The Cue Ball

As promised, my before and after chemo shots of, as Jacob calls it, my "cue ball". I was talking to a cousin a few weeks ago and she told me about her niece who had undergone chemotherapy for lymphoma and lost all her hair. When her hair came back it was thicker and more lustrous than it had been before. So, being an optimist, I decided my formerly sparse, white hair would come back thick and black, like thirty years ago. When I mentioned this to my son he responded, in his best bedside manner, "Don't count on it, Dad". Thanks, kid.

Here I am before starting chemo. Nancy got me as I was heading off to work one morning last Fall.

Heading Off to Teach Last Fall

And just yesterday. Nancy took this as I was getting ready for the trip to Boston. Just a fringe left on top, though strangely, my eyebrows have grown thicker since the chemo. I'm told both pictures show off my "prominent" Armenian nose. Also, the chemo seems to have aged me a bit.

Yesterday Morning

In other news, I woke up too early this morning feeling slightly nauseous. So I dug out the acupressure bands, looked up the acupressure points Jennifer had given me, and dug out the ginger tea. Haven't had the tea yet, but the acupressure seems to be helping. Otherwise I feel pretty good. We just got back from a rather leisurely walk by the harbor. The boat from Nantucket had just docked and dropped off a bunch of high school kids from a sports team, presumably for a game against one of the local schools. It won't be long before we'll be taking that walk in shorts and t-shirts. I can't wait.

It's Over, Finally

Thank God it's over. It has been weeks, nay months of suffering, hoping to make it to the finish line with sanity intact. And today we got there. The two Brits finally got married!  Can I now please hear no more of it? Thank you.

Oh, and yes, today I had my last chemo treatment. It seemed to take longer than usual, but otherwise was just more of the same. The traffic going home was horrendous; we left the hospital at 3:30 and got home at 7:30, with an hour off to eat supper. It still took about twice as long as it should have. Next Wednesday I'll go back to Boston to meet with the chief radiologist and find out whether I'll be getting radiation. I thought it was the oncologist's call, but apparently it's her call. If I do have to get radiation it will probably be in June and I'll get it at BMC in Pittsfield. Jason described it again as an insurance policy. My last scan was very good and they're sure the chemo will end up getting all the cancer. But just in case there's something still there hiding where the scan can't spot it...

Tomorrow morning we'll go to see Jacob's soccer, his second of the Spring season but the first for us. He's getting pretty good, the result of several years in the league.

I don't think I'm going to lose any more hair, so tomorrow I'll post some before and after pictures of the noggin.

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday in New Jersey. My sister Lucille and brother-in-law Ronnie put out an over the top spread. Ronnie, who is an accomplished chef, made his signature ham (many have tried to copy it, none have succeeded), as well as eggplant parmesan, stuffed shells, mashed sweet potatoes, a delicious lasagne from their daughter-in-law Jessica, and a broccoli and cheese casserole from Nancy. Truly there was enough food to feed several dozen people. I did my share, eating more or less nonstop all day.

The weather was great, hot and sunny, so we were able to sit out on the deck all afternoon, enjoying appetizers and a cooler full of drinks on ice. Lucille's grandkids Jack and Lulu, ages 5 and 4, had a ball and kept the older cousins, Jill and Normunds and Lucille's four kids, busy while we grandparents watched the action. My little brother Bill came up from West Virginia for the weekend. It's always great to see him, and now that he's no longer living in Holland, we'll see him a lot more often. The only disappointment of the day was that my younger sister Joan, returning Saturday from New Mexico, was diverted from the St. Louis airport to Baltimore and missed her connection home. She didn't get home to Sheffield until 11:30 Sunday and had to miss Easter with us. But then again she's retiring in just a few weeks so don't feel sorry for her.

On our way home to Lenox we stopped in my New Jersey hometown, Pompton Lakes, to buy crumb buns from a bakery that has been in town since I was a kid. The crumb buns are amazing, mostly crumb stacked on a wee bit of cake. Unfortunately we didn't get to taste them because the bakery is closed on Monday. But we did take a nice walk through the town to see my old home. The downtown, which had been a shopping hub for the surrounding area when I lived there, had gone downhill in recent years, but looked much nicer this time after a facelift last Fall. Pompton has undergone a lot of growth since my day, but in many ways hasn't really changed. It was a great place to grow up and I'm guessing it still is.

