dX plus 2

2/8/07, Two years after diagnosis day
In theory this was the day I would be done with chemo. It is 3am, and I am up and about since 2 at least partly due to 100 mg of prednisone. Health is good, but the doc wants me to go one more month, just for extra kicks. So this is my last steroid week, a little more mercaptopurine and some methotrexate, a bone marrow biopsy just for a final check in early March, and we're done!

I noticed about 4 weeks ago that I was always freezing even though it was 70 in the office and at home, and then I started gaining weight, so we tested out my thyroid. The dang thing was normal, and my doc says I am just finally wearing out from the chemo, and I will probably sag a little more when we end it, but then by April I will recover. Reminds me of The Wasteland by TS Eliot, which I will only include parts of because it is long:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
..........
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

A moment of silence for Chiaki, who I worked with at Symantec, who sadly passed away last week from stomach cancer, leaving her husband and teenage daughter. Turns out she was born 2 days after me, and I was thinking how that bullet was meant for me, but I ducked and she caught it full brunt. A stupid thought. More like she hit the other side of our medical care, she had a doctor who dismissed her symptoms for something like a year, and when she switched docs it was too late. She suffered the chemo bravely even with the full brunt of side effects that I never got, and with the knowledge that she was only delaying the inevitable well beyond what they she could endure. She seemed a happy and very peaceful person that I would have liked to know better, and her passing brings me sorrow. I wish her luck and bon voyage in her travels through the universe.

Everything else is good, chugging through life. My neighbors are having more fun than us, but our house looks nicer. I think that means they are winning if we're keeping score. It is time to ratchet back the work efforts (at home) and enjoy life more. Dana and I get caught up in a battle of who does more, and then we start keeping score, and then we're caught in the death spiral. I am out of gas and can't tread water in the whirlpool for long, so I am opting out of this spiral this time. Let's take up dancing and go for a canoe ride, maybe have a BBQ.

Hey, maybe it is time for the final phase BBQ! Hmmmm, I have eyebrows, and now I have a bigger gut, maybe a big gut BBQ. Mac, I bet you got some spare big guts in Alabammy, no?