Happy Thanksgiving!  As for many people, it's my favorite holiday--neither patriotic nor religious and, for those of us who are lucky, with a groaning board covered with a surfeit of delicious food.

One semi-obligatory ritual is going around the table so that everyone can say what he or she is thankful for.  Jimmy Kimmel says we should all just saying 'togetherness' and then walk around the table kissing everyone on the top of the head.  It is togetherness that we all say in one form or another.  My list:

Togetherness--seriously.  Since I don't have family, it's a day to be grateful for all the friends who make up a faithful, if voluntary family.

The Internet in all its forms, which provides hours of entertainment, the means to keep in touch with friends all over the world, and ways of learning surprising new things.

MSNBC, which provides a 24-hour a day "variety" of shows with talking heads who all think like I do. 

Votrient, which, despite its unfortunate side effects, has kept me alive and kicking more than two years longer than the initial prognosis. 

My husband--and the fact that for the first time in 68 years I can say that.  Thanks to Iowa who made the marriage possible and then easy, to the friends who drove long distances to attend, and to all the well-wishers who congratulated us on our return.  Most of all, thanks to Mohamed, who continues to love and support me without ever a moment of complaint or reservation. 

The last few days have been tough ones, but it's good to take time to remember all that I have to be thankful for.

And while we're celebrating life and light, Happy Hanukkah!

Fifty years ago, I was an eighteen year old freshman at State College of Iowa, soon to become the University of Northern Iowa.  At noon on Friday, November 22, I had eaten lunch at the cafeteria in the Union, returned to the dorm to pick up my books, and headed to my 1 o'clock Intro to Lit class, taught by Loren Taylor, my favorite professor in my three years at SCI.  Dormitories were different in those days.  I had two roommates in a room designed for two students.  There were no mini-fridges or phones or televisions in the room.  There was one common room per floor with a television, but it was rarely used during the day.  As I walked across campus to the classroom, there seemed to be fewer students than usual, but it was Friday afternoon, so the absence could be dismissed as students leaving early for the weekend.

When I got to the classroom, perhaps half the students were there.  A few of them said that President Kennedy had been shot, but that seemed unthinkable and no one had much information.  We waited for 15 minutes to see if Prof. Taylor would show up and then left the classroom.  In the dorm, everyone was in the common room.  Walter Cronkite had announced the President's death at 1 p.m.  For the rest of the day, the room was packed as we tried to fathom what had happened.  South American dictators were assassinated, not American Presidents.  The idea that RFK, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X would also be killed in the next few years couldn't have occurred to us. 

Three years earlier, I had been an eager volunteer in Kennedy's campaign.  The night of his nomination (on my birthday in my time zone), my parents let me stay up late.  Nerd (a word that didn't exist then) that I was (am?), I had made a giant chart of all the states, the number of their votes, the possible nominees.  I dutifully filled out all the little squares until Kennedy finally secured the nomination.  I went door-to-door in my Republican home town passing out brochures.  Although I've always portrayed Story City as fairly liberal, there was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment.  The pastor of the largest Lutheran church in urging his parishioners to vote against Kennedy had announced from the pulpit that he would rather his daughter marry a Communist than a Catholic.  (There was some backlash against that statement.)

I don't remember much about the weekend following the assassination--what activities went on as scheduled, which were cancelled.  The common room in Baker Hall, my dorm, was always packed, the black-and-white TV always on, grief, anger, and incomprehension mingled.


Thanksgiving Tip:  Don't forget to spatchcock your turkey.

I resumed taking the chemo yesterday after a six-day break, the longest I've ever taken, though also the first in a year or so.  The point was to let my body "reboot," but after 2½ years of taking the Votrient daily, I'm not sure the level of toxic chemicals in my body could significantly decline.

The break certainly did help with the stomach problems.  My appetite improved, and with one unfortunate exception, rushing to the bathroom wasn't a frequent priority.  In addition to my reliance on sushi as a staple, I've added pad thai from a new restaurant that has take-out.  One order lasts me for three meals, and I don't get tired of it.  I realize that pad thai doesn't sound as if it would be easy on the stomach, but somehow it doesn't create problems.  Our friends Raylene and Doug brought over a baked pork chop, rice, and vegetable dish (and a pumpkin pie) that was good for three meals.  Poor Mohamed!  He doesn't know what he's missing.  I feel bad for him because he's so intent on making sure I eat as well as possible that his own eating patterns suffer.

On the other hand, the break didn't change the fatigue or the aches.  I can access my KU charts electronically, and the new thyroid medication brought the number down dramatically so that I'm now well within the normal range.  But it hasn't done anything to increase my energy.  Exactly three hours after taking the Votrient, I crash for at least an hour.  After a shower and lunch, I have another bout of fatigue--this one leading to at least two hours of sleep.  But now I've added a third crash at about 6:30--not as long, but just as sudden and demanding.

