Tuesday! and the Difference a day makes! I feel so much better today so now the bad days are behind me! Oh, I am a bit sore from this latest battle but just knowing my good days have begun is all it takes! I usually make a list for the things I want to do when these good times arrive but I failed to do that this time! that is real freedom, no list of things to do! I get a lot of "Cancer Cures" in my e-mail, everything from asperagus to bleach to this is God's Will. I can believe that God has a sense of humor, I mean He must! a job that powerful would drive a person nuts! but I don't believe He has a twisted, sick vendetta type of humor! and I don't believe He inflicts anything on anyone. This is a situation that just is. The only power that I have and the power that I am able to pray for is the strength to deal with it. This is not the first "hole" I have been in, and I am hoping it won't be the last! I try to put it all into a larger perspective (the dinnasaurs lived for millions of years!), I try to keep a sense of humor, and I know I have to tend my tomatoes! I am off to a good start, today will be a wonderful day!

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Monday, and I did the PET scans. They are not painful I mostly slept through this procedure. Wednesday I will get the CAT scans and by clever manipulation the technicians will digitalize these into a single image showing...I have no idea what! My hands are getting worse, there is something worse than putting them through an old fashioned wringer washing machine! They feel as if they are being smashed with a baseball bat. Now. My finger nails and toenails are hard and brittle. I still have a cough which is ironic since I smoked for 45 years without ever getting one! This chemo-medicine is not fun and shopuld not be called "medicine". I think it is more like putting steel into an acid bath to clean off the rust. That will do the job but it removes a lot of steel in the process. This will be an interesting week, after Wednesday's CAT scan, THEY will know my prognosis but I won't know until the next Tuesday, because that is when my appointment is!!! The answer could be anything: this is not working. It is working wonderfully. or something in between. Doctors are very cautious and do not like to be quoted and error on the side of indecision. We will try a little more and see what happens! that is my guess as to the answer! When in doubt stay the course! I am thinking that a really good Cancer Institute would be run by doctors that were themselves cancer survivors, had the operations, the radiation, the chemo-cocktails and lived to tell about it! I know this is true of Alcohol Addiction Centers. They have been there and done that and know from experience that which you can only know from experience!

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Saturday and "day 2" of I don't know how many "Bad Days"! I think I am over half-way done with this process, but I don't really even know that. My main Chemo Doctor may still be stuck in Scotland. I have scheduled a PET scan for Monday and a CAT scan for Wednesday and these tests (think 400 x-rays!) should tell what the Chemo is doing. I will probably wait until the following Tuesday, in May to find out as that is my next chemo session and voodoo appointment. So, they will know but I won't! The answers will be written on my charts with all the appropriate forms filled out but they will sit there and I won't know for another week! If these bad days are any indication I must be getting well fast! 'cause the bad days are a little longer, a little harder, and a little less light! I can hardly feel my hands, certainly couldn't hold a paint brush! this is causing me to drop a few things, like my coffee cup! I still do things but with a little less feeling. All my tomatoes are in 4" pots now and happy. If the weather cooperates I will rototill my garden in about 2 weeks and that radically changes the looks of everything!

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Wednesday, and I DID IT!!!

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Tuesday today and I am saying "goodbye" to my moustache! I have a third of it or so but it is pretty pathetic, so tomorrow morning I will shave the remainder off! I have had it since I was 17 years old! Just a wild and crazy guy, I guess! I mention my hair because it is the only "marker" of my illness or the only one visible to others. I am not throwing up or even wincing, I am in no pain or much discomfort, other than being tired on a few days. So, when I remove this scraggly moustache all the evidence will be gone! I will miss part of it for another reason. People have noticed my concentration camp haircut and realize that something is wrong with me and ask how I am doing. It is like a secret society! I have cancer and am getting chem cocktails I tell them, and they tell me of their cancer stories, or abuse stories, or auto wreck stories and even worse! We share in these meteoric near misses and how we almost fell but dodged in the Nick of time and are sticking around because we like to laugh and explore, make stuff, grow gardens, love a little more. You can't really be a member of this club unless you have been close to the edge and looked over the cliffs but there are a lot of us. and we know it is Spring. Now. Today. The flowers are growing, a gentle rain may clear the air, we can breath deeply, we smile and laugh a bit and know there is still lots we can do. Most of us will get totally well from this experience but I doubt if we will ever forget about it.

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Monday today and I just came back from another Chemo! I was off schedule so had a brand new group of nurses! I am possitive that chemo nurses are chosen by their personalities. Yes, they have to have a certain skill set and they are all very professional about that, but they have a humor that is always nice to see. The nurses were far more concerned about my lingering cough than the doctor was. He pretty much dismissed it but they are worried about it, almost to the point of conferring with the doctor again! Nurses have a knack of making you feel important. Part of having cancer is you lose your sense of importance.

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Saturday today and my "best week" hasn't been perfect. I think I have a cold. I am coughing and sputtering a lot and don't exactly feel in top shape. I went around today with my camera and took a bunch of photos but as I looked through them I am wondering about Life's Perspectives. What is really important to us? Strange that an earthquake in Haiti will cause 200,000 deaths and some real misery, or one in the Pacific will cause a tsunami and kill hundreds of thousands of islanders somewhere (we don't even really know where, do we?) and now we have a volcano in Iceland that, without killing a single person has brought Europe to a standstill!!! The Headlines and news stories? This is costing $200 Million a day!!! Having Cancer does change your perspectives on life, you rearrange your prioritiies here and there and sometimes what was important to you is now of little interest. You learn that it is not really frustrating that we cannot control a volcano. We should be happy it has not caused much damage. I finally decided to post a photo of my Trumpet vine with new growth straining the iron trellis it is growing on. This is a strange relationship of Nature and my steel trellis. Today and for a lot more years it makes a beautiful entry to my garden, but the vine is working against the very steel that holds it up! Eventually the Trumpet Vine will win this battle and it will lose its support and fall down! I am not where all this is going, just random thoughts this morning!

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