Well, even though the site doesn’t look much different, I got some good behind-the-scenes updating done yesterday. I would have done a little bit more, but I had to drop everything so we could go see Jake Johannsen at the Hartford Funny Bone in, you guessed it, Manchester.

I don’t get it either.

To make things even more interesting, the club is in a mall. Right next to a Panera Bread and a soon-to-be-opened Bertucci’s. Will the weirdness never cease?

So I’m lying on the couch, sweating and typing, and Barb’s cell rings. barb didn’t get there in time, so had to wait for the voicemail. It’s her best friend Mary, wondering if we’d like to meet her and Craig (her husband, if you’ve just joined us) in Manchester to see Jake at 7:30. Would we? Would we? (Harelip! Harelip!)

Shortly after, either Mary calls the home phone or Barb called her back (the heat makes things fuzzy) (that’s what she said). Come to find out, we’re going to meet them at Pepe’s beforehand for pizza. We need to meet them there at 5:30. Sounds great, yes?

Did I mention it was 4:45? Or that Barb and I both needed to get showered and cleaned up? How about that Google says the mall is 41 minutes away?

We cleaned up in record time, got Phoebe fed and put her in my office (where the air conditioning is), raced out to my car, charged up the flux capacitor and made it there a mere ten minutes late. Which, now that I type it out, doesn’t seem nearly as impressive as it felt. Did I also mention that my “low fuel” light came on halfway there? That might have added to the excitement.

So we made it there in possibly record time (considering all the drafting and coasting I had to do), had some great pizza, and watched some great comedy. The MC was great, the first guy (Tom? Sorry - if I don’t take notes, I’m useless) was awesome and Jake was possibly even more funny than he usually is. Still seems weird to see him without the curly hair, though.

The MC’s last name was “Crohn” so he made a couple of Crohn’s Disease jokes, which made Craig feel good, since he has it. In his words, “Hey, this means at least someone knows what it is now!” Yep, they’re hittin’ the big time. When we left the club, I was tempted to pull the MC aside and confront him.

“So. I heard your little Crohn’s Disease jokes up there. What, cancer isn’t FUNNY ENOUGH any more? Where are OUR jokes? Pander to us!!!!”

But I didn’t, since each of us sickos needs our time in the spotlight, right?

We made it back home without incident (the gas station was downhill from the mall) and I only had to spend $36 on gas!!

Because I only put in half a tank’s worth. Oy.

I really thought I was a loser and had already missed a day of posting, but it turns out today was actually yesterday’s tomorrow! Whodathunkit.

Of course, that could be from pulling my umpteenth work all-nighter last night. Finally got (most) of the bugs worked out and the Big Project is out the door. Mostly.

I can see all of you, but it’s like through a weird hazy fog…

Since my brain is wandering more than usual, here’s a short list of things you can expect to see in the near-to-not-so-distant future:

• Brian finally gets his personal life extricated from work.
• Brian finally gets back to work on Cancer is My Bitch.
• Night of the Splitting Blogs! Since I’m soooo over the whole cancer thing, I’ll be going back to the ol’ random non-cancery posts. Between that and pushing ahead with the CiMB movement, I’m going to “Splitteth the Blog in Twain” as the kids say. Anything cancery or CiMB-related will still be there, while the old weirdness is safely nestled back in the bosom of moondoggie.com
• Brian finally gets his photos organized and uses that domain he’s had for them for, like, forever.
• Brian finally gets the CiMB emails back up and running.
• Brian finally stops referring to himself in the third person.
• Flying cars!
• Trendy new web designs!
• Occasional frightening personal discoveries of how old I am, when I do the math after hearing things like Billy Joel releasing a special 30th anniversary edition of The Stranger.
• Purple, purple, purple, as far as the eye can see!

I’m ready for my nap now, Mr. DeMille.

Wow - August was my last post. August? Seriously? Wow.

There have been a lot of reasons for my silence the past few months. The first one being (say it with me gang), work has been crazy. The craziness is finally starting to call down just a little, so I’ll be able to pay a little more attention to you, my adoring public.

The other big reason is, I’ve lost some great friends recently. With each one, I’ve felt that I needed to write one of my novella-length posts in memorial to them both for me and for their families. But with each new loss, that meant I had another novella that I needed to write. I’ve felt more guilty for not paying proper tribute to them than for leaving all of you in the lurch.

With these enormous self-imposed tributes hanging over my head, it didn’t feel right to write about the more trivial things in my life until I paid them each the proper respect. And due to the work craziness, I didn’t have the time available to sit and type away.

Finally, my wife and a bunch of Hodgers made me see the light. Last weekend, we had our big Hodgeapalooza East meetup, where a bunch of us from the Hodge Board got together to eat, drink and be more than merry. It was an awesome weekend keyed off by the fact that two of our more prominent members from Scotland were planning on making the leap over the pond for vacation (no matter what Veronica says). Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime possibility, we had a great turnout of folks with their spouses and/or parents, patients, former patients and caregivers alike.

The most amazing thing is that in this large group of people (30? 40? My math’s been bad lately), there wasn’t a single person who made you think “Oh man, I can’t wait to get aWAY from this fool!” When’s the last time you’ve had that happen in a large gathering? Of course, there’s always the possibility that I was the fool to get away from, but I’m just self-centered enough to convince myself that that is more than likely not the case. Maybe.

Meeting all of these people in person for the first time after going through so much with all of them was… some word that I don’t know. Wherever “amazing” “extraordinary” and the like are on the scale of greatness, pick your own word that’s thirty or forty levels above those. That’s what it was. Being around all of my Hodge family made me realize just how much I’ve missed having them in my life, even when they’re primarily words on a screen. I also realized that not only am I being heard when I speak, but that I’m missed when I’m silent. The realization absolutely floored me. A few people told me how important my jester-like presence was and others told my wife in secret what a difference I was making for them by just yammering away. Okay, they used nicer words, but I have to keep myself grounded, you know.

Seeing that I was making any kind of difference to people out there in the cold cruel world also finally drove home one thought I had been keeping in the back of my brain: The friends I have lost would be SO pissed off to discover that they’re part of the reason I’m no longer out here making people giggle or shake their heads in disbelief at the latest dumb thing I did. I think this is proof positive that there’s no such things as ghosts, because I’m sure they’d all be haunting me by now.

Even though these people were very important to me, I’m going to finally break the barricade by not worrying about long tributes with the perfect thing to say. Sometimes the most perfect tribute is to say that someone has touched your life and will be missed and thought of every day.

Anne-Marie, Sarah, Shannon and Doug - you four are in my heart and mind forevermore. Anne-Marie and Sarah are two of the three people who got me fired up about how folks were treating them and made me decide to make Cancer is My Bitch a Movement. I got a shaky semi-start, but that’s another project crushed by work, another promise broken. I’ll be taking up the CiMB mantle again shortly though, and it’ll be bigger and better than ever. Shannon and Doug I only knew through their spouses, who posted on our Hodge board, but they were just as much family as every other Hodger out there and just as much pain when we lost them. Though I only got to see them through Jesse and Deb’s eyes respectively, it was obvious even secondhand just how strong and loved they both were.

I miss all four of you, though I can’t imagine it’s anything near as much as the people who were actually with you in person feel.

Okay, I’m back to posting now. Now will you guys PLEASE quick making all those spooky noises in the attic?

I’m definitely going to be posting more often now (lofty goal, since my last post was about 10 months ago) and I have Big Plans for CiMB, Moondoggie and my photography, but I’ll slowly reveal those later. I doubt I’ll reach that lofty “post-a-day” goal that I usually set for myself, and I’m tired of breaking promises. So that means, you’re left with “I’ll be posting more frequently,” so suck it up, people.

I just noticed that my last post was on JUNE 22nd and now I’m finally posting again on AUGUST 22nd. Spooky! Not to mention that my jersey number is 22 as well. Oooooo! And Oingo Boingo is playing too! That doesn’t have anything to do with the number 22 as such, but it’s a spooky sounding song.

So here I am, putting off writing another post because I have so much to catch everyone up on, which means that more stuff happens, which means I put off the post longer, which means more stuff happens, which means I start to get a little dizzy after awhile. So now, it’s time to break the cycle. There will be a lot that’s happened which might occur to me to mention down the road aways, or I might never get around to it and have this hidden little dark corner of my life that you don’t know about, filled with forgotten ideas and trips to the ice cream shop.

So, some of the biggest news is that I had chicken pox. Again.

(For my Hodge board friends, this is in reference to the pox I just had, not another, which would be the third time, if it happened).

Yes, I had the pox as a child, but the stem cell transplant sets your immunity back to zero, so you have to get re-immunized for everything. For once, it wasn’t a case of me slacking and putting it off or forgetting. You can’t get re-immunized until you’re one year post-transplant, and I had only recently hit the mark (July 12th, my first re-birthday). So now hopefully next week I’ll get my immunizations. I had to wait to be rid of the pox, then I had to spend a week or so forgetting to call and set up my appointment. D’OH! I would do it this week, but Barb’s volunteering at the Hole in the Wall Gang camp this week, and I want to make sure someone’s around to take me to the hospital if I need it.

Sure, nothing untoward typically happens with immunizations, but I think I’ve shown I’m not quite typical when it comes to the medical world.

Another thing making me feel young and happy with the world is that I bought my first laptop. I’ve had many a desktop computer, but have never really had a reason to get a laptop until now. My previous job with the state gave me a state-issued laptop since I was on the road, but that’s not quite the same as your very own flat-black-cased rectangle of awesomeness.

