Click images for desktop size: "A Whole New Ball Game" This is dreary. Rainy and cloudy all day, and far too cold. I went to the doctor. Chemotherapy has implanted fear receptors in my brain. Hard evidence of this from the nifty way my blood pressure and pulse rate bounce around. When we started I was 6' 3/4" (I appear to have grown a half inch in 3 weeks!) 174 pounds (I also appear to have lost 5 pounds in 3 weeks) my BP was 112 over 80 and my pulse was 72 BPM. An hour later I calmed down and my BP was 80 over 50 and my pulse was down to a more reasonable 60. The Dr said it was normal for chemo patients to dislike the doctor's office and my having 3 chemo's just made it sort of ingrained. This was one of those long 2 plus hour exams with a lot of "fluids" taken from me. There weren't any highlights. The low lights were the Dr telling me I was in remarkable good shape . . . If he'd stopped there I'd have been stoked . . . for someone who's body has had to endure what mine has. He also said, "you must have been very very fit before all of this. Most chemo patients look much worse than you do." I like this doctor but a little bit less after he said that. He brought back too many of the memories. Maybe he figured I had no memory, no memory at all. To add to my veil of tears I now have neuropathy. (I don't have a clue how to spell that.) It just means that the veins in my hands, feet and face are dying, I guess. They set up an appointment at the lab for all the blood for the new panels. When it's analyzed I have to see a nutrionist. My diet has to change yet again. Food makes me sick. I have to eat but another of the side effects of the chemo's is that my engine doesn't process food quite right. I think it's a pretty safe bet that whatever the changes are I won't get to eat coquille St Jacque anymore . . . and I have to take two more pills every day for the rest of my life . . . On the plus side I got to flirt with the nurse and receptionist. Any day you get to innocently flirt with cute women is a good day. My housemate actually waited for me to drive me home from the Doctors! I might have terrified her a little bit. She wanted to take more charge of my diet. I was still freaked out from the Dr's pronouncements so I think I was unintentionally sharp. She must have forgiven me as we had a good time shopping for some stuff to make her son's stay more comfortable. I like her son. He's smart, agile brained and funny. He raises the comfort level here well. I keep trying to feel like the outsider, the intruder, the spectre but they don't allow it. This has been the second dreary day here. I have to be stupid careful about getting sick - chills etc so I haven't been able to take good ol' dog out for our 4 or 5 mile walks. She's pretty hacked about this. "You get me into shape and then you abandon me!" We got about a mile and then I panicked over a few drops of rain and headed back. Good ol' dog kept looking at me and I know she was muttering under her breath about me. We went out later at night. (My new glasses are so dark that it is an adventure going out at night!) I carried an umbrella this time and we did about 2 quick miles. Walking in the streets disturbed me greatly. People in cars did not seem sober and I know we startled at least 2 people so we went on a trail around a man made lake. It was cool and we got to wake up some ducks who quacked at us and fled into the water. The way I figure it I got to flirt with two cute women, shop for some furniture, see an old book on college football and I got to wake up some ducks; so it was a pretty good day.