It was a good trip.

Going for an overnight trip to Half Moon Bay was a really good idea. It was soooo beautiful, and the time with Eric was very, very, nice. We didn't have to drive & drive to get there, either -- it's less than an hour away. Perfect!

When we arrived on Saturday it was cold and grey and a bit drizzly. That totally didn't matter. It was still gorgeous, and walking on the beach on a blustery day is still one of my favorite things (even if I rarely do so). After a late afternoon siesta we walked downtown, and then had a lovely dinner.

Today was bright and sunny, with blue skies. We walked on the beach in the morning, had a delicious brunch (I had brioche french toast stuffed with marsipone, with applewood smoked bacon) on main street, then drove up into the hills to a nature preserve, where we walked among redwoods and wildflowers, next to a rushing river.

This whole trip was delightful, and it served to remind us of all the things we still can do, despite the weight and worry of cancer.

Here are a few more pictures from the weekend:


It's a quaint town, but there aren't too many purveyors of potpourri.




This was when it was was chilly, when we first arrived. Isn't he cute?




There was lots o' horseback riding on the beach in Half Moon Bay.




It really was beautiful.






Today it was bright and sunny.




Most of the redwoods were 2nd growth -- the area has been heavily logged.

Update from Half Moon Bay

Here are a few pics from our walk this afternoon:















Here I am looking at Eric.

We're getting ready to go for a walk downtown, then to dinner at Pasta Moon. It's been a nice day.

Weekend

We have a nice weekend planned. On Saturday we're going to SF-MOMA to see the Calder exhibit, then we're driving to Half Moon Bay, and spending the night there. It will be good to get away.

Any weekend with Eric is a good weekend for me.

Nutshell

Medical decisions are difficult to make when all paths come to the same end, The End, and all bad things come in time. Women take many different approaches, and I'm not sure that one is fundamentally better than the next.

Some women refuse to talk about quality of life (qol) until their qol has more or less slipped away. They don't want to be "kept comfortable". They want to throw everything medical science has at what they sometimes describe as "The Beast". They will suffer any side effect or indignity... just let them be doing something.

Women with young children are particularly inclined to the above. Very often they have a goal of staying alive until their youngest is out of highschool.

Some women eschew medical care as much as possible, but lean toward herbal remedies, dietary changes, or a combination of positive thinking and denial.

And I just want to live as long as possible while still being able to have fun. I think that's it in a nutshell for me.

The scans say that there's growth of the nodules in my lungs. This is unfortunate, because two onocologists have said and one has implied that the scattered specks that have shown in scans may or may not have been metastatic disease. There was reason to believe that my disease was merely bony, which makes a big difference in length of survival.

In a field scattered with landmines of maybes, my life expectancy (such as it is) maybe was just cut in half. Or not. As always, there's no way to know anything, except that I'm ultimately fucked.

I don't know what I'm going to do, but I suspect that I'll do very little, for now.

And unless he or she has been diagnosed with a stage IV cancer, I'm not particularly interested in anyone's opinion about "next steps".

(Although I know that most folks don't have opinions as much as they have concerns. I think it sucks, too. And as usual, there's really nothing to say.)

Sleepy

I went back to bed shortly after writing the last post... and slept until the alarm clock rang. I guess that my birthday party tired me out more than I had thought, since I got fourteen and a half hours sleep on Monday night and still woke up tired!

Last night I went to mosaics class, which was fun. This morning I'm at work, tired but enjoying a nice latte.

Wee Hours

I was home from work at 4:00 PM yesterday, and in bed by 4:10 PM. I slept like a rock until about 15 minutes ago. So... not it's one in the morning and I've had a solid 8 hours of sleep. I think I'll be able to go back to sleep soon, though.

So Tired

I had a really nice birthday. Eric and I laughed with our friends, which was really, really nice... and the party wasn't as much work for Eric as some of our other shindigs.

It didn't do anything particularly energetic. I ate pizza, drank wine, and told stories. Still, I was exhausted -- probably because I was coming off such a tough week. Just a few days earlier I had 1. been informed that my treatment had failed and 2. been immobilized by pain.

All of our houseguests were gone before noon on Sunday, but I still didn't seem to recover yesterday. I didn't recover yesterday, and I tossed and turned all night, partially from discomfort, and partially from the residule effect from a bit of emotional hooey from the day before.

Now I'm at work but I wish I were still in bed.

One last thought

I stayed up much later than I anticipated.

Have I said before that Eric makes everything better? Eric makes everything better. He can't make it perfect, although he would if he could. He makes the hardest days easier, though (and the easy days dreamy).

Yawn

I drank the barium shake and had the ct scan done. Then I picked up a latte and went to work. Here I am, working, and totally worn out. I'm looking forward to sleeping tonight. I may go to bed at 8:00 o'clock.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and we're having a pizza party at my house -- a few friends and a few pizzas and a few glasses of wine. Simple and nice. I'm looking forward to it.

Hmph.

I'm getting another scan tomorrow, a ct scan, which means that I can't have any coffee in the morning. It's such a horrible thought. It makes me want to cry. I want to shake an angry fist at God. Not having a cup of coffee tomorrow morning isn't going to add years, days, or minutes to my life, but I still can't have any. It's really got me mad.

After the scan I guess I'll go to work.

This week hasn't been so hot.