I have discovered a new and undocumented side effect of chemotherapy. It is called the 'stealth headache'. It is characterized by a subtle feeling of angst with a general sense of not liking anything or anyone without being able to narrow it down to one twit or another. That lack of focus leaves the victim sort of pissed off at anyone they encounter, with no real chance of attaining the satisfaction of settling what is annoying them with or about that person or any other offender in the general vicinity. Instead, after every interaction with human or machine the feeling of peace and quiet is noticeably diminished with no particular issue identified as the culprit.

The sense of general disapproval of the world detected only in slight bits and pieces with each encounter is made all the worse by reading the media. What used to be a surge of disapproval with the news will be more of a sense of ill defined disgust with the entire media and all participants in it, the telling feature is that you actually wish some deranged fool would deal with the media harshly on your mental orders. Since this is an unreasonable expectation it should be taken as an indication that you are out of sorts in the way herein described.

Once the stealth headache is suspected, I recommend a good long nap surrounded by any and/or all small animals of your household. The ceremony should be held quietly in a darkened comfy bedroom. A few hours should be dedicated to this ceremony. I prefer to follow it up with a heavy dose of pain relievers that are generally prescription strength. Being a cancer patient I have those easily available. (Being on chemo this week six shots of Wild Turkey is not an option.) I have followed this procedure carefully and I am feeling better by the second. I am achieving mental clarity as I type this.

I include this in my blog about cancer because I recognize that these days the possibility of the general public having this syndrome is quite high. The proposed remedy is useful in most cases, and should be followed even if there is a reasonable suspicion that the condition might not be a stealth headache. It is always a good idea to bond by napping and snuggling with your pets. A clear case of win/win for everybody.

Other than that I am in a sort of procedural flatland where I go through one infusion treatment after another and plod on to the magic day when they will test me again for the presence of an alien growth. No news, just plain old same old, day in and day out. Sort of the medical equivalent of being on Highway 50 through Nevada with nothing but the scenery to entertain you. I am tired of being tired but glad to be alive, living severely below optimum performance but thankfully above the minimum performance levels for existence.

The road goes on forever and the chemo never ends. (My apologies to Robert Earle Keene)

In the movies when the hero is hanging on to some high precarious perch somebody always tells him "don't look down". Well that advice goes for real life too.

Yesterday I was doing some research to clear up a disagreement between me and Janice. The essence of the question was the difference between a field trial and a clinical trial. In the course of doing that research on line I stumbled into the midst of all the research being done on pancreatic cancer. Then it got more particular, the research being done on the regimen I am under which is using Gemxar, Taxatere and Xolodan, or GTX. These are new clinical and field trials, I would guess it came about in the last couple of years. At any rate it is purportedly much more successful than any previous treatment for pancreatic cancer. The baseline subject for the trials was a pancreatic patient with metastasized cancer, usually to the liver. The results are scant, the trials are on small groups of 4 to 6 patients. There were some patients who died during the first set of three cycles or they could not handle the side effects of chemo, which are pretty considerable. There were some that lived through the first cycle and most of them saw the cancer on the liver go away. But still, with a 40% improvement in results, there is no guarantee of living through it all and seeing a full recovery. The only guarantee was that more people were living longer, but there was not a great big dent in the mortality numbers, lots of pancreatic patients are still dying, and dying fairly quickly under the GTX regimen.

Well, after a few hours of research and seeing all sorts of numbers go by I was in a pancreatic cancer fact overload. I was staring at my life in those numbers and they were not good. I was looking down at the potential fall if I let go. I was freaked out. I sat out on the deck and sipped wine and contemplated it all. My first realization was that I had handled chemo well enough that the oncologist thought I was healthy enough to undergo a second set of chemo. (The field and clinical trials only had one set of chemo to base their numbers on.) That I was healthy enough to undergo the second set of chemo was a real encouragement. Then I realized that I was performing as well or better than most people under the trails because I had actually put on weight and had minimal side effects from chemo, in addition to losing the mass on my liver. I found enough encouragement in all that to settle down and accept that while situation was not cause for wild eyed optimism, it wasn't cause for doom and gloom either. Actually, I have reason to look forward to the next CT scan because I may actually see the cancer mass reduced in size and that would mean an important milestone had been reached. If the mass in my pancreas is reduced in size that means that there is hope for a full recovery because the GTX is affecting the growth of the cancer.

