port

Hello dears, They took Val’s PICC line out last week. Tomorrow she will have a port surgically implanted instead. Next week she’ll begin her second three-week cycle of Navelbine. At the end of those three weeks she’ll have a CT scan, and around then we should also get results from Continue Reading

Gemzar

Oh, cancer. You are such an exhausting prima donna. Go home. Get a day job. Take up fly-fishing. Become a cabbie, maybe? Turn all that energy to something productive, for once. Val had a CT scan Friday. We got the results this morning, and they were not we hoped or, Continue Reading

the underside looking up

i am waking up this morning. if my body is under me, or on top of me, hard to tell. then i am standing. and the slant in this old floor pitches me sideways more than usual. that is a clue. there are thousands of clues. the feeling of ten feet tall Continue Reading

breathing

Val did two rounds of chemo on the trial drug, her white blood count flattening out each time. Then the first scan showed that cancer continued to grow by millimeters. It was decided to ditch the trial and try a different chemo cocktail. It is now two weeks after the Continue Reading

de lay, de light, de spair

friends i have been infused. and the result is that i had to go on without my white blood cells. they would have only slowed me down. the masters of the universe wouldn’t give me treatment last tuesday because my white count was too low. it is a potent cocktail. and also a bone Continue Reading