kiyyik's Journal

A long weekend, but a short one.
Got the day off Friday for the 4th (Saturday), but didn't really do anything. Only main thing we did was go in on Saturday because Kassie's pain meds had run out and it was absolutely killing her. The 4th was a busy day at the emergency room: lotsa people in swimsuits hobbling around or being stretchered in. They took Kassie back then moved us to a bed and got her in a gown Then they wound up taking her off for X-Rays. I stayed behind in the room and called everyone, let them know what was going on. I joked to Dad that we got diagnosed on St Patrick's Day, and now here we were spending the 4th of July in hospital again. I hate to think what she has planned for Hannukeh--eight days! ;)

Bit of disturbing news. The attending physician made a reference to her bone scan, and seemed to indicate they'd found cancer in the bone marrow after all, despite us being told otherwise by two different doctors. So now we're on pins and needles about that, too. Between that and the PET scan, I'm just waiting for them to pull her in and give her the full details. If we've been through all this to no avail I swear I'll scream.

Kassie gets scanned
Kassie went in to get her PET scan today. This is where we find out what all the weeks of radiation and chemo have done to the tumor, if anything. I even called mom before going to work and let her know to keep Kassie in mind; she said she would and that it usually takes a few days to get back the results and I was to go with her or find someone else to go with her because you don't want to face that alone, regardless of the result. So I've got to find her someone.

One bit of good news; they checked her bones last time she was in (because of all the pain she's been having) and said that she hasn't got any tumors in them, thank goodness. Now we just have to wait and see what we hear back.

Springfield Pride 2009

We headed down to Springfield today for their annual Pride fest. It used to be held in Phelps Grove park, but in 2006 they Pride committee dropped the ball, and didn't make any reservations or plans or anything; we wound up putting the whole thing together in eight weeks. And it was my first advertising work ever. We moved it to Commercial Street, where the GLBT center actually is anyway, and just had a "block party" there. And it's been there ever since. But I've never seen it like it was today.

For one thing, it was packed. Tents everywhere, crowds of people all day long. They said we had a good couple thousand at least, and that's not even counting the uninvited guests. Ah, yes...the uninvited guests...

Fact is, we knew they were coming. The holy roller faction had been making trouble in recent days, even protesting at one of the bars where the Pride pageant was supposed to've been held. In point of fact it had been moved to another bar at the last minute (because of the rollers? I don't know), and so they spent the whole night picketing the wrong place! Then in the morning, they were at the Pride festival, in their suits and 10 Commandments t-shirts and so on, trying to convince us that we were evil and wrong and all the usual things those people do. And then the Bosh showed up.

Now, I've only seen nazis in Springfield once before: I was walking home one night, crossing the crosswalk before walking up to my apartment and just happened to look at the lone car stopped at the light. Two of 'em, they were: khakis and armbands, the whole bit. I nearly stumbled over myself, I was so surprised. Well, these weren't the same folks--at least I don't think they were--it was about ten of them, all young, mostly skinheads and like that, waving swastika flags and holding up some signs that...well, you can probably guess about the signs. They were across the street from us, and for the most part, they stayed there. Except just once...

I had grabbed my camera and hustled over to our side of the street where various counter-protesters and the holy rollers were clustered (it seems that after the nazis showed up, the 'rollers stopped going after us and started going after them! I guess even they have their limits), getting some nice shots with my zoom lens, when all of a sudden, they started heading for our side of the street. At first the cops (I didn't mention the cops? Oh yeah. There were cops.) didn't stop them, but after they got right there and started shouting in our faces, and some of us (not me, too busy taking pictures thank you) were yelling back, and it looked like the thing was going to turn into a powder keg, the cops stepped in and neatly inserted themselves between us, and the nazis began to back off, shouting and seig-hieling all the way until they were back on their side of the road.

Compared to that, the rest of the day was almost quiet. Kassie and I took a shift at the TG support booth, hanging out with our friends there, and gave some brochures away. Caught up with a lot of friends from around town, made some new connections, generally had a good time. The uninvited were new--I've been to years and years of pride festivals in Springfield and never seen the likes of this before--but we had a hell of a turnout, and all sorts of great stuff going on. All in all, they did a bang-up job and I'm glad we went.

