It was always a question of when, not if

Well, shit.  MRI last Thursday shows something that ought not to be there.  So we'll wait about 5 weeks and look at it again to see if it's progression or what they term psuedoprogression.

It's possible that what they're seeing is an effect of the treatments, and that could be a good thing: it may be that my own leukocytes are attacking bad cells.  Hope so.

I reckon we will know more after the next scan.

Well....

Okay.


So.

Soon I will die.

But fuck that.

When i go, I want  a party.  I want all my friends to come over , bring booze and musical instruments, and have  fucking good time.

If you do, I will. And that'a what I want.  When it's time for folks to leave, come kiss me goodbye.

And I will be  happy.  I wil be content.  I will be ready.


Wish me adieu, my friends.  Thtat's what I want.

If there be one, I will see you on the other side.

But I really do want to have a goodbye kiss.  I will be a mess, but I will know you.  And I will carry your goodwill will with me whereever there is after this life.

Well, shit

My doctor recently called to tell me he had an astrocytoma, but it was bilateral and was involving his corpus callous,.  His balance was shot, so falling was a constant worry.

He was doing okay, but I reckon his reduced mobility led to the development of clots, one of which found its way to his lung, and a couple mornings ago, he died.  He was really an exceptional physician, and I'll miss him a lot.  He was patient, kind, comprehensive.  When I was diagnosed with my cancer, he spent a lot of time in the evening schooling himself on gliomas and following my case.

I was very flattered he called to talk to me about it, and I got to visit him several times before he died.  I think he had become more my friend who happened also to be my doctor than the reverse.  He was a bit of a renaissance man: interested in art and philosophy as well as medicine.  He was well-known around the community.

He was one of 3 physicians I've known (and I've known more than a few) who made me feel that he was treating me, not just my illness.  He would sit and chat and ask me about pretty much everything going on with me.  I got to meet his wife, a perfectly wonderful woman, and I can't stop thinking about her and what she must be feeling.  I'll call her tomorrow and see how she's getting on.  They had a fairly large group of friends, so I can know that at least she won't be alone any more than usual, for the most part.

But it's so damned odd, and sad, that my doc would come down the the same sort of rare cancer that I had, and remarkably touching that he reached out to me for support.  I hope I gave him some.  He called me his "hero" because the cancer didn't get me.  And in the end, it only got him indirectly.

It's a great loss, personally as well as collectively and professionally.

Well, hell.

so now, it's over 3 years, and so far, still no cancer.  I'm alive twice as long as they forecast (or endcast?), and it's strange.

I'm technically "cured," but 30 months of chemotherapy isn't nothing.  It changes you.  My energy level is crazy, sometimes okay, sometimes I can hardly get up stairs.  If I go out with friends to a noisy restauarant, it's physically taxing -- the next day I'm likely to run a big energy debt, a hangover from noise and trying to talk loudly.

Other thing is memory.  Short-term memory is shot (I have to write everything down), and I have some lacunae for things is knew long ago.  It's weird.

Biggest pain in the ass is that I spend most of my time looking for things.  That gets tiresome.  Seems like every time I go to get something from one room, I get distracted and forget why.  Then when I go back to where I came from, I recall what I went after the first time.  Sometimes it seems that I have to do everything twice, and that turns out to be especially frustrating for the spouse.  She has been such a rock, I really hate to put her through more crap.

So, on the one hand, I'm doing far better than I've a right to.

But if you know a cancer survivor, don't expect him or her to be the same person that he or she was before the cancer.  The treatments leave lasting effects.  One person I read said chemo-brain is like wearing a hat of fog.  I'm trying to resurrect some of what I learned when studying philosophy, and man, is it tough to remember things.  But I keep trying!

A year.

well, I'm officially Cancer-free after a year.

On the one hand, this is pretty astonishing, and I really like not having Cancer.  I still have some memory issues, but in the main, I'm my same old fucked-up self.

