I have a backlog within the filing cabinet of my mind of dozens of articles I want to write. I put these all aside while I worked on my novel, tirelessly day after day. Now that the manuscript is in the hands of the editor, I have a window of opportunity to put some of…

If you have ever worked with a professional editor, you know the process can be brutal and cuts to the heart of you. I have mentioned before that even John Updike (a fantastic writer and one of only four of which to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once) described in his last book Endpoint,…

Housekeeping: The article below, while having strong Christian overtones, is not necessarily a Christian article, meaning a subject that only Christians would be interested in. It has a lot of psychological questions, which from my perspective is the same as spiritual (look at the Greek roots to Psyche and Soul, they are the same). I…

My labs have returned. On a positive note, after going six weeks without labs, my kidney function tests are still stable, awful but stable, with a GFR of 22, where normal is above 60 and dialysis starts at 15. The anemia is slightly worse but not worth worrying about. Looking at the cancer, the evil…

I just went six weeks between tests and seeing my oncologist, which is the longest since I’ve been sick. I was getting labs every other day, then once a week, then every six hours (after my bone marrow transplant) then weekly, biweekly and now this long jump. The space between was defined by the fact…

Conversations, either online or in person, are typically where my ramblings are conceived. I had such a conversation recently with someone who thought the COVID-19 closures of our society are ridiculous. His point was, we are all adults and therefore we should have the freedom to make our own decisions about our health. In a…

This morning my dear aunt, my father’s little sister, passed from this life. She was 93. She had lived with insulin dependent diabetes for fifty years. It is hard to do justice to describe this incredible woman. While she never bore children of her own, she became a mother to whole village, including my siblings…

When out of the blue I start to hear a consistent narrative, remarkably similar, coming from a variety of people spread out across diverse geographical areas, I become suspicious. Over the past 10 days I’ve heard the following narrative coming from a spectrum of sources: The death rate for coronavirus infections is grossly overstated. The…

Someone made the comment that I had not done an “update” in a while and that they don’t read my ramblings. So, for the sake of those interested in my health and not these tangents I get off on, I will give an update. I just finished my first three-week cycle of my new chemo…