Another weekend
Well, it's been an interesting weekend to say the least. Friday night we were meant to go to the American Cancer Society's Relay for life, an annual fundraising event in which (if you don't know) multiple teams spend an entire night taking sponsored laps around a t rack, individually or in groups, in order to raise money for cancer treatments and, eventually, a cure. It's an interesting thing, including "illuminations" (decorated bags with lights inside to light the way) and a "survivors lap" right at the beginning. I was really hoping to take Kassie along, and get her to do the survivor's lap, but unfortunately she wasn't feeling well and wasn't up to the trip. I can't decide whether this was ironic or not.

Saturday, things were a little more eventful. For the past several weeks, the lake area has been littered with billboards advertising, of all things, a "Testicle Festival", in the nearby village of Olean. Now, a testicle festival, if you haven't encountered such a beast before, is very interesting: way back in some unknown country--most likely the type of rural area where they tend to use every bit of the animal because they have to--somebody found out that if you took the testicles off of, e.g., a bull, pig, rooster, mouse, etc., and fried them up in batter, you got something that is not only palatable, but sometimes even fit for human consumption. And so it was that we set out, map and GPS in hand, to go eat some balls.

Now, the thing about Olean is, it's not a big place. It's small. Very small. The last census had it at 157 people. It's little more than an exaggerated crossroads, a sort of L shape out in the middle of farmland, with a welding shop, a few antique stores, and several hundred motorcyclists, though I suspect they weren't usual. They were everywhere, though: parked along the street, roaring up and down the main drag, at every corner, in every lot, even a strip of them going down the middle of the main street, a slow sloping hill that led to the solitary trailer where the star atraction of the day was being doled out for five bucks a pop. Ball Mecca.

We had a spot of trouble getting there, in fact: a small target is easy to overshoot. And when one map doesn't tell you the details, your phone's GPS doesn't give turn-by-turn instructions, and your in-car GPS hasn't even heard of the place, it takes a bit of creative juggling. It also doesn't help when the place is reached by heading off the paved road and riding down a winding dirt path past farms and creeks and so on until you finally, finally come upon a patch of paved roads and buildings with a name attached. It's almost as if someone spilled some asphalt on their way somewhere and decided to put up a town around it. I'll spare you the endless winding roads, the inevitable turnarounds, and just get to the point where we finally did get there.

A Testicle Festival, once you pay the parking guy and the Jaycees people, and frantically make sure you've got enough money left to even bother, looks much like any other small-town celebration. There's the vendor tents all along the tiny park, selling jewelry and various crafts and so forth. There's the camera crews down from the city to get a little nibble for the 5 o'clock news, the veterans in their t-shirts (this is the 16th annual event; I saw shirts for the third, the 10th, and more). And then , there was the line. Snaking all the way up the block to the top of the hill when we got there, and even further when we left, pilgrims come to feast.

We killed a little time looking at the vendors, checking out the bikes and so on, and finally took our place in line. It was a long day, and hot, so eventually Kassie had to drop out, and I took it solo. It was about an hour, all told, before I got to my turn (some say it was an hour and a half, or even two, but I fear they exaggerate); fortunately, I had a book with me, and was able to pass the time with that--until I finished it. No truth to the rumor that I read the entire book while in line, by the way. I don't know how these things get started. Anyway. By the time I got to the front of the line, tragedy had struck: they were out of hot sauce, and the ketchup was running dangerously low. Now, if you've never eaten batter-dipped genitalia before, let me tell you, under circumstances such as this , condiments become all-important, like you can't even imagine. But I picked up three sets, as per orders, and wound my way back up the hill til I found Kassie sitting in the shade and enjoying a porch swing. I joined her, and we braced ourselves, and took a bite.

So...what was it like? Well, you know the texture liver has? that sort of dryness? Imagine that, but subtle. I'm not a liver fan, but found these quite palatable, though I did go back for ketchup. Kassie, on the other hand, took a few and decided that it was just not for her; we wound up selling our third basket to someone who didn't want to wait in line and, wrapping up the rest of hers for the doggie, headed for home.

Sunday was a little quieter. Kassie spent most of it resting up from the previous adventure, and I spent it tending my sunburns and catching up on my reading. We did head down to Springfield, however, to meat up with our old support group. Next week is Pride, and they were getting ready to have a booth this year;; I'm glad about this, as it's the first time since I left the group and moved up here that they have done so; it was always a goal of mine to have them participate in the LGBT community more, so this is very gratifying: apparently they have new brochures and everything. We'll be down there too, of course--they even got us to do a shift on the booth, which I don't mind. The group is thriving, and that was good to see. So next week I'll be able to tell you all about how Pride went down; I won't get into too much detail but from what was said at the meeting it may turn out to be a very interesting occasion indeed.

