Printing again

The fatigue is very slow to leave me. Wah wah wah. I'm so sick of complaining about that, I could puke. But there you are.

Thanks to the fatigue, I had to skip the first session of my new linocut class last Wednesday, because I was pretty sure I couldn't stand on my feet for 4 hours, which is what I have to do when I'm printing all evening. However, I was able to attend it this week. This lino plate took quite a lot of carving time, as you can imagine. Very creative people in my new class. I look forward to getting ideas and inspiration from them. It's also great to see Katie (the teacher) again. She and I are such kindred spirits.

So what am I doing now...

As I wait for the fatigue from the radiation to lift (no it hasn't yet), I'm getting a little bored. I only have a few minutes each day when I have enough energy to do art work, so the other activities I find to preoccupy myself have to be rather passive, like reading, doing crossword puzzles, or watching TV.

God knows I already watch enough TV, my brain can only function in crossword land for so long, and I own a tremendous number of books I've never even read. Shopping in used book stores used to be a great passion of mine, back in the days before Amazon, when it was a real challenge to find anything not currently in print. I'd try to keep the names of authors and books from the past that I was interested in or had seen referred to in other books in the forefront of my mind, and scan the inventory of each used book shop I went into, hoping to find one of my must-haves. It was fun, and whenever I found something from my mental list (or better, something related to something on the list that I didn't even know had been written) I felt a great sense of victory.

I no longer buy books. I live one block from my local branch of the library, and there just isn't that much in print that I need to read more than once. However, there are still a great many untouched volumes from my voracious used-book-shopping days on my shelves.

This one by Elizabeth Bowen is proving to be very enjoyable. I was last in Rome 16 years ago, and although she provides no maps or illustrations in this slim volume, her descriptions of the city are so lucid and rich in detail that I can picture where she is in each chapter perfectly well, my imagination combining her experiences with my memories of each place.

And don't you wish they still took author photographs like that one for the dust cover? So clearly posed and so clearly designed to show off her credentials as an intellectual (she's reading James Baldwin's "Go Tell it on the Mountain" and in her lap is Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex"). This is the kind of thing the Kindle cheats you out of.

I still go out to lunch every day during the week, and I try to see Della and Rene at least once a week. Cito has such a busy social life of his own these days that I don't see him as often, but when I do, it's always fun. He's grown into the dearest little boy, much nicer than I was at his age.

My old scooter got repaired after all, and good thing, since the new one is held up in Chicago getting inspected by the EPA, with no projected or promised release date. My linoleum block print class starts again this week. It's going to be tough to get through Wednesdays until this dadburn fatigue wears off, but I'm going to force myself, because it's so worth it.

I went ahead and signed up for the AIDS Walk, even though I doubt I'll have the energy to walk it this year. I've already met the goal I set, but I like to try to raise more money each year than I have the year before and I'm not there yet this year. If you 'd like to sponsor me, here's the link.

Good Good Good

My scan results were all that we wanted them to be. I am in remission and it's even possible that I could be in complete remission, if, when my cancer was detected, it was in fact stage 3, and not stage 4. This is something we will know only with time. If I go past 3 years with clean scans, I'm sitting pretty. If I go past 5 years, then I'm probably really home free.

So I'll be having blood tests and getting scanned in 6 months. He told me that getting this CT scan is equivalent to having 1000 xrays, so he doesn't want to scan me too often, but 6 months seems reasonable at this point... After that we'll probably be on an annual schedule.

He told me not to be discouraged about the fatigue, that it sometimes takes 2 months for it to go away completely, and I'm only 2 weeks from radiation completion.

So.....Yay! I'm gonna go out and live.

(The photo is from my celebratory dinner at Paulines. Cito is wearing the Ralph Lauren shirt I gave him for his bd. :) )

One year ago today

I was glancing through my flickr stream and noticed the date on this photo. Exactly one year ago. It's hard to imagine a time before...well...before, but here's the evidence.

I seem to have hit a wall on my energy level. It's discouraging, but I'm trying to react to it only by resting and eating well, and making myself take at least one short walk a day. After my Tuesday appointment with Dr. Liu I'll know if I should be worried about this slow return to vigor.

Robert hosted a family night dinner the other night, and I made a coconut layer cake from scratch for it. In the old days, I could have done that, prepared a whole dinner and cleaned my apartment and hosted the dinner all in the same day. As it is now, making the cake and walking the few blocks to Roberts pretty much shot my wad. Even worn out as I was, it was nice to have a social event to attend and to see everyone.

At one point soon after the kids had arrived, everyone was crowded in the kitchen. It was the usual family night pandemonium that I love. Robert was cooking, Holly and Emily were chatting, Cito was trying to do something on the kitchen computer and Della was wandering around the kitchen holding a rubber spatula and looking for something to get into. Rene wasn't arriving until dessert, so I was keeping an eye on Della, making sure she stayed away from the stove, etc. This involved talking to her constantly over the din, so she'd know that she was being observed. Suddenly, she walked up to me and without making a sound, took me by the hand and pulled me off the kitchen stool toward a clear patch of floor space. We stood there holding hands for a moment. I assumed she wanted me to lift her for a somersault off my shoulders, but then I noticed that she was moving her feet like a tap dancer and grinning at me. (I often tap dance for her to distract her from getting fussy, or just as something to do when we walk down the street.) This is the grin she had on her face:



I know some of my readers must think I'm irrationally fond of this little girl, but come on! How can you resist a child that does that for you? I would have had a lot harder time this past several months without her and Cito brightening the corners.

Scanticipation

This pic was taken a few weeks ago at Crissy Field during Cito's birthday party. Della likes the backward somersault. I think she will be a stunt person one day.

I had the post-radiation CT scan this morning. I have an appointment with Dr. Liu next Tuesday afternoon (6/8) to review the results.

I'm happy to report that the fatigue is lifting. My energy level isn't back to what it was before radiation, but it's getting there. I can take longer walks now when I go to lunch. Going to lunch was the one thing I managed to keep doing through the worst of the fatigue, although it was always to somewhere nearby. Last week I went shopping for a new scooter and over the weekend I even found enough sustained focused energy to work on some art.

I am on the waiting list for a Stella scooter which is expected to arrive at the dealers mid-June. Good thing too, since I took my 10-year old Italjet Torpedo 50cc in to get its brakes looked at, and the problem may be too expensive to fix, considering this scooter is no longer manufactured and that parts have to come from Italy and are always difficult to find. Ah well, she gave me 13,100 miles and the only damage to her came from getting knocked over when she was parked. Not bad for an initial investment of 3K.