After an overnight in Lenox, we left this morning for the Cape and arrived, fairly wiped out, around noon. Way too much driving over three days, but more than worth it. We had a late lunch, then both napped, pretty much killing the rest of the day. Friday it's back to Boston for my last chemo treatment. Then back again the following Wednesday to meet with the radiology team to plan for the radiation treatment.

Weather

For those of you who live in more temperate climes, here's what we woke up to this morning:

Thank goodness we're going to be down south for Easter, well New Jersey, which is south of us I believe, and probably won't have a White Easter like Lenox seems to be headed for. Ah, the joys of New England weather. But in truth, I wouldn't live anywhere else. I've experienced the utter boredom, the ennui, of Southern California weather, which ranges from sunny to hazy, where there are two seasons, green and brown, and where a neighbor used to rake the few turning leaves off his trees in the fall. A writer in the L.A. Times once summarized the Southern California experience perfectly for me in the line "another s**t day in paradise". It truly resonated at the time, shortly before we finally moved back east. And I've lived down south, in Florida and Texas, courtesy of the Navy. Thankfully both experiences were relatively short. I haven't lived in the heartland, but have driven through it many times on our cross-country jaunts. I can only say that until you've driven through Kansas in 104 degree heat with a car full of kids and the air-conditioner on the blink, you haven't lived. Or may wish you hadn't. We always breathed a sigh of relief when we finally saw the Rockies on the horizon.

My sister Joan is flying back today from a week's vacation in Taos and Santa Fe, NM. Even though we've visited there many times, I'm still jealous. I love the southwest, the desert and the Native American and Hispanic culture, but it's another place I wouldn't want to live.

I hope I haven't insulted anyone's ancestral home; if so, I apologize. It's all a matter of taste. I just like the Northeast, and New England in particular.

It has been a very productive visit home. We made a lot of progress in getting the place cleaned up. We were going to finish cleaning the yards today but nature intervened, so we'll work inside instead. I'm feeling my usual last-week-of-cycle good, eating non-stop but still not gaining any weight (but not losing any either). It should be interesting when  the treatments end and I keep eating like this.

I mentioned in a recent post that my son-in-law Normunds is an artist. I forgot to note that he has a website devoted to his art. It can be found at http://normundsbruveris.com/ and is worth a look.

The Maddy Interview

After Jacob's interview yesterday, I interviewed our four-year old granddaughter Madeline. Maddy is an adorable little girl with a strong will and a mind of her own. She attends a Montessori pre-school where she has learned a lot, including being able to count to twenty in Spanish (that's ten more than her grandpa can do) and to one hundred in English. Here is Maddy in her own words.

Ed: Hi sweetheart. What are you doing now?
Maddy:  Painting.
Ed: What are you painting?
Maddy:  A doggy.
Ed: What colors are you painting the dog?
Maddy: Red, black, purple, green, yellow and orange. 
Ed: Wow, that's a colorful doggy! What's your favorite thing to do in school?
Maddy: Water play. It's in Lynn's room.
Ed: Do you like to help Grandma make cookies?
Maddy:  Yeah. Because it's so fun. 
Ed: What's your favorite kind of cookie to make with Grandma?
Maddy:  Molasses cookies. I like them because they taste good.
Ed: Do you ever make a mess when you make cookies?
Maddy: No. Sometimes. Sometimes I make a big mess.
Ed: What is you favorite TV show to watch?
Maddy:  Yo Gabba Gabba.
Ed: Why is it your favorite show?
Maddy:  Because it's for kids.
Ed: What do you think about your brother?
Maddy:  He's so freaky. He's fun to play with.
Ed: Does he ever teach you anything?
Maddy:  He teaches me naughty things. Once we blew soap bubbles in the house. (Busted! Their dad just heard the whole exchange.) 
Ed: Maddy, who is your favorite cartoon character?
Maddy:  Tom and Jerry. I like to watch them all the time.
Ed: Who do you root for, Tom or Jerry?
Maddy:  Tom.
Ed: Why do you root for Tom?
Maddy:  Because I like Tom. He's so awesome.
Ed: What are you doing now?
Maddy:  I'm rolling up paper in the water. Like this. It's like a soup.
Ed: Do you like me interviewing you?
Maddy: No.
Ed: Do you want to stop doing the interview?
Maddy: Yes. 

