Unearthing a life.....

Note: these photos are all post-chemo by maybe three hours. We are gathered on the deck, Kay and I with granddaughters Rachel and Michal, after a fine dinner of shrimp stir-fry and rice prepared by Rachel with Michal's veggie slicing help.

As to the day. It had its ups and downs, but the ups hit a couple bases loaded homers and won by a large margin. In the doctor's words, my blood numbers were "Great!" The fluid in my right lung was almost all gone. The plural thickening was only a slight bit advanced. The several involved lymph nodes that had been two to three times larger than normal were shrunk back to near normal. In the doctor's additional words, "That is tremendous ... it means you are responding to the chemo." AND "I'd say for a 73 year old guy you are doing very good. Good job!"

Howsomever, at the six hour mark, 2/3's of the way thru the big bag of Sisplaten (sp?), I began to scratch at my palms and then at my scalp and then I noticed that I was doing it with exceeding vigour and so summoned a nurse and brought it to her attention. She exclaimed "Allergic reaction!" and shut down the Sisplaten, then gave me a couple small bags of meds to curtail and ward off the evil allergic reaction. Once that was under control she fed me the remainder of the Sisplaten without selling me the farm. Now there may be some question as to whether I will get that sixth and last Sisplaten treatment, or maybe be switched to just the other chem they've been feeding me. Anyway all the extra baggies turned my 7-hour treatment into an 8-hour treatment.


This here be Michal all back from her year of au pairing in Auckland, New Zealand. It was a job fraught with hardships and danger. And she brought back photographic proof of the horrors she survived ..... sometime back I posted a shot of her kissing the first fish she caught, but that was nothing compared to what followed [To be posted soon as a separate set of photos and event descriptions].


I think my day-after chemo-brain is catching up with me and I will have to pause this post for now.

"But I'm still here."

Good afternoon and good love!