Of course, me being me, I couldn’t simply get a laptop with nothing special happening. I compared a bunch of stats, features and prices and went with a nifty Lenovo ThinkPad (formerly IBM). I was a little surprised as I watched all of the shipping information that everything was originating in China. Sure, I have a bunch of stuff made there, but usually it’s sent to a US warehouse so it looks like it’s coming from here. Then, about a week after my new baby arrives, I find out that the US Government sent back a shipment of Lenovo computers after discovering Lenovo was owned by the Chinese government. Great. Now the Chinese government is going to know my Minesweeper scores.

Let’s see, in other news, I’ve finally seen a neurologist, and he’s prescribed Neurontin for all of my ails. This is awesome, as it seems to cover all kinds of problems I’ve had, both pre- and post-cancer. I’m in my second (third?) week of it, and so far, so good. Of course, I haven’t done a lot of walking since I started taking the pills, so I don’t know how it’s taking care of the Lhermitte’s issue. Time will tell.

As for now, it’s back to work. There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Hey Everybody

Still busy as always, but I had to get a couple of words out before getting swallowed back up again.

First, thanks to all of you for your care, concern and love over the past few days. If there’s one thing cancer does, it’s surround you with great people. I haven’t had a chance to respond to your comments and emails yet, but I will soon!

Second, speaking of emails, I’ve recently discovered my spamblocker has been going a little nutso on who it decides to block. So, if you sent me an email awhile back and I haven’t responded yet, you might be one of them it caught. Or I might just be a lazy, good-for-nothing slacker. Only time and some digging will tell, but I’ll get back to you soon!

Lastly, the biggest news. I had my PET scan this morning and… it’s clean! There’s a little bit of activity around my appendix, but since I’m not keeling over in agonizing pain, everything seems to be fine. Now we can all get come sleep this weekend :)

After you’ve gone… and left me cryin’,
After you’ve gone… there’s no denyin’,
You’ll feel blue, you’ll feel sad,
You’ll miss the dearest pal that you have ever had.
- Henry Creamer & Turner Layton

Well, today marks an anniversary of sorts. One year ago today, my thymus walked towards the light and left this mortal coil after being sucked through a tube and diced into little bitty bits. So long, sucker.

It seems a strange thing to commemorate, what with the regular birthdays and the stem cell birthday and the diagnosis anniversary and the first symptom anniversary and all, but for some reason, I found myself counting down the days until today. Maybe it was my subconscious way of getting myself to feel okay about sitting still and writing instead of working on some project or another.

I’ve always been at least a vaguely self-reflective person, and quite good at ferretting out the reasons behind why I am or do certain things. I seem to recall there’s something special about that quality and ADD. Either it helps your brain to do this, or you’re not supposed to be able to do this. Either way, it’s one of my more powerful and annoying traits. While I can see why I’m doing the things I’m doing, that doesn’t mean I can actually do anything about them, which makes it all the more frustrating.

Can you tell yet that this is going to be a long one?

I’ve had a lot of little bumps in the road as of late, and I’ve been getting the feeling that there’s something that floats around in the air with us Hodgers, as when I start to feel or think about certain things, someone always winds up posting about the same thing. In this case, we’re talking about those ol’ Post HL Blues that Paige brought up. I would’ve posted this over there, but as soon as I tried, the site went down.

Oh well, I’m used to muttering to myself. It’s comforting, and I always laugh at my jokes.

Back to the topic at hand - me. Anyhoo, I’ve been driving myself a little crazy for the past few months, both through my actions and my examinations of those actions. Like most things dealing with cancer, it’s worse at night.

For starters, I’ve finally come to a new realization, somewhere in the middle of reading that similar thread on the NHL Side that Kat posted a link to in Paige’s thread. I’m not totally sure it could be called a realization, since I knew it in my brain somewhere, but at some point tonight I suddenly new it in my gut.

The cancer claimed another victim. He was 32 years old, had his whole life ahead of him, and had no idea what hit him. Granted, it didn’t take him quickly - these things never do. But though he hung on for a year or so, his time of death can be placed right at the start of it all. On October 3, 2003, Brian Watts died.

If I were a drinker, I’d raise a glass to that old forgotten me. If I were a gangsta, I’d be sure and pour some of my 40 on the ground in his memory. But starting with that first infuriating itch, that Brian’s fate was sealed.

And now you all have to deal with me.

Sure, there are still ways that I’m the same. Times when people recognize the “old me.” It seems like other people see it a lot more than I do, though. Hell, there are lots of ways that I’m better that I was.

Brian Watts, Geek. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man. Brian Watts will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.

Okay, so the “stronger” part hasn’t happened yet, unless they were talking about will or determination. But who wants that? I want that cool noise when I leap over cars. At the very least, I want to be able to walk two blocks without having to start limping from the L’hermitte’s. I want to be able to exert some physical energy, take a break, then get back to work, rather than just having to put my head down and grind because I know that if I stop to rest, I won’t be able to continue.

I want to look in the mirror in the morning and see me, not The Other.

Granted, being a new me isn’t necessarily a bad thing - our dearly departed Brian did have his flaws. Who doesn’t? But it’s not necessarily a good thing either. At best, I seem to have just traded in my old scuffed up luggage for a larger, heavier-duty set. Big Joe vs. the Volcano trunks.

Currently, my biggest suitcase contains “overworking.” Actually, a few of my larger ones carry that, as well as this carry-on and one of the fanny packs.

You see, I’ve been caught in a mental trap of sorts ever since the firing back in late February. One side of the trap goes like this: “You’ve recently accomplished An Amazing Thing. You beat cancer. Now is the time to appreciate life and all of its beauty. Go out and smell some roses!”

The other side of the trap sounds like “You’ve recently accomplished An Amazing Thing. There was obviously some Reason this happened, so you’d better hop to and get to work. You were put through the struggle and came out on the other side for a Reason, so you’d better not screw around smelling roses - you’ve got work to do! Go fulfill your DESTINY!”

Yet another side follows this line of reasoning: “You beat the Hodge - this time. This thing comes back and that first fight wasn’t all puppies and lollipops. It’s time to make hay while the sun shines. You’d better get to work and get those ducks in a row now, because you don’t know how much longer you actually have.”

I think that last side is what’s been bothering me the most lately. It’s bad enough knowing what Sarah and Anne-Marie are having to deal with and occasionally having the “that could be me” thought pass between my ears in the midst of all the usual static.

But I’ve found that it’s even worse when the thought isn’t cutting through the static. Because it’s there whether I hear it or not, screwing with my every action.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of home repair lately. I’ve embarked on projects that surprise some in their grandeur, but that I consider fully within my means and abilities. Yet, once I get started, they’ve all been spiraling out into madness of Lucy Ricardo proportions.

One late, late night, covered in grime and cobwebs and curses, the reason for this suddenly dawned on me. I was trying to make everything I did bulletproof. Why?

Because I might not be around to fix it if it breaks.

That’s right - my subconscious has been pushing me to work harder, faster and crazier, because it’s convinced I will die soon and I should make sure that things are taken care of. How messed up is that?

And what’s worse is, that’s only one facet to this new Brian’s screwy new life. Let’s go write on the chalkboard for a bit.

• A Subconscious certainty that It’s Gonna Get Me, and Probably Soon
• New job with ever-expanding responsibilities and needed job skills with ever-shortening amounts of time to learn and do it all (not the Death thing, but the Time Management Thing)
• A new puppy (well, new since February) who, while she’s a bundle of joy in her life, does have her moments, like any creature, be they man or beastie.
• The Baby Thing. I’ve had so many different chemicals pumped through me that I’m no longer a factor in the actual fertilization part of the baby process. That means that we can’t just go and get knocked up like most couples - we actually have to think about how we’ll make it happen, when to make it happen, and think about all of those “what ifs” and “whys” and “hows” and “should we’s”. Aside from the stress that all causes, there’s the added bonus of feeling like a failure. Not one of those male “I should be able to spread my seed far and wide” type failures, but a feeling of failing Barb, not being able to give her something she wants and truly deserves. Then again, what has she done that’s so bad to deserve a little Brian running around, right?
• Aside from that failure thing, there’s also the lingering thought in the back of my head that always upsets Barb’s when she sees it in my eyes, but I can’t help it. So skip to the next bullet point now, Barb. Please. That other thing is the suspicion that I’ve ruined Barb’s life. Not that she’d ever think or feel that way, but while I can see a lot of good things that have happened in her life from me being around, I also see a lot of bad. And when the nights grow dark, the bad things pile up.
• I know there’s a whole hell of a lot more going on in my mind right now, but I’m too tired to think of it. But I did ask Barb to skip down to the next bullet point, so that meant I had to write something, right?
• Oh, here’s another - Responsibility. Responsibility as a Survivor. Responsibility as a Husband. Responsibility to my fellow cancer folk. Responsibility as a furry little girl’s Dad. Responsibility as a Homeowner. Responsibility as CTO of a small company that I could accidentally destroy with a few misplaced pieces of code. Holy crap - it seems that at some point in the last year or two, I grew up. How much does that suck?

So all of that has been weighing on me as of late and kind of driving me into the ground. I tend to not be able to think of all the possible problems at once, for much the same reason I’ve never been able to cry about myself. I can dissolve into a puddle watching a home makeover show because I know it’ll be over in an hour and the crying can stop. Today, it was an episode of Overhaulin’ that got me. And if that’s not pathetic enough for you, I’m actually tearing up a little right now thinking about it. But if I cry about me, when does the crying stop? So I can’t cry about me, but I can (and do) cry about all of you in your battles. And about movies where the rookie learns a valuable life lesson from the veteran. Or when Barb looks at me That Way. Or when they call the wind Mariah.