Movie Night
"So," Kassie came into my office, pulled up a chair. "What do you feel like doing tonight?"

I didn't know. As far as I was concerned we weren't doing anything; I thought after her mini-adventure heading up for a birthday dinner last night, she'd want to rest.

"Well, I was thinkin'," she smiled, "That we may want to go see a drive in movie?"

Now, as long as she's known me, she's known I love drive-ins. We don't get 'em around much anymore (in case you hadn't noticed) and so I had pretty much filed it off in the "one-of-these-days" category. But she had found one about an hour and a half away, still open and showing a movie that night. We made it a date.

The Owen's drive-in is in Seymour, Missouri, a bit west of Springfield. What you do is, you take the interstate to Marshfield, then you follow that road, then get onto another, smaller road, then onto another road still (taking care to watch out for Amish buggies), then onto one more road, and you're int Seymour. Just folow that road along past everything til you see the big white screen. There it is.

Owen's is a pretty sparese place: a little stone shack in the front for the tickets, a concrete one for the concessions and projection, and a big grass yard in between. We had come early enough to get premium parking, and I scouted out the concession stand. It was your typical fare: burgers, hot dogs, popcorn, nachos--piece of advice on the nachos, if you go there: they have regular and deluxe nachos. Only order the deluxe if you are SURE. Put it this way: they gost five bucks and are worth it.

Interesting place, though...there was a sign hanging in the back saying they'd been in the entertainment biz since 1908, and you could tell just from the sheer accumulation of stuff. It was cool, though; almost a mini-museum of leisure activities. I was prarticularly surprised to see an original Pac-Man machine. For those of you who don't know, most of them were brought back to Midway and gutted to make Ms Pac Man machines out of'em (ah, if only it were that easy....), so you don't get many of them around anymore, and the ones tat are around are generally quite valuable. I snapped a pic; will post it later.

The people there were incredibly nice: while we had some light, I was trotting around, doing my photography thing, natch, and people asked us where we were from and what brought us down there. I fell to chatting with a lady who'd brought a bunch of girls to the movie, and one girl in particular advised me that the cheeseburgers were "heavenly". And they were quite good at that: cooked to order, and all the fixin's, as they say (has anyone ever seen an individual fixin?) I had one, and Kassie had a look at it and went and had one of her own--I think this may be the first burger she's totally finished in quite a long time--even the Backyard Burger we got on the way home from the reunion last week didn't get entirely polished off, but this one did. It was good to see. Kassie starts chemo agian on Wednesday, but I don't know if/when they're going to start her up on the radiation again. I'm hoping it won't be for a bit; she seems to be getting her appetite back, finally.

As to the movie, well,what can I say? Last week they'd shown the new X-Men movie, which we wanted to see, and next week they're showing Star Trek, which we have seen and want to see again. So what were they showing this week? "17 again", one of those adult-goes-back-to-being-a-kid-or-vice-versa type movies that absolutely littered the 80's. It was the usual: middle class white guy regrets decision made in youth, magic janitor sends him back to that age....except that he doesn't actually travel back in time, nonono. He's still in the present day, dealing with a divorce, going to school with his children, and crashing with his old school buddy who is theo nly one who knows his Terrible Secret(tm). You can pretty much write th plot from there, if you've ever seen a sitcom in your whole life. Ugh. I tell you what, though; between the "teenage" version of the character being hit on by his daughter, and hthe awkward tension with his wife, and one hting and antoehr...well, I'd just like to see a nice, Freudian analysis of this film. Freud himself would have a fit.

Anyway, on the way home we agreed that though the movie sucked, the experience was great, and we would totally have to go back to see Star Trek next week. Also, there are apparantly a few other drive-ins around; they're all a bit of a drive but that's all right. We've got time.

(postscript: tongiht I had a long , odd sort of dream, where she and I drove off backroads and into small towns with huge buildings that blended inside and outside, brightly colored and retro-styled...but I suppose when you read a book on 50's design and archetecture during the day and go to a drive-in at night, you have to expect that sort of thing.)

Birthday
Today was Kassie's birthday. We didn't celebrate much--at least, not until after I got home from work, anyway. I managed to get her flowers into a vase and sign the card, but when I went to sneak them over to the couch, she was already awake. Oh well.

I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday. She said that the night previous she'd had a dream about Dover sole, which had pretty much stayed with her all day. Now, it just happens there's only one place on this side of the lake to get a good Dover sole, and it's run by some former coworkers & friends of hers. So off we went.