But I still had several hours of sheer terror while I analyzed the mortality figures. It was a little like reading the coroner's report on my own death for a while. Then I got a perspective and I calmed down. Today I can talk rationally about it all. I even feel optimistic. Tough road to getting there though. Just one of many nights I am going to have where I get a little freaked and not too sure about this whole scene. Sure cleans out the emotional closets for a guy though. I feel like I went to a spa for a few days of psycho therapy. Good day today. I can even accept 102 degrees with 50% humidity because that is how life is in Texas in the summer. And life is where it is these days. I am starting to see the whole 'every day is magic' viewpoint.

This will be a real short post. You'll see why in a minute.

Yesterday I went to the doctor, my primary care physician, because of a mild sore throat. My wife has one too. So two sickies go in and we both get the same meds. The prescriptions are for a Z-pac antibiotic or something like that, and some other medicine that is to be taken every 12 hours. Fine print department, the second med says "may cause drowsiness". That may have been a bit of an understatement. I have slept most of the day, so has Janice. I was already sleepy just now when I took a pill that will cause drowsiness along with my chill pill, which also causes drowsiness.

Great, my week off from chemo is going to be spent sleeping. Somehow, it could be worse, I just don't want to explore that option. At least the dreams are so passive and relaxing. No wild nightmares or anything like that. Just relaxing sleep.

Tomorrow is another day - to sleep through.

I have not posted for several days for a few reasons. It all goes back to chemo on Thursday. There was a guy there who came in for chemo. When he got up from the recliner after chemo he was sick and very out of it. Janice said that is the way she expected me to get up every time I went in. Obviously that is not what happens to me, not once even. I get up, walk out, drive home and go to bed for a nap because all the prep, mostly the Benadryl, makes me sleepy. I sleep and wake up Friday and try to get some things done. No problems whatsoever except for the yellow-green skin thing I bitch about. My appetite is great, I have fairly normal bodily functions and enough energy to do things around the house.

Then there is this time. It went sideways when I told the oncologist that I was taking Unisom for sleeping, a little tiny bit of it. He got kind of twisted and recommended that I take Ambien. They also tested my blood, like they always do prior to chemo. My red and white blood cell counts came back off the bottom end of the charts. Everything else looked okay. But the nurse said I should avoid fresh salads and vegetables, eat steamed or well cooked foods and so on to avoid food borne infections because my resistance was low.

Now, back to the Ambien. I have a loose association problem with Ambien. Carlos Mencia did a skit on it, he stretched the side effects to include sleep bull riding and a few other comic events. It affected my opinion of Ambien very badly. Well, I filled the prescription. The crap comes with a full page of side effect warnings to read. I took the pill and waited and nothing happened. After an hour, I went to bed. Bad night, not sleeping, crappy dreams, felt like crap Friday morning. Along with a weird sort of feeling that wasn't normal. And tired because I hadn't slept well. So Friday night, ever hopeful, I followed the instructions exactly. I took the pill, went to bed and tried to sleep. I had nightmares so ghastly I will not recall any of them here. Luckily I was able to stay 'outside' of the bad dreams and not get swept into the madness. I watched them for about two hours and they just got worse. Finally I got up, wide awake, and spent some time surfing the web before I tried to sleep again. Same thing happened, bad nightmares and no productive sleep. By Saturday morning I was tired, spacey, slightly dingy, and thoroughly finished with Ambien. I would describe how I felt as on the verge of hallucinations. All day long I felt very off, barely able to deal with life. Ambien was a total disaster for me, I only want to know how to dispose of the rest of the prescription so nobody else will have the nights like I had. I went back to Unisom, good night sleep Saturday night on about a sixth of a tablet.

Saturday though Janice was all on edge, tears every few minutes, withdrawn, just a mess. I tried to talk to her. It didn't go well. No matter what I said I could not comfort her. I told her to back down from trying to control my every move, she couldn't live my life for me, that taking care of a cancer patient is not something that a loved one or close relative should do and so on. No effect. About an hour later she tells me she is reading this story in some magazine about some woman who has pancreatic cancer and the trials this woman had/has are nightmares compared to my episode. I won't go into particulars, but I have the easiest pancreatic cancer in the world to deal with compared to this woman. So, my wife is all seriously depressed over some story some woman wrote about her struggle with pancreatic cancer and it is making my day and my life a miserable hell and making my wife's day even worse. I hope the stupid ass who decided this was a story people need to read gets her just desserts in hell. Some stories just don't need to be told. Especially one that sends my wife and caretaker into the pits of depression like that. And of course I need to caution my wife that reading other stories and transposing that setting to me is a major Bozo No-No, and don't do that again.