Anyway, back to the driving into the ground bit. Some days are better than others, some are worse. Lately, we’ve been swinging to the “worse” side. Why?

The Itch is back.

Originally, I thought it was because I had missed a couple of days of my Doxepin. I was so busy and swamped with work and home projects, that I couldn’t convince myself to drop it all long enough to go get a refill. I’ve been back on it for a couple of weeks now, and it’s not cutting through this time.

I would hope it’s allergies or stress or polonium poisoning or such, but it’s all too familiar. I already have the fresh wounds and hour-old scabs. I’m already down to about five hours of sleep a night again, interspersed with random wakenings, sometimes to scratch, sometimes just to stare at the wall and wonder why I’m awake this time. A couple of mornings, I’ve had the joy of once again having to clean the caked blood out from under my fingernails after I woke up. Joy.

I have a PET scan coming up next Friday (the 22nd if you’re still reading, and if you are, you’re my new best friend. I will quiz you before showing you the super-secret best friend’s handshake, though), and for the first time ever, I’m actually a little scared.

Aside from the ol’ scanxiety (which I never had before now, since I got so used to hearing bad results), there’s another thing I’m scared of and that’s my stupid subconscious. Aside from all of the typing it’s made me do tonight, there’s one other little thing it did. I was supposed to have my PET scan back in May. Somehow, I always managed to forget it until 6 or 7 at night. Or I’d be “too busy” to get away and make a phone call. Even with four or five voicemails from the onc’s office reminding me that I really do need to call and schedule that scan soon.

But I finally did it, so we’ll roll the dice again and see what happens.

And with that, I think I’ll post this and see how long I get to sleep tonight.

Weird as it may be, though I started the post with “After You’ve Gone,” (Benny Goodman’s version, if you’re interested) at the moment, my iTunes is playing the theme to The Great Escape. Odd, yet somehow strangely appropriate.

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted here, but life’s been getting in the way a lot as of late. In the past two and a half months, I’ve dreamed up an idea for a survivorship movement, I’ve started selling t-shirts to get the movement’s message out there and get survivors out where people can see them, I ran myself into the ground trying to make a deadline for work, I’ve been to Texas for a Planet Cancer retreat and to visit my parents, I’ve been fired, and it looks like I’m on the verge of being hired again. There have been many trials and tribulations over the past couple of months, but more than ever, I’ve been feeling that “guiding hand” presence.

I’ve never really been a religious person, haven’t really believed in fate either. But with each step I take through this cancer journey, it seems that more and more I’m seeing things happening for a reason, and it seems that nine and a half times out of ten, that reason is to get me back on track with CiMB. Whenever I’ve felt down or strung out and tired from overwork or like giving it all up, something always happens. I’ll get a wonderful note from one of you complimenting me on what I’m doing. I’ll read a touching story that hardens my resolve to Do Something for my cancer surviving family. I’ll get some little something that gets me back on track and shows me that my path has already been written down somewhere.

Usually it’s something small like these things. Like they say, it’s the little things that mean a lot. Sometimes it’s bigger things that happen, like losing my job. After all, if I can’t work on CiMB because of all the time I’m putting into work, that guiding hand has to make it go away, right? It also has to then make another job available to me that will make me work more on CiMB, and it has. But now that hand has done the biggest thing and gotten personal. It took my friend Mike away from us.

We met Mike and Sarah at the Planet Cancer Young Couple’s retreat. They’re from California and were our roommates for the weekend. Mike was a survivor of the Hodge, stage IV, just like me. Only trouble was, he was diagnosed twelve years ago. All of that chemo and all of those years of fighting had taken its toll on his body, but his heart was still strong and he was prepared to fight this thing forever.

It’s amazing how close this cancer can allow you to get to people. From complete strangers to best friends - no - to family almost immediately. We bonded with everyone there and became one big happy semi-diseased family. And there was so much about that weekend that kept me inspired and kept me going when I felt like I couldn’t go anymore. Mike was one of the main images in my mind for so many reasons, so many of which (as has been typical lately) just resolved into anger. I never really indulged in the “Why me?”s through all of my treatments, as I knew there were plenty of folks who had it rougher than I. But Mike brought out the “Why me?” in me. Namely, why am I standing here, looking fit as a fiddle, while my poor buddy Mike has been through the wringer over and over again? Why did I breeze through when he had to fight so hard? It’s not fair. It’s not right.

I hate this fucking disease.

I hate the fucking politicians who won’t save our lives.

I hate the fucking media for turning the country’s brain into mush and going after sensationalism rather than news, or at the very least, get sensationalistic about something that actually fucking matters, rather than the latest update on where an ex-stripper is going to be buried.

I hate myself for setting my quest aside for work or for rest or for any of the millions of things I’ve told myself I have to do.

Sarah just got off the phone with us a little while ago, telling us of Mike’s passing. He loved his shirt and wore it proudly, which makes sense for a guy with a biohazard tattoo on his back. Sarah said that for that weekend, he was like the Old Mike again - no cancer, just life. I’m honored to have been able to spend even a little time with a real-life hero, and my anger over losing him is wiping my slate clean.

No more excuses, no more screwing around. In the next couple of days, you’re going to be seeing a lot of changes to this site. I’m taking my Idea live and I’m going to start tilting at some fucking windmills. For those of you who only know me in the real world or through this site, you might not have learned of the Grand Idea, but believe me, before long, you will. It would be a disgrace to Mike’s memory and the memory of all the other warriors we’ve lost to this cowardly, piece of shit disease if I fell asleep on the job again. We can’t afford to lose any more Mikes.

Mike, I know you’re up there in heaven and all, but keep giving ‘em hell.

You know how sometimes you’ve got this nagging feeling that there’s something you should have done, but can’t quite put your finger on it? It turns out that in this case, that thing was you, my lovelies. Or at least giving you guys the latest updates in Moondoggieland.

Actually, it’s not so much a forgetting as it is a remembering at the wrong place. Like thinking of posting something when I’m downstairs and worn out from a day’s work and two hours worth of sleep the night before. Then it all reaches that awkward point where there’s so much stuff to tell that I’m too tired to sit and type for long enough to get it all out. But you know what I discovered today? Stuff keeps happening. So I’ll just start typing and we’ll see just how updated you get.

First off, the biggest news I’ve been keeping from you, my loyal and adoring fans. I had a PET scan last Monday. This was a follow-up PET scan, specifically to check up on the cancer. Unlike those previous ones that were mainly to check for infections or weird pains and such. Last Tuesday, I visited SuperCoop for the answer.

I am cancer-free.*

In deference to my parents and grandparents, I will say “Holy expletive EXPLETIVE!”

No wonder four letter words are so easy to use - “expletive” is hard to spell and doesn’t quite look right.

So can you imagine how excited and thrilled and overjoyed Barb and I are? I can guarantee that you can’t, because you’d probably overguess us by a mile. It’s not that we aren’t all of those things, it’s just that our minds haven’t grasped the meaning behind the results enough to let us be ecstatic and giggly. In fact, I think some people are a little concerned with our rather nonplussed attitude. My current theory is that we’re so used to hearing bad news and expecting bad news that we haven’t fully figured out how to act when good news hits.

It does seem to be sort of time-released happiness, though. I’m definitely more happy, excited and giddy about it that I was last week. This time next week, I may be wetting myself with joy. We’ll see.

You might have noticed the asterisk on the diagnosis. That’s another reason we can’t be 100% ecstatic right now. Remember The Itch? The Itch that started this whole ride and would occasionally rear its ugly head? It’s been back in full force since just before Thanksgiving. Wasn’t this supposed to be caused by the Hodgkin’s? We all thought so. But hear I am, clean PET scan under my belt and torn up, scratched-through skin everywhere else. SuperCoop is rather stunned, since my PET looked so good. He checked me over and found one lump behind my collarbone that was negligble. He said with my PET results he wouldn’t think it was anything, but with all of this itching, he wants me to see an ENT and get checked out by someone specifically concerned with neck stuff just to be sure. He also recommended I go back to my dermatologist to see what he thinks. As SuperCoop said, since it doesn’t appear I have any cancer right now, there’s not much an oncologist can do for my skin.

I saw my dermo on Friday. We’ll call him Dr. Heald ’cause, interestingly enough, that’s his real name. Dr. Heald gave me a good looking over and tossed out a few theories.

1. This itch we’re seeing is The Itch of 2003, which never really went away. You see, with most of my chemo treatments they would give me various steroids to keep down inflammation. That also keeps down itches. This rings true, ’cause looking back through my blog before the appointment to write down my full medical history (damn, these things are useful) I saw a recurring theme: I’d go through chemo, then a few days to a week later I’d freak out ’cause the itch was back. Not every time, but repetitive enough that I was surprised I didn’t pick up on it sooner.
2. The itch is something new. That’s kind of a given, if it’s not the old one, it has to be a new one.
3. The itch is something weird from the stem cell transplant time. There are a couple of possibilities with this one. One is that I picked up something weird in that post-sct time when my immune system was compromised. Maybe I have monkeypox after all. The other possibility is just that something weird happened. That one’s less likely, since my stem cells came from me. In scts where someone else is the donor, he said there have been instances recorded where really weird things happen. For instance, say Barb is giving me her stem cells and let’s pretend she has psoriasis. Turns out, there’s a good chance I would wind up with psoriasis by taking her stem cells, even though I didn’t have it before then. Weird, huh?