But I'm a little more scared than usual.  13 months is about what folks with astrocytoma get.  I've had 12.  That gives me pause and makes me want to spend a little more time thinking about how I want this to go down.

From what I've read, the end of this is pretty ugly.  Not sure I want to wade through it, and I'm damned sure I don't want Erin dragged through it.

I can likely get home hospice (if I hang on another year I'm eligible for Medicare, and they do hospice).  But still. It means diapers and IVs for nutrition, and just generally not being me.

I don't want that.  When I'm no longer me--when I can't converse, when I can't make morbid jokes about death--I'm not sure I'd rather not just go to sleep and discover if there's something on the other side of this life.

I'll be horribly sad to leave Erin.  I'll be horribly sad to leave my family, friends and colleagues -- as much a shit as I am, there are people out there who will be sad when I die.

But. I'm going to die.  Maybe not too soon, but sooner than I'd like.

I want to go paris again. I want to go on long bike rides on lonely gravel roads amid cornfields and cows. ("Hello, ladies!" I always say to them.)

I want to teach another class or two.  If my life has had any enduring meaning, it is through my students. They amaze me, frustrate me, but mostly they humble me with their hard work, their concern and affection, and their trust in me.

I mean that and feel it profoundly: I am humbled by my students.  They have been the most amazing groups of young adults, ever.  So they will be what remains of me when I go.

I couldn't ask for a better legacy.  Some hate me, but lots of them are glad I had a chance to teach them some stuff.

What I hope I taught them, more than anything, is a respect and love of learning.

That's something you can carry all your life: curiosity.  I hope they do. And I hope that they also have the tools to know how to answer the questions that they will encounter.

Teaching is the coolest job there is.  Grading papers gets old, especially when it dawns on you that you've be correcting the same errors for 25 years.  But you get to leave something enduring.

And I tell you: the reaction of my students to my illness has been nothing short of flabbergasting.  (is that a word?)  I have been completely blown away by their concern, their generosity, their care.

I always had a sense that i got close to my students, that they knew I cared about them beyond what happened in the classroom.  But this has -- far beyond my wildest imagination -- showed me how much I have mattered in their lives.

I'm sad I only got to work with them for a few years.  I wish it could have been a decade or more.  They are amazing.  You ask them to try, they try.  You give them something that will stretch them, and they reach for it and get it.

I'm amazed.

So, I can die knowing there will be a little piece of me living on -- if my students have students, I trust they will know what my students knew.  I have some former students who are now "Dr."  I couldn't be more proud.

Wow.  This is ramble and unfocused.  But then, so am I!

So, I think I figured something out.

Most of this week and last I have been sad, which is a big contrast from the past.  I've been trying to understand why.

I think I know: I have more or less suddenly realized that my life has gone from one of optimism and wild future opportunities to one with a deadline, and those opportunities are gone.

Sobering to realize that you have far more past than future.

I still have some time, I think, given that my cancer has not recurred in over 7 months, but still -- I'm 57 going on 58, and there are relatively few opportunities for one nearing 60.  I figure I can still pick up the occasional class without jeopardizing my disability benefits, and that will allow me a chance to make some difference in the world, still, before I go.

And every class you teach, no matter how many times you've done that material, is an adventure.

Young people are amazing.  Though I have no kids of my own, I feel as though hundreds -- even thousands -- of parents have lent me their children for a few years, and without seeming vain, I think I have made a mark on many of them.  In a good way.  Fundamentally I think I'm a good person, and being the clasroom with me several times a week for years willl probably have a good influence.

And I so adore them.They keep me young, keep me thinking forward, keep me thinking of the future and not only the past.

So I do believe I will need to get in the classroom from time to time, just to stay alive and fresh an optimistic.  As long as I can do a good job (and fear of not being able to do a good job was the reason I opted to retire), I'd like to keep doing it.