The Jacob Interview

My grandson Jacob has been visiting us,along with his family, for the last two days. Jacob is a bright, active seven-year old who attends second grade at a Horace Mann charter school in Hyannis on the Cape. Horace Mann charter schools are part of the local school district (his is the Barnstable public schools) and do not take funding away from the school district, but are able to do things that are not part of the standard contract. I decided to interview Jacob, to try to get inside the mind of today's seven-year old.

Ed: Good morning Jacob. Who are those animals you're carrying?
Jacob: Blackie, Snauzer Baby, Dasher and Buster.
Ed: Wow. That's a lot of animals. What kind of animals are they?
Jacob: Blackie is a cat. Snauzer Baby is a dog. Dasher is a reindeer. And Buster is a dog.
Ed: Don't they keep you awake at night?
Jacob: No. They help me sleep.
Ed: So, what do you want for breakfast?
Jacob: I want Mickey Mouse pancakes.
Ed: And who's going to make them for you?
Jacob: Grandpa is going to make them for me.
Ed: Really? Are you sure he will?
Jacob: Yes, cause he always does.
Ed: Are they edible?
Jacob: Yes, they're really good and edible.
Ed: Flattery will get you everywhere, young man. So, what is your favorite video game?
Jacob: That's a tough one. I guess it is Kirby's Epic Yarn. You are this little pink guy named Kirby and you have to kill the evil guy, Yin-Yarn. He's the boss of the whole game. But I already beat him because I passed the whole game. 
Ed: Do you play video games with your friends?
Jacob: Yes. I played Kirby's Epic Yarn with my friend Ben. I also like Just Dance. It has popular songs like Monster Mash. There's a shadow and you have to copy the moves. If you do it better than the other guy, you win. I also play that with Ben. 
Ed: Do you ever get to higher levels in the games?
Jacob: Yes because in Kirby Superstar Ultra I got up to the last level, Helper to Hero. I got up to the thirteenth boss and his second form. I was just about to kill him with the rock guy. He had only a little health left. One more hit and he would die. But then he dropped jewels on me and I died.
Ed: I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sorry to hear that you died. I once got all the way to level one in a video game. Pretty good, huh?
Jacob: No. That's bad because you start on level one, so that means you've beaten no levels yet.
Ed: Speaking of sports, what is your favorite sport to play?
Jacob: Soccer.
Ed: How long have you been playing soccer?
Jacob: Three or four years. In the Barnstable Youth League.
Ed: Why is soccer your favorite sport?
Jacob: Because it's fun.
Ed: What position do you like to play?
Jacob:  I like to play defense and center.
Ed: You and I have played soccer a few times. Who usually wins, Grandpa or Jacob?
Jacob: Me. You never win. 
Ed: Ouch! So, Jacob, have you seen any movies lately?
Jacob: Yep. I saw Hop. It was about this guy who couldn't get a job and when he was a little kid he saw the Easter Bunny and the chicks flying the Easter sleigh. In one part of the movie the guy didn't want the bunny to live with him so he said "Great, I've got a talking bunny that can also poop out candy". You and Grandma should see it. It's really funny.
Ed: We'll put it on our list. So, what's your favorite subject in school?
Jacob: I like math and reading.
Ed: Well, you're a man after my own heart. What do you like about math?
Jacob: I like doing multiplication and logic puzzles.
Ed: And what do you like to read these days?
Jacob: I like to read the Kingdom of Fantasy books. There are many books in the series. I finished the original two and some of the newer ones. I also read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. I finished the whole series and I'm reading them again.
Ed: Where are you going?
Jacob: I don't want to do any more interviews.
 
And that was the end of the interview. Jacob got his Mickey Mouse pancakes as usual. Next time, an interview with our four-year old, Maddy. As for me, I'm feeling pretty good, with the evil days 6-10 behind me. One more treatment and I'll be done with chemo, hopefully for good.

Normunds

Had my follow up with Dr. T. and Jason yesterday. All my counts look good, maybe the best yet. My fatigue lately is to be expected, according to Jason, who compared my situation now to hitting Heartbreak Hill at the tail end of the marathon (Boston Marathon of course, which will be run this Monday). But then again, I'm almost done, so no complaints here.

