I figure now would be a good time to let y’all know how it’s going. I did not want you to be thinking I was all curled up in a ball somewhere with tubes coming out of me in all directions. The truth is, I’m feeling pretty darn good approaching the halfway point in the process.

I began Chemo just about a month ago. The regimen is five days of daily poisoning and then 2 weeks off to rest up. I finished the second round last Friday. The Chemo treatment itself goes fairly easy. I just have to sit all day at the hospital while they pump the bug juice into my veins. The only real hard part is the first few days after, the period I’m just now passing out of for the second time. There really is not a vocabulary for it. They talk about nausea because an anti-nausea drug pretty well treats it. It’s not. It is poisoning. From what I understand, my ride is nothing like it would have been 10 years ago. They had the Chemo part down pat, but not all the other drugs for handling the side effects. Mostly, I just feel weak now. However, my strength is starting to return. By this time next week, I will be feeling pretty much all better, and then it starts all over again.

My hair lasted until Tuesday of the second week. It started coming out in handfuls; my mustache started falling out into my coffee mug a few hours later. I decided to whack it all off, and embrace the look for the time being. It will grow back eventually.

I am on strong blood thinners at the moment. This removes the possibility of blood clots associated with the cancer. Indeed it was a clot in my leg which caused them to run the test that rediscovered the cancer in early April. Activities such as trips to the Shamanic Secret Underground Reloading Facility (SSURF) are curtailed into the foreseeable future. I’m pretty well confined to my recliner. That is not such a bad thing considering I’m also restricted from using all over-the-counter pain relief (Ibuprofen, Tylenol, Aspirin,etc.) as a consequence of the Chemo. I had to steal a few minutes and get my shotgun cleaned from Turkey Season, but that was a risk. Getting up and down the stairs had me gassed as well.

In the big scheme of things, I’m really the luckiest bastid imaginable. Understand that the surgeon that did the Left Nut Job on me had just given me a clean bill of health on 10 March. I was not due for additional tests until a couple of weeks from now. As it was, I had the blood test that found the cancer done in the first week of April, and I’m going to be halfway through the Chemo treatments before the normal schedule of checkups would have discovered it sometime in mid-June. Just so you know, the test in question has a range of 0-3. With the nut still attached, I was reading a 2. It went down below 1 in December. It was 7 and then 11 in April. Just before Chemo it was 43 (Yikes!). After the first round of Chemo, it went to 2. Probably the cancer is already dead. The remainder of this exercise is just grinding its butt into the dirt.

Just to clean up loose ends, I have to agree with my earlier assessment that cancer has a way of pissing on Turkey Season. However, the weather was crappy for most of the remainder– cold and rainy. I stayed home to steel myself for the upcoming poisoning, and the rest of the Shamanic Dream Team followed suit. Moose and Angus have been going down regularly to keep up with the chores I would normally be doing. They have been a terrific help up in town as well.

Don’t expect much out of me until after Chemo Camp ends in the latter part of July. At this point, there is nothing to suggest, I won’t be able slog it out until then, and be in some sort of semblance of normalcy by fall. I thoroughly expect to be able to be in my stand at Campground on The Opener in November. However, I am not making any predictions on how fast I’ll bounce back before then.

One thing is certain: God speaks no plainer to a man than as he has spoken to me. Dad once told me in regards to my relationships with women that they were like carnival rides. You go up, you go down, they spin you around, but at some point the car pulls back into the station, the bar goes up, and it is time to exit to the left and go seek another ride. After 40+ years of being a IT bit jockey, it was time to get up from the seat and go find the exit. I was just a day before going under the knife; they had to install a port in my chest for the Chemo. I dragged myself down the local Social Security Office and got my account straightened out. They had horsed it up back in the 70s when they were transcribing it from paper. I wanted to make sure KYHillChick had access to my survivor benefit if things did not go well. As it turned out, I got a better-than-expected deal from SS and I am now officially a retired old fart. I got my first check a few weeks ago. This means that I will not have to deal with a day job on the back end of this and be able to devote more of my efforts to Genesis 9:2-4 Ministries.

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