JJ's is an interesting place--on the other side of the lake, the two "fancy" eateries were always the Potted Steer and the Blue Heron, both owned by the same guy. For about a season and a half, Kassie worked at the former as a garde mange--that is, in charge of the "cold pantry": salads, desserts, that sort of thing. She did her work well, and impressed everyone there, but unfortunately it didn't last, owing to...well, let's just say the owner had a tendency to rub people th wrong way. In fact, not long after Kassie was gone, the main chef at the Heron quit. Add to that the Steer being closed so the highway department could knock it down, and there was suddenly a lot of first-class restaurant people floating free. And so JJ's was born.

So we got there fairly shortly--it's in Laurie, just up the road from where I work--and got ushered to a table. Most of the waitstaff know her, and a good bunch of the kitchen crew. I, er, let it leak out that it was her birthday, and our waitress (who we knew from the Steer days) treated her to some lobster-stuffed mushrooms to celebrate. Anyway, she got her Dover Sole, while I opted for the batter-fried shrimp (very good; they do a double-wash: wet/dry/wet/dry, it gets very cripsy and tasty indeed; they also do onion rings the same way. You wouldn't think onion rings would be something you'd get in a class establishment like this, but they're incredibly good).

Kassie actually did pretty good at eating. She had her salad. And ate a ocuple of the mushrooms (I had another, and we saved the last for later), and got about halfway through the first piece of sole. Of course, she had downed an entire bowl of soup earlier in the day, so she was just doing well all around. Actually, I was quite proud of her. And we got a nice doggie-box to take home.

On the way out, they hugged her and told me to take care of her, keep her out of any trouble. I joked that it was actually easier to do that now, but it was nice that they still rememebr and look out after her. They're good poeple over there--they're what gave the old place class, not its menu or its wine list (and certainly not its decor--oy!). We headed for home, and spent the night unwinding for a nice, long weekend.

Happy Birthday, Kassie

Many, many happy returns.

Reunion Weekend
A few days ago Kassie got in touch with one of her old school mates. For years since we got together she's regailed me with tales of "The 12", a bunch of friends with whom she'd skip school, bum around, drink, smoke, and generally gdo all the things I personally never dreamed of doing for fear they would go on my Permanant Record. Anyway, one of them had gone onto Facebook, rounded up as many of the 12 as he could, and wanted us all to come down to visit.

Now, when I say "come down"  I mean down to Fort Smith, Arkansas. It's a town o the western edge of Arkansas, about halfway down or so. Call it a five hour drive. Between the drive length, Kassie's condition, and the impending storm going through SW Missouri and Arkansas, it was an open question whether we'd make it or not. But this morning I checked the weather report, and figured out if we got onto 44 til Joplin and dropped straight down to Fort Smith, we should get there bone dry, or at least avoid the worst bits ofthe storm. So off we went.

First stop: drop off the dog. We dropped Uzume off with a friend who has a nice farm with lots of dogs. Unfortunately, not all of them are particulary friendly with ours, so she doesn't like it too much. We always makesure to pack extra doggie treats for her when we drop her off there, sweeten the deal a little bit. Then down the road we went.

Mostly the trip was all right. Kassie was having trouble with her voice, which made the few times we had to use drive-through windows a bit trying (at one point we had the operator come out and talk to us face-to-face jsut because it was easier. We had a rather unpleasant experience at that place; it used to be the last Popeye's Chicken in Springfield, MO, but was now a combination Chicago/generic cajun place. I got a 3 piece chicken, thinking the recipe woudl at least be more or less the same, but ...well, put it this way: once you got past the lackluster crust that made it look and taste like grocery store chicken, the meat was distressingly pink. Ugh. Not even cooked properly. A 20 minute detour for nothing.

Anyway. Across to Joplin and down into Arkansas. Past neverending golf courses and rolling hills, just tons of scenery. I snapped away as we drove, got lots of shots. You like green?  Lots of green down here. I'll say this much about the rain: it really has cranked the vegetation to 11 around these parts.

We found the place in a nice little neighborhood. The organizer was an IT nerd like me, who had just bought the place, and was very house proud, and deservedly so. We sat around, joking about old times, as other people trickled in. There was another IT guy, a girl who wasn't in IT but her husband was, a youth pastor, and a couple of brothers we had to go pick up in one of the sleazier bars I've ever set foot in: the kind of place that lends real meaning to the word "dive". Well, some people move on, some don't. All the way there, we were sharing stories back and forth--well, they were sharing, I was listening. I must say, I rather envied them; they had a lot of stories, a lot of memories. Looking back to myself those days, I don't have a lot I would care to recall.

