FORMER RADIO HOST SIPORIN LIVES WITH DAILY PAIN.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

EDITOR'S NOTE: "Where Are They Now?" is a Monday column that updates readers on local newsmakers from the past.

Have ideas? E-mail Bob Welch at [e-mail].

THEN: Because of acute facial pain, iconoclastic KLCC talk-show host Alan Siporin signed off the air four years ago this month.

NOW: Siporin, 58, says he's "pretty happy and relaxed" despite pain so intense that, for now, he can't write and can barely read. "It's pretty frustrating," he says. `People say: `Why don't you dictate?' But a lot of talking aggravates the pain. When I write I need to read it and play with it. But I can't read much. I fall asleep.

`There's nothing to make you value something than to have that something taken away.'

Siporin, whose 2002 book, "Fire's Edge,' was called a "powerful, sensitive first novel" by Publisher's Weekly, was a hundred pages into a "memoir novel" when he had to stop.

He has sought all kinds of treatment, even visited a "healer" in Sing<302>apore. Nothing has helped the condition that doctors, he says, can't identify. He takes an array of drugs, some morphine-based, after refusing to do so when the condition first hit.

"I promised my loved ones I'd take the drugs before giving up on life, and I'm glad I have a lot of people I love."

Among them: two grandsons in Bend, ages 11 and 4. Siporin built a tree fort for them. `I was going to put if off, but when my older grandson turned 8 I said, `He's gonna be 20 and I'm still going to be thinking about building the tree house.' It lit a fire under me.'

He remains passionate about politics but says he can't stay atop local, state, national and international issues like he used to.

He loves spending time with the family, running into friends at the grocery store, speaking to kids, he says, who give him hope for the future. "But anything involving social energy increases the pain. It can take days to recover. People ask if it's like a headache. No, it's like a charley horse, a spasm, in your face."

Siporin filled in for talk-show hosts on KOPT until the radio station changed its format. He gardens regularly. And walks, mainly in Hendricks Park, near his home.

"Helps the spirit," he said.