Day 130 - coming right up! chemo

Today was a very nice day. Stefan stopped in this morning on his way to lecture and we chatted for a while. He became the second person in less than a week to ask to hear "my story." It's funny how these things work. I haven't told it in ages, then all of a sudden, twice in one week. Hopefully, I told the same story both times!

Later in the day, Tommie came to visit and we chatted, ate lunch and went for a 2 mile walk. This makes three days in a row. I did get quite short of breath on this walk too, but I bet when I'm not anemic, I'll be able to walk and talk at the same time.

I haven't brought you up to date on the best articles in the latest journals in a while so let me do that now. The Oct 24/31 JAMA had only one article I liked much. It was the "Piece of my mind" by an oncologist who had prostate cancer and who wrote about "Cancer Survivorship and Beyond." It is kind of interesting, I think until near the end when it really picks up steam and he writes "A cancer diagnosis is obviously unwelcome. There is no minimizing the sense of threat, and clearly one wants to survive. But by moving beyond the focused identity of cancer survivor, one opens oneself to fellowship with all in the grip of life's fragility." I thought that paragraph was really lovely and kind of captures what I don't like so much about "cancer survivor": it makes it seem like the life threatening experience of cancer is a special club that people who have other life threatening diseases or just the life threatening condition of being alive can't ever aspire to. Except he said it better. There were a bunch of articles, but none of them was really very interesting to me.

The Annals from 10/16, however, had lots of good stuff in it. There was a really cool study of reusing resterilized ICDs in India. It's not legal exactly, but a group of people collected them in the U.S. and sent them to India where people who in no way could otherwise get them, got these fabulous life saving devices and the devices went on saving lives. Very, very cool. Then there was this other study where they took a dozen normal people and had them sleep normally four nights, then did a fat biopsy, then had them sleep for 4.5 hours/night for four nights and did another fat biopsy. They were hugely more insulin resistant in the sleep deprived state. We've talked before about how closely linked I think sleep and weight/metabolism issues are. Another little piece of evidence.

I'm still reading "Dying for Beginners" and still recommend it and still having fun with "Beautiful Swimmers." I haven't posted pictures of my darkening hair recently so here are two, taken with my fabulous new phone. You can't tell the texture of my hair, but it seems to be about the same. the color is a little bit darker, actually less gray and less white. This is the opposite of what I was expecting, but just fine. I'm not entirely sure that the first picture looks like me.

It's really me, but doesn't quite look it to me.

This is me, too with a nice cytarabine/decadron apple cheek rash

Since tonight is chemo night for me, I'm hoping for a quiet, non-eventful, sleep-filled night. That's not a bad wish for you, unless you want a rowdy, busy, awake all night kind of night. In that case, I hope that's what you get.