Turn to stone

In the early days of my cancer misadventure, my nurse in the recovery room at Kaiser tried to convince the rest of the hospital staff that her newest patient was not your humble blogger but madly rich Ben Stiller.

Almost six months later, I'm looping back to Ben.

My newly frozen jaw make me feel like I've been cast in a movie that turns Stiller's "Night at the Museum" movie franchise on its head. But instead of being a statue taking on human qualities, I feel like a human who is slowly turning into a statue.

My fingers are crossed that this symptom is just a sneak preview of rigor mortis, and that it will go away.

I can still move my neck fairly well. So what's the big deal if I'm losing the ability to move my mouth and jaw, since I can't chew or speak anyhow?

But if this symptom worsens, I may be headed straight to Pershing Square, where I could park myself beside the statue of Ludwig van Beethoven.

I bet Times columnist Steve Lopez still hangs out down in Pershing Square, hoping to stumble on story ideas, just as he discovered Nathaniel Anthony Ayers playing Beethoven ditties on a broken violin a few years back and turned the encounter into a series of columns, a book and a feature film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx.

I'm not as interesting as a homeless cellist but I bet Lopez could find enough human interest in a formerly human statue to eke out a 700-word column or two. But if I continue down the path toward a deep freeze, I'll be pretty hard for the Times reporter to interview.

So I'm counting on next week's PET scan to capture some insight into what's causing this immobility and how to treat it.

Between now and next week's heavy PETing, I'm just going to have to perfect my poker face.