One interesting highlight of the night was one of the brothers, who had difficulty dealing withKassie's condition...he didn't even recognize her at first. After he did, it seemd to shake him to the core. He spent the rest of the night worrying it over, and even went offf with the pastor and thenKassie herself and talked it over.    I was a little worried about it to tell the truth, but all ended well, so that's all right.

Menatime, I wound up making friends with the kids. Every nwo and then I find myself around kids--hardly ever, actually--and have always thought of myself as being gruff and curmugeonly, in a W C Fields kind of way. But when I'm around kids...I dunno, more often than not we jsut sort of click. Before Iknew it, I was helpingtheir youngest build a house out of Duplo blocks, and then wound up getting treated to a complete tour through the son's rock collection. Kassie's said she's seen me be good with kids before; I am slowly coming round to the possibility--horrifying as it may be--that I'm actually *good* with kids. You think you know yourself...

We did have one minor snag--and by snag I mean darn-near-heart-attack. Got a call from the pet locator service we had Uzume chipped through: someone had reported finding her. The hell!? Then we got a voicemeail from the guy who found her...bleeding...oh, god... we played some very fast phone tag, and found out that Uzume and the dog at the friend's house that particularly didn't like her had gotten into it, prety hard. Uzume had run away, and they had been running up and down the roads in a panic, tyringto find her. We gave them the number of the guy who found her, and a little while later, go the all-clear that she was back in the farm. Meantime, we pretty much decided that, as much as we liked oru friend, as as nice as she was and all, next time we left town overnight the dog was going in the kennel.

Anyway, we're off in a hotel now, Kassie is resting up--I think she had a good night. I jsut wish she could have eaten something: she jsut managed about 2 1/2 chicken mcnuggets through the entire day, plus some tea and water now and again. That's kind of how it goes these days; she doesn't know til she tries to put something in her mouth whether it's going to go down or not. She had her last radiation dose on Wednesday, and her last chemo for this batch last Wednesday, so she's got a week or two to kind of reset, physically. We're hoping in the meantime she can get some solid food into her. The night is windign down. Tomorrow we go home and fetch the dog home. I think we owe her some extra treats this time.

Good weekend, not so great finish
Whoever did the old "Love is..." cartoons that used to appear in the newspaper did not, I think, do a very complete job. Oh, certainly they captured the rosier aspects of the thing, but that's only half the story, and I think they did love a disservice in their incompleteness. Where, for example, is the comic for "Love is... holding her hair back when she's throwing up into the toilet?"  or "Love is... running around in the middle of the night, arranging bail?" Tonight I discovered another one: getting up at 1:30 in the morning to go buy laxatives.

I had gone to bed around elevenish, at the end of a long but pretty good day. I got a new wifi card for my netbook, and managed to install both it and OSX onto the thing. The install went well, and I was feeling rather pleased as I hit the sack. Around about one in the morning, however, I awoke with a start; Kassie was calling my name. Poor thing had been on the toilet for the better part of an hour. Could I run out to Wal-Mart and get her some laxative?

Now, I wasn't quite awake at this point; I thought it must be coming up on four or five in the morning. I was expecting to run to the kitchen and get a drink of water or something but nope, she was serious, and so was the situation. Hadn't we gotten some laxitive just the other day?  No, that was stool softener, not the same. So off I go out into the night.

If you think Camdenton is a quiet, sleepy town under normal circumstances, you should see it in the middle of the night. Absolute stillness. You've heard of cities that never sleep ?  This isn't one of them. This is a city that likes to get its head down properly. Actually, I kind of like driving through an empty town in the middle of the night; it's quite peaceful, and interesting to see the world shut down. I think I'm really a night person at heart; I know that, given my druthers, I prefer the quiet all-night haul to the busy daytime shift. Been like that ever since the military, where as a consequence of being one of the few top-secret clearances in my area, I spent a *lot* of night shifts on duty.   I keep hoping one day I can get a nice night job, but there's not that many white collar jobs that offer that luxury.

Anyway. Off to the walmart I go. I parked right close to the pharmacy door, and was quite pleased until I discovered that the door was locked for the night and I'd have to go over to the other one and kind of boomerang back into the pharmacy area. Oh well. Got the 'lax, got a cushion for Kassie (who was more or less camped out for the night at this point) and headed for home.

