...Lace Up Your Gloves...

And thankfully, not much more to tell...

It's an interesting experience, this whirlwind of zaps and antibiotics and steroids and work and life and holidays approaching and I tell you, it's not all that unusual.

I keep trying to get a feel for things, to gauge what I might react to, or how my reactions might be different than the norm, but save for a momentary lapse of disorientation yesterday which might have been due to the fact that I was hungry, thirsty, or just a little off kilter - all has been seeming remarkably stable.

I love remarkably stable. Now, let's get these damn scans back to remarkably stable in a few weeks time...

The radiation itself is a breeze - we enter our super secret patient pass code (which I'm sure all of Banner Desert knows of), I scan my card into the reader in the waiting room, and a few minutes later I am unceremoniously announced to come down the hall. They give me the squishy ring to hold onto whilst I am laying on the table, strap on my most beauteous honeycomb mask, and apparently leave the room. I hear whatever song is playing in the background, attempt to insert my own soundtrack, and escape to someplace in my mind, which today happened to be swimming through the water at Havasupai Falls to the place behind the waterfall.

I hear the buzzing, I see the flashes of light changing behind my eyes. I will the radiation to work with every ounce of my being. I smell a faintly foreign smell that I can't identify, and before I know it, the noises stop, the people enter the room, my mask is being unsnapped, someone tells me that I did great and that they'll see me tomorrow, and I head back out the door for re-entry into the world...

We were walking yesterday morning and I was feeling very optimistic about my ability to sail through these treatments and put them behind me once again. And then a falling star shot across the sky. I didn't see it, but Greg did - perhaps it was an omen...

So long as I can walk, and feel the wind on my face... so long as I can laugh and hear my voice ringing in my ears... so long as I can smile and feel the muscles of my face stretch into a grin...so long as I can can love, and have the love beside me of the one I've been waiting for this whole time... one way or another, it will be just fine.