So, too, I still have pains in my back and right hip, the one with all the titanium.  (Whenever I hear Sia singing "Titanium," I assume she's singing to me.)  I take three Percocet a day, but they
don't really seem to help, though of course I don't know what the level of pain would be without the Percocet. 

Otherwise, fall is definitely here, and our yard is mostly covered with leaves.  The semester is winding down, though Mohamed still has two papers to write.  Kimber is obsessed with either a family of rabbits or a possum that's living under our back deck.  And I'm writing a blog entry after a week of silence.

Yesterday it was time for our once-every-six-weeks visit to the KU Cancer Center.  Because Mohamed has classes Friday mornings, the appointment had to be in the afternoon.  Between the morning waits to eat after taking thyroid and chemo meds and the not eating for four hours before a CT scan, I was hungry, tired, and a little grumpy by the time the exams began.  Because of the tight schedule, they drew blood at the same time they put in the port for the CT scans.  The department where they do x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans was very busy, so the wait was long, but luckily, a new New Yorker had arrived just as we were leaving Topeka, so I had good reading to fill the time.  The scans themselves go quickly.

Then it was time to go to the second floor and wait for Dr. Van, who was "only" 40 minutes late.  He apologized for his lateness, and I wondered why since he's never been on time in the last 2½ years.  But I shouldn't complain because all the news was good: the kidney tumor hasn't grown, nor have any of the other spots in the area scanned, including my lungs.  I felt a little silly in that when Dr. Van said they had scanned the lungs, I insisted that they hadn't, that they had just done the pelvic area as usual.  And then the scans appeared on the computer screen, those of the lungs included.  I really hadn't thought that I had gone farther into the machine than usual, and they hadn't asked me to remove the chain around my neck with its small green sapphire and small gold chai.  But I couldn't argue with what was on the screen.  Everything continues to be stable--very good news indeed.

The last couple of months haven't been great.  After we reduced the Votrient from 600 to 400 mg per day, the diarrhea had improved for a couple of months, but by September, it had returned, along with a lack of appetite (though I had actually gained a couple of pounds at yesterday's exam).  For the last three weeks or so, I've had a number of aches and pains, especially in my back.  We considered changing the chemo to see whether that would mitigate the stomach problems, but since the Votrient
has been so effective, we're reluctant to try something new.  Or we could reduce the dosage, but we were all hesitant to do that as well.  So I'm going to take a break of a week in taking the Votrient to give my body the opportunity to "reboot."  We'll see whether that helps.  And we'll continue to monitor the pains in my back, since there are small tumors in my spine and ribs.  If they don't improve, at my next session, they'll do an MRI.

After the good news, neither of us having eaten all day, we stopped by the cafeteria, which was closed.  There was a vending machine, but the way the sun was reflecting, it was impossible to read the labels on the sandwiches.  I ended up with a meatball and cheese sandwich, which I gobbled down and for which I later paid the price.  I stayed awake almost the entire way home, but then conked out for an hour.  Neither of us made it past 10:30, but at least we went to sleep relieved and grateful for all that modern medicine can do.

A number of you have expressed concern about my shift to less frequent blogging.  As I said, one main reason is that, given my rather quiet life these days, it was becoming difficult to think of subjects for the blog.  Everyone has said that blogging about health matters, even if nothing really changes much, is always welcome.  I'm touched by the sentiment, but even I get bored writing about how many hours I sleep, the number and quality of my bathroom trips, the fluctuations of my appetite.  I can always write about politics, though I haven't been as involved as usual, and as far as reading, I've been plugging away at Madame Bovary for a month or so now, falling asleep after reading a page or two.  I'll have to admit, however, that my energy level has been particularly low the last three weeks with the last few days being particularly bad.  I sleep even more than I did before, and I can't concentrate for very long.  A few new aches and pains have developed, and they make getting around even more fatiguing.  I'm sure I've just strained a muscle or two from sitting so much in the same position, not one that enhances good posture.  I keep promising myself that tomorrow I'm going to pull myself together and be more energetic and productive.  Tomorrow...

Maybe a month or so ago, I wrote about Joe, the friend of a friend, who was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer in circumstances similar to my own diagnosis: neither of us had had any symptoms of kidney problems, but both of us had developed pains--his in the ribs, mine in the scapula--that we attributed to physical activity but that wouldn't go away.  We kept meaning to get together to discuss our treatments.  Although the beginnings of our cancer were similar, the ends were not.  Joe died 48 hours ago--a little over four months from diagnosis to death, while I'm still putzing along 2½ years after the diagnosis.  It hardly seems fair, but then again, we don't live in a world where fairness obtains.

For the first time in the 25+ years I've lived here, we didn't have a single trick-or-treater last night.  The number of kids who come has always fluctuated, but there have always been at least 15 or 20.  Our street isn't exactly conducive to kids: there are only seven houses on each side, and there are no street lights, so it's very dark.  Still, the weather was good, and it was rather surprising--and disappointing--for their not to be any costumed visitors.