Hi!  Glad that you could make it.  The other night I heard Kyle Seager of the Seattle Mariners baseball team talking about a game that the team had just won.   And I learned a new word, “cupcake”.  He said that the win was not a cupcake, saying that it wasn’t that easy.  It didn’t come easy maybe as it looked or what the scoreboard looked like.

The Cancer Camino that I have been walking for almost four years is no cupcake but that is not to say that it doesn’t have miracles happen and precious high points happen.  And these stand out maybe more brilliantly because they appear on the contrasting dark background.  So, to begin my story I have been joined on my Cancer Camino by another.  And this has been very special and a big breakthrough for me.

Along comes Jennifer.  And I asked her if I could blog about her and this in a general manner and that is what I am up to.  And along comes Jennifer.  She lives on the Island, has the same doc and we figured how we could get our hospital visit in sync.  So now we commute together.  And just as being joined by someone, a complete stranger, on the dusty or muddy trail in Spain after maybe too much time alone, you marvel, how much fun is this?  Where have you been?

So we have similar problems and similar challenges, daily and long term.  But I have been walking for what seems like forever she has started recenty relatively.   So this is good for both of us.  With my oldness I can help her with the freak out that chemotherapy tries to drown you in at the beginning, a very strange foreign world.  She in turn with her newness helps me remember things that I have tried to block out and to maybe look at my own sticky wickets in a new way.  See?  Mira?

So, yesterday a miracle occured or maybe we just heard of it as it happened earlier.  But I have to back up a few notches to fill you in.  On Tuesday Jennifer went in for a scan to look into her insides.  This is a valuable tool that our oncologist uses to check what going on.  Sort of as close to boots on the ground that he gets to.  So she gets one every two months and this marks a place, once the scan is looked at and intrepreted where strategy and/or dosage is likely to change.   The  doc can tweak things depending on what he sees on the report on Wednesday and talks it over with you.

From the Cancer Camper’s ( patients’s) point of view this is a totally nerve wracking, sleep losing, nail biting process.  Life or death seems to hang in balance in the mind.  This is the second scan that she has had and the second time through the wringer.  But in spite of all the mental gymnastics that she went through this one turned out to be very very good.  And combined with excellent numbers from her blood work it looks very positive for her.  So we are loosing no time toasting to her health and the miracle revealed.

So, we walk on through the ins and outs and over and unders of the Cancer Camino, never a dull moment.    Cupcake loves, Felipe.