Besides the Ambien episode and the crazy ass scary story about some woman who had hell with pancreatic cancer, Janice has now gone way off the deep end about the possibility of all sorts of sources of infection that might plague me because of the low red and white cell counts. She is way off the scale, nuts is not even close to describing it. I can't eat this, she is researching the threats from that set of sources, she panics every time I open my mouth because a fly might go down my throat and kill me with hoof and mouth disease. She is hovering over me like I am a seven month old baby with thirteen diseases that were wiped out in the 19th century like typhus and typhoid and green eyed chancre cholera and monkey borne spastic left eye twitch and in general making me feel entirely uncomfortable. The worst part is she is trying to force me to use that silly hand sanitizer crap she carries with her to wash my hands every time I touch food. I wanted to get good and sick and throw up a stream of mutant green slime across the room so she would get some sort of validation for all her efforts at worrying. Instead I went in and took a nap. All healthy when I went to sleep and got up healthy and the worst I ever got was a dry throat from sleeping too little because of the Ambien. I should send the rest of that Ambien prescription to the doofus bitch that printed that story and pay her back for the suffering she caused in my house.

But all in all, I have it pretty easy as a pancreatic cancer patient. I have never had vomiting, or even gotten really sick. They caught the cancer in time and except for the time when they had to hustle to put the stent in, I am fairly well off and even well comparatively. I have put on weight, I have even started growing my hair back while I am still in chemo. I am in general such a healthy case of pancreatic cancer that my primary care physician practically brags about me. I have it so good and so easy, most of my problems are external to my illness, they are peripheral to the medical issues I really have. And that concerns me because when I started this blog and I got all self involved about how tough it was and how sick I was. I'm really not that sick nor am I close to dying anymore. Mostly my big complaints are about how much of my energy is being sapped by the treatment and the disease. I hate losing so much of my life. But in a while it will be over and I will slowly get back to my normal way of life, that is all I have to complain about. So I will change the tone in my blog to reflect how well I really have been, and that I am on the recovery side of it all. There will still be pissy days when I really feel down because of either the chemo or just plain being worn out, but by and large when you read about my whining, know that it is temporary and I will feel stupid for having written very shortly after I post it. But I'll leave it up because it was true when I wrote it. I will have to contravene it later. That is how this is supposed to work.

So, I had a crappy few days because of some prescription medicines, a stupid pity party story about cancer that my wife read in a magazine and the slight possibility of food borne infections. Besides that I had four beers and a great steak that my neighbor cooked for me yesterday. I am eating way too much (because I can because I have an appetite) and I am too lazy and a bit too self involved. Tomorrow I intend to eat less, pay more attention to the people around me and thank my lucky stars that I have such an easy time of pancreatic cancer.

Unusual day time post, second in the day. Had a follow up with my oncologist. I talked of the sleep and how tired I was. Turns out my red and white blood cell counts have plunged into near dangerous territory. There may be positive ramifications of this. One is that the chemo has finally achieved the levels necessary to do some serious damage to the cancer. The other is that I am now more prone than ever to a serious infection from virtually any source. So much so that I can no longer eat fresh vegetables and salads.

The other aspect is that my whiney post earlier this morning may well be blamed on the blood situation. I generally feel like a wet towel left on the floor. I have slept most of the day and will go to bed in a few minutes. Sleep is the golden remedy right now. Somehow you cannot get a full head of steam going if your blood count is so low that normal activity is out of the question.

I have a watermelon in the refrigerator that should be ripe and very cold. I will slice into that before I got bed. I love watermelon and it is calling me.

I am getting to genuinely hate all the extra stuff I have to do and all the 'loss of my life as I knew it' stuff caused by cancer. My activity level is so low that I feel like I am hospitalized. Yesterday I had to sleep until 2:30 pm just to have the feeling of a full night's sleep. My mental capacity is so low, no energy to think, not much thinking goes on. I have tons of ideas during the day, all of which trail off into nothingness before long because I just don't have the energy to pursue and expand them. I have to write it all down and then go back and expand each idea as my mind recalls some detail about the project. Same with all my projects that I used to accomplish in what used to be a day to get an idea and then implement it, these days it could take weeks, if at all.