But for now, I should go to bed.  Tomorrow is lawn chores, and i'll need all the energy I can muster.

Ciao!

Well, hell: the melancholies.

So, the last few days I have been feeling melancholy, and today I figured out what it is.  I have been thinking a lot about when I was young, and thinking about that for some reason really makes me feel sad.  Not sure what it is.  I am sort of stuck thinking of my 15-year-old self, and wow does it make me sad to think about that kid.  The idea of dying sooner rather than later seems sadder when I think of that kid.

I don't know if it's the idea that whatever opportunity that lost is really, honestly, now going to be gone.  I don't know if it's regret over things I didn't do (although I don't feel regret for things that I did, in the main). Some of it,  I think, is realizing that there are people that I miss from that time that I am never going to see again, and some of them were pretty important to me -- and I guess, in some ways, still are.  I wish I could find some of them before it's all over, but don't know how.

It's a pretty profound ache, and I do not like it.  Maybe when you go along living your life you never stop to think about the people that you will never see again -- it always seems there's a chance you will.  But not now.  :/

I'm sure some of this is also coming from the fact that I haven't been feeling very well for a couple of weeks.  I go visit the doc in a week or so, so that will be good.

Tomorrow is my big sister's birthday.  She has some right frontal lobe damage from a tumor resection back in 1987.  I hope I can get down to see some family this summer.

Anyway, I should try to sleep.

And another thing....

Not only do i worry about the loss of income, but this loss is coming on top of several thousand bucks in out-of-pocket medical bills.

Pooh.

Most of the places have been good about letting us pay a little at a time, but when you add them all up, its still quite a bit of loot to pay out every month.

Sigh.  Wish we could have gotten a single-payer system. (And so does my doctor...)

To Disability or not to disability.... that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler -- or something like that. (And obtw, Shakespeare was beyond brilliant.)

So, we are working on the decision about whether I should go on permanent disability.

I worry about two things. One is financial: it will mean a fairly massive cut in income, and thus a pretty substantial change in our lives. Things that we had planned -- or hoped -- to do, especially travel, are going to have to  get dropped.  And thereare other, smaller lifestyle changes that we will have to accomodate.  I find a lot of that scary.  For the past few years i have had the luxury of -- for the first time in my adult life -- not having to fret about money.  We haven't lived extravagantly, by any means.  But neither have we had to worry. Now, i think that worry will come back.

The second thing is whether or not I can develop enough discipline to do some substantive writing.  I've never been a good self-starter, and unless (or until) I can find a project that really energizes me, I'm not sure how well I'll do if left to my own devices.  I have some writing projects I want to work on, and I really want to continue with the ITM stuff and spend more time with those people (which would be something that would get me out of the house and make sure that I'm taking care of myself and not just sitting at home wanting to drink or something like that).

So, the quandary: do I go on disability, lose my identity as a teacher, and become something else?  I've certainly known lots of people who cobble together lives out of this and that, and don't have a career per se, but just do enough to get by.

Part of me likes the thought of that: just doing what we need to do to get by.  We don't need to be extravagant; we don't need a housekeeper.  I can probably cut wood with a friend and by helping him, get wood for free.  If I am home and can keep a fire going in the stove all day, we don't really use much propane or electricity at all for heat.  The summer will be interesting because I hate being too hot and sticky.  But I can adjust.  And hell, I may be in a bad way come summertime -- which means I will like the heat and not want to be cold.

So, lots to think about.  Being not poor, but at the same time, being forced to think about consumption a little more than we have in a few years.  Reduce our carbon footprint.  Live a little more simply.  Not buy so many toys.  I have lots of toys.

I can also try to pick up a class.  I can talk to the disability insurance people about how much I am allowed to earn without losing my benefits.  I really don't think I can go back and do my old job well, but that's not to say that I can't do something.  The real thing I don't want to do is grade papers.

