Some people

A nice chat in the infusion room with a woman whose daughter had accompanied her to pick up a continuous chemo system. She was going to get a fanny pack to hold the drugs which would be administered through her port while she went about her daily business, getting the chemo 24/7 for several days. However, there had been a glitch and the system wasn't ready.

She and her daughter seemed upbeat and friendly, and we exchanged the usual what-are-you-here-fors. She has esophageal cancer. Most of the time, though, we talked about Scrabble. She was clearly a good player, knowing about qi and wiz, looking over Jerry's shoulder and spotting good plays, so we agreed that if our schedules ever lined up it would be fun to play together.

As time went by, though, she got more and more annoyed at having to wait. Finally I overheard her saying to her daughter, "Well, it looks like we'll have time to go out for a cigarette," and they got up and left. They came back rather quickly, probably after they found out that Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a non-smoking campus and they'd have to walk a fair distance to get to where they could smoke.

So.... am I totally bigoted in being horrified that someone on chemotherapy for esophageal cancer is still smoking? I found myself emotionally pulling away from this very nice woman just because of that. On the one hand, who am I to judge anyone else? On the other, how can she?

Hoofbeats

When the doctors finally put my symptoms together and we found out that I had pancreatic cancer, one of them explained why it had taken so long. "In medical school they told us that when you hear hoofbeats, the first thing you should think of is horses, not zebras." In other words, the common explanation is usually the right one.

But when you're in a situation where the common explanation wasn't the right one, you tend to think zebras the next time you hear the hoofbeats.

Last week I started coughing, so of course my immediate thought was metastesis. What else could it be? Jerry, more realistically, said that I sounded like I was coming down with a cold. I got out the zinc, vitamin C, and my new best solution, elderberry extract, dosed myself up with all at frequent intervals, and drank lots of tea with honey and lime, and I feel fine.

Sometimes they really are horses.

The Kitchen

Jerry said to wait until the tiles for the backsplash are in, but I couldn't. He also has the new and improved island to do, but meanwhile I'm cooking and enjoying the spaces, the prep area, the SINK, and the window into the laundry room.

The bright pumpkin orange ended up a bit too bright, so Jerry toned it down to more of a turmeric color, and I love it. The backsplash will be the same burgundy as the trim.

Gorgeous, hmm?

Signs and Portents

We live at the southeastern corner of this crossroads. I took the picture from Pleasant Street, which is the official street we live on, looking at the signs for (from left to right) Ryan Road, Frost Hill Road, and Bixby Street.

The more I think about this, the more confused I get. For one thing, even after forty years of teaching ESL, I'm not sure what differentiates a road from a street.

For another, this picture sums up just why it is that people from, say Utah just to pick a wild example, get so confused in New England. Four roads (streets?) meet at an otherwise uninteresting point, and instead of road A crossing road B and continuing to be road A, it suddenly becomes road C. Why?

Then there's the question of the names themselves. Pleasant St. is simply and appropriately named. Frost Hill Road is clear, except to the flatlanders who come around during leaf peeping season and want to know if this is the actual road that the poet lived on (someone actually asked me that once). But who were Bixby and Ryan, and what did they do to deserve the honor?

My big question, though, is why there are only three signposts at the corner. Even though Pleasant St. is the main road up the hill from the town, it doesn't rate a sign of its own.

Perhaps this is all some sort of philosophical metaphor. Here I am on this unlabeled (but pleasant) street, at a sudden crossroads in the middle of nowhere, facing cryptically named roads leading off -- where? Should I be thinking in terms of treatment options, lifestyle choices, or my immortal soul? I won't even get into the fact that one of the roads, but I won't tell you which, is a dead end.

Or maybe this is the place where the traditional New England jokes about lost flatlanders originated.

"Does it matter which road I take to get to Jaffrey?"
"Not to me, it don't."

Progress!

Jerry wouldn't agree, but I think the whole kitchen project has gone incredibly smoothly. The walls and floor are now probably more true and even than they ever were before, the cabinets are all in and filled (drawers that slide in and out without tugging!), the countertop and SINK are in and working, and the first coat of primer is on the walls. Jerry's putting the second coat of primer on now. Wait till you see the final colors.
I spent Saturday morning putting things away, and, as promised, throwing out the worst of the paper goods. It's a wonderful feeling.

Anniversary season again

With all of the kitchen and car projects, I let an anniversary go past. Two years ago on the 12th of October I started getting the symptoms that eventually led to my diagnosis. I look back on the four months between the onset of the symptoms and the diagnosis itself and remember that the pain and confusion were just a part of other health problems -- we worried that the operation on Jerry's ulnar nerve wouldn't work and would leave him unable to play. We worried that his cardiologist would find something odd about his aortic valve, and he did, though it turned out to be nothing to worry about. Jerry also had a painful UTI during this time. And a few weeks later, I took my fall down the slippery hillside and completely blew out my posterior tibialis tendon. It wasn't surprising that the stomach pain and jaundice seemed like just one more thing instead of The Big Thing that it's all turned into.

Yet here I am, two years later, and in amazingly good shape. Yes, I take a variety of pills every day, though a lot of them are self-prescribed vitamins and minerals. Yes, my energy is good except when it suddenly disappears. Yes, I have to plan each week that I'll spend one afternoon at the treatment room and the next day lying on the couch feeling as though I'm coming down with the flu. Yes, I'm relieved that I'm not still working and getting exposed to all the germs little kids share with everyone around them.

But these are small things. What's important is that family and friends continue to support me. Every day truly is precious. There are still new things to learn, laugh at, and glory in.

And next year's anniversaries to expect.

A quiz for you: Which is the new car?

Yes, we did it. A 2010 Kia Forte, and while it doesn't have the heated seats and GPS they tried to sell us, it still has enough bells and whistles to give us a learning curve, including a neat system in which you can move from automatic to a kind of manual transmission without a clutch. Just right for our needs.
And, of course, we still have the '76 Volare for backup, though I'm not sure if it can actually back up.

It's nice to get that out of the way. Does anyone really like buying a car? My fantasies never include long, fast car rides with the wind in my hair and loud music surrounding me. I just want to get from point A to point B as smoothly and efficiently as possible. And up the hill to our house in the middle of winter.