Mellotronists

We've been very quiet for the last six months with the new album
Codetalkers sitting in limbo. There's many a slip betwixt cup and lip,
as the old saying goes, but we're almost there, despite one personal
issue after another. We'd like to let people know that it will be
coming soon and offer a pre-release ordering option for those
interested. If you're willing to advance order it we'll offer a small
CD-R goodies bonus for doing so, since you'll be helping us pay for
pressing it and getting the promo copies out the door. Email me
off-list at sdavmor@... or read the follow-up post to
this group for details. Greg also has his third solo CD lined up for
release early next year, for those that enjoyed his first two solo albums.

However, hawking new music is secondary to why I'm posting today. What
I really want to do is tell fans of Systems Theory about Greg Amov's
health. Five weeks ago he took a few days off from work, feeling quite
under the weather. As soon as he went back to work he had a dizzy
spell coupled with upper chest pain, and drove himself over to a local
Urgent Care facility. While there he passed out and began vomiting
blood. Extremely alarmed the urgent care Paramediced him over to the
closest hospital emergency room. I was out of town at that time and
didn't get to see him until he'd been in hospital for 24 hours. He
looked awful, and I wondered if he was about to die.

The upshot of it all is that Greg had an obstruction in the esophagus,
that had been developing for some time. It's roots may well go back 30
years to his teenage acid reflux problem. When they went in with a
camera to look at it the obstruction was IDd as cancer of the
esophagus. This is the same cancer that killed ex-Texas governor Ann
Richards last week six months after she was diagnosed. So the hospital
he was at immediately stopped what they were doing and made
arrangements to move him to USC, where they have a team that
specializes in treating this very sickness with a combination of
surgery and (if needed) chemotherapy.

Greg's not feeling well dizziness led directly to very early
detection. [Huge sigh of relief]. A lucky boy indeed. He had surgery
at the USC teaching hospital to remove the tumor and rebuild the lower
esophagus last week. Ironically his surgery was the same day that Ann
Richards died. He was on the table for over 10 hours, spent the next
couple of days pain-medicated to his eyeballs, and several more days
in intensive care hooked up to a battery of monitors and tubes.

After what has been the most miserable week of his life, Greg is now
out of the ICU, and slowly beginning to mend. He will be in hospital
at least through the end of this week, possibly through the end of
next week, and will then be under nursing care at home for a few
weeks. His biopsy results show minimal pre-cancerous indicators in the
lymph nodes. Hopefully this means that he won't have to undergo
chemotherapy. We'll know more on that score in a week or so.
While this entire episode has been distressing the positive is that
Greg's cancer was detected very early on. The plus is that he lives 20
minutes away from one of the handful of hospitals in the US that
performs this kind of surgery (removal and rebuild of the esophagus
using upper stomach lining). Another three months and he might not
have been so lucky. Longer that that and he'd have been another
statistic. Had he lived elsewhere chemotherapy might have been his
only option.
-- 
Cheers,
SDM -- a 21st century schizoid man
Systems Theory internet music project links:
soundclick <www.soundclick.com/systemstheory>
garageband <http://www.garageband.com/artist/systemstheory>
"Soundtracks For Imaginary Movies" CD released Dec 2004
"Codetalkers" CD coming very soon in 2006
NP: a new demo by Mike Dickson