Right now, the theories are academic. We won’t know much more until we get a biopsy (which he did last Friday) and we have the results (which we get this Friday). In the meantime, he gave me a really strong antihistamine to take and some Elidel cream for my blotchy face. I dropped off the prescription after work and picked it up to find in my bag a tube of Elidel and an antidepressant. Pardon? I called Barb to make sure I heard Dr. Heald right. Yup, she heard “antihistamine” too. Huh.

Naturally, this is all Friday night, after doctors have left the office. All I have to go on is that he told me it would put me to sleep that night. The three nights previous, I had two, two, and four hours of sleep. This pill said “May cause drowsiness” all over it. Good enough for me. I get home, take the pill and go to bed at 10:00.

I wake up at 2:00 the next afternoon. Holy crap! And I wake up groggy too, like if I wanted to, I could’ve squeezed in a couple of more hours. Nice! The effect wasn’t as strong as my itching Saturday night or Sunday night and I’m back down to around four hours of sleep again. I called the office early Monday morning and they confirmed that while this is an antidepressant, it is also a strong antihistamine. The trick to it is, it’s one of those drugs that has to build up in your system before it starts to really work. The little Walgreen’s drug sheet just says it may take “several weeks.” Doc says the good thing about this drug is they can actually measure it through my bloodwork and see how well it’s working. My itch does already feel different. It’s not as… urgent. Like, sometimes I can almost ignore it for a little while. If I do happen to scratch, it gets just as maddening as ever. Hopefully this will improve with the ensuing days.

Oh, and just in case someone stumbles across this page on a random Google search (I’ve been seeing a lot more medical questions coming this way since I was diagnosed), I’ll state it plainly. The antidepressant doxepin is also a powerful antihistamine and can be used strictly for that purpose. I’m living proof. See the above paragraph if you skimmed to the good part.

So that catches you up to my life now, health-wise. We still have technology-wise and life-wise, but those will have to wait until another day. Now it’s time to go rest my weary hands.

Well, it’s time for the End-of-Cancer present we’ve all been waiting for! Barb’s taking me into NYC today to see… The Colbert Report! If you have Comedy Central (11:30 EST people - get a nap today after work!), be sure and look for a bald guy if they happen to show a shot of the audience (it’s the Colbert Report. It happens.). Tonight we get to see Dr. Michael Novacek, dinosaur hunter - you know what that means: EVOLUTION DEBATE! YES! Al Franken’s supposed to be there too - sweeeeet.

You might have noticed I alluded to being bald. While I’ve had some hair grow back in since the stem cell transplant, what was there was short, fine and babyesque. I decided to shave off what I had in the hopes that stronger stuff might come out. Plus, it’ll make me easier to spot in the audience :) It already feels like a good idea, ’cause my head feels a lot stubblier than it did when this stuff was growing back on its own. It looks slightly weird though, ’cause the stubble gives my head a sort of blue tint. Maybe that’s just what color it’s going to be growing back as.

Well, I did it - today was my first day back at work. That would be Day +122 for those of you keeping track of such things. I myself had to sit down with a pen and paper and do the figuring, so that number might not be right anyway.

Work went well. I’ve forgotten a lot of programming stuff, but I’m well underway in re-learning it all. I went up and down the stairs four times and was quite bushed when I got home tonight.

In other news (since I did no posting in the month of October - for shame!), we’ve rented out the Hartford house! They’re a nice young couple and love the house. So much so, that they’ve mentioned a couple of times that they really want to buy it when the lease is up in April. Cross your fingers that we have a mild winter so they won’t be freaked out by the gas bills. This came just in time for us, since we can now take the house back off the market and someone will be there to shovel the walks and keep the pipes from freezing. Plus, they’re covering most of our mortgage payment, which always helps.

Of course, the very day that the lease was signed and we got the first/last/deposit check, Barb’s check engine light came on. Then my airbag light went on. Barb’s car is gonna cost us $2600 to fix, and I’m pretty sure mine’s a short in the dashboard, as it does other weird things. For the truck, we’re doing research on trading it in and getting something that’ll be safer for me to drive in the winter. That’ll give me something else to write about out here, at least, right?

We had a moderate number of trick-or-treaters last night, with the best being our little next door neighbor. Her brother was dressed as Anakin and she was something furry (both near ten-ish). She asked Barb if Barb could guess her costume and after a little pause, perusal and a couple of spins, Barb asked “Are you a squirrel?” She was overjoyed, since in fact, she was a squirrel. Barb mentioned that squirrels were my favorite and how I take care of my little buddies. Turns out, they’re constantly feeding the little guys as well. No wonder we have such fat squirrels in our neighborhood!

One last sad Halloween note - I came very close last night to reporting some parents for child abuse. We had to return some pants I bought earlier in the day and around 7:30 the trick-or-treaters had slowed down to a trickle, so we went back to the store. When we get to the store, it was us, the employees and a family consisting of two parents and two kids, both within trick-or-treat age. Not only were the kids not dressed up for Halloween and out trick or treating, but they were in a clothing store SHOPPING FOR SHOES! Sure, if you have some wacked out religious beliefs, you can keep your kids from celebrating pagan holidays like Halloween, Easter and Christmas, but to instead take them shoe shopping? That’s just cruel and unusual.

Oh, and a quick website note - I’ve added some more warriors over to the Hodgkin’s Army list. If you’ve sent me your URL at some point, I probably have you added now. I’m going to make a resolution to start going through my backlogs of email and start replying to all of the people I didn’t get to reply to through the stem cell days and such. Better late than never, right? Right?

So I just returned from a trip to Stop & Shop and discovered that Father Time drives a Benzo. In the S&S parking lot, I followed a silver CL500 with the license plate “Time” driving substantially under 5 mph. After wondering if Jerome was driving it with the big mirror in the passenger seat (come on people, stay with me here) and if Morris Day was in a Beamer behind me somewhere, I got a gander at the driver. Well, not the driver so much as a little bit of his gray hair, since naturally, that’s all I could see over his steering wheel. Who new eternal beings went for German luxury?

In cancer news, I saw SuperCoop today and everything looks okay. I’m going to be getting a PET scan in November sometime and it occurs to me as I type this that I have no scheduled appointment either for the scan or a followup appointment with SuperCoop. Oh well, I guess someone will call me eventually. I also set up an appointment to see a headshrinker (the licensed kind, not the aboriginal kind) and will perhaps discuss my Father Time sighting with her on Monday.

Oh, also as I was driving to the Stop & Shop (current craving: OreIda crispers. current need: bigger freezer) and I get to the end of my block, a lady is driving towards me and preparing to turn to her right as I turn to mine. As she turns and I see the side of her car, I think to myself, “What a nice lady, showing her support for someone in her life that has cancer.”

I tootle on down the street a ways and pull up behind a car at a stop sign and think, “Here’s someone else giving us… ‘Support Our Troops’? Ohhhhh yeaaaaahhhh… the yellow ribbons aren’t for us. Crap.”

I’m not sure if this means that cancer is still very much on my mind or if I’m just really, really self-centered.

The oven might be preheated now, so I’ll leave you with those nuggets. I have more to write on what I’ve learned (eventually) and I’m also going to be getting around to answering all of your emails really soon, so don’t despair!

First, the cancer update. I saw the retina folks yesterday and, after a 53 minute wait, found that my eyes are still doing slightly better. Two hours of sitting and a fifteen minute exam to find this out. I have an appointment in three months to do the same thing.

I also saw the dietician for the radiation therapy folks to discuss the types of stuff I should be eating right now, since my esophagus is acting a little wonky. Basically it boils down to avoiding spices, citruses, acidics and sharps. So no Thai, no oranges, no tomato sauce and no chips. She also was trying to paint a semi-bleak feature for me, mentioning that the esophageal effects could linger for a couple of weeks after treatment. Then she got around to asking where I was, treatment-wise. After hearing I only had three treatments left (two as of today), she changed her tune. Naturally, she didn’t realize she was dealing with a badass.

I’ve recently gotten it in my head that it’s time to start riding a bicycle. I’m thinking about getting a single speed mountain bike, ’cause I’ve never really been enamoured of the whole bicycle-shifting thing. A single speed bike is supposed to be a tougher workout that requires less concentration, which is right up my alley right now. The only problem I have (aside from finding a place that sells the one I want) is the image thing. The cancer survivor is taking up bicycle riding. You know what that means - Lance Frickin’ Armstrong. Thanks for spoiling it for the rest of us, Lance. Now everyone thinks we’re you or trying to be you. Maybe I’ll wait until my hair grows out some more, tell the shop owner I’m recovering from a shark attack.

Wow, a month can go by pretty quickly when you’re not paying attention. Let’s see how quickly I can get you folks caught up.

In my last post, I thought I’d be admitted to the hospital later that day. I was right. After a nuclear medicine study of my lungs and an echocardiogram, I was eventually admitted to the hospital. The primary reason for the admission was because SuperCoop wanted to have a CT of my chest done with contrast (aka x-ray dye). This stuff is iodine based and rough on the kidneys, which isn’t good when you’ve recently had renal failure. Thus, he wanted me in the hospital so they could overhydrate me and give me a drug called mucomyst, which helps protect the kidneys.

Long story short, I was in the hospital for six days and all they could come up with was a little pneumonia. In addition to the echo, nuc med and CT studies, I also had an MRI of my C-Spine and T-Spine (neck and upper back). Turns out I have a slipped disk around T-5 T-6 or T-6 T-7. Maybe it was T-7 T-8. Anyways, it was apparently an old injury but interesting to learn. Not quite worth the fifty minutes straight in the MRI tube, however.