We got home yesterday afternoon around 4 PM. Nancy went food shopping while I crashed. Jill and Normunds got in late last night to find the parents sound asleep. Besides being a talented artist, Normunds is a very skilled woodworker whose day job is building furniture. He is also a great guy, a loving husband and wonderful son-in-law. He and Jill would be terrific parents (hint, hint). Normunds loves to help when he's here, whether it's cooking, which he's very good at, or fixing things (there's always a candidate or two for fixing at this house). I knew he'd want to help me repair the damage to the house from the tree but I really wanted them to just relax and enjoy themselves. Plus we hadn't seen them in a long time. Normunds had different ideas. According to Jill he talked all the way up about the projects he wanted to do when they got here, basically fix everything that was damaged. Well, needless to say I didn't win that argument. Jill and Normunds went out after breakfast and bought a new post and four new rails. Normunds then spent the next three hours rebuilding the fence with my sort-of help, while Jill and Nancy worked on cleaning up the yard. Jill also took pictures of the work in progress (she works several nights a week as a photographer for Madison Square Garden, shooting Knicks, Rangers and Liberty games; her day job is in publishing). The fence looks great, and is more solid than it was before the tree hit it.

After the tree hit

Normunds wields the chainsaw

Getting a good fit

Almost done

Tomorrow Pete and family arrive for a visit and we'll say goodbye to Jill and Normunds. But only for a week. We'll see them next weekend at my sister's for Easter. Can't wait.

Sugar

For any of you that might still be reading this blog after yesterday's extremely nerdy post, this may be as bad, though it has nothing to do with computers. Browsing through Google News headlines early this morning I noticed a link to an article from the New York Times Magazine about sugar and its possible toxicity, i.e., not just that it may make us fat and diabetic but that it may be poisoning us by promoting hypertension, heart disease and cancer. That last part caught my eye. We certainly don't think of sugar as a culprit in cancer or, for that matter, in the other two diseases. The article, which I'm guessing is going to appear in this Sunday's edition of the paper, is quite long, but fascinating. The piece is inspired by the ongoing research into the toxic effects of sugar by Robert Lustig, who is a leading expert on childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, medical school. Lustig considers both refined sugar, the stuff we put in our coffee and on our cereal, as well as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the current bad guy in the sugar/obesity debate, to be essentially the same. According to Lustig, refined sugar consists of one molecule of glucose bonded to one molecule of fructose, making it a 50-50 mixture of the two. HFCS is 55% fructose and the remaining 45% is almost all glucose. Also, the more fructose, the sweeter tasting, which, along with the fact that it is cheaper, may explain the food processors' preference for using HFCS over refined sugar. An interesting sidelight is that HFCS began to replace sugar in soft drinks and other processed foods in the early 1980's because refined sugar was seen as the villain. Of course, now we've come full circle and HFCS is the villain, though it is still found in sodas and many other processed foods. The point of the article is that both are equally bad and for reasons beyond those we think of now.

I'll try to summarize Lustig's thesis: the difference between sugar consumed eating fresh fruit and that in processed foods like soda, fruit juices and bakery products is that in the latter the glucose and fructose hit the liver more quickly. If fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat, which induces insulin resistance. This phenomenon has been observed in experiments involving rodents. (An aside: There is no question that what occurs physiologically in animals in the lab will not necessarily happen to humans. However we can not ethically feed large doses of something to human subjects that we suspect to be harmful to them. So, as with the relationship between smoking and cancer, we can only demonstrate what may be called circumstantial evidence or an association between increased sugar consumption and diseases like heart disease and cancer, and then infer that there is likely a causal relation. We have shown experimentally that smoking causes cancer in lab rats, but cannot ethically perform the same experiments on humans. However comparisons of smoking rates and cancer in humans have consistently shown a positive relationship. Few people believe any more that smoking does not cause cancer.) To continue, metabolic syndrome, which is also called insulin resistance syndrome and includes risk factors like abdominal fat and high levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, is itself a major risk factor for coronary heart disease. According to the author, when you deposit fat in the liver (as in consuming sugar from processed foods) you become insulin resistant.

But what about cancer? The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization and is not controversial, according to the author. The basic mechanism: Insulin resistance leads to secreting more insulin and insulin  promotes tumor growth.The author quotes Craig Thompson, the head of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, to the effect that insulin provides the fuel and materials cancer cells need to grow and multiply. Also, insulin and insulin-like growth factor provide the signal for them to do it. Finally, the author quotes Lewis Cantley, the director of the Cancer Center at Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who states that "...up to 80 percent of all human cancers are driven by either mutations or environmental factors that work to enhance or mimic the effect of insulin on the incipient tumor cells."

