Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Perspective




8 comments:

  1. All's well in Dean Country!

    The trees are now unburdened, and the cold weather is slowly giving way to what will soon be a brief January thaw.

    Ahhhhhhhhh.

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  2. My Christmas gift from Mah*Sweetiel was art lessons this year. So I have signed up for 12 weeks of watercolour classes locally, and will receive some tutoring as well from my wonderfully creative friend Ginger. Class runs February 5th to May 7th. I'm pretty excited!

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  3. That sounds like a dandy present, listener--but nothing to compare with Ally's remission. Four years already? It hardly seems possible. And that triple star system is pretty incredible too!

    Two court appearances tomorrow, one by teleconference in the federal court in Yosemite, the other in Superior Court in a neighboring county.

    Glad your heater is getting with the program, Bill! I saw a photo of ice on Lake Michigan, looking toward downtown Chicago.

    And now to the Land of Nod.

    --Alan

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    1. Alan, how long since you became cancer free?

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    2. I was diagnosed in December 2008; I had six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation in January and February of 2009, and there has been no sign at all of it since then. (So almost five years.) I had a really good response to the chemoradiation--as memory serves me, the bleeding stopped after a single treatment. After surgery (in April?) the pathologists could not find a single malignant cell in the excised tissue. I seem to have been one of the 15% who are cured by chemoradiation alone, but surgery to remove the radiation-damaged intestinal tissue would probably have had to be done anyway, and 15% isn't good enough odds for that big a gamble. The five year survival rate with the sort of cancer and treatment I had is at least 95%. I don't have much recollection of the rough stuff, and my oncologist says that's typical (like severe burn patients). I'm back so close to normal as to make the distinction insignificant, although it took years. (Pardon me for running on; you didn't ask for so much.)
      --Alan

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  4. Well now…Jo*in*Vermont writes:
    "First Congregational Church of Burlington, Vermont, United Church of Christ is pleased to announce that Governor Howard Dean will be a special guest during a unique conversational Forum on Sunday, January 12 at 11:15am - immediately following their 10am worship service. The focus will largely be on building a positive bridge between our faith lives and our political and civic lives. All are welcome and invited."

    Awww, we'll have our wiggly Grand with us on Sunday and I have a program to run at the Library that day too. Dang!

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    1. Maybe they could record it? Or you could ask the NSA for a copy of their recording? (Pardon the dark humor.)

      --Alan

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