Got home, brought in the shopping bag, emptied it, had a minor panic attack when the laxative wasn't there, went back to the car, found the laxitive, poured Kassie some tea to wash it down, stepped outside for a little air (and because the bathroom was occupied for the duration), decided to do a little night photography, back out to the car *again* to fetch the camera, back outside to shoot the moon and the nighttime woods, and off to bed.

Anyway, as I write this, it's coming up on 2:30 and Kassie's...well, she's doing her best. I should really go to sleep if I'm to be worth anything in the morning. I'll check up on her later, though. I'm hoping I'll at least have gotten some good photographs out of this, but we'll see. Anyway, time for bed.

---

Postscript, 2:40 A.M. Mission Accomplished. I won't go into details but the words "Oak tree" were employed. And so to bed.

The Survivors' Banquet

So. Every year Relay for Life has a banquet, in wich all the local cancer survivors and their caregivers get to eat food donated by local restaurants, meet this year's Relay for Life officers, and hobnob a little. Tonight was the night, and so after work off we went to the resort where it was being held.

It took a while to find the place--not because we got lost (there were plenty of signs) but because the place was so damn big it was going to take a while regardless. Eventually we found it next to the indoor water park (yes, really). There was good spread--steak nibbles, onion blossoms, barbecue, shell pasta with cheese, strawberry bread and different sorts of desserts. Very nice. We shared the table with a lady who had been a cancer survivor for over *thirty* years, which was amazing. During the banquet, we had a speaker who had been surviving some very nasty cancer for several years now, and they gave each person a cute little pendant that came in two parts, rather like those "heart " pendants where each person wears half. Then there was a drawing, and I won a t-shirt which I proudly wore the next day (casual Friday y'know). It was pretty awesome, all told, and I'm very excited about going to the actual Relay, which is June 5.

The Hammer Drops
We got the word down today that the oncologist would be coming by. Apparently he was the head of the department, a man who had been practicing since before some of the younger doctors had been alive. Everyone seemed to feel that we were in very good hands as a result; I just wanted to hear something even vaguely akin to good news.

It was about nine-thirty or so when he came in, flanked by doctors and students and so forth. Introductions were made, and he went straight to business. It was large-cell cancer of the lung, very nasty. The tumor was big enough (softball size, he said) to be inoperable, so it was down to radiation and chemotherapy. We would need an MRI and possibly a bone scan, IV chemo every three weeks on an outpatient basis. After two, they would do another cat scan, and repeat the whole thing up to six times, in the meantime having radiation on a daily basis. If this didn't work, they would switch to something else.

At this point ,they would need to put in a portacap or stent of some sort to get her chemo through, mostly likely a cap at the collarbone going into the superior vena cava (SVC) or a pic line running down her arm.They could make no guarantees as to the efficacy of the treatment; he said that we had a 30-40% chance of reducing the tumor in size by 50%, which apparently counts as a successful treatment.

I dont' remember if it was now that we got the information that explained her swelling. It was SVC Syndrome: the tumor was blocking the SVC and causing the blood circulation to traffic-jam rather badly. Hence the swelling up of the face, chest and arms. Probably was also responsible for the purple veins that had been worrying me. In any case, things were pretty damn bad.

After he left, I excused myself from the room, and stated making phone calls. Going from a possible diagnosis with a 90% cure rate to less than 50/50 in one fell swoop takes its toll, and I was talking with mom about it, I began to break down. One thing mother had told me right at the start was to always be upbeat and optimistic with Kassie, always keep her spirits up. And never, ever let her see you cry. And I didn't, either. It wasn't easy but I didn't. There were times in the days to come when I would excuse myself to take a walk around, "Get some fresh air" or whatnot. I don't think she saw me stuffing kleenix in my pocket on the way out. But right there and then, I was in the hallway outside the room, just bawling uncontrollably. The nurses on the ward kindly let me borrow their observation room and a box of kleenix, and let me know that they would look after us and that there were lots of supports and things and to be strong. I sat in there a little while, had a good cry and got it out of my system. Then I cleaned up, went back to Kassie, and got back to taking care of her.

Now that we had the diagnosis proper, Kassie was itching to go home. We would have to wrap up all the paperwork (I'd started Friday with the financial aid people and the medicaid ombudsman and various other,s filling out what seemed to be a solid inch of paperwork all told--it had to be in excess of a hundred pages altogether, I do know that. And with Kassie on morphine most of the time, it fell to me to be the filler-inner) and get her prepped for chemo, and that would take a couple days. During this time she got understandably impatient--and indeed, I was impatient to get back to work--and it was all I could do sometimes to calm her down and counsel patience. In the meantime, we were calling around, letting everyone in on the news. It would be two days before we got everything done and got out.