That's a very brief and imperfect summary of a nine-page article. For anyone who wants to read the article, I will embed a link to the article here. It may or may not work. The new policy of the Times online allows 20 free articles per month; after that you have to subscribe. But they also allow free access beyond that to articles linked to from another website. Finally, I know it's hard to get excited about another health study when so many previous studies and their conclusions have later been contradicted. But personally I'd like to eat less sugar than I do now.

Tomorrow we head to Boston for my follow-up visit, then we'll go from there to Lenox.

Rainy Day Ramblings

I don't know if it's the dreary, rainy day here on the Cape or Day 6 kicking in (I hope not), but it's 3:30 PM and I still don't feel like I've fully woken up yet. We did get out for a walk at the mall this morning, running through a thunderstorm to get inside, and I got my half hour at Barnes and Noble while Nancy finished her walk. I found a book on Ubuntu Linux, my new favorite operating system. I learned a lot about the development of this wonderful free software. It derives from Unix, which was developed at Bell Labs, I think in the 60's, and the X operating system, an early windowing system developed at MIT and used long before Microsoft even dreamed of windows (I remember working with X on computers at RPI in the 80's when I was teaching at Siena, where we were still typing obscure commands into MS-DOS to get anything done). Of course I didn't buy the book, which was extremely technical, lots of command line stuff which made my eyes glaze over. Linux is more widely used for large, shared systems than by individuals on a single computer so far, and this book was written both for people like me and for system administrators and programmers. Thus the high geek quotient. But thanks to Ubuntu Linux, I now love my laptop, the same laptop that I was ready to throw away just a while ago. And I really don't need a manual - it's a very easy, intuitive system to work with. And there is an amazing amount of good, free software from Ubuntu. This morning I downloaded a photo processing application that has many of the capabilities of Photoshop, free of course. Learning how to use it is going to be a job, a project for another rainy day. So, if you're running a PC and you're frustrated with Windows, I highly recommend trying Linux.

We're heading to Lenox this Friday, after my follow up at Beth Israel. Jill and Normunds are coming up for the weekend and Pete and Melissa and the kids will join us Sunday through Tuesday. Then it's time to start repairing the damage to the house and generally getting the place in shape. We'll spend Easter with my extended family at my sister's in New Jersey and then head back to Lenox and the Cape.

My PED Kicks In

I don't look like Barry Bonds yet, my head hasn't grown two sizes and no new muscles, but my very own Performance Enhancing Drug, the steroid Prednisone, has definitely kicked in after two days. I woke up at 2 AM this morning wide awake and raring to go. After browsing the web, eating some pineapple slices and coconut ice cream (the appetite is going strong), I read for an hour or so and then managed to get back to sleep for an hour. Had a big breakfast at 5 AM and just got back from a brisk three mile walk. Experience tells me this won't last much past the end of the Prednisone on Tuesday, but it's kind of fun for now.

Falcon nesting under the bridge

Falcon in flight

We got lucky yesterday and spotted the peregrine falcons at their nesting site under the Sagamore Bridge. Even though they generally pass through the Cape about this time of year they almost never nest here. This is according to Chief Bird Watcher Dr. Pete, who got some great shots of the birds nesting and in flight. They are amazing flyers, not only the fastest birds but the fastest creatures on earth. They have been clocked flying at 200 mph, and the military has studied them with the goal of copying some of the bird's adaptations for extreme speed to its airplanes. We were lucky to see them fly as they went foraging. They looked like they had been fired from a slingshot, then were able to turn on a dime and get back to speed almost instantly. It was an awesome sight. Pete got these pictures with his Nikon 3000 using a 300 mm zoom lens. Good shooting!

It's another beautiful day on the Cape, warm, sunny and very little wind. Hopefully the weather will stay this way as we're planning to take a trip to the outer Cape tomorrow, along scenic route 6A to P-Town and the ocean.

