self-respect to be with them. I feel bad about the damage that it does for future generations that don't understand the repercussions of men not doing what they need to do to make a woman feel respected, loved, needed...I feel bad for black men that have been lulled into a sense of entitlement and getting to the point where we feel that a woman needs to "prove" herself to us. Apparently bearing someone a child, sacrificing other friends,dreams and careers to be with us isn't enough to get us to want to spend our lives with you...

It's really gotten that bad.

Yay! CLEVELAND ROCKS!!!

Come and visit Cleveland!!! Right now!!! Trust me, we could use the tourism dollars!

Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video: 2nd Attempt from Albi Cakes on Vimeo.

MARSHA!!!

I'm absolutely loving me some Marsha Ambroius right now!!! She makes some great music and put on a great show live last week in Baltimore @ Ram's Head Live. Shouts out to Marsha and to Anthony David who did a great job as well! Her music will get you in some trouble LOL!Thanks for the great show!

What a woman needs, wants, desires...

Many men struggle for years to try to figure out what to give a woman, or how to really please her even. We typically think that showering them in flowers, gifts and other material things will satisfy them. Maybe even the occasional, "I love you", or holding her hand. Don't get me wrong-all of these things are indeed important, but we fail to realize that thing she needs, or perhaps requires the most is so very simple to provide...

We can't say that our conditioning as males is the reason to blame for our shortcomings in response to what she wants the most. We can't say that it's "weak" or somehow "feminine" to give her what she wants, but truly these are convenient excuses to not compromise on our masculine identities. Most of the time we allow our males friends (the ones who are more than likely single) to get to us and tease us for giving her this. Have you ever stopped to think that advice from historically single friends on relationships isn't that good of advice to listen to?

What a woman needs, wants and desires most is affection. It symbolizes security, comfort, protection and approval. These are vital and important commodities in her eyes. A simple hug can encapsulate all of these things-yet men generally don't like to hug. Hugging is a skill most men need to develop. It's a simple but effective way to re-enforce your love for her. Have you ever noticed that women love to hug? Whether it's hugging each other, children, animals or even stuffed animals, universally women hug.

From a woman's point of view, affection is essential to cement her relationship with a man. Without it, a woman will more than likely feel alienated from her mate. So men, do yourself a solid and start following up those " I love you" statements with a hug. Trust me,it'll mean more to her than anything you could ever buy or say.

The BEAST STRIKES YET AGAIN!!!

Congrats once again to my boy Marvin for winning the bench and deadlift competitons this past weekend back home in Cleveland!!! Another state record set in benching 545 lbs.raw!!! Do your thing homie!!!

For Queah

Yesterday, the world lost a great person, but heaven gained a new angel. She taught me a lot about life.Queah was a great person and will be missed dearly. I can only hope that African-Americans can begin to take their health more seriously. Please don't hesitate to see a doctor if you are having health issues. Please encourage your parents beginning at age 50 to begin screening for colon cancer.

From a February 2011 Medical Study:

•Colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates are highest in African American men and women. Incidence rates are 20% higher and mortality rates are about 45% higher than those in whites.

 

February 2007 - Don't Take Life Too Seriously

Queah Habern Houston, TX

Diagnosed at 27 Survivor since 2005

Queah & Terry: 

Queah Habern and Terry Miller may not look like they have much in common, but colorectal cancer doesn’t discriminate by age, skin color or gender.

Although African-Americans have a higher incidence of colorectal cancer, Queah never knew that she would need to be concerned about it. After months of misdiagnosis, she ended up in surgery for appendicitis but was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer just two days later. Upon finishing chemotherapy, she started sharing her story to prove that you don’t have to be a 50-year-old white guy to get colorectal cancer.

 

Queah and Terry are both passionate about how they live their lives, but try not to take themselves too seriously. They both want people to know that early detection and a sense of humor are important tools in beating cancer.

 

Queah's Story as told by Queah

My story begins with a misdiagnosis. I think that’s huge because most of us were misdiagnosed. I was working at Nordstrom and I had just moved to Houston. I had only been here about a year or a year and half, maybe less, and my benefits had started kicking in so I finally found a doctor.

I went to the doctor because I had bloating and couldn’t get rid of it. I even tried colon cleansing teas. I went to the doctor and she gave me a physical exam and I told her my symptoms. I was eating like a little bird and I couldn’t understand why I was feeling so full. She said you might be experiencing stomach irritation, and she mentioned IBS. She checked my rectum for blood and asked if I had seen any dark stools or blood and I said no. She decided to give me medication, so I picked up the prescription but it didn’t work – and I didn’t want to believe it was anything worse. I had gone seven months and it had gotten so bad, for maybe two months I was always getting sick. I had started working at a new job and for two months I was going back and forth to my general practitioner trying to figure out what was wrong. She was giving me scripts for this that and the other, but nothing worked.

