As good excuse as any...

I passed my test!  I was pretty sure that I would but it is not exactly the kind of test one can study for.
My blood is perfect and I have no lumps or bumps, no signs of cancer returning at all.  And the MRI and PET scans will be talked about at the end of January, my next scheduled appointment.  I gave him my arguments not to have them now and he respected my reasoning.  I have no symptoms and therefore no cause to get these tests.  I don't have the strength for another, much more invasive "cure" than the last one!And they are expensive, weather my money or the insurance company's, money best spent somewhere else.
And I am welding again, in the process of living and would prefer to focus on that.
   It is interesting how we can take an illness and make it a life's focus, controlling everything that we do.
I think back over my life and I have never done that.  Oh, I have hurt myself for sure but never gave it much time, just never saw myself that way.  I remember once, years and years ago when I was working at the local cannery.  I was severely burned when a batch of cream style corn exploded, getting 2nd and third degree burns all down my back.   That sent me to the hospital but I heal fast and only missed three days of work.
On another occasion I was in a traffic accident when some thief stole a car and rammed into me going 80 mph.  This destroyed the car and smashed a disc in my back causing me to wear a brace for about six months.  I missed a week of work for that one and returned working along with the others in my cumbersome back brace.
   I broke my hand once, smashing it with a three pound hammer and boy did that hurt!  I worked another two hours, finishing what I was doing.  I did go to the doctor for that one too but not until the next day!  He put my hand in a cast which I was to wear for six weeks.  I didn't miss a full day over that, just a few hours!
   There were lots of other times I could have made an issue of an illness or accident.  A few years ago I fell off a Church roof, steep as any church, fell 16 feet straight onto a concrete sidewalk landing on my bottom.
It looked like you beat me with a baseball bat!  I never even went to a doctor over that.
   The point to all of this is that I am not my cancer and have never been.  It wasn't a fun process and the chemo took its toll on me, that is for sure.  But at its worst when I couldn't lift 20 pounds I was still in my shop every day, doing what I do, even if with a weakened effort.
   It would be easy to focus on what is wrong with me, dwell on my neuropathy, worry about my lungs and that I can no longer run, haven't the strength I used to have.  It would be easy but oh so boring.

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Doctor Appointment

I think I have a doctor's appointment today. I only remember that it is soon and in the afternoon so I will call them this morning to discover the time.  This is a three month check up, one year and three months after my last chemo!  He will have the blood suckers extract some samples and with the power of modern medicine, within five minutes they will know most everything about me, down to the parts per billion.
   I will be weighed and measured and stripped, pushed and prodded and poked.  They are hunting.
I know he will suggest another MRI and PET scan, something I successfully avoided three months ago.  My last scans were half way into the chemos and the cancer was gone then yet I continued with six more chemos
"just to be sure".  Enough chemical poisons to give me neuropathy for a lifetime and maybe chase away the cancer for good.
   I don't know what my answer will be.  I am still thinking about it this late, just hours before my appointment.
I haven't made up my mind.
   The down side to me, the reason not to get the scans?  They are horribly time consuming and boring.   You get them and wait, schedule another appointment, get some kind of analysis, make another appointment and you lose three days of your life just doing that.
   They are very expensive.  Oh, they won't cost me much, I have great health insurance.  One of the lucky few.  But money is still spent and they are not definitive.  Always that odds game one plays with cancer.
   The other reason, the other down side to getting these tests is the answer, any test results, will have very little significance to me.  I am living my life without cancer now.  As if I didn't have it.  I do what I want.  I do what I am able to do.  I never think about it.  It is not my focus at all.
   I have no strength to fight this fight again.  My hands cannot get worse.  I can't allow that.  I have my strength back but in a new limited edition.  I am good for short distances and short bursts of energy.  My lungs have taken a beating from this cure and more "medicine" would do them in.
   After the blood letting and looking up stuff in the computer, after feeling me up in a not nice way at all, he,
my Voodoo Doctor will sit me down and ask me how I am doing?  That is not an easy question from a doctor.  I have to be careful with my answers.  Guarded answers.  The wrong answer will get you sent to another specialist, more testing.  Cutting if sent to a surgeon, zapping if sent to the radiologist and more cocktails if sent to another voodoo doctor.  I am very careful indeed with my answers.
   I have always dealt with the uncomfortable in life with distraction.  As soon as possible I will get the conversation to art and hopefully it will be a fifteen minute appointment with my doctor that is not about me at all.
   I have no symptoms at all.  No lumps, no bumps.  Nothing that made me go to him in the first place.
I think I am going to be all right.

My Art is HERE

Behind the poverty numbers: real lives, real pain EarthLink - Top News

Behind the poverty numbers: real lives, real pain EarthLink - Top News

Corn Weather

Mid September already and we are experiencing an Indian Summer.  The days are warm and sunny with cool evenings, great for sleeping, and the best weather for corn!
   My garden was hit and miss this year with some things doing well and others not so well.  Sometimes I think of my garden as one entity and wonder why some plants do well and others don't?
   A year ago I couldn't grow a cucumber to save my soul.  They all succumbed to "damp-off" and withered as baby plants.  This year I have them all over, in abundance!
   It was a wet and colder than normal Spring and my garden began slowly, chilled by the air and wet from the rains.  Tomatoes especially hate that weather, hate being cold at night.  I planted 25 plants, seven varieties, all heirloom, and lost almost 20 to early blight, a condition encouraged by their cold beginning.
Five plants ended up doing very well despite this seasonal cold and from these alone I am getting a lot of tomatoes!  Enough to get out my food dryer and dehydrate them for future use and Christmas gifts.
These were the strongest plants, resistance to disease and prolific.  I will save their seeds for next year.
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Tomato seeds are the easiest of all to save.  Just squish them onto a paper towel and let them dry. Then next Spring tear off a little paper towel with the seed attached and plant them.