Good News

We just got back from Boston for my next-to-last chemo treatment. We met first with Dr. T. and Jason to talk about my scan and what happens going forward. The scan results give dimensions and something called SUV for each mass, SUV being a measure of the intensity of the mass, how "lit up" it is on the scan. All three masses in my chest have shrunk significantly and become much less intensely active. For example, the largest mass previously measured about 10 cm in its largest dimension. That number is now 1.9 cm. The SUV's showed similar improvement, falling from double-digit values to numbers in the 3 - 4 range, barely significant. The other two masses had corresponding improvements. So I'm doing very well, and was right about where I should have been after four treatments. Thankfully I've tolerated the chemo very well, the last time being the best, and I expect this time to be at least as good. My numbers from today's labs are all good. Even the sodium is back where it should be. I'm eating well and putting on some weight, even getting some of the old pot belly back. So we're both very encouraged. My worrier-in-chief promises me she'll stop worrying now. And I don't feel like I somehow failed, which has been nagging me for the last week or so. As for what to do next, Dr. T. would like me to follow the chemo with radiation, as a kind of insurance policy. The radiation would start about a month after my last chemo and be two or three weeks of five day per week treatments. Most likely I'll have the radiation locally at Cape Cod Hospital.

Tomorrow we'll go with Pete and the kids to see a pair of peregrine falcons that are nesting near the Sagamore Bridge. Sounds like a lot of fun, and we're in for a rare sight if we spot them.

Travel

I love to travel. Nancy does, too, which is good. It's one of the many ways we're compatible. I just love to see new places, the more exotic the better. We're lucky in that we've been able to take some wonderful trips, both with our kids and with just the two of us. Even exploring new places here on the Cape or in the Berkshires is exciting. This morning we spent a few hours taking care of some business, completing re-enrollment forms for the VA that I had been putting off for several weeks, and then packed lunches and headed out to do some exploring. We found ourselves at a beautiful beach that we hadn't seen before and had our lunches there. I should mention that it's a warm, sunny, slightly windy day today, great beach weather. After we ate we drove through some more places we hadn't been to, then headed home (after a stop at the library to read the Times, which will probably become a habit now that the online edition is no longer free).

I'm reading a book called The Last Three Minutes, by an Australian physicist named Paul Davies. It's about the universe and what its ultimate fate may look like. It's somewhat dated, having been written in the early 1990's, but is very readable and to me, very exciting. I've always wanted to travel in space. It's not going to happen but it's fun to imagine, and to read about the strange, almost incomprehensible character of our universe. It also made me think about what a unique and beautiful place the earth is, and what terrible things we do to it and each other. We fight and kill each other in our endless wars and rape the environment so the obscenely rich corporations and individuals can become more obscenely rich. When I think of these things my usual optimism eludes me. I've read too much history to think we will ever stop killing each other. It seems our history is one of war and little else, wars over land, wars over religion, wars over tribalism; you name it and we'll fight over it. I find it hard to think of any period in history that I've read about when war was not the central event. Are we evolving beyond that? If so, it's hard to see today. Well, I guess that's all a little depressing, so I apologize. But I'm going to post this anyway.

I'm still feeling good and eating well. I'm anxious to hear Friday what the doc is going to recommend for treatment going forward. I suspect it's going to be a couple of additional cycles of chemo and/or radiation. I've been looking online at some lymphoma forums and that seems to be fairly common. I'd rather be done sooner, but whatever it takes, we'll do.

I Spy

We got back to the Cape Saturday shortly before noon, after a whirlwind trip to Lenox. I didn't get much done by way of repairs to the house, though Nancy did clean from top to bottom. But we had wonderful visits with family and old friends, and the house will be waiting for me to make it better when we finally return for real.

Yesterday we had the kids to ourselves while Pete went bird watching with a friend and Melissa started getting her garden in shape for the Spring. The weather was beautiful. Nancy had made up I Spy lists for both kids (Maddy's was all pictures, with big boxes to check off; once an elementary teacher always an elementary teacher) to find things like a nautical house, a wind turbine (there are two in our neighborhood), an evergreen tree, and so on. Jacob and I ended up walking about two miles; he was determined to find everything on his list. It was great fun. Back in the condo the kids spent the next hour painting rocks, making an unbelievable mess. But they had a great time doing it. Later Melissa brought over a delicious dinner of chicken picatta, pasta and salad, along with a homemade chili. Dessert was angel food cake and strawberries. Needless to say I stuffed myself.

I finally got the results of my PET scan last week. The tumor has shrunk and doesn't light up as brightly, which is good. I was hoping it would be gone entirely, but that probably wasn't realistic. When I go back to Beth Israel for my chemo this Friday Dr. T. will talk about what's next. It may be more chemo or radiation or both, or maybe I won't need anything more. We'll see. For now I feel good, still eating a lot and keeping pretty active.