Finally I was doubled over in pain and I had to call in sick to work. I thought it would be okay if I just lay down for a while, but I drove myself to the emergency room because I could barely walk. I told them I needed to be admitted because the pain was so bad, and the nurse could tell so she rushed me on to a stretcher. The doctor hadn’t seen me yet but the pain was so bad that the nurse gave me morphine. I was so freaked out because I realized it was bad because of the drugs they were giving me. My boyfriend showed up and I saw the doctor about an hour later, but I waited seven hours while they were prepping me for surgery. Initially they told me they didn’t know what was wrong, but they would go in laparoscopically and clean out whatever was making me sick.

My mom rushed in and when I woke up in the hospital, the surgeon who saw me told me that when he went in he saw that my appendix was about to rupture. There was a six-inch tumor on the side of my appendix that caused it to almost rupture. He took out my appendix, the tumor and some of my colon. He said, “Don’t worry, you haven’t been diagnosed with cancer or anything like that, but this is what we do to cancer patients to make sure we get everything out that we can get out.”

I found out I had cancer two days after I had surgery, and I just remember thinking this can’t be happening, it was surreal – you mean this is happening to me? Can this be happening? He took out a good part of colon, I think six inches, and when they did a biopsy on the large tumor, that one was not cancerous. But when they went in to biopsy the colon they found a tiny two centimeter tumor that was cancer. It was stage III and had gone through several layers of the colon wall, which was scary because he told me that if he hadn’t taken out that part of colon on a whim I could still be walking around with cancer.

When I found out what kind of cancer it was, everyone was asking me my family history, but nobody has ever had colon cancer in my family. I felt like it was a fluke that I ended up with it because I couldn’t trace it back anywhere. I believe in eating what you want in moderation so I would have a pork chop here and ice cream there, but I ate really healthy. I just couldn’t figure out why it was happening to me, and after a while I did some research and found out that it didn’t really happen to people like me - that it was typically an old man’s disease - an old white man’s disease.

After I found out I had cancer, my thinking was that I just wanted to do whatever I needed to do to get rid of it. Whatever the doctors wanted me to do, I would do it. When they told me chemo would be mandatory because of the stage, I was all for it. I didn’t really know what chemo was all about because I never knew anyone who was doing it. My grandmother had breast cancer but she went through radiation. Chemo was out there and I heard stories about it, but I didn’t really know what to expect. At that point I just wanted to survive, I just wanted to live and that was the most important thing to me. Every day was just getting me closer to the day I would start my chemo. I started on the first Tuesday in March and I just remember thinking that when I walked into the cancer clinic that I didn’t want to be there. It was really scary. Earlier in the beginning of the month I met with the on-site RN, who is the main nurse who gives all the chemo education. I remember sitting across from her hearing about the chemo I was going to get and the side effects. The drug I was going to be on was so new that some of the side effects they didn’t know about yet.

I was in shock. I didn’t know how to digest all of the information. It took me a few days because I wasn’t prepared to hear what she was telling me. I was blindsided and it was worse than I ever thought, when I went in for my first round I was scared to death. The first two weeks of chemo I was okay, I thought that if I had to go ten more rounds like that, I would be okay. But I wasn’t okay because every round of chemo made me sicker and more depressed.

I had been going to cancer counseling and around the time of my second round of chemo I got married. When I started going to my cancer counseling, the counselor told me a story about another woman she was counseling who was in a marriage and as soon as she was diagnosed her husband left her. I was thinking that I was so lucky, here I was going through chemo and my boyfriend wanted to marry me. I thought I was so lucky.

While we were dating the relationship was really good, but a month after we got married he turned into a person I didn’t recognize. He was abusive and it was very stressful. He wasn’t actually abusive while we were dating, but after we got married he was making demands, he was very selfish. I’m divorced now; my divorce was final in April of 2006. It was a bad situation, but at the time I had to deal with him and go through ten more rounds of chemo.

I kept a diary throughout the majority of my chemo, while I was going to counseling and while my husband and I were arguing. He and I started going to counseling together, and that helped a little bit because I was able to express what I was feeling. The counseling that my husband and I went to was a good thing, and I think that not enough people believe in counseling. They think that something has to be really wrong or you shouldn’t go, but it’s a really healthy thing to do. It helped me put some things back together, and it helped me realize I’m not by myself. There are other people who have the same experiences, emotions and fears. It was tough but I survived it all, I look back and I don’t know how – I was just so focused. I wanted to live so that I could leave him, I wanted to live so that I could have a family and go back to this great job. I just wanted to live to have a future and be happy and have all those dreams I had when I was a kid. I wanted to experience all of that.

