Field dependent

We just came from the doctor’s office, so I want to relate the latest info. The CT scan I had last week shows no change. The masses are the same size. This means the doctor will come up with a chemotherapy plan by the end of the week. We probably need some new chemos, so he will work with Stanford to see what is available, including clinical trials. I may have to go back to Stanford, either in hospital or outpatient.

We will not pursue donor leukocyte infusion until those masses in my pancreas are very reduced. My best hope right now is for a clinical trial that involves chocolate and italian food, with a side of mahi mahi, not necessarily all at once. If nothing at all happens, or chemo cannot arrest the progress of this disease, the Irish wake is planned for some time in October or so. I would like to be there, listening to you all say what a great guy I was, but every one I have suggested this to (having a wake before I die) said it would be quite weird and uncomfortable. Cowards.

All this leaves me with a lot of work to get done. Do I finish turning the blog into a book? Keep going on the genealogy project? Make the jade fountain I always said I would make? I know I have to make all the finances very straightforward, and finish my appeal with Social Security.

I will most likely move back in with my family. Dana and I have been working things out, and I love her, and she loves me, and she is very supportive and knows that I will need her support. Moving back in will be a big job, but I will just take my time. Time to shed some things, too.

It occurs to me that it would be so much easier if I knew we had no hope and how much time exactly I had, but of course there is a glimmer of hope and I am prepared to dash through the eye of the needle, again. None of us knows how much time we have, and it highlights to me just how important every day is, how important it is to tell my family that I love them, to pet my dog and throw the ball with him, and to appreciate the beauty all around me.

Dana and I went out to the east of Santa Margarita last Thursday, to Shell Creek Road, where the wildflowers were having their annual show, spectacular this year after the rains. We had a little picnic and basked in the glory of living.

I wrote this a few weeks ago, in a bleak mood, based on the weekly prompt (stranded) from Writing Through Cancer:

Empty

Vision’s getting blurry,
skin like dry cracked paper,
random pains are flaring up
in my abdomen and joints as my body
consumes itself in a fight for life.
Stranded in nowhere, rocks and sky and
scrub, rapidly fading now,
only fumes in my tank,
nothing in the bank, raided and
traded for this long shot at life and love,
for hands to ease me down,
a rock for a pillow and sand
for a blanket,
and the vultures overhead like a ceiling fan,
shade, blaze, blaze,
shade, blaze, blaze.
Relentless, relentless,
comforted that we all die,
it had to happen,
this too shall pass.
Why be thankful for the pain,
just to know there is life yet?
The accounts are drained,
the tank is empty,
and I’m stranded between
living and dying.