The flip side of that is that it could all be worse, much worse. My sister in law and a friend both died of cancer in the last few weeks. I came close to dying already once, it could happen again. I have a very good idea of how vulnerable I am. I am walking a fine line between having a life and losing it all. Each time I take chemo I meddle with the chances of dying even more. More chemo, the higher the level of those toxic drugs in my system. The higher that level gets, the more likely I am to develop problems like gastro-esophageal problems. Blood problems possibilities are very prominent right now too, I have low red and white blood counts because of the chemo. My muscles are not rebuilding either so I am wasting away physically too. My energy levels are lower than I can ever remember them being, based on what I can actually do each day. And of course that goes for my mental concentration as well.

Today I go in for more chemo. More watching my hands turn that awful color of brown as if I had dipped my hands in artificial suntan ointment. My hands are strangely wrinkled as if they were exposed to some chemical that leaves them forever shriveled. My hair grows so slowly, and my facial hair nearly not at all. My skin color is awful, and it just gets worse with each session. I have a chemo session today and four more sessions after that before I am re-evaluated. And even then I could get nominated for more chemo, just a different schedule. Yes, it could go on for years. During that time I will be reduced ever more to the baseline, trying to infinitely define the point at which the cancer dies and I don't. This defines true ambivalence. Yes I want to live, but what requisites do I demand in order to do so?

I realize that I should be thinking about getting a job to help with the bills. But with chemo and my energy and concentration levels at near infant/child levels, there is no hope. Not to mention the issue of who would want to hire a cancer survivor? The stigma is immense. People have preconceived notions of such things that transcend their every moral value, not to mention what will happen when the medical forms are filled out. HR talks a lot about confidentiality, but face it, they are the gossips of the hiring process and I have no faith in their adherence to the rules. Even worse, having not worked in so long, I effectively have no employment history, no applicable skills and nothing to offer to a prospective employee. You see, I didn't do what they want to hire me to do within the last few hours so effectively I never did it at all.

I could turn that around and embark on a self employment gig. Anyone who has tried that will see the folly in that. It is not easy to build a personal business that makes money. Yet that is one thing that could give me the potential for getting my life back on track. I will have to search high and low to find just a few options left to exercise, and with my state of affairs, it will be as much luck to see it through as it is hard work to complete it. Bitch and moan as much as I might, the truth is that is exactly what I am going to have to do. I have the rest of my life and apparently a clean slate on which to build it. This should be quite the challenge.

Living through cancer is just part of the challenge. Living through the rest of my life is more of a challenge.

Yesterday a friend of Janice's came by to visit. She brought along a guy she was dating. We talked about many things, including of course my cancer. I gave some details to describe my journey from what was near death to believing I was dying to believing in my recovery. Hard to believe it was all within a couple of months that this happened. But something else struck me. These two people said they were praying for me. So many people have said that, I cannot believe that so many people would include me in their conversations with God. I believe that their prayers have something to do with my progress and possible recovery.

I believe there are many factors in regaining my health. Part of it is medicine, the supplications of the products of the earth to heal the physical body at its most primitive level. Then there is the collective conscious of the people around us who beseech what powers they might find powerful to ask for my well being. And then there is the part inside of each of us that decides in one form or another to live up to the struggle at hand. Each of these must be in some agreement for the whole body to recover. These things all seem to be in agreement for me to have lived this long. The medicine was available but the prayers had to come from the hearts of each of you. I thank all of you out there that have included me in your prayers. I am humbled by your prayers for me. I hope that my living will yield benefit to humanity to justify all your concern for me. Only time will tell.

I have a lot to learn about all this care and compassion stuff. It is fairly new to me at this level. Please forgive me if i don't pick up on it right away, it is a fairly deep and complex philosophical concept not grasped at the very first attempt. I have a lot to learn here. First on the list is to make sure I let people know how much I care that they are around me and demonstrate that concern with regular visits and conversations with them. Something I have never been very good at. I never knew people long enough to get to this stage before.

New life, new challenges.

Today was hot like Texas gets, 95 or so. I chose today to clean out the gutters of the house, it was number one on my list just by chance. I got out the ten foot ladder and went at it. One gutter was very clogged with Crepe Myrtle leaves and debris. There was even a fire ant mound and earth worms in it. How in hell do earth worms get ten feet up off the ground into gutters? It still has me wondering. At any rate five of seven down spouts were clogged but all is well now. Had to quit because of heat and because chemo was Thursday. My energy gets low after chemo. Just the first task on my long list of maintenance issues around the house.

