A Spork in the Road

No, not clapping: counting. I can count my remaining chemos on one hand. 7 down, 5 to go.

I slept through the initial queasiness today and now feel, if not good, then at least not too bad. Chemo took longer than usual due to some confusion over my orders, but my blood counts were good and my oncologist is very pleased with my progress.

I will say, when the nurse pushed my Vinblastine today, the weird sweet smell was really unpleasant. I feel nauseated just thinking about it. The Adriamycin wasn’t fun either, but for some reason it’s the Vinblastine experience that really turned my stomach. Maybe because she pushed the Vinblastine first, instead of the Adriamycin, so it came through stronger. I don’t know. I just know I’m going to feel about “Vinblastine” the way Miracle Max feels about “Prince Humperdink.”

Now I’m going to go revel in the inauguration proceedings.

I am a book junkie, and Mary is my pusher. She lent me the superb Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, which won the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1995.

The book had notes in common with both The Shipping News and 12 Angry Men. It dipped into the lives of many diverse characters, and I admired the range of emotion it covered, from the fragile angst of young love to the abiding love of a born farmer for the land to the brutal reality of war.

I will say that there were moments it felt overwritten: a few too many words, sometimes. And I do not say that lightly, because I love words.

But that’s a quibble. The tale and its telling are both beautiful.

Buy this book from Amazon.com

It’s cool and raining today. The eaves have been dripping all day and the trees the back yard stand against a dull gray sky. I love rainy days. They make me feel calm and exultant at the same time.

Blood work came back good today. WBC down a little from its recent high, but still solidly in the healthy range. RBC is holding very steady.

I’m continuing my habit of taking the stairs when I go for bloodwork. It gets my blood pressure up a little bit, which reduces my chance of passing out, and gives me some exercise. It’s a true pleasure to be able to take the stairs.

I did pretty well over the weekend; didn’t sleep too much, ate well, stayed active and mostly positive. Yesterday I was a little anxious and tired, but I seem to have snapped out of it today. I didn’t sleep much last night, yet I’m not feeling tired today, happily enough. I think I’m past the major chemo shadow, as I usually am on Tuesdays. Hurrah!

So. Next week I’m on the downhill slope. After Tuesday I’ll be able to count my remaining rounds of chemo on one hand!

Get thee gone, wastrel. Stop wasting a perfectly good morning/afternoon/evening/night reading about red pee and fatigue headaches, and go read Maureen McHugh’s blog, where she writes about things like 10,000 Hours:

I’m wondering now what a second 10,000 hours does. And a third. Does it make a difference that I started writing seriously at nineteen? Would I be able to start writing seriously now, at fifty, and at sixty produce something competent? I think so, although I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure it, and I, would be different than what I will produce at sixty now. The practice shapes me as much as I shape the practice.

And about Urban Gardening:

I’m an indifferent gardener, gung ho in spring, bored by summer, overrun by weeds by mid-season. At the moment I plant things like rosemary and thyme which require no maintenance at all. I don’t spend $50 to $250 a week on vegetables, so My Farm would be admirable but not budget concious for me. Still, I like it a lot better than hiring a gardener.

And so forth. Lots of posts about food and writing. And what’s more interesting than food and writing?

I walked to some friends’ house last night around 7:30pm. It was cool. The moon was one night short of full and glinted off the silhouettes of palm trees. As I walked, I could feel the living organism of the town around me, breathing and metabolizing. I felt like a cell wandering down an artery, and it was a gift to have even a glimpse of my connection to the greater organism.

The town around me. The region around the town. And out and out to the entire planet and its interlocking ecosystems. The magnificent body of the Earth.

I have cancer, I thought. And I am cancer. Humanity has become a cancer to the body of our planet, and we’re beginning to metastasize. Is it possible for cancer to decide to change its nature, to stop reproducing madly and corrupting its host? I guess we’ll find out over the coming decades.

The oyster population in the Chesapeake today stands at just 1% of its pre-1980 levels.
“Gem of the Ocean” – The Economist

Considering how integral oysters are to cleaning up the water, this is not good, as any Chesapeake aficionado knows. And oysters aren’t faring much better elsewhere; I’ve seen estimates that the current total oyster population is somewhere around 10% of pristine levels.

As in 90% gone.

The Environmental Defense Fund has a convenient seafood selector to help make eco-conscious seafood choices.

Do you think this would be a more effective ecological rallying cry: Don’t be cancer!

Hm. Maybe not.