Things are going well. It’s been a very busy summer with family visits and hosting several out of town friends. I’ve been walking a lot, which I love to do: taking stairs instead of escalators, finding interesting hill walks in the City.
I’ve stopped taking the anti-virals and antibiotics and next week I meet my new doctor for the first time. I have been suffering what I think is a bit of PTS. I have a twinge of fear when someone comes at me with a needle, where as before it was just a part of the regular routine, something I just did: sat calmly while a smiling face poked needles into my veins and pumped me full of toxic chemicals.
I had to visit the dentist earlier this month and I was terrified. As the chair tilted back I wanted to bolt out the door, and I have one of the best and nicest dentists in the world. I had a fractured tooth and we were going to try to put a crown on it, but in preparing the tooth it broke completely so he patched it up and scheduled me for an extraction. And again when I had the tooth pulled it was all I could do keep from bawling like a baby and screaming “Leave Me Alone!!!”
There are mood swings, I assume from the after-effects of the steroids and a year spent in survival mode. I now look forward to times of solitude, where before being alone was never very important to me. I have a dream of spending a month in a cabin on the coast, reading and writing and drinking tea in the early morning and taking long walks. I do realize that after about a week I’d be ready to return to the City and want to spend all my time photographing in the streets. But it’s a nice dream anyway.
It’s funny, I’ve always been impatient with people in general, but now even more so. I just don’t have time for nonsense. When I was a kid I knew my dad was not a smart person. I knew he was mean and irresponsible and I didn’t care for him at all and never gained any benefit from a relationship with him. But there was one time he said something to me that stuck. I don’t remember the exact situation, but one day we were in a wood shop and he said to me, “Can’t never could do anything.” I don’t know where that came from or where he heard it, I never asked. But it made sense to me, and today I think of that phrase often, especially when I’m at work and watching the people around me and when I hear adults complaining about this or that and acting the part of the victim. I just don’t have patience for it.
I suppose I’m just going through life changes, I turn 50 next month. I don’t mean to sound like the grumpy old curmudgeon that I am and I certainly do appreciate your patience with me. And just so you know, every morning, when I wake up, I tell my self, “I’m alive and it’s a new day.” I’m truly grateful for that. And if I can do that, anyone can.
Photo by: David W. Sumner
Stranded by MUNI at Church Street while on the way to AmTrak.
My nephew Dylan is quite the photographer. We spent a morning showing off our gear. After 22 hours on a train it was nice to spend some time with family.
The big event of the week was the high school graduation of my nephew Ethan (Dylan's brother). Anna caught me photographing Ethan as he negotiated dinner plans with his mother.
I got a shot of Anna with Dylan and Ethan. I can't tell you how proud Anna and I are of those very special young men.
Breakfast at Gilbert's with the family. I had never seen such a stack of hotcakes in my life.
Photographing Dylan's hockey practice.
A photo outing with the family on the Island. Our last day in Washington.
A year ago today I was diagnosed with Acute Leukemia. I had never met Dr. Reddy until that afternoon, my Primary Care Physician had made the appointment. Dr. Reddy said to confirm the diagnosis she would need a bone marrow biopsy. I would be admitted to the hospital in three days for three weeks of aggressive chemo therapy. I’d probably live six months, maybe a year. Dr Reddy took the bone marrow from my hip. Anna met me in the doctor’s office and listened to Dr. Reddy lay out the details. Our good friend Janet picked us up and we went home and spent the next 24 hours trying to come to terms with the idea that I was sick and dying. 
It's been almost a year since I was diagnosed with CLL. Looking back it was pretty hellacious, but I continue to do well and my doctor is very, very pleased. She was very excited by the numbers from my last CBC. I'm out shooting a great deal and posting to Flickr. In fact I finally posted the Alcatraz essay to my Flickr page this past weekend. You can see it here.
Shooting down town with Anna. Our reflection in a window. Anna's first roll of cross processed film. ©2008 Anna L. Conti
Hanging out in Dale Erickson's studio. ©2008 Anna L. Conti
Throughout the day, every doctor or nurse who spoke kept expressing their frustration with the current state of health care in this country.
The keynote speaker was Dr. David Spiegel, (at left) who gave an inspirational talk on "Living With Uncertainty." His specialty is stress disorders and he had some practical advice about living with the sword of Damocles over your head. He had done a lot of work with breast cancer patients, so many of his slides used artwork from those patients and examples from their stories. After his talk was over, we were talking with the couple next to us (the husband had lymphoma) and she said that she had breast cancer, so it seemed like the talk was custom made for them.
For the disease-specific talks, they divided us up into several different rooms, each with our own specialist & topics. The CLL room was packed - the speaker was Dr. Steven Coutre, a CLL researcher. I could tell he was trying very hard to avoid technical language and speak ordinary English, but he was still talking way over the heads of many (if not most) of the people in the room. His talk was about the latest prognostic tests and newest therapies, meaning things that have been learned in the last year about CLL treatment. He had tons of charts and graphs and thank goodness he had all the slides on a handout that we could take home and study at our leisure.
Well, we didn't make it to the end of January before we had to make more trips to the hospital. Actually we didn't make it out of December. Right after Christmas, Dave was coming down the stairs and heard/felt a "pop" in his left knee. He had ruptured a Baker's Cyst, and his leg started swelling up. It didn't get better, and the symptoms are almost the same as deep vein thrombosis (DVT), so we got nervous and ended up spending New Year's eve at the hospital. They ruled out DVT and sent him home again, saying it would soon resolve on its own. 
It didn't - it got worse. His leg got bigger, redder, and more painful, and today they did an ultrasound and diagnosed a DVT. So now he's on Warfarin (pills) and Fondaparinux (injections) and he's being followed by the "Blood Thinning Clinic." And he's pretty scared. I had a minor surgical procedure myself today, and I'm just putting one foot in front of the other.
