When I first starting blogging, a number of friends tried posting comments.  Some succeeded, but many would find their comments labeled "accepted" before they disappeared into cyberspace.  Since then, most comments arrive via e-mail.  The last comment, by cameronVSJ, requesting that I e-mail him to answer a quick question, I found rather suspicious.  I don't know him; he's not a follower.  I didn't want to seem unfriendly, but neither did I want to send an e-mail to someone whose motives weren't clear.  So Mohamed and I began snooping around.  It wasn't long before we found that cameronVSJ sends the exact same comment to many bloggers whose subject is living with cancer.  Many people warned that he was phishing and/or trying to hack e-mail and cautioned not to respond.  I worked myself into a state of indignation and prepared a nasty comment in return.  I could imagine that people living with cancer might send via e-mail personal, financial information to friends or, indeed, to lawyers.  Mohamed and I kept digging and found cameron's last name (the VSJ), a name that itself sounded fishy (or phishy).  Googling him by his full name, we found that the request he seems to make of cancer bloggers is that he be allowed to do a guest post on their site.

Several years ago, his wife was, according to his posts, diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer.  What's strange is that he has been posting essentially the same blog entry on the sites of people who do respond to his request ever since.  It focuses on his role as caregiver (it's hard; accept whatever help is offered) and gives some conventional advice (life is full of the unexpected so enjoy every moment that you have).  Sometimes, if it appears near a holiday, he'll tweak the entry a little, but the essence has remained the same for six or seven years.  Is he sincere and extremely persistent but completely uninteresting?  Does he simply get off on seeing his name online?  Or is something less innocent going on?  So this is all the response you get, cameron, and no, you can't be a guest blogger here.

A number of distant friends have said that since this is how they keep up with my health, I should mention it more.  I always talk about it after I've had tests, but on a day-to-day basis, it's pretty much same old, same old.  I've taken Votrient (the chemo) every day for 20 months now.  In clinical trials, the longest anyone took Votrient was two years; most suspended the treatment after about eight months.  I'm used to the most immediate effects: my hair turned white, and my blood pressure soared so that I have to take three pills every morning to keep the blood pressure in check.  My left shoulder, where part of the scapula was destroyed by cancer and which underwent radiation, doesn't pain me and has gotten much stronger.  There are a few things that I can't do, but I've long since adjusted to them, and anyway (or anyways, as Kansans say) we left-handers are pretty good about adapting.  My right leg and hip (both full of titanium and plastic) are always the source of discomfort, but never real pain.  As I've said, unconsciously (most of the time) I make small groaning sounds when I stand, and though I negotiate stairs pretty well, I carry my cane outside the house, since it's easier if there's a railing or some other support.  I can't kneel or get down on my hands and knees to play with the dog or do serious cleaning (an advantage).  But in general I'm pretty mobile.  I had naively thought that after a while, I'd return to normality, like someone who's had a hip replacement, but after all this time, I've realized that that's not to be.

Of course, the most frustrating problems are the fatigue and the G-I problems.  I know that three to four hours after I take the Votrient, I'm going to have to crash for an hour and that usually right after lunch, I'm going to fall deeply into a two-hour sleep.  But it's not as if I have a lot of serious work to do, so I've relaxed into that rhythm.  Still, it's a bit scary when one minute I'm feeling peppy and the next I'm completely out of it.  The stomach problems--loss of appetite, nausea, and diarrhea--are the most irritating, especially as they're fairly constant parts of my days, but come and go without any observable direct cause.  I eat spicy Thai food, and all is well.  I eat something that seems totally bland and suffer dire consequences.  I'm unhappy that food and drink are no longer pleasures, but I don't think anything is going to change on that front.  So if I don't write more about my physical health, it's not that I'm avoiding the subject.  It's just that there is rarely anything new to report.

My mental health is okay as well.  Even though my life is much more constrained than I had hoped, I don't get bored (sleeping so much probably helps), and I've got many good friends whose company always gives me a 90-minute burst of energy.  I've certainly got my share of neuroses, but luckily depression has never been one of them.  Many years ago, I saw for a time a crazy, drug-addled shrink who at the end of one session suggested that I might like to try Zoloft or Paxil or Prozac.  I said that I wasn't depressed.  He said he knew, but perhaps I'd enjoy their effects.  Finally, I agreed (I wasn't a hippie for all those years for nothing) and took Zoloft for a week or two.  I've never been so depressed in my life.  I sat immobile on the couch for hours at a time.  That was the end of that experiment.  (He also once decided to hypnotize me.  In the middle of my "trance," he used the word 'collegial,' which he pronounced with a hard g.  I remember debating whether it would be rude to correct him and then whether it would break the spell if I did so.  I finally decided that if I was thinking about this and not whatever he was saying, I probably wasn't all that hypnotized anyway.  Another experiment came to an end.)

I'm also by nature not a brooder.  I was saying to a friend last week that sometimes, when my stomach is being particularly rebellious, I wondered whether I should stop the chemo for a few days, as I've done a couple of times before.  But, I added, since the primary tumor seems to have resumed growing, I was reluctant to do so.  She said that it must be a hard decision and that I must spend a lot of time thinking it over.  But the truth is that I don't.  On a bad day, I think about it for a few seconds, decide I'm not going to stop, and that's that.  Or I look at the bottle of Votrient, think for a moment how nice it would be not to take it that day, and then just go ahead and swallow the three pills and don't think about it again.  It's not denial or avoidance; it's just my character.

True, it's frustrating that food is an ordeal rather than a pleasure and that I'm not spending time lounging on a beach in Mexico or planning a summer trip to France.  But I know that I've been very lucky in traveling and living abroad more than most people can even dream of.  I tend to live almost entirely in the present (a trait which hasn't always served me well), so I'm much more likely to think about what I should read next (having just finished the very funny and very cynical "Vanity Fair," I need another long book to immerse myself in) or when Liam is finally going to choose between Hope and Steffy on "Bold and the Beautiful" than about what isn't happening in my life.  You can see I have my priorities in order.