Oh, and I got to meet with the radiation therapy folks who did my simulation on Friday (a CT exam that lets them figure out where they’re going to aim the radiation). I then receive three tiny tattoos in the form of black dots.

Immediately upon leaving the hospital that Saturday, Barb took me home so I could shower the hospital off me. Then we went to Moe’s Grill for a burrito and stopped by the movie theater to see Little Miss Sunshine. Great afternoon and the way everyone should get to leave the hospital.

The next week or two I was pretty depressed. Not sad depressed so much, but a combination of blah depressed and “don’t feel like doing anything” depressed. Unfortunately for you folks, that means no web updating.

Two Thursdays ago (9/7), I started developing a pain in my left shoulder. Initially it just felt like I slept on it wrong, but by Sunday it had progressed to an unrelenting stabbing pain down through the top of my shoulder. Put your hand on your shoulder. Not there - more between your shoulder and your neck. You know how you can sort of feel the gap in the bones there? That’s where the pain was.

Last Monday the radiation folks look me over and say it’s not ’cause of them, since this is out of the radiation field. Unfortunately, they don’t have the power to order random x-rays and such over at the hospital, so they recommend I go through the ER. Incidentally, everyone at Yale calls it the “ED,” which I know stands for “Emergency Department” (after having the first person who used this acronym repeat it three or four times), but it’s still wrong. An ER is an ER, not an ED. If anything is an ED, I would say a school is. Especially if it’s special.

Anyway, I go over to the ER and they zip me right in again (let’s hear it for cancer!). They take a chest x-ray and think they see some pneumonia. Guess who’s going back in the hospital. This time I’m in there for four days. This time was quite exciting because the floor just got brand new beds.

It really sucks that I know this.

After I had been there for a couple of hours, SuperCoop comes in the room, eyes all agoggle. “What are you doing here?”

I figure he’s joking and start gushing at length about the cool new bed (it was quite impressive after the clunkers they used to have, believe me) (still depressing). He stops me as I’m showing him how the head of the bed goes up and down silently to say, “No seriously - what are you doing here?”

Turns out the ER folks had been talking to SuperCoop’s fellows, who had neglected to relay to him that his star patient was causing trouble again. He was on the floor making his rounds and just happened to notice that my name was on one of the doors. Comforting.

So after four days and a few more random tests, I leave the hospital minus the shoulder pain and any knowledge as to why it might have occurred. It just stopped around the third day (same day I had a shoulder MRI), so they figured they couldn’t hold me there any longer. Damn straight.

So now I’ve decided that if anything hurts or feels weird I’m not telling anybody. Every time I do, I wind up in the hospital for a week. I’ve also decided that I looooooove dilaudid (aka hydromorphone). Up until this point, I’ve had a lot of different pain meds and I’ve remained puzzled that people get addicted to them. I’ve had morphine, percocet, darvocet and a lot of other pills you hear about suburban wives getting hooked on. As soon as I stopped hurting, I stopped the pills, no problem. No desire whatsoever to continue. After this stuff though, I understand. Aside from twisting my reality a quarter turn and knocking me on my ass, it left a definite impression in my brain that I liked what just transpired and would be quite happy to have it transpire again. Scary stuff.

Skip forward to today. I have four more radiation treatments (out of an original 20) as of today’s treatment - Monday will be my last one. I have a little bit of a sunburn on my chest and back where the radiation shoots through, but my skin’s been holding up pretty well thanks to early glooping of Aquaphor on the affected areas. Internally, I’ve been having some esophagus troubles. Originally, this consisted of a burning feeling right around the esophagus/stomach juncture. Now it’s turned into more of an indigestion feeling which sometimes morphs into… Have you ever swallowed wrong and it feels like your esophagus either gets a knot or swallows backwards? That’s kind of what it feels like. Often. But not enough to really bother me - just annoy me.

I think that does it. Today’s been a better day than usual - I replaced one of the headlights on my truck and got a spare key made for the house after locking myself out this morning. Idiot. That’s been safely hidden (no one looks under mats, right?) and my squirrels have been fed. You think I haven’t written here in a long time - it’s been even longer since I’ve fed my poor little furry buddies. They were going apeshit today over the piles of peanuts that suddenly appeared all over the deck. Eventually I’ll get around to taking some photos.

So, that brings you all up to date. Aside from locking my keys in the house, this has felt like a pretty good day, so hopefully that bodes well for keeping the blog up to date. Hopefully.

First off, I have to say I have no idea why I have “American Pie” stuck in my head right now. I must have done something really bad in a previous life, so this is my punishment. Well, this and that cancer thing.

I’m currently awake not because of Don McLean, but rather because of my head swirling into another deep depressing “I’ve got cancer” spiral. I’m not sure how I got to thinking about my previous career as an x-ray tech (in February it will be ten years since I’ve taken an x-ray. Man, I’m old), but somehow it spiraled and coalesced into more greiving about my current situation.

Perhaps grieving is too strong a word. This is nothing like last Wednesday’s breakdown. Merely more of a tired re-pondering of my current life. In the movie world, I’m somewhere between “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes.” and “I’m getting too old for this shit.” So yeah, more tired than sad. In either case, it’s keeping me awake right now.

On Thursday, I saw SuperCoop to get the rundown on what’s happening to me next and when. All of the fun starts next Thursday, the 6th of July. It’ll be much as we expected way back in February - high dose chemo (BEAM) followed by the stem cell transplant. About a month after the SCT, I’ll get some high dose tightly collimated radiation to my mediastinum. For those of you who are scratching your heads, that means I’ll be getting a tight beam of radiation to the center of my chest. Here’s sort of what my upcoming schedule looks like:

Day -6: receive the “B” of the BEAM chemo: BCNU. I already forget what that stands for, but it’s long.
Days -5 through -2: I get the “EA” portion - Etoposide & Cytarabine. I think the Cytarabine is the “A.” I know, but what can you do? I get the drugs at the clinic in the morning, then again at night at home by a home care nurse. Two of the treatments are on Saturday and Sunday, so morning and night doses will be given at home.
Day -1: I get the “M” drug, Melphalan.
Day 0: I get my stem cells back. SuperCoop says it won’t take me as long as most, as we collected all of my stem cells in one day, which means they should be in one bag. They give me the cells back and super-hydrate me to help my body get rid of the extra red blood cells that were in with the stem cells. Once there’s no more blood in my urine, I’m free to go. One other thing to note, I will reek of creamed corn due to the preservatives they kept my stem cells in. Good thing I already hate the stuff.
Day +1: Rest day. As long as I feel okay, I don’t have to go anywhere.
Day +2 through Day +12: Show up at the clinic each morning for bloodwork, IV fluids, neupogen (yay.), anti-nausea meds and anything else they might need to pump into me.

After that, everything pretty much depends on how I’m feeling and how my counts are doing. Yay.

In happier news, we’re continuing to get our nest padded and organized here at Dogwood Place. It’s a weird experience after Whitney Street. In Hartford, we spent so much time just making it liveable that by the time we were able to live in it, we had already decided to get it ready to sell. Rather than making it a home, we began making it ready for someone else to live in.

Now we have our real home and what should be our last one. It feels so much different when we’re doing things here, because every action has a certain… permanence. I was going to say “finality,” but us cancer patients shy away from that word. “Permanence” gets the point across though, I think. The things we’re doing to this house are not to increase the selling value, they’re to increase our enjoyment and comfort. As I’m lying on the floor, upgrading our electrical system from two prongs to three, the thought hits me that this may be the last time I ever do this in our house. Once every outlet has three prongs, I’m done with that job. We won’t be moving on to another place that I have to do electrical work on.

The thought astounds me.

I think the idea of permanence has really helped out my perfectionism as well, at least in the arena of home repair. While there’s still a needling need for doing things perfectly, since this is Our House, I can now sometimes take the broad overview and say to myself “It isn’t absolutely perfect, but it’s good enough to last for twenty or thirty years until it drives me crazy and I have to make it perfect.”

That being said, I still have yet to get everything moved into my workshop, as everything there naturally has to be “just so.” I tell myself it’s just because it’s a small space and I have to make sure I have enough room to do what I want, but deep down I know the real reason.

Hey Gang

Well, we’re finally back on the net at the new house, so I can go back to keeping everyone up to date on what’s happening in the World of Me.

I made it out of the hospital the Friday before last, though it was a bit touch and go due to the recovering heroin addict sharing my part of CCU. Apparently wherever they go to dry out was full, so they were keeping him there with a 24 hour a day babysitter. I wake up the first morning hearing “Here’s your Ativan… and here’s your methadone.” Lovely. He did okay the first day, but then started flipping out more and more as the week went on. I didn’t get a lot of rest.

To top it off, it was astounding how slow time moved in CCU. Barb stopped by the first morning and then headed off to work. As the hours passed, I figured she must have said something to me about stopping by after work. Maybe she had a meeting or something for lunch. So I slept and I laid there and I waited and I waited. Finally, 5:00 must have arrived, because Barb was back! That’s the good news. The bad news was that she was indeed back for lunch. Rather than an eight hour wait, she had only been gone for about two hours. This time disjointing continued all through the week, with the nighttime being the worst of it all. Especially when the junkie would decide he needed to sweep around his bed at midnight.

So everything happened pretty quickly after that, getting the catheter out, the chest tubes later and eventually being plopped out on the street. I got to come home and recuperate in the new house and it was a very good thing. We were still planning on me overseeing the movers on the following Monday (last Monday), but Sunday night my fever started spiking, so Barb had to be in charge of the move. I must be worn out from all the chemo and such to not be able to follow around movers two days after being released from the hospital, right?