I felt like if I gave up I would never get to that point. I didn’t think I ended up with cancer so that I could die at that point in my life. There’s so much more that I needed to do, that I had to do, and cancer was one of those things. But it’s hard when you are on so many medications with so many side effects. I felt like whatever they gave me, I would have all of the side effects.

I was okay until round nine of chemo. Once I hit my ninth round I wanted to give up; I wanted to stop it because I was so sick. I couldn’t move.  I would get up and throw up, go back to bed, go to the kitchen and get a little bit to eat and then throw it up. If I could get up and lie down on the couch I would fall asleep 30 minutes later. I don’t know if the doctors thought I was making it up or not, but the doctors were telling me that they didn’t understand why I was so sick. That made me so depressed. My neuropathy got so bad that my hands hurt and were numb and ached at the same time. I couldn’t wear gloves and I couldn’t grip anything – the numbness would work its way up from my feet to my knees, and I was miserable. I just kept thinking there’s got to be something wrong with me because other people can do this. On top of that I was having allergic reactions to the nausea medicine they put me on. The type of reaction I was having was not just that it didn’t work; I was having violent muscle spasms and I had to go to the emergency room. While I was in the hospital the nurse gave me an extra dose of Ativan and told me to relax when in fact I was really having an allergic reaction, but we didn’t know it.

The worst was when I was home and I couldn’t control my neck, head, or arms – imagine having body parts you can’t control! My husband tried to massage me and he gave me doses of Ativan. I wanted to go to the hospital, but he said, “No, just take a hot bath.” I said, “If you don’t take me to the hospital I’ll take myself,” so he finally got up and took me to the hospital. When I went in to the emergency room nurse, a nurse at the counter was trying to get me to fill out the paperwork, but a nurse in the back heard me and saw the reaction I was having. She said, “You might be having an allergic reaction. What medication are you on? What are you taking?” I listed the drugs I was taking and somehow remembered the nausea medication, and she said that she thought that was it. She immediately took me to the back and gave me two high doses of Benadryl and within 10 minutes the symptoms had stopped. She said that the only reason she knew to do it is because she had the same reaction herself. I got lucky because this nurse had the same reaction. That’s just an example of the little things and the issues that I was dealing with. It seemed like everything that was happening – oh this only happens to a small percentage of women, but it happened to me. It sucked but I did get through it.

The beginning of my last round of chemo was August 15, 2005. I had a PET scan shortly after that and it was clean, and I had another one in May and it was still clean – so I’m officially in remission!

I’m still at the doctor every single week, seriously, but I don’t mind. I go every Friday to the cancer clinic and they do blood work to make sure that the counts are good and everything. The cancer center has this distinctive smell, and I associate it with cancer; I still get a weak stomach when I go in for the blood work. On Fridays my oncologist is there and even though I don’t have an appointment I get to see him and consult with him if I’ve been having an issue over the week.

I’m glad to be able to do that, especially at my age – I’m so young I want the opportunity to stop anything before it starts, before the cells start dividing. So I have a follow-up every week, I see my oncologist, and I get some of the injections I had while I had chemo. My blood counts are still really low and I still have to take the nausea medicine. It’s the weirdest thing, the doctor says the chemo is over so you shouldn’t be so nauseous, but he still has to give me refills.

There are a lot of good things that came out of my whole cancer experience, but one good thing is that you can write off your medication on your taxes! That’s like $1000!

 

WINNING!!! or losing...

Let me be honest. I have sat first-row and watched and cheered on this "train wreck" we call Charlie Sheen. The gesticulations, the new lexicon he has branded-"Winning" , "tiger blood" and all. But what does this say about society? That we love to watch and laugh and prod this man on as his life seemingly spins out of control. Yeah, we can say that he has a lot of money and can get help-so who cares? We should. Money shouldn't be a reason to believe that someone isn't susceptible to the same pitfalls of average, hard-working everyday people. Actually, having money may make someone more at risk or in danger to get caught up in the use of drugs or what have you. It is often  pontificated that the highest rate of suicide is among middle-aged white males who make close to or over six figures a year. Needless to say, Charlie's "brand" has taken a hit. He is well on his way to becoming a leper in Hollywood and has lost his job on his hit show. There is no doubt that if he gets the help he most certainly needs, he'll be able to rebound and do well again. The question is, will we be there for him cheering him on when he's not ready to crash and burn?, or will our morbid fascinations with self-destruction win out and push Charlie to his untimely death? "Tiger blood" or not, nobody will be "winning" then.Not Charlie, or us. You can never win the war on drugs, but you definitely can lose.