I have been researching the CNC router project. I have read over and studied several plans. I am getting close to determining the optimum design. One fun consideration is that I can build a small one, then use it to build a bigger one. The one I need for the miniatures will cost much less because the stepper motors will be way less expensive. I am very excited about it. I love tools and making them is just so much more fun. By the way, check out http://www.instructables.com/ More projects on more subjects than you can imagine. I wouldn't normally plug a website but this one deserves it.

I am still considering the good news of last Thursday. Knowing that I likely will not die from pancreatic is a major relief, of course. But behind that good news is the realization that I have to change my life so that the bitterness and bad attitude that got me into cancer mode will be challenged and changed. I have embarked on the miniature building episode for one level of 'distraction' but I have to do more. I am looking for a job that will get me out of the house, if that can ever come to fruition. Perhaps demonstrating my abilities will help so I am considering building a website where I practice my web techniques by promoting fictional products such as electric rocks, bottling cow farts to limit green house gasses and a few others. It will of course all be done as if the products are genuine. I am curious just what reactions I might get from some of my ideas. People can have some unusual reactions to subtle humor, not that my humor has ever been subtle.

The other thing is that I have decided to try writing essays on various observations on life. That will be an entirely separate website, to be announced soon. I am greatly encouraged by the reception to this blog so I will move up to write on more wide ranging subject matter. I will try to avoid politics as my views are fairly conservative and without much room for compromise. I will instead try to do some essays and develop short stories so that I can develop my writing styles. I will decorate the story lines with my photography so I can maybe explore some more creativity venues. It would seem that my life has been vexed by the duality of being very technical and being very creative, two mostly mutually exclusive mental endeavors. The technical enterprise paid for the earlier part of my life, the creative side of my personality will maybe fill the part of my life that has been granted to me in this great adventure. I have written about what happened to me in my cancer period so far, now I will write about how I can describe life or particular events in my new found reality. Life gets a lot more intense and colorful when you get surprised by fate slapping you upside the head.

Today was results day. I will present them and then do the commentary. The mass on my pancreas has not grown. The mass on my liver is shrinking. My health overall is good. My bodily functions are returning to normal. I will continue chemotherapy for one more set of three cycles, as before. I will then change to a regimen to be determined by the results of the next CT scan. Briefly, I ain't gonna die any time soon.

I was disappointed, I wanted a full and final victory over pancreatic cancer. I wanted the mass in my pancreas to be eradicated without so much as a trace. No such luck. My wife is overjoyed that the mass has not grown. My oncologist is happy that I am doing as well as I am. They both tell me that this much success, this much of a victory is rare in pancreatic cancer. By the stats I should be dead. But I am not dead nor do I intend to be dead any time soon.

Damnable part of it all is that since I underwent chemo today there will be no celebration in the traditional way, in fact my wife is out with a friend leaving me home to post alone. That leaves me to ask my readers to do something for me.

I am alive, I am healthy, and I am not going to die any time soon. Please readers, lift a glass and toast for me. I'll join you when I am off of chemo and have achieved a full and complete victory. It is coming and I am just the man to do it.

The CT scan tomorrow is to see whether the chemo has been effective in reducing the size of the cancer. The chemo could have been ineffective, but that is unlikely as my overall health has improved and my weight is steady. My blood sugars are doing pretty good as well. The tests could find that the cancer has not shrunk just stabilized, in which case I will continue on chemo. The tests could also find that the cancer had shrunk or is all but gone. An outcome I would accept but do not realistically expect. The worst result is that the cancer has spread and that things are going to go really bad from here. I don't really expect that result either. I expect a mixed bag of results, and that chemo will continue. So I test tomorrow and wait until Thursday morning to hear about it. I'm having a bit of a problem with the suspense.

Seems my normally garulous self has succumbed to the tension of the time. Took a chill pill and some pain killers for the headache that comes with the stress.

When the results are in they will hit this website as soon as I can post.

We sat and talked today for about 14 hours. My friend and my wife and I sat on the deck and talked from 10:30 this morning to just a while ago, it is now nearly 1 AM. I never thought that was possible. Three people talking that long about abstract thoughts and memories and possibilities and options. We feasted on snacks and then some spit roasted chicken and then more food and talked some more. We drank beer and wine and I slipped a sip of scotch in.