So Monday came and the movers did a fanTAStic job. They were incredibly nice and friendly, fast and strong. If you have to do any kind of house move, give Joyce Van Lines a call. I believe they’re based here in Connecticut, but give them a try if you’re elsewhere too. We had heard lots of horror stories about movers and moving companies, and not a single one of them came true with these folks.

So now we’re going through the whole unpacking thing. Between Barb and Bev and Mary, the first floor’s starting to look pretty presentable. I think I’m finally healed up enough to start lifting things, so I’ll be able to help out more as well. There’s nothing more frustrating to me right now than having all of these people (and mostly women at that) buzzing around me, doing all of this work and not being able to join in. Not to mention getting yelled at for trying to help out. Yes, I’m supposed to be resting and healing, but come on.

On Wednesday, SuperCoop gave me a call. He had the biopsy results, which showed Hodgkin’s Disease in the thymus. He said the best result we could have hoped for would be either an active thymus (the thymic rebound thing) or a thymoma. The one good thing about HD being found was that Dr. Detterbeck was able to remove about 90% of what he found, so that means a good portion of the HD has been physically removed from my body. Plus, hopefully that area won’t light up on PET scans anymore.

SuperCoop told me that depending on what Detterbeck thought about my healing, we could go right into the high dose chemo and stem cell transplant. He said that could be as early as this week or the next.

I thought I was okay with this, but a few hours later, the magnitude of it all finally hit me. Going through chemo again. This time, going through something worse than any of the others I’ve been on. The long road to recovery. The side effects. I had myself a pretty good little breakdown. I’m just so tired of it all. Tired of recovering. Tired of weird things happening to me and thinking it’s probably just a side effect of some drug I’m on. Tired of being a happy little soldier. Tired of fighting.

So now, I’m taking my own mini-break from cancer. I’m not going to be looking in on the Hodgkin’s forum every few minutes. I’m not going to think about cancer. I’m not going to think about the future or the past. I’m just going to be. I saw Detterbeck on Friday and he said SuperCoop can start on the new stuff whenever he wants. I see SuperCoop at 5 on Thursday to get the gameplan. Until then, I’m going to do my best to forget I’ve got cancer.

I’ll still be posting stuff out here, of course, but for the next few days, it’ll more than likely be non-cancer related. Thursday will be here soon enough. In the meantime, there’s plenty to be doing here around the house. Unpacking, storing, organizing, building… and if all else fails, I just sit and watch the squirrels.

Finally, finally, the last typing I’ll be doing in Hartford. We close on the new house in two and a half hours! So, in that frame of mind, I’ll mention that I’ll be out of email contact for the next few days as we wait to get the DSL going at the new place. And I’ll be back under radio silence as far as the site’s concerned. With any luck I’ll have everything back up and online before the surgery (on Wednesday), but if not, one of us will find a way to update you all on what’s happening.

It’s moving time, baby!

“It’s three thirty in the frickin’ morning. What are you doing awake?”

Well, the short answer, would be “typing softly so as not to wake up sleeping beauty in the next room.” That’s one good thing about the new house - the office is down the hall and around a corner from the master bedroom. That should help mask my late night typing jaunts.

The long answer? Well, that’s somewhat. Um… longer.

You know how sometimes people get reflective on their lives when they have cancer? And how others get reflective when they take part in someone else’s life event, like a wedding or a funeral? And how others still get in the mood when they have a birthday? I hit the trifecta this weekend, baby! A wedding on Saturday, my birthday on Sunday and, well, you know about the cancer thing already.

I guess this would be a good point to post a warning. I don’t really know where this post is going, but it probably won’t be to a shiny happy place. If you’re newly diagnosed with Hodgkin’s, you might want to stop reading here and go read some of my happier posts. Mom, this might not be one you want to print out for Nanny to read. Or maybe it will be - we’ll see where I go with this. At the very least, it will be long and rambling and kill a lot of trees. Be patient, everybody.

Strangely enough, the thing that convinced me to risk waking Barb was an early morning snack. I’ve been awake this whole time and crossed that border between tired and hungry. I came upstairs to do some of my usual random websurfing, checking up on the Hodgkin’s board, some blogs and my Flickr account (new photos added a couple of days ago that I neglected to mention). As I sat here numbly clicking through the world, I realized I had a giant Mr. Goodbar in the left hand drawer of my desk.

Interesting that all of my candy resides on the sinister side of my desk.

One thing about the Whitney Street house - while it’s pretty cold in the winter, it gets hot quickly in the summer. We came home from the birthday celebrating to find the second floor quite stuffy. We didn’t risk the third floor. I opened the windows in the bedroom, so hopefully it had cooled off in there before Barb turned in.

The office, however, has not. Not much anyway. You see, the two windows here don’t have screens. Well, one definitely doesn’t and I’m almost certain the other doesn’t either. Something for the new owners to concern themselves with, whoever those new owners wind up being.

None of this was going through my head as I opened the left hand drawer of my desk. I think what was going through my head was something along the lines of “Food. Eat. Now. Good.” I took uot the Mr. Goodbar and proceeded to break it into its component rectangles as I always do. At least, I tried to. The bar wasn’t gooey, but it wasn’t breakable. Just a really pliable in-between state.

So I’m sitting at my desk, eating my playdoh textured Goodbar and something poignant and relevant comes to mind. Some grandiose statement on life, death, melted chocolate and Doing Things. Something to make all of you say “Holy CRAP! I’ve got to read this guy more often! He’s DEEP!”

Sadly, that poignant, grandiose statement is lost to the ether, eaten away by ADD, early morning and chocolate satiation. I promise it was really good too. Both the idea and the chocolate.

Even though I haven’t the slightest notion what my early notion was, it got my typing and I figure I should keep going. This is the part that makes me think I’m going to get into trouble. Not trouble exactly. Maybe more along the lines of uncomfortable. Different? Maybe. Depressed? Possibly. Boring? God, I hope not. Rambling? What, are you new here?

Whatever my thought may have been as I was trying to lick the melted chocolate off my fingers, it had something to do in no small way with This Thing I’m Dealing With. You know: the cancer.

Where does my head want me to begin? Let’s start with an update that I forgot to post, then you’ll be able to follow along with the bouncing ball that is my brain. Here’s what I posted over on the Hodgkin’s forum (partially edited so it doesn’t seem weird and stupid over here) :

I do have some good news this morning to add on to all the drama.

So there’s where things are standing now. We’re overjoyed that we’ll be moving into the house soon and super happy that we’re gonna be cutting part of this sucker out to see what’s going on. That’s all I would need is to go through the whole SCT process and still have the same thing light up just because it’s born from the nether regions of Mars. Now I just sit and wait for the thoracic surgeon to call.

That was Thursday morning. I haven’t heard anything from the thoracic surgeon yet, so I’m going to call my SCT coordinator and see who I need to bug about the biopsy. So all this means that there’s a possibility that I’m in remission, and might have been for some time. Except for one thing.

The Itch is back.

It started three days ago, on my back for the first time. Sunday morning, the old familiar itching of the hands came back. Mom, Dad - close your eyes for this next line.

Fuck.

Yes, my number one symptom of the Hodge seems to be reasserting itself. It’s not as bad or as maddening as it was for a year and a half before diagnosis, but it didn’t start out that maddening then either. Am I angry? Not really. Sad? Maybe a little maudlin. More than anything, I’m just tired.

I’m tired of these early morning nights, too itchy to sleep, to tired to think.

I’m tired of putting my body through the wringer. I’ve been on one form of chemotherapy or another for a full year, for a disease that usually takes six months of chemo.

I’m tired of being tired. I can’t help anyone anymore and can barely help myself on the bad days. On the good days, I can sit down and type.

I’m tired of being emotional. Barb will walk into the room to find me bawling my eyes out and all she sees on the TV is a frickin’ long distance commercial. I was quite proud of myself for holding it together all through the wedding Saturday, though there were quite a few close calls. Interestingly enough, as much as I cry about external things, I can’t seem to bring the tears up for my own plight. In fact, thinking about myself is often a surefire way to make the tears dry up. How messed up is that? My theory is that some part of me knows that the other things I’m crying for are short term with a definite ending. If I start crying for myself, where will I stop?

I’m tired of waiting. My whole life has been on hold for the past year, particularly the last six months or so. While things are indeed happening, the majority of my life is in “sit and wait” mode.

I’m tired of scratching. I’ve already got scars from the first round of itching, all of the places where I clawed at my skin until I bled. I’m ready to heal now, not open up more wounds.

I’m tired of my brain not working. Sure, I’ve been doing Sudoku like nobody’s business, and I’m not a complete gibbering idiot just yet, but there are still frustrating short circuits I’ve been having to deal with. For example, I was reading a description of our house which mention the linoleum that had been installed “on the cellar floor.” I couldn’t read that correctly until the fourth or fifth time. On all of the initial tries, the line said “cellar roof,” which made no sense to me and caused me to keep rereading the sentence to myself. And this wasn’t just a simple misreading mistake. On those first three or four tries, the paper actually had the word “roof” typed on it, according to my brain. On that last attempt, the word finally changed into what was actually there. That was even scary than the now-usual random mistyping, where I’ll say, replace all of my “fs” with “p”s or something equally bizarre.

