checking in - Friday ramble

Another week gone. It seems to me that I am eating more and more food, but still just maintaining my weight. The good news is that I am maintaining with real food, and eating seems to get a little easier each week...it's been awhile since having to drink that dreaded Ensure. Taste continues to come back.

Today is a tipping point. When I was in the middle of radiation and chemo, I was so weak that I spent many days going back and forth from treatment in the morning, and then spending the rest of the day in bed...awake, but too weak to move about. I had nothing but time on my hands, so I occasionally would crunch numbers in my head to pass the time. Here is an example: One day I began calculating the number of years, months and days that had passed after certain events... I received my Ph.D. diploma in Dec 1980. According to the date on my degree, I was 29 years, one month and 15 days old on that date...how far off was I, I wondered, from being a doctor for as long as I was not a doctor... the answer I figured out, was Feb 5, 2010 which would be 29 years, one month and 15 days from the day I got my degree. So... there you go...isn't that fascinating? Tomorrow when I wake up, I can say I've been a doctor MOST of my life. To be honest, when I made the mental calculation, I feared I would not live to see this day, based on how poorly I seemed to be faring and feeling that day. I am amazed I remembered...there is so much of those few months that I have already repressed.

We have had yet more snow last night, and possibly more to come on Sunday...nothing like the blizzard on the East Coast, thank God, but we've had our share of blizzards this winter. We are three months from May...that sounds like paradise. I am not alone in thinking this is one of the worst winters in memory. I must admit though, it was the kind of snow that clung to trees and this morning there was no wind and it was silent and still and the blanket of fresh whiteness that hung from the pines and spruce trees and covered the gray and dirty snow beneath was beautiful. Just beautiful. Now, though, I want it gone. Enough of snow beauty.

I am scheduled for a CT scan on February 16. I often feel pains in my neck, which say..."the tumor is back." I'm pretty sure it's mostly my imagination...or just part of the healing process, but living with uncertainty is oh so difficult. At the same time, I realize we ALL live with uncertainty about tomorrow. The comfort comes when I remember that God has a very good retirement plan, and it's not subject to a real estate or stock market bubble. It's more than enough to last.