Brief Trip Home
Well, it had been since Tuesday that I'd been gone; Valerie had been going in daily to feed the critters & let the dog out, but there were things that needed taking care of, so we arranged for me to get shuttled down home and back by a Columbia friend of ours, Christianne. She's a fellow computer and cartoon geek, so we had a lot to talk about on the way down and back. Christianne is good people to say the least, it was nice to take a break of sorts and "Geek out" with her until we got to the house.

Place was a mess. The dog had gotten antsy, and made a bit of a mess--she's an Akita, one oft he smarter breeds, and they do tend to act out if they get bored, which can easily happen. Still, they all seemed to be glad to see me, albeit temporarily. I ran around feeding everyone, cleaning up this and that as I went, hastily repacking my bags. Christianne and I chatted about old comic strips and so forth, and I restocked the cabinet with dozen-or-so cans of dog food I'd picked up on the journey home. We didn't stay too long, but headed up shortly afterwards (unfortuantely while there I'd accidentally turned the deadbolt on the back door, to which Valerie didn't have a key. She had to have one of her kids crawl through the small firewood-hole in the garage to open the door the next day).

In the meantime, we headed back up and I resumed my station at Kassie's side. Had there been any news? No, of course not. We sat back and waited; there would be news in the morning, with any luck. As it turned out, it wouldn't be til Tuesday that we'd get the final word.

Awaiting sentencing
...well, that's what it felt like, anyway.

Apparently the oncology team didn't all come in on Saturday--fair enough--but we were supposed to be shoved in the front for at least a preliminary look-see this morning. Hopefully they could figure out what she had in general, and get back to us. Most of the day was spent sitting around and waiting for news...it came, eventually: they were going to have to come in Monday at give it a proper look. Arrrrrgh.

That was a very slow weekend.

Friday the Thirteenth, Part II
Those who are given to harboring superstitions around the number 13 have had a hard year of it; We've had two of them on a Friday already, the first being in February and not being a leap year, we get another one in March as well, a sort of anti-bonus. Mind you, the February one was not bad in adn of itself; it was a whole four days before the world caved in on us. It seems Friday the 13th is more a harbinger of pending disaster than actual disaster itself, in my case. So it was with the last one, so it was with this one.

It had been a slow few days at the hospital. I basically looked after Kassidy, taking over such nursing duties as I was able, running errands, keeping track of various vital signs and biological functions that I won't get into here. Suffice to say that while I wouldn't dream of taking a nursing exam, I nevertheless feel that I'd have a pretty good shot at the practical section. All the time we've been waiting for her Monday biopsy results to come back, and finally they did: inconclusive.
k
Damn bloody damn.

OK, here's what happened. Apparently the Standard Operating Procedure in these cases was to go after a lymph node somewhere away from the chest, under the arm or suchlike, the reason being, if there was cancer to be found, they thought perhaps it would show up in the nodes there. This would allow them to do a non-invasive procedure, get a sample, and get out without having to disturb the chest or muck about in and around her vitals. This they did, and got a nice sample . Unfortunately, it seems that the sample wasn't enough to tell them anything except that it was malignant (which we knew) and that they were going to have to dive into the chest for a proper sample of the tumor after all.

So, Friday the 13th being the ideal day for this sort of thing, they started prepping her in the morning and wheeled her off in the afternoon. I followed along behind shortly thereafter, down to the third floor where all the surgical-type things went down. There was a nice waiting room there, with TVs and vending machines and so on, and I staked out a table and spent a couple of hours fretting and waiting, talking with friends online (by this time I had gotten my backpack back; one of my coworkers who actually lived in Columbia and commuted back & forth daily had been kind enough to take it from the person whose car I'd left it in and drop it off the night before on his way home). I forget how long it took, except that was well past five when they stuck their head in and told me the doctor would see me in the debriefing room.