My other Blog is HERE

Immune?

   I sometimes wonder whether a person can be immune to cancer?  Some people don't get it.  Even smokers don't always get it.  There seems to be a thousand ways to get cancer and yet, some people don't get it.

   I don't have it now.  I have been thouroughly probed and prodded, examined from the inside out.  I have none.  It is all gone!  All but the idea.

   I don't know whether my cancer was fast and I caught it in time or slow and methodical and I caught it in time.  I know I had it pretty much everywhere.  What began as a lump on my neck had spread to my spine and spleen and my entire lymph system.  50-50 odds is what I was told, or maybe a little less.

  Six months later, 12 Chemos later, $130,000 later, all my hair gone later, and fifty pound light, it is gone.

I may have starved it to death!  Certainly what had become a comfortable host became uncomfortable.

   The cancer was always like an alien being, something that did not belong.

   I feel fine now and sometimes that worries me.  My hair is back.  My weight is back.  My strength is back.

In a way it is like I never had cancer.  Just a dream.  A nightmare really.  I am just like I was before cancer!

Why it snuck up on me in the first place I will never know.  I always wonder whether it could do so again?

   Maybe I am immune now.  I think that too.  Like sometimes a severe case of poison oak will give you future immunity.  Or you only get "chicken pox" once.

There are certainly days when I never give it a thought and I wonder if lack of gratitude will turn back to bite me!  Although I don't think the cancer was caused by a deplenishing well of gratitude.

   I am living now and welding, creating my kind of art and having fun.  It is summer and even with a late start my garden is doing well.  I ate the first tomato yesterday!

   I think once a month will be enough to post here.  It will remind me of where I have been.  To the very edge, looking over and not liking it one bit.

you can always find me HERE

Three More Months!

All's well that ends well.  I had a great visit with my Voodoo Doctor!  He just got back from a short vacation so we talked mostly about Italy and that was just fine with me.  I did the blood test.  It is red and all perimeters are where they are supposed to be!  My blood pressure is perfect.  It has always been on the low side of normal.  I don't get riled easily.  and I have a pulse!  That is a good thing!
   He couldn't find any lumps or bumps either but had the audacity to suggest that I could stop gaining weight!
   I will have to think about that one.  I started this process weighing 225 pounds and went down to 170 pounds.  For awhile I lived on one Ensure a day, if you could call that living.  Now I weigh in at 217 pounds, not exactly welter weight but I am ready to get back in the ring!  I enjoy a good meal and none of this weight gain is from potato chips!
   We did discuss the PET and CAT scans and I went through my rationalzations with him.  They are boring.
I would rather be doing something else.  Anything else.  They are dangerous.  They cause cancer.  They are expensive.  No matter who is paying the bill.  They are not 100% conclusive.  There are no guarantees.
There is too much evidence that my fight with chemo-therapy worked.  I have had these PET and CAT scans before.  Three times.  The first was at the beginning of this mess and those were pretty clear.  I had cancer everywhere!  In well over 100 lymph nodes.  In my spleen and in my spine.  The cancer was thriving, living well and expanding wherever it wanted.  The second series of scans show the battle midway when I was halfway done with th chemo-cocktails and clearly the cancer was running scared.  In retreat. and my last one was a year ago when I finished with this "therapy" (it wasn't like a massage at the hot springs!).  The cancer was gone!  I want so much to say, "just like that!" but it wasn't easy.
   So, all the evidence says the cancer is gone and the issue really is, will it return?  No one knows how it got there in the first place.  I lead a dangerous life but there is no connecting.  No found reason for cause and effect.  It just doesn't sound right when the tool of discovery causes cancer!
   We agreed on a course of delay.  My next appointment is October 6th, three months from now.  Three months of summer that I didn't get last year.  I won't fret and worry over this and told the Doctor that I am likely to forget the appointment unless I am called to remind me.  I have way too much to do!
   So we talked about Italy and pizza and bottled water and little cafes in central Rome.  It was the best doctor's visit, ever!

Today is The Day!

Five hours from now.  I have my "One Year Check Up"!...and I still don't know what I am going to do!
I know my voodoo doctor will want to do more PET scans and CAT scans and I am still battling!
Should I? or should I not?  They are a bother; there are a million other things I would rather do.  I don't like doctors.  I don't like hospitals.  I don't like waiting rooms.  I don't...like waiting!
   And then there is the very big issue, what would I do if the cancer returned?  Taking "chemo" the first time is always a risk.  Maybe it will do this and maybe it will do that?  They don't really know, everybody is different.  Maybe it will cure you and maybe it won't?  It will make you sick though and that is for sure!
Some people have had "chemo" twice or even more and I just don't know how they did it?  Where did they get that kind of strength to enter the fire again?
   I start my day with Vicodine and end it with Vicodine when I go to sleep at night.  I have pretty bad neuropathy in my hands and a little in my feet.  I have enough pain.
   These tests cause cancer.  They are the same as getting 400 x-rays in a single day.  They are not fool-
proof, they don't see everything.  They wouldn't come with a guarantee.
   They are extremely expensive.  I have great insurance but that is only by luck.  It is still expensive whether
I pay for it or they do.
   I have no symptoms.  No lumps, no bumps, no chills, nothing.
   This time a year ago my garden was a mess.  I couldn't lift 20 pounds. I couldn't weld nor paint, couldn't make art of any kind.  Couldn't.  Couldn't do anything.  Nothing.
   Now I am strong again and my garden is weed free and perfect, all set up for "that perfect tomato"!  I can weld and work and make art.  I can eat again!
  I just don't know.  Four hours now and we shall see?
My art is HERE