Holy cats, after all these months the photo shmackety (apart from some alignment weirdness) is working again! Thanks, webmistress! So here for your amusement are just a few snippets of what we’ve been up to lately: I’ve been teaching family literacy classes, mainly to teen moms and recent immigrants from Continue Reading
debrarian
one year
Friends, It was one year ago today that an X-ray revealed the mass in Valerie’s lung. She hiked up Silver Star Peak this weekend. Two weeks ago she biked to the coast, 55 miles in one day. This morning she made friends with Odell, the woman next to her in Continue Reading
uplift
I have just returned from a week in Carbondale, Illinois, where I was serving as pit crew for my fabulous glassblowing sister’s MFA thesis show, which was spectacular. While I was away Val met with the doctor and called me with this uplifting news: The CT scan last week shows Continue Reading
preliminary results
Fantastic: The PET scan showed no new hot spots. Cancer is NOT rekindling. Disappointing: The two remaining, shrunken tumors are not yet dead. In a preliminary report, the PET scan technician (or whoever phones over the preliminary info) says the scan shows “residual disease” in two already-known spots, which we Continue Reading
Tuesday
Tulips are blooming. Sunshine is forecast. Neighbors are emerging from their winter burrows. Val had treatment Wednesday, and all her blood numbers continue to be very good. (She’s a wee bit low on sodium, but we think it’s the gallons of water she drinks. I am going to get her Continue Reading
Now it’s April
Hello tenacious fans, We are still here. It’s April now. Things are riotously blooming all over Portland: trees, shrubs, flowers, mosses. Right now our front yard has four kinds of daffodil still in bloom (the early spring climate here works as refrigeration and the daffodils bloom for months), hyacinths, euphorbia, Continue Reading
another kind of birthday
This post is not about Val or about me, really. It’s about gratitude, and my dad, and how one year ago an organ donor saved his life. A year ago March 5 we waited to hear if my father had lived through liver transplant surgery. A year ago March 5 Continue Reading
Sunny day for an infusion
Hi all, Val’s wrapping up her regular infusion this morning with a view of pigeons on the spine of a roof across the way. All her numbers (white and red blood count, and about 45 other things) are back in the normal range. The doc is thrilled she’s exercising and Continue Reading
finding your way in cancerland
It’s a funny thing: Suddenly everyone we know knows someone newly diagnosed with cancer. Maybe this was happening all around us before we entered cancerland, back when we were unscathed, back before we spoke the language. Back in the Old Country. Now somehow we’ve become greeters here. It seems that Continue Reading
keeping an eye on the heart
Val just called with some results from her dad’s heart tests on Friday: apparently they show no perceivable blockage, which is good news. So no radical actions to be taken at present, but they’ll keep monitoring his heart (I’m not sure how yet) to track the episodes of slow-down. Deborah