The Merry Maids are here for their once-a-month visit, the three of us are on the back deck enjoying some uncharacteristically mild weather for the first of August.  It'll be 90º by this afternoon, but for the moment it's lovely.  The only problem is the glare from the sun on my computer screen, which makes it virtually impossible to see what I'm typing.  Mohamed has retreated to the balcony steps, where there is more shade, but no back support.  And Kimber is lying in the sun, waiting for a squirrel or rabbit to put in a morning appearance. 

It's now been 3½ weeks since I reduced the dosage of the chemo and of one of the three blood pressure meds.  (The most immediate effect of the chemo when I started the daily treatment over two years ago was to dramatically increase my blood pressure--well, that and to turn my hair white.)  So far, the blood pressure has remained low.  Of course, there's some worry that reducing the chemo by 1/3 might also reduce its effectiveness, but at least one of the side effects has happily abated.  The fatigue level remains about the same: I made it through the trip to Iowa with just one crash per day, and I managed to have them at convenient times.  But since we've been back, I still need my morning nap, the afternoon sleep may be a little shorter, but now around 6 or 6:30, I fall asleep again for about 30 minutes.  Then I'm good till bedtime around 11:11.  On the other hand, my stomach problems are much improved.  First, my appetite has returned, and I often have healthy appetites for both lunch and dinner.  I've become obsessed with fish--not just my three-times-a-week sushi dinner, but trout and mako shark and whatever else I can find.  We've found good fish in restaurants where you'd least expect it (Longhorn Steak House has an excellent rainbow trout), and as a confirmed carnivore, who used to like nothing better than a bloody steak, I'm a little surprised that fish always looks better.  But it's a wonderful change when eating dinner doesn't seem like an ordeal.

More importantly, I don't feel as if I'm chained to the toilet any more--a four-hour car trip to Iowa?  No problem.  After two years of calculating every outing, preparing with Imodium, searching for the restrooms, and at home making innumerable trips up the seven steps to the john, it's an enormous relief to function relatively normally.  I haven't had any serious bouts of nausea.  Gastro-intestinally, I feel human again.

I know this entry is short, but the glare is driving me nuts, and there's a previously unpublished short story, "Paranoia," by Shirley Jackson in the latest New Yorker, that's tempting me.  I'm giving way to temptation.  (And I'll proofread this later, when I can actually see the words on the screen.)