Tomorrow my friend will leave for the coast. I will be very sorry to see him leave but I feel very good that he came to see me. I have learned much about life this weekend. It will take me days to explain it because it will take at least that long to understand what happened.

I went to my sister in law's memorial service yesterday. What struck me first was how much of my life she shared, how much I did not notice or appreciate. The first realization was when a picture of my brother was shown in the memorial slide show. Then more pictures of my family and my nephews and niece. Lives get intertwined without a preceding agreement, and they stay intertwined forever. It isn't something you can just put down and walk away from. I have obligations I cannot ignore like I have done for a bit longer than I should have.

Driving the point home further were the younger people at the service who wished me well. I have to admit I was dumbfounded they even remembered me, yet they did. Yet more of that lack of trust issue I have. I never realized how much my self reliance and lack of trust issues separate me from the people around me. I have so much to learn. Those young people made me feel like I was more alive than I ever have felt. More lessons from this episode. I want to find a way to let the feeling get back to them and the other people I met and talked to. Life is not just living your life, it is being in other people's lives as well, and being a whole person with substance. I will take on that responsibility with gusto.

As soon as I get some sleep and consider what it is that I can contribute to the lives around me. This is where it gets into the unknown. Trust is an abstract concept to most people, I only discovered it recently. Hit rock bottom just once and life throws more stuff at you than you ever imagined even existed. It will take a craftsman in human emotion to put these pieces together; somebody who just got their head knocked sideways and cleaned out. Tonight I will sleep better than I have in a long time, and tomorrow will be a better day.

My journey starts tomorrow.

I am posting during the day because things got busy yesterday. A friend of mine called and wanted to stop by. He and I were diagnosed with very different but possibly fatal diagnoses near the same time. He was going to be in town for some sort of certification test and wanted to stop by. He ended up having dinner with us and staying the night.

We talked for a few hours about his medical condition and mine. His situation was made all the worse by his employer dismissing him. There is a possibility the dismissal was because of his medical condition. These days doing something like that may well turn out to be a very dumb thing to do. And canceling his health benefits immediately does not help their defense case.

After all the death and dying discussion we got onto the living part of our lives. He is one of those people who constantly scrounges things up. He had built a large garden complex made of things he has collected. It sounds very interesting and I would very much like to see what he has done. He wants me to help him sort through some aluminum material and windows to see if we can arrive at a plan to built a green house out of it all. That should be a very interesting project. He has so many projects going on and we talked about several that are underway. While we talked I was going through some of my bookcases and found all sorts of old books I had collected that had been tucked away and lost. He and I both like to cook so we discussed a book on pickling. And there were some books on stained glass. He said wants to get into that activity so I promised him I would build him a work table. I have all the woodworking tools and an idea of what is needed in a bench to work on glass. As providence would have it, yesterday a shelf in my garage collapsed and my stained glass tool box ended up right in the middle of the floor. Maybe I need to look at that activity a little more.

This afternoon my old friend from California is coming in. We go a long way back, some 35 years. We are both older and somewhat wiser now. But we have slowed down. We will no doubt talk well into the night tonight and tomorrow. Because of that my posts will probably be a little sparse this weekend. He used to have hair, I did too. Mine will come back, his hair has retired. We are both a lot slower now as well. Where we used to go through beer like the brewery was solely dependent on us for customers, now we will have maybe one or two. But at least we are still alive and kicking, just maybe not so much or as often.

Cancer news is slim but encouraging. I was scheduled to start another set of chemotherapy next week. I got a call yesterday from the oncologist's office. They have the CT scan set for Wednesday and then Thursday the doctor and I will discuss the results and see if I need to continue chemo. They went ahead and scheduled one cycle of the next set, but that is just a placeholder depending on the results. Anymore, any news that is not definitely bad news can be assumed to be good news. I really think I will be given a green light to skip chemo and go on the maintenance list, with just periodic checkups. It may not work out that way but for now I am going to believe that things went very well during my first set of chemo. I haven't taken a pain pill in weeks, my blood sugars are stable, appetite is good and my weight is holding. Even my pallor is looking good. All of these things are what the doctors use to assess my health. My primary care physician is really happy with my progress. I find all that very encouraging.

My wife needs a few days of R&R, away from cancer boy and the stress of life. My sister in law's death hit her hard. And her company is in turmoil, the corporate structure is going through a major overhaul and the uncertainty of it all has taken a pretty big toll on her. The visit from her parents left her a little shaken as her mother is really starting to show her age at 86. My poor wife has sort of rolled it all up into one tight ball and can't unsort it. I would really like to deliver some good news to her next week so maybe she can get her world to stop spinning so out of control.