I guess most of all, I’m tired of this ever-looming and slowly growing spectre of death hanging above me. Sure, Hodgkin’s is the most curable cancer out there. Sure, it’s the “easy” cancer to have. But guess what - the cure rate’s not at one hundred percent. And a good portion of the percentage of people who kick this thing beat it down with ABVD alone. With each different form of chemo I’m taking in and each new procedure being performed, I’m moving more and more into the “special case” category. The one time it pays to be average, I have to go an be different.

I’m often asked how I do it. How I get through the day, each day, every day. How I cope with this thing hanging over my head and the constant, crushing letdowns I’ve had through the course of this stupid disease. Well, there are a few things that have helped me up to this point.

One of the most important things is my ADD. This is one of the very few times it’s helped me out in life. If you’re distracted by shiny objects whenever you start to think Bad Cancer Thoughts, you don’t have a long enough string of Bad Cancer Thoughts to break through your clueless hide. Sure, I’m constantly reminded and remind myself of the fact I have cancer several times an hour. But there’s so much other stuff in the world to cram into my head that it’s easy to put the cancer thing on the back burner often, especially since it won’t stay back there. I mean, sure this cancer thing’s important, but look - tinsel!

That’s the easy, happy answer I most readily give out to people. And while it’s an easy, happy answer, that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. At most, it’s a lie of omission. Forgetfulness is a large part of my Cancer Sanity Program, but that’s not the whole story. It’s just the easiest story.

The next part of the story would be that indefinable trait of human nature known as me. While I can have my dark, brooding depressed moments, it’s not in me to blather on about them to other people. He says as he blathers on to other people. I guess what I’m trying to say is that most often when I’m around other people, I don’t tend to be exceedingly serious. Quiet, certainly, but it’s my nature to be quietly funny. I like to put the people around me at ease, and it’s easier to do that by making fun of this stupid creature than it is to whine about my life’s injustice. There are enough people doing that in the world already - we don’t need one more voice.

As difficult as things may get for me, I always keep in mind that there are so many who have it worse than I do. No matter how I want to look at it, I can always think of people in worse situations. Yeah, I have cancer, but it’s not brain cancer. Or colon cancer. I could easily be in much, much worse shape than I am right now. I could be in a third world country with no available resources for cancer treatment. I could be in this first world country with no insurance. I could have no support. I could be alone. I could be dead.

Aside from that, I really get sick of one-downsmanship. I mean, here I sit with the trump card for almost any one-downsmanship faceoff, and I refuse to play it. In public, at least. In my head, I’m thinking “Oh you poor thing, there with your sore throat you’ve been whining about for the past three hours. I’m glad I only have CANCER to deal with!” Not that I’ve become a less caring person, but come on.

Another large part of my story is support. A big thing that keeps me going are the supportive emails I get from all of you out there, whether family, longtime friends, newfound friends or random folks who stumbled across the site. Each word of encouragement helps me lift my head and prepare to fight the next battle. When I see folks in person and they give their support, I get lifted a little higher yet. You people play a big part in keeping me going, and I do thank you for that.

The last thing is a world premiere. I’m pretty sure I gave Barb a sneak preview awhile back, but as Barb is basically a part of me, this is the first time I consider it to be telling someone else. The biggest secret that keeps me going was a revelation I had awhile back. I don’t remember when it was exactly, but Barb probably knows. She’s the part of me that remembers things.

One day, I was thinking about this whole Cancer Experience. I was thinking about fighting, I was thinking about winning and I was thinking about losing. Mostly, I was thinking about giving up. Let me rephrase that. I wasn’t thinking about actually doing the deed and giving up, more like I was thinking about what “giving up” required. What thing in your body or your mind would have to change to make you quit. I’ve heard of people with other cancers who have relapsed, often multiple times, and have decided to just let the cancer take them. The treatment was worse than the illness, so they’d rather enjoy things while they could, rather than go through the agony of more chemo or more radiation.

I was reading someone’s blog or maybe just a story about someone with some other kind of cancer. One of the bad ones. They had recently made this decision themselves and were going through the process of dying. Something in their story or in their words finally made a connection fuse in my brain.

You see, up until that point, I was fighting this thing under a major misconception. Not an actively thought out one, mind you. Just working under a notion I hadn’t thought about or thought all the way through. Up until I finished that story, I thought of the death option as a light switch. If I got to the point where I decided to give up and let the cancer take me, it would be over. As if the mere act of giving up and deciding to die would flick this life/death switch to “death” and it would be all over and done with.

I should interject at this point that I’m not a stupid person. I’m merely of an age where I’ve never really thought about death from illness. People in my little world died from car crashes and hurricanes and frak accidents and heart attacks - things that take you rather quickly. Therefore, the people dying from cancer and old age and disease all went the same way in my mind. Sure, I know these aren’t quick deaths, but I never really sat down and pondered what one of these would be like. Have you, little Mister/Miss Healthypants?

Once I thought about it, I was stunned at just how idiotic my subconscious notions were. Giving up on this thing isn’t an easy out. Dying from cancer is a horrifying process. To die from cancer is to lose pieces of yourself little by little each and every day until there’s nothing left. Not only does it steal you away from your loved ones, it steals you away from yourself.

Above all else, this has become my primary driving factor. Not necessarily a will to live, or an urge to not die, but a definitive goal to specifically not die from cancer. I have no fears of being shot or stabbed or killed in a horrendous car wreck. Drowning and burning are still in the top three of ways I don’t want to go, however. But more than anything else, I’ve made a vow to myself that I’m not letting cancer take me. I am not going to give in to disease. I am not going to waste away. I am not going to lose myself. No matter how dark the night, how early the morning or how dismal the test results, there is one thing I can promise to both you and myself with no doubts in my mind or heart.

I will not give up.

Oh, and I just wanted to mention: if you’ve sent me an email in the past couple of days, I’m not ignoring you or being my usual lazy self. Dreamhost has been having some major email issues as of late and right now they’re stockpiling our emails on one of the servers while they try to fix the problem. At some point in the near future I should be getting a flood of email and I can start replying. Until then, feel free to leave me comments on the site.

Well, if there’s one thing this cancer’s doing, it’s building my character. Or maybe chipping it away. Either way, it’s starting to help me let go of stuff.

You know how awhile back, I came up with my new “It’s not Art” mantra? Well, sometimes saying is easier than doing.

I had gathered up all of our photos from the house inspection and started building a site to show them off. I came up with a nice clean, design. Then I decided I needed a graphic of a dogwood flower. A little research and some hunting for sharpies ensued. Then I had to find some paper. Next comes the dismantling of a picture frame so I can make an impromptu lightbox (don’t tell Barb). Then comes the scanning and touching up in Photoshop. A couple of hours after I get the idea, I have a flower I’m happy with. Of course, a flower that nice needs a better looking site, so I work on that a bit more.

All the while, I’m complimenting myself on following my mantra because even though I knew a few pixels weren’t in perfect alignment, I was going to let it go and not obsess.

I eventually came up with something I liked, only to realize that I had taken off designing without taking the 800×600 folks into consideration (a small part of my constituency, but an important one - all of our parents). So then I started creating two site versions, one for the 6×8s and one for the rest of us.

Because I wasn’t obsessing.

Finally the Hodge reared its head and sent me to bed. As I lay there thinking about how my arms had no energy and my head was spinny and hating the whole Hodge thing, something in my head clicked. That tiny little rational voice in my head that usually gets overwhelmed by Elivs Costello lyrics and all the other voices in there finally cleared its throat and stepped to the front of the queue.

“Hey - that whole ‘It’s not Art’ thing? That’s not what you’re doing. You’re still thinking like Very Important Design People are going to be coming by and judging you. Get over yourself and just get the photos posted, stupid.”

This made enough sense to me to actually drag myself out of bed and come back to the computer. I grabbed the inspection photos, upgraded my Flickr account and threw them all up there. Done. I’m keeping my layout concepts for the house’s site, because at some point, I’ll come back and make that. After all, it is real purty. So from now on, I have a new method for my madness:

1) Take photos
2) Try not to obsess over making them all pretty
3) Upload to Flickr
4) Worry about a pretty site some other day

Sure, people do this all the time. I, however, am a slow learner and this is a huge step for me. You can’t imagine how huge, but I’m sure Barb could tell you. Revel in the new me - I know I will be.

Now that I’ve said what I needed to, you can go look at our new house.

Well, sadly, I was right. The Devils lost Game 5, playing much the same way they did in games 1-3. You know, I was just saying they wouldn’t win so that they would - they didn’t have to prove me right. So now I’ll cheer for Edmonton. Sure, the Ducks brought some more purple into the league, but they took my Neidermeyer, so they get no support. Besides, that Edmonton arena ROCKS!

ATTENTION DAD! Be sure and watch the San Jose/Edmonton game this Wednesday at 8 EST on OLN. They’ll be playing in Edmonton and you’ll get to hear what I was telling you about on Sunday. Plus, if they win and close out the series, the place is going to go bonkers.

In other news, I masked up and we went over to the new house for the inspection. There were a couple of minor issues, mostly with the fireplace. That actually makes it sound worse than it is. Basically, the fireplace needed some cleaning and a good inspecting from a chimney guy. The top of the chimney needs a little mortar and we couldn’t find the cleanout for the furnace side of the chimney. Other than that, a semi-screwy attic fan and little touch ups here and there, the place passed with flying colors. I took a few photos of everything and I’m in the process of throwing them all together for you to see. Expect another post by the end of the day.

Another realtor brought someone by our house while we were at the new house. They didn’t say anything bad about the place, which is a step in the right direction, but we don’t have an offer yet, and that’s what counts.

