Friends

 As the folks who follow the blog know, we had Liz's birthday party on Saturday. Yes, it's a day late but who's counting. Liz has some of the best friends and co-workers on earth. They look out for her, and that's always a great thing to have. She's gonna need them when my ride is finished, and the cool thing is, she won't have to ask. They'll be there. Good friends are like that. I had a couple of friends from High School, one of them was my best friend, and although we lost touch forever and a day, we can usually pick right up where we left off.

  Kise Randall and Daric Smith came to visit me this weekend. They drove all day Saturday, spent the night, and left again on Sunday afternoon. I tried to convince them to leave Topeka Ks earlier on Saturday so they could come to Liz's birthday party but they'd have none of that. They felt it might be intruding. Strange, they both sound a lot like me in that regard. So, we met up at Cracker Barrel on Sunday morning. Went through some pictures, caught up on some old times, and generally had a nice visit. Then we came back to Casa De Roc and shot the shit for five or so more hours. What a great day it was for me. I didn't realize how much I'd missed their company until I saw them drive away. My eyes leaked again. A lot. It's funny, we sat down, each of us with kids of our own, lives, jobs, hobbies, all the things that we've acquired as we've gotten older, and when we started talking it was as if it was fall of 1978, waiting to graduate in May of next year. The conversation was easy and not rushed, just like when we were kids and knew every damn thing there was to know. I miss that, and I miss Kise, Daric, Kise's husband Tom, more than I expected myself to miss them. I'd liked to have kept in better touch with all those folks. I don't regret my lack of correspondence, but it would have been a positive thing to have stayed in better contact. And now, at the closing side of my journey, we get together for just a few hours, and it's like we never lived more than a few blocks apart. They made me smile, and laugh, just like they did when we were younger. I'm going to miss them, and I'm very glad we had a few hours to catch up a little. It's time I'll treasure. Thanks Kise and Daric. I'm glad you didn't tell me you were going to drive straight through. And I'm glad you made it home in once piece. It was a long day and a long drive. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your lives to come spend some of my time with me. Love ya

  The horror is now, I'm bleeding like a stuck hog. Well that's not entirely true, but I'm bleeding a lot more than I had been. I cough a lot, but since they got me some cough syrup it's held that down to the point I'm not throwing up during the coughing spells. That helps a lot. The strange thing is, when I was bleeding inside my mouth, besides coughing up what I'd aspirated, I suctioned a lot out of my mouth. I'm not getting hardly any bloody mucus or saliva. Not when compared to what I'm hacking out of my trach tube. I have to wonder, is that coming out of my lungs? If it is, is it cancer moving off into there (might explain why I run out of wind so easily), or is it just something that is irritated and causing me to hack up a much higher volume of blood. Even more strange is the fact that it will clear up for a while, and I won't hack up blood at all. Then BOOM it's back with a vengeance. Weird, huh? I'll discuss this with my Hospice nurse when he comes in Tuesday, see if he want's to go over it with the doctor. Now, having said that, my docs in Houston said I would bleed, but they never said where or approximately how much, or any of that stuff. I'm sure they didn't want to get pinned down with specifics, because somewhere out there is some guy that's dying from his own cancer that might not happen exactly as the doc's said, then he'd sue them. I can almost smell that. I understand that specifics can change in a flash and never be exactly what they thought they would be back three months ago. At any rate, that's how I see my cancer, as the moving around shit that's fucking up my perfectly happy life. So be it. I die, it dies. I win in the long run, and that's all I care about. As far as the cancer goes that is. I care about my family. And they'd see me winning as something entirely different, like dad being completely clear of cancer and able to go back to work. That's what they'd see as a win for me. That'd take a miracle. While I wouldn't mind having to go into the next benefits meeting and saying "Yeah, yeah yeah. I know I said last year was my last trip here. But I had a miracle and I'm here working." Eating that little dab of crow wouldn't hurt my feelings at all.

 I'm having more neck and shoulder pain too. I doubled up my pain patches to see if that was the way to go since I had just ordered more of the 25mg patches. I can tell a big difference in the pain. But I'm also really groggy and feel like I need more sleep. As a control, I'll drop one of the patches on Tuesday when it's time to change them again. If I get more pain, and still feel as groggy, I'll go back to 50 mg. Anyway, I get more rest during the day. I still wake up 2-5 times a night having to clear my tracy. I can live with that. Although, a nice 5 or 6 hours straight through would be neat. I think I'm passed getting anymore of those days, though. Woke up this morning with what I thought was a screaming sinus headache. Turns out it was the muscles in my neck. The back of my neck felt like it had two 2X4's stuck in it. I think that was from the hoodie I wore on the couch. The hood must have wadded up behind my neck and forced my head forward. That must have made my neck stiff, and as soon as it was able it went on up into my head and jaw. As soon as I got my posture lined up correctly, or as correctly as can be expected, the head ache stopped. Gotta love that. A little bit of home remedy. I don't want to be one of those Hospice patients that calls every time the slightest thing goes awry for them. Nope,  I may be a mess but I'm not an afraid of my own shadow. I ask later, and then only in generalities.

  I get a lot of good things that happen in a day, and they far out weigh the bad things that go hand in hand with them. I laugh, I smile. I get pleasure out of watching my grandson try to weasel around with his mom. He's pretty good at it, and getting better. Although, he sometimes doesn't back off quickly enough. Then his mom pounces. That in itself is pretty funny. She reminds me of me dealing with two kids. I think they would tag team dad, unless they wanted the same thing. Then they attacked from different angles and work at me from different directions. That didn't work all the time, but it did often enough. I was a bit of a push over. As long as they were clear about what they wanted and the babysitter didn't have any complaints, they could have a snack of something that wasn't best for them.
Just seeing the sunrise or sunset is a good thing. That means I'm not stuck in the house all the time. That I'm still able to get out and be me, even for a couple of minutes. So yes, everything has a silver lining. And I like to hunt for it every time.

 Short one again today. That's not all bad, I don't think.

 What shall we do today, my friends? Carpe Diem? No, that's been done to the point of nausea.
Book Of Rock: It's not my fault you're unhappy, I can't fix that. If I could, I'd tell you to get off your ass and learn something. Make yourself happy first, then other people will either resent you being in a good mood, in which case they need an opterectomy, or they'll join in and have fun with you. Either way, as long as your happy, that's all that matters. Remember, this ain't the girl scouts. If you want your cookies, you gotta get em yourself.

Have fun, my friends. Of my youth and of my years here in Midland. Each and every one of you holds a special place in my heart. Thanks for being there