I am doing so well that they are going to have to sell tickets and popcorn to watch.

You should be able to say that as well. It is possible.

Meanwhile, I am having a great evening and I will add more tomorrow. Until then, be safe, active, and aware of your possibilities.

Hooray for all of us.

It was a very busy weekend. My in laws came in from California. They came out specifically to visit me and see how I was doing. I thought that was kind of odd, I have my blog to keep everybody posted, it seems to work well for that purpose. But my father in law drove for three days to get here, on his way to three other places, all equally geographically diverse to visit his family that has spread across a few states. My in laws are in their eighties and his family is not quite as healthy as he is. He has lost a few siblings over the recent years. He loves to drive, he finds peace and solitude in that venture. He also removes his hearing aid so the trip is even more peaceful. It may well be that my mother in law never figured out that he was not hearing a thing she said. Just as well, had he heard his trip might not have been so peaceful. Usually when they come by I have a trip planned, I once left on a nine state ride the day after they arrived. Another time I left for South Dakota. This time I did not have other places to be. We had a nice visit and talked about my cancer and how well I was doing. My mother in law assured Janice that I was in good health and would be okay. The in laws left early this morning.

My neighbor had his birthday party Saturday night. He had quite the list of friends come to wish him well. The pergola and the new concrete that was poured was in preparation for this event. His wife wanted it to be perfect. She was going off on various episodes about how she wanted it to all be perfect and she was worried about people not having a good time. I told her to just let them be an things would be fine. I promised her I would come to her and tell her I was not having a good time if she kept worrying about it. The party and the people went very well, I had some beer and talked with quite a few people, maybe even started a few new friendships. Afterward, my neighbor and I sat on my deck and talked till early morning. He and I have several things in common, and we talk about them when we can. That was a good opportunity. We talk about a wide range of subjects, things we are interested in and the things we suspect about the world. When it was over I was extremely relaxed, tired and very relaxed.

Being completely relaxed was the problem a few minutes later when I went to the bathroom and removed my shirt. I caught a view of me with my bald head and the medi-port in my shoulder. It hit me like bricks falling off a moving truck. It was as if I had never seen it before, the evidence that I have cancer and that I am being treated for it. I stared at it all like it was a personal freak show. It had a very serious effect on me. Even the next morning I was still shaken. I had to start my day with an anti anxiety pill. It took most of the day to shake the feeling I had got the night before. I would compare it to a cowboy who has just been thrown and hurt by a big, mean bull, and five minutes later he draws that same bull to ride all over again. Got to get over that experience to go through it all again.

Sunday morning I got news that my sister in law had died from the cancer that had come out of remission after several years. She was doing fine then she had major troubles and ended up in the hospital for several weeks. Last time I saw her the cancer had taken everything and left her barely able to understand what was happening. And now it is over for her. Her two sons came to see me after a long day of making arrangements. They had told everyone about the news and their day was done and they wanted to visit with me. We sat and talked about the family, some of the things we had seen and done as family and what was happening to them now. We had a few beers and talked for as long as I could hold out. Finally the night was over and we said goodbye. The world had changed for them, they wanted to find something that might give them some sort of permanence and reassurance and they came to see me. I felt honored.

I have been fixing things and planting and working on all the things around the house. I keep telling myself that it is all because this stuff has gone bad since I got sick. That is not entirely true. Sure, the radiator went out on my car and I had to fix that. But planting trees and bushes, and patching the lawn out front, all stuff that needs done but on no urgent schedule. Then I had to fix the fridge in the garage because the defrost timer went out, now that was immediate, that is where I keep my beer. That had to be fixed. Got the part first thing this morning. Fixed it and now I am waiting for it to reach that ice cold beer temperature. But the power washer has been giving me fits since I got it and I have tried to get it straight. I spent money on new parts and assembled and reassembled it a few times. Today it still wasn't working right so I took to a pro to have it fixed. I hate having to acknowledge I can't fix something so that really pained me. But getting everything in working order and redoing gardens and planting flowers and taking out bushes, those are things I am doing to feel like I have a permanence. It gives me more reasons to stick around to watch all that stuff grow into the vision I have for the yard. It gives me a feeling that I am going to be around to see it all and enjoy it. I intend to be.