One last thing - I’m going to be reworking my email delivery system in a little bit. Shouldn’t mean too much to you folks out there, but if you send me an email today and I don’t reply for awhile (like, even longer than it usually takes me), send me a note via the contact form and I’ll let you know if I’m just being lazy. It goes to a different address, so shouldn’t be affected. Assuming, of course, that I don’t do something really stupid.

I’m not sure if it’s the hockey gods trying to make me look like an idiot or if they just needed me to post about them to win, but the Devs put on a really impressive show yesterday. They finally looked like themselves, even though Gionta still hasn’t gotten a point in this series. I’ll declare this right now - Cam Janssen is my cancer watchdog. Now whenever I’m feeling low from the chemo, I’m just picturing a million Cams skating through my system knocking the Hodge on its ass. Let’s hear it for positive visualization.

So whichever thing I did yesterday to make them win, I’ll do it again today. Let’s see…

The way the Devils are looking right now, I would not be surprised in the least if they lose on Saturday Sunday and are swept beaten 4-1. Being the team they are and on the cusp of elimination, I would also not be surprised if they win on Saturday Sunday. But the way they’ve been playing in this series and, more importantly, the way the Hurricanes have been playing, I don’t see the Devils making it through to the next round. Still, the playoffs are where the miracles happen, right?

Man, it’s hard being a fan…

Cancer-wise, I’m feeling slightly better. My sleeping habits are still hosed from the prednisone and I have bacne like you wouldn’t believe, but I’m slowly getting to where I don’t dread climbing the stairs. I’m still not that fond of them and they still wear me out, but I’m getting there. I’m spending Mother’s Day here alone at the house to be away from the crowd at Bev’s house today. The weather’s being crappy and rainy and everyone’s going to have to stay huddled inside and I really don’t like that stupid little mask. So, I’ll do some more lying around the house today and wait for the hockey game at 7, when I get to climb all the way up to the third floor. I think I’ll pack some provisions and start the journey around 6.

Hmmm… today feels like a Big Lebowski day. I wonder which moving box we’ve stashed that in… Oooo! Maybe a Coen Brothers marathon! Though, I’m pretty sure I sent the Hudsucker Proxy to storage. My life is so full…

Speaking of storage and such, another realtor came by to show off the house yesterday. They were here for about a half hour or so, but no word yet on what the potential buyers thought. Our house inspection for the new place is on Monday, so it’ll be great to get to see our new place again. We’ve got another open house for this place coming up next Sunday, so I’ve got a whole week to maniacally shuffle around the house hiding anything of value. There’s just something about random strangers walking around my house alone that gives me the heebie jeebies, especially in this neighborhood.

I mean… this is a GREAT neighborhood! Buy our house!

It’s been quite a week since last we spoke. Let’s see how much I can recall.

The biggest news is, Barb and I have found a new house and our offer’s been accepted. We’ve got an inspection on Monday, so sometime after that I’ll put up some photos. We’re both tremendously excited, as there’s so much that’s absolutely perfect about this house. When we bought our current abode, it never quite felt like home. First, we had a good solid year’s worth of work we had to put into ti just to make it liveable. Then with its location and such, we always knew that we’d be moving at some point once it came time to be havin’ little chilluns. This new house is it. The Last House. At least until the kids all grow up and we get moved to an assisted living community.

One of the many truly excellent things about the new house is, it’s ready to move in. It could use a little paint on the walls, but that’s IT. We can immediately start settling in to this place. We don’t have to rip the kitchen down to the bare studs before we can cook anything. We can move our boxes and furniture into the house, unpack the boxes, stash our stuff and STOP! I cannot put in to words how amazing that is. Let me see if I can do it with a picture.

Me in our old kitchen.

This, to me, is the one photo that typifies everything we’ve gone through with this house. There are SO many more that do an equally horrifying job, but… well, let’s just zoom in a bit here.

The eyes have it.

Yes, I think the look in my eyes says more than the rotted floorboards could ever say.

Cancer-wise, life has really sucked as of late. I’m done with the chemo, but this one has finally done me in. If I go up or down the stairs here, I have to rest wherever I wind up for awhile before I can even think about making the return trip. My pulse races like I’ve been running a marathon and I’m just as out of breath. All from one flight of stairs, taken very slowly. This really sucks, to say the least.

I went to the doc’s yesterday to get checked out because of it. Actually, I was taken to doc’s ’cause Barb had to leave work and come take me. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to actually drive myself there and back. I’m just that tired.

They drew some blood and my red cells are okay. Low, but workable. My neutraphils, however, were in the basement. These are the things that your white blood cells are based off of, so it’s a key as to your immunity from illness and infection. They start to worry a little if your count gets down to 1500. Mine was at 400. So now I have to stay away from groups of people and children, wash my hands like I have OCD and wear a mask if I’m feeling energetic enough to wander out into the world. Fortunately I’m too tired to make it to the front door let alone go out it, so I don’t have to worry about the mask too much for now.

The medical folks are thinking this might all be a reaction to stopping the prednisone, the steroid that makes up the last “P” in MOPP. Dr. D gave me another prescription for the pred that we can taper off this time, as well as an antibiotic to help head off anything bad I might catch until my counts come back up.

So now I just take pills and lie around the house. It’s not as glamourous as they make it seem in the movies. the next thing on my medical agenda is a PET scan on Friday the 19th. This will be the one that determines what we’ll be doing next.

One more good thing about the new house - it’s 19 minutes away from Yale Medical. That means if our timing works out right with the closing and the stem cell transplant, I won’t have to stay in a hotel after the SCT! That would so rock.

I think more than anything, I need a cancer break right now. I would love to just have one day where I didn’t have to think about it. No pills to take. No aches and pains and tiredness. I’d stay away from the hodgkin’s forum and eat whatever I want. I’d go down to my new workshop and build something. Spend the day making something instead of thinking about dying. Yesterday was my one year anniversary. I’ve been fighting this thing for a whole year and I’m tired of punching.

Hockey-wise, things have been even worse. The Devils are down 3-0 in their series against Carolina. I blame myself, as you can see from my playoff picks. Everyone I picked is getting their ass handed to them. The Avs were swept, the Devs are down 3-0, the Sens are down 3-1. Edmonton’s putting up a bit of a fight and hanging in there, down 2-1, but still. The way the Devils are looking right now, I would not be surprised in the least if they lose on Saturday and are swept. Being the team they are and on the cusp of elimination, I would also not be surprised if the win on Saturday. But the way they’ve been playing in this series and, more importantly, the way the Hurricanes have been playing, I don’t see the Devils making it through to the next round. Still, the playoffs are where the miracles happen, right?

Hey everybody - I’m still here. The MOPP! has been wearing me out for the past week. Yesterday I didn’t even wander in front of the computer until 11:00 or so at night. This has been more of an all over exhaustion, akin to the post-hospital recovery times more than the chemo-tiredness. My body’s weak, my brain’s cloudy and I just can’t seem to get out of my own way. So let’s get you updated before I pass out at the keyboard here…

Barb’s game went well - the students beat the faculty, 12-7. Last year was the first year the faculty won and they only did it by one run, so being five behind isn’t all that bad. Especially compared to some of the past shellackings. Barb even got a hit - atta girl, slugger!

The open house went well as well. We got a few interested nibbles, including the former owners of the house. Barb and I came home from Wallingford to find them all sitting in our living room - quite an offputting sight. They loved what we’ve done with the house (how could they not, considering the condition we got the house in) and are hoping to be able to buy it back. Probably not a likely situation since the house price has doubled since they sold it. Of course, the value has quintupled at least.

In hockey news, after the first round of the playoffs, my predictions are at 50 percent (warning - large, wallpaper-size graphic ahead). I told you I didn’t know jack about the Western Conference. But then, who would expect none of the top four seeds to make it in? As for the East, Philly over Buffalo was more wishful thinking on my part, since I didn’t want the Devils to have to face Buffalo. Of course now that things are underway, I remember that the Stanley Cup isn’t a straightforward tree structure to allow for home ice and such, so it doesn’t matter that Buffalo won anyway.

In keeping with sticking my neck out on the line, I’ve made a revised playoff tree (warning - large, wallpaper-size graphic ahead again). We’ll see how I do in this round…

Now I’m gonna go lie down…

And it’s a Devils’ sweep! And Gionta got a short handed goal! Elias now has five goals and six assists! Gomer got a goal!

I have to say, I really do respect the Rangers’ coach for pulling their goalie with three minutes to go after the Devils took a penalty. It showed that he wasn’t ready to let his team give up and they actually made up a little bit of ground. Kind of the opposite tack that I usually think of anything associated with Jaromir Jagr, but it probably helped that he re-injured his shoulder on his first shift. That let the rest of the Rangers play tough and not give up. Still… sweep time, baby!

On the chemo front, I had another good night. Looks like taking Zofran an hour before the chemo drugs is the key. I’m still going to wait until after Wednesday before I have any tomato sauce again. Wednesday I get another blast of vinblastine, so by Thursday I might be secure enough with my belly to eat red things.

Barb’s faculty vs. student softball game is tomorrow, but I’m not going to be able to be there. It’s down in New Haven at 10 and we have the realtors coming over at 12:30 to get the open house set up. Since I won’t be able to race back and forth (it’s about a 45 minute drive, even at Brianspeed), I’m going to be sticking around here to make sure they get in the house and get set up okay. I did get to go with her today to watch their practice. I don’t know what the students look like, but the faculty was looking pretty good. Nothing like seeing all of that gray hair flying through the breeze…

Well, I’ve been sprinting around like mad trying to remember all of the places in the house we’ve touched since the last time we showed it because… a real-life realtor