Last chemo session is tomorrow

I know that my few regular readers noticed that my postings had dropped off significantly. In a way that's good news. It had all become routine without all that much to report. Tomorrow is my last chemo session. I'll go in for the last time tomorrow morning at 9 am. Hooray.

Before the session three weeks ago, Dr. O the oncologist, came in to report the results of a CT scan that I'd taken on the prior Thursday. "I have good news." She couldn't detect any clear signs of swollen nodes within the abdomen. Tomorrow's session is therefore just a kind of protective measure in case something didn't show up on the scan.

So, it's gone. No more lymphoma. It all seems from this vantage point that it was not a big deal. I'm still more tired than usual. I still have problems walking up hills. But at least I now know that those conditions are caused pretty much entirely by the chemo drugs and not by the cancer itself.

I've even started to get fuzz on my head that appears to be relatively widespread without too many obvious blotches.

But there are a couple of other reasons for the dropoff in postings. For one things, I've been busy for the past two months with tasks for a non-profit group at which I've volunteered for years. I manage their website and do print graphics for their big annual fundraising party. I switched the website over to a new host and prepared -- with much email deliberation -- the graphic "look" for the part before preparing the many posters, mailers, fliers, and related material.

So that's kept me busy. But a more significant change transpired when someone that all of us in the family was diagnosed with breast cancer. Because she wouldn't want to be identified any more clearly, I'll call her "M".

M didn't really want to tell anyone about the cancer. At one point when I asked her why she wasn't reading the brochures the doctors had given me, she said to me, "I don't want to become one with this cancer."

Fair enough. But many of us worried that she wasn't yet prepared to do what it would take to "kill bill" as she has named the critter.

While all that was happening, it seemed a bit self-indulgent of me to post these entries. So I stopped for a while.

But M is now in chemo, getting session every other week. She reports

All is well, the second Chemo was this last Tuesday, it's not so bad...compared to bull fighting. No really, it was not bad at all. It just kicks the crap out of you for a few days...like a bull would too. Otherwise, not bad. Food tastes funny...but I'll eat my peas with honey, I've done so all my life it makes the peas taste funny but it keeps them on my knife!!!

Yup. Comapared to bull fighting.