Throw Parts At It

Chemo+1 it’s 4:30AM.  I have a faint burning and urge but not enough to act on.  Last acted 2 am and took 2 tabs then.  2.5 hours between actions represents a record that has not been seen since before the surgery, wow.  Oh, never mind.  With all the time spent in the comfort station my reading speed has increased dramatically along with retention.  Seeing that magazine subscriptions to keep up were going to denude a rain forest and destroy a river to produce and add to a mountain to get rid of I have crossed the line to books.  Who knows, my Sister has a regular magazine stand next to her lou with books, puzzles, pencils and so forth.  At the Christmas brunch I visited the facility 4 times and noted that the word puzzle no doubt she looked forward to finishing was being magically finished.  I always found at least one word and apparently many other visitors did the same.  Before leaving I visited the laundry room, featuring it’s own lou in the corner designed with a corner shape.  Here were the trailering and vacation magazines making up the Man of the House’s main dream.  This facility was made for long term communal meditation of the most moving kind.  I always admired their design of facilities and how it cleverly took advantage of the footprint of a very old house. When you really find a frequent need for it, you become a natural critic I think.  

Got Nurse M squared away on my medication requirements.  I am really sure we are not entirely on the same page but we will get there.  Nurse M works well through e mail.  My messages always include my name and dob, which is how she identifies me.  She has a lot of patients.  Using e mail chains assures a back up to all communication on both ends, although I do not feel the need to back up routine correspondence and updates. 

I tried to express to John last night how hard it was getting.  My oncologist has me on a monthly visit to monitor my condition and progress of the disease.  The scan showed the animal alive and thriving and ‘shadows’ about the left area.  I cannot help but be haunted by my Mom’s passing, from learning that the final assault had began to becoming incapacitated and non communicative was a few very short months.  Hospice was months long, born at first entirely by my Sister and in the end by all of us who could.  Only thing I can say is it is a good thing I do not have a lot to put in order but how do you decide what to put in order?  Oh of course the obvious, finances and final arrangements, but what else?  I know I could go out now and seek forgiveness of all of those I perceive I have wronged in some way.  This could include anyone who was ever in my employ and some very close friends.  If I go there, like an Earl it could be an entirely different story but with characters that probably would prefer to forget.  I won’t go there, but pray forgiveness, for at heart I may have been misguided but my motives were never entirely self serving.  Huh, maybe I should have gone into politics. 

Electing not to push the envelope, he went to drain 2 hours 50 minutes sld (since last drain). 

Got in a good day’s work and stayed on the 4 hour interval for meds.  I continue to struggle with hydration.  The animal works hard to dry me out from the inside it seems.  I now have thermal mugs always ready at my TV chair, office, comfort station and men’s room.  I struggle to reach 48 oz per day and my goal is the magic 64.  Urinary pain increases and is a signal that I am not taking in enough water. 

I had a visit with Pastor Miles on the phone today.  His voice is a comfort to me and I was afraid he had forgotten about me as it had been some time.  Not so of course, but his plate is full with wife, grand kids and a Church to minister.  A miracle in his own right, given only 18 months to live in 1997 and stubbornly holding on he is testimony to what might happen.  I assured him I would never give up, and am getting ready to order a free range chicken for sacrifice at the full moon during the sign of the cancer in the astrological cycle.  I plan to adapt the massage table Inger uses for the event.  I am resourcing the chants and incantations’.  This is only one of the many treatment options I am open to. I have always marveled at the intelligence and desire to live that seems to express itself in every living creature, cancers included.  The clever disguises, the surprise moves and sophisticated survival techniques you think are reserved for us ‘smart ones’ you see demonstrated in insects, under the microscope and indeed in the animal.  Bent on reproduction at any cost to assure survival of it’s kind.  Bent on survival for life’s sake just for the sake of living.  My battle is against in many ways my equal and in some ways superior on the field of survival of host or parasite. 

There are several ways to repair a machine of any kind.  When you know a lot about the machine your way is methodical and follows a ladder logic if not this then this until the problem is determined and appropriate repairs are made.  At the opposite end of this spectrum is when you know very little about the machine and you are under severe time constraints, so you ‘throw parts at it’.  Almost every car owner has experienced a large repair bill for extensive parts because the technician simply did not know enough to get at the problem except to start replacing parts.  So little is known about cancer that the best we can do is find willing candidates and throw parts at it and keep track of what works and doesn’t at present.