My doc said that when poeple get this diagnosis, they can often have a choice about whether they want to spend their remaining time doing things they want, or things that they don't want to do.

There's something compassionate about how the SS administration treats people who are going on disability and have a terminal diagnosis: it is almost as though they have decided that they should not force people to continue to do work that they may not like or may not and so they give you a few years of doing what it is that you want -- or not doing what you do not want.

For me, I love to teach.  I love to talk about brains and how they work, I love to challenge kids to think about what makes people do what they do and not let the students rely on intuition or "common sense" (which is, it must be said, not all that common).  I love to teach about how science works and why we use it as a guide to what works and what doesn't work.

But man, if I could do all of the above and never grade another paper, I would be happy -- as my dad would say -- as a pig in shit.  Grading is pure drugery.  Working with students to make their writing better, or make their research better, is awesome, and I would love to keep doing that -- unforch, that usually comes along with grading papers.  Ack.

I could probably modify my classes so that I don't spend so much time grading and instead conference with students, talk to them about how to make their work better, and let them do the hard work of editing and revising.

I have done a lot of that in the last few years: I leave them alone to work either singly or in small groups, then meet with them and give them verbal feedback about how they're doing and what they've done.  They seem to be learning.  And I love it when they learn.

That's something that really turns my crank: watching kids get it.  There's nothing like seeing a kid in a classroom light up because all of a sudden they understand something they've not gotten, but have been trying to get.  And POW, when they get it, it's like the whole world changed.  I love that.

The sad part is that in my regular classes, as soon as they get one thing, I give them something new, and it's like the POW but from the other direction.

But by the end of my class, I have a group of the most methodologically sophisticated undergraduates there are.  I'm proud of that.

But we need to have something for students who don't want to go to grad school.  Right now we do grad-school-prep.  We do it exceedingly well.  But not all students want to do grad school.

So how do we acommodate both, the grad-school-bound, and those who just happen to like psych?  I have considered two tracks, but (without in any way taking anything from our students), I know that almost all would opt for the easier track, and then expect to get into a grad program (because that's what you have to do if you want to use psych, esp as a therapist or counselor -- which pretty much they all do.

(I thought I did, too, but they decided that talking to depressed people only made me depressed, also...  So I became an experimental psychologist and started doing research on brains that are not distressed.)

Okay, I'm going to stop this now because I had to take a pain pill earlier and have no idea if this is making any sense at all.  (I have had some pretty bad headaches lately, and that worries me....  Damn cancer.  Bastard.)

So, more anon!

Feeling better.

Bad headache day today.

Was forced to medicate it.

Feeling better, now.

I dont't understand why that happens. But some days, it is as though someone were hammering a nail into my head.

I hate that....

But thanks,  medicine.

Pain sucks.

But!  I feel better now.

Low day today.

They warned me.

But it still sort of sucks.  Tired.  Achey.

But!  I'm not dead!  that's a plus!

Not sure at all why i've been having these days where i just feel puny.  BP and pulse are a little elevated, a little headache, and a lot of tired.

This is a roller coaster.  One day it's all good, one day I just want to lay down and sleep.

Dr Taylor says to try hard not to give into the sleeping, so I'm writing a little and just resting a bit.  Often after a 15-minute lie-down I feel better.

So!  That's what I'm doing.

My advice ro you all is avoid cancer.  It sucks.

So! Round 1!

Sitting in the chemo unit at the cancer center; just got an injection of (what I hope to be) well-trained white blood cells that will go after whatever bits of cancerous tissue we didn't either get with surgery or the chemo and radiation.  Interesting.

I don't know if I'm in the placebo control or the experimental group.  I hope I'm in the latter.  Immunotherapy holds a great deal of promise for dealing with cancer that can't be gotten at with surgery (what I have that is left is likely scattered around and hard to get at surgically).

So, here's to successful clinical trials!  I expect to be cancer-free very soon.