The surgeon was a nice fellow, who had come in every day on the early morning rounds, students in tow, and generally was very open and honest with us. He thus far had been betting on Lymphoma, a breed of cancer with about a 90% survival rate. As we went into the briefing room, he told me that while he still thought that was the case, the surgeon in the team had thought it didn't seem like a typical sample for lymphoma. He said it could possibly be a germ cell tumor (which usually shows up in the genitalia but had apparently come north for the spring), small cell lung cancer (though from the slide review they'd done he suspected not), or possibly a sort of non-small cell lung cancer. It was definitely malignant--of course--and about ten to twelve centimeters in diameter, good and round. They were hoping for a preliminary oncology report on Saturday--not the full report, but just something to give them an idea, and the sooner they knew what they were dealing with, the sooner they could begin treatment.

She was going to be in recovery for a while, so I couldn't see her just yet, but they would come get me when she was moved back up to her room. Back to the waiting room I went, and started making phone calls. It can be frustrating being the one giving everyone news updates when there's not much news, as there hadn't been the last few days, but that certainly wasn't the problem today. I had copied everything down into my notes first thing, and wound up going through them more or less verbatim with everyone I talked to, trying to bring them into the picture as much as possible. Then I went back online, logged on to talk to my friends, and when through the whole same thing with them. Lot of crossed fingers out there, and that helped a lot.

Now by this point, I was really staking my hopes on Lymphoma. You know what they say about hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst? I dearly hoped it was lymphoma with its 90% cure rate. Not everything had those odds. I liked those odds.

Unfortunately, those were not the odds we'd get. But we wouldn't find that out for a few days yet.

A Typical Day
This is how my days at the hospital generally went. Weekdays and weekends tended to blur together; there wasn't much difference here, really, between one and another.

4 AM: Nurse comes in to read Kassie's vitals, check up on her oxygen, blood pressure, hydration, etc. I wake up as well; the chair I'm in is clearly not designed to be slept in; it only reclines back about 45 degrees, and while the footrest is nice, it does mean either lying flat on your back and hoping you don't slide down, or having to curl up in a knotty sort of fetal position, arranging yourself around the steel arms and trying to find a way to keep the blanket around you and the pillow from sliding away down the back of the chair or right off the side altogether. Not a nice bed in the best of circumstances, and a 24-hour ward pretty much guarantees you won't be getting much sleep in any case.

6 AM: Shift change, more nurses, more checkups. The place is starting to come a bit alive; I get around, clean up, try to get prepped up for the day.

7 AM: The doctors start making the rounds. I hang out, waiting for them to make their way round to us. I've gotten into the habit of taking down notes of what everyone says--useful because with Kassie in constant pain and drifting in and out of sleep, she's either dozing or on morphine, and in no condition to be committing things to memory. I've gotten to the point where the doctors will ask me what such-and-such said and when, as it saves them time and makes it easier all around. Anyway, we converse, I jot down any news there might be.

9 AM: By now, the doctors have been and gone, and I troop down to breakfast. Breakfast is probably french toast, or bacon and eggs or similar, though I did try other things (hospital tip: avoid the biscuits and gravy). Before I left, I ordered Kassidy her breakfast: a banana and some whole milk. When I get back, the milk's gone but the banana is quite possibly untouched.

Morning in general: I watch after Kassidy, making sure she keeps her oxygen flowing (she has a tendency to take the plastic tubing out of her nose when she has to blow, then not put it back in again), helping her with various bodily functions, etc. She doesn't much move from the bed, so we do what we can to keep her comfortable. Sometimes she sits up on the edge of the bed, just for a change. I've parked the chair next to her bed and set up a sort of improvised desk, where I keep her company. Mostly we wind up watching daytime television, which seems to mostly consist of reality tv shows, cartoons, and sitcoms aimed at (and written by) twelve-year-olds. There was one I remember, that took place on a cruise ship that was apparently a school, or something, that we watched several of. It was one of those where the kids are all cardboard cutouts and the adults are worse. It made me long for those towers of art that were Punky Brewster and Silver Spoons.

Afternoon: I almost never made it down to lunch on time. Once or twice I did, and the hot lunch line would be still open. Usually it was closer to one or two in the afternoon, though, and I'd have to make do with the grill (another hospital tip: don't bother with the cheeseburgers). Then back upstairs and more TV, chatting online, holding Kassie's pee cup for her, running and fetching things, helping her get as semi-comfortable as possible, etc. I learn the hospital survival tricks, like ringing the bell for the nurse and then standing outside the room with a hopeful look on your face until somebody comes. Every now and then, they[ll wheel her away to do another cat scan if it's been a few days since the last one, or something like that, and I might stroll out on to the campus proper. Dad used to teach here at the university, so I feel a small kinship with it, as I used to visit him here ont he summers and hang around in the art department where he taught