checking in - what have I learned?

I seem to have less of a sense of urgency about writing these posts these days. I do not know what that means...I wonder...should I formally have an ending to this blog? Should I just fade out with fewer and fewer posts? Should I work at keeping it going? The dramatic gains I made in the early months post treatment are gone, and now the gains seem slooooow and very gradual. I pray there are more gains to come, particularly in the area of salivary function. I pray the good news from the last scan will remain good news and that eventually I can really close the door on this episode in my life.

Here is one post I need yet to write..."What have I learned?" If I formally end this blog, perhaps that needs to be the title of my final post. I really need to put some thought into that. I suppose an even more meaningful post might be "How have I changed?"

Regarding my week or two since the last post, it has been generally good. There are still days my energy seems to forget to get out of bed with me, and there are days when eating is more of a chore, but there are also days when I feel more energetic and days I actually enjoy food again. It is always a treat to discover I can add a new food to the list of foods I can eat. Sometimes, it's up and down. For example, my tongue often gets invisible little cuts from the dryness or from getting scraped by some dry food in the process of chewing or swallowing...then I eat an orange and my eyes water with the pain of the acidic fruit on the cuts. But, I have also eaten oranges and enjoyed a burst of juicy sweetness, and not had that burning sensation on my tongue. It seems I am recovering taste on the left side of my mouth more quickly than the right, and I can tell that if I am going to taste anything sweet, it will come from the back of my tongue on the left...I have no idea where our taste buds are located, but that has been my experience. In the past, I just ate an orange and it seemed to taste sweet everywhere I chewed it. Now, I have to remember...back, left. I ate a marshmallow peep the other night...a past weakness of mine...I had to wash each small bite down with milk. The first bite was quite sweet...but by the last bite of it, the sweetness was gone. Weird.

If anyone has thoughts or suggestions about what to do with this blog, I'd be open to considering them. I know when I was going through what looking back seems to be a very bad nightmare lasting several months (which seemed like several years), this blog was always on my mind and often reading the encouragement from your comments is what kept me going. I started writing without the expectation of having anyone actually read what I wrote, and have always been amazed that there were people who regularly followed this beyond a few family members. I hope I have been able to convey how much that has meant to me. And thinking back, it seemed there were times I felt compelled to write about some aspect of my spiritual life, and other times I felt a need to share something I felt through the words of a poem I had read. More recently, it seems I am just writing "here's how I'm doing" kinds of entries, and I find it not very interesting to write about (or read) another post like..."guess what? I ate an apple today!"

So...my initial thought is that if my next doctor's visit/exam in late April yields good news, that I bring this blog to a formal end. Between now and then, I work on posting a few final thoughts, some of which I alluded to above. Then, we keep in touch through other venues... What do you think?