So, more whiplash, only this time it isn't Kansas Spring weather.

So this morning my radiation oncologists suggested that I might stop thinking of myself as a cancer patient and start thinking of myself as a cancer survivor.  It's early yet, but I like his optimism a lot...

This is the same guy who just a few weeks ago suggested I might want to make a list of things I'd like to get done  this year.  :)

But I'm going to run with it.  I'll get more info from the medical oncologist on Thursday when we start the immunotherapy stuff.  She's a little more cautious than the radiation oncologist, so I'll wait to see what she says.

But in the meantime, that seems pretty good news.

And another thing...

So, here's another thing.

Yesterday was a scan day -- first new scan since treatments started.

It looks pretty damned good.  There's one small troublesome spot that took up a lot of the contrast medium, but it's very small and chances are good that it will get whacked by the maintenance chemo, or better, if I get in the experimental group in the clinical trial, that my own, specially-trained white blood cancer-eater cells will eat that shit up.

But on the whole, it was a very good-news day.  (I adore my medical oncologist: she is amazing and always gives me a hug before she leaves after we meet.)

One thing that I'm struggling with a little bit is being left alone.  I still have cancer (in her words, "there's no curing this") and it has felt good to be surrounded by people at the radiation place, or the Cancer Center in KC.  The thought, though, of this transitioning into a chronic thing that I just have to deal with on my own is a little scary.  It feels fantastic to be surrounded by those people, and the thought of being out here on my own is unnerving.  Yes, I will kick this cancer's ass, but I cannot do it alone and find the thought of going back to my "regular" life a little scary.  Being on leave has allowed me lots of time to process what's going on with me (and to write about it a little, thank you for reading!).  Not having that time is going to be weird.  It isn't that I want to be sick, but at the same time, I feel that I need to carve out some space to be sick and not forget that I have to save some energy for beating this disease.

So I've been thinking more and more about how important social media has been and how important it has been that I can feel all those good wishes and know that there are so many people out there who are on my side.  So I won't be alone in this.

But it's a little weird to get cut loose. I'll miss them.  They're smart, caring, people, and they mean a lot to me.

Other thing is that I am all of a sudden "normal" again, and it's back to the same old grind.  That's a little unsettling, too -- I was pretty unhappy with things last fall (not feeling good about the job, not feeling in control of things), and I don't want to step right back into that...  So my job right now is to figure out what I can do differently so that I don't feel like I'm wading back into the same mud that I left last fall.  I think I can talk to the Dean about that -- and will.

Really weird thing is that when I go to my office, it looks exactly like it did on December 6.  I just left work that Friday afternoon and didn't come back.  Odd that your life can be so truncated like that: my work life just stopped that day like a clock that ran down.  A frozen moment.  (And let me tell you: my office at the end of a semester looks a lot like something blew up in it -- it would only be a perfect frozen moment with papers suspended in mid-air.)  It's not unlike a little time capsule, sitting there on the cusp of my two lives.  I think a lot of two parts of my life: the part before that weekend, and the part since then.  Very different sets of concerns.

But!  I had really good news yesterday, and even amid all these odd feelings, I feel pretty good this morning.  There's hardly any cancer to be seen in my head.  (Did learn something interesting; "paradoxical progression": sometimes treatment can make it appear as though the cancer has actually grown.  They don't know why.  But I don't show that, so I get to stay in the clinical trial.)

And by the way, immunotherapy is pretty cool.  Brilliant idea, and has worked with other sorts of cancers.  And they are going to keep some of my stem cells, so I keep hoping that I'll be like Henrietta Lacks and my cells can go on helping people for a long time.  That would be a neat legacy.  To think that I could somehow help others with glioblastoma would make the leukaferesis worth it.  (Did I mention that involves them sticking a spear into my heart?)

Yay, brain.  Keep fighting!

So, here's a thing...

Well, here's something I've been musing on and off about for a while.

People seem to be (for some reason) impressed with the way I'm handling all this.  I'm not sure where that comes from.  I get "brave" and "strong" comments and feel like they're way off the mark.

To me this is one more thing to do, but that's all.  I have had a fairly laid-back feeling about it, and don't think I'm in some sort of denial.  I think I know what's going to happen, but am not feeling a lot (or not consistently feeling much) distress about it.

But that doesn't make me strong or brave or whatever.  It just is what it is.  If I do have a shorter time here than I was thinking, I surely don't want to spend it moping or being afraid or sad.  I just need to go on and live what I get. openly and full-on.

I wonder if it doesn't have something to do with some of the adversity I had to deal with when I was a kid.  After a while you just sort of resign yourself to the way things are, and do what you need to do to get through them.  That's sort of how this feels.

I can remember being in the hospital once when I was about 5 and had started to feel sorry for myself and my mom took me around that pediatric ward and showed me all the kids who were in way worse shape than I was.  That was a good lesson, I think.  Ever since then I haven't been tempted to feel pity for myself.

I just do what I gotta do.  But it isn't heroic.  It just is what it is.

Oh. Other thing...

So, other thing that I've been thinking about is the fact that my radiation oncologist recommended that I "make a list of the things I might want to get done this year."

I think it was a gentle way of asking me to make a bucket list.

And you know, there just aren't that many things that I haven't done that I really really want to do.

Fly an airplane?
Swim in the ocean one more time?
Go back to Europe once more?
Climb a 14-er?
Go for an extended bike ride on a trail, with overnight stops (maybe do part of the Katy trail)?
Maybe play golf once more?
Do some fun shit in New York?

I reckon there are a few things, but most are things that I've done and would like to do once more, not things that I've never done.

That suggests to me that I've been pretty damned lucky to have gotten to do so many things already.  Lived in the Dominican Republic.  Camped around Mexico for a couple months.  Lived in so many cool places, from Southern California to New York (Brooklyn, anyway).

So, the fact that I am having a hard time making a lengthy list is probably a good sign that something has gone right for me.  I started out sort of tense and painful, but things settled down when I became a teenager, and I had a good 40-odd-year run.

That's not bad, considering that most people, before the 20-th century, didn't live more than 40 years.

I have a short list.  That's a cool thing.

Nothing exciting...

Just sitting here thinking.  Tomorrow I'm going to get up and go with a friend to "celebrate" her last dose of radiation.  She and I carpooled for about a month, and it was sort of cool to have a friend going along with the same things I was going through.

I had my last one a little while ago (10 days?), and tomorrow is her last.  So I thought it would be fun just to go with her, say hey to the wonderful staff at the Cancer Center, and like that.

For me the end of radiation is not the end of treatments.  I get a new scan on March 6, and it will show us what's left of this cancer.  I expect a lot.  But they can put me on a maintenance schedule of chemotherapy that can go long-term (thank goodness they have specialty-pharmacy connections!) and I hope keep this stuff in check for a few years.

Earlier today I was thinking a little about the end and when it will come.  I just hope it comes in the summer or late Spring.  I do not want to be cold.  I want to be warm, snug, and not shivering.  I have been so cold since all this started (our really cold weather more or less coincides with our discovery of the cancer and the start of all the medical stuff), I'm just determined that however this plays out, I'm holding out for warm weather.

If I could have an ideal way to go, it would be in a lounger in the sun, and just go to sleep with the sun making my eyelids pink.  That would be warm.

Okay, not to sound whiny

(in no small measure because I'm not sure how to spell "whiny"), but this is an interesting phenom I'm noting right now.

So, I'm sick, and people want to help and do things.  But often, given my fatigue level or general not-feeling-good, I don't wanna.  But I find myself doing things, anyway, in order to allow others to feel better.

Isn't that odd?  I am not bothered by it; in fact, I like it (except when I'm really not feeling good).  I like being able to help people feel better.

But the oddness of it having sort of become my responsibility to help others feel better about my having a terminal diagnosis is just, well, a little striking to me.

But people have been spectacularly great to me.  So if I get a chance to give back a little, I'm grateful for that chance.

But it's become this sort of symbiosis.

Life is weird.  But fun.

So, what the fuck?

Just trying to get your attention.

Here's the deal: why am I not scared?  Why do I feel lucky?  Why do I feel that I have had a graced life when two months ago a neurosurgeon told Erin I had 18 months to live?

Weird, people.  Freaking weird.

Talked to several psych types about it, and they're pretty much as confused as I.  One says, "Well, it'll hit you later," one says "well, a lot people feel that way at the end," but hey: I've a long damed way to go before the end, and I intend to raise some hell and play some tunes and drink far more good beverages than is advised.

Why would a 57-year-old-man with a wife and a fun life feel lucky?
 on finding out that he has a stage 4 glioma that will surely kill him (barring a bus or bad bike crash)?

It's so weird to me.  I know I've talked about this before, but I still can't get over it.  I get sad from time to time, but in the main, I feel happy.  "Euphoric" was a word I used the other day.

Liberated.  I can write.  I can muse.  I can be whatever I want, now.  I'm not tied to a job.

But wow.  My time is short.  I figure good odds on 3 years.; slightly worse but still decent on 5.  Beyond that?  Who knows...

But man.  I have met so many good and wonderful people who have made my little journey so fun and interesting and unexpected.

Unexpected.

That's been my life.  Completely unexpected.

So, to all of you who have touched this strange little life, I thank you.  Sincerely.

I'ts been one wild ride.  But wow.

Just touching base....

So, what's happening?

I have 8 more radiation treatments, and a few days after that will get a new MRI to see what has happened.  I'm a little terrified of that scan.  It could mean 6 more weeks of radiation, or worse.

But so far I am tolerating treatments very well.  I'm starting to get some radiation burns around my right eye and forehead, but aloe really helps soothe those, and they will heal fine and fast once they stop blasting me.

After three days of very hi anxiety we were able to get the pharmacy to ship the correct number of pills for me to complete this first phase of chemotherapy.  But we were on the phone with everyone from the FBI to the insurance company before we finally got it resolved.  They showed up this morning.  These meds are astonishingly expensive ($15k/month), and so we were really sweating whether we were going to have to go find some in KC and just buy them without using insurance.  That would have been about $2500 for a couple days.

Not much else to report.  I can feel that my scalp is reattaching to my skull -- little tingles and stretches  Good -- I think I like it attached better than not.  I assume the bones are fusing, but don't get much sensation from that.  That's probably going to be another month before those bones are strongly fused.  I'll have to be very careful on the bike.  No falls, and always wear a helmet (which I do, anyway, and always have).

Had some ultrasound on my legs to R/O DVT the other day; I'm very short of breath all the time and my radiation onc doc is concerned about pulmonary embolisms.  But my leg veins are fine.  Ultrasound is weird: the sound of your blood going through your arteries and veins is trippy.  (I do suppose the alternative would be worse.)

Have been making an effort to get together with folks for lunches and things, or just trying to stop by and say hey so that they can see that I'm still here, still me.

I'm very lucky.  Masterful, god-like neurosurgeon to go that far into my frontal lobe, take out about 20% of it, and have me sitting here coherently writing (or mostly coherently).

I'm so overwhelmed by the care and concern shown me by my friends and colleagues, by people in my real as well as virtual circle of friends.  It's just amazing.

You don't know what you mean to people until something shitty happens, I think.  That's a shame.  We should try more often to let folks know how we value them before they're on the way to dying.

Okay, enough for now.  Even though there's no humidity in the house, I'm going to get the pipes out and see if they'll play at all today.  Doubtful.  They were born in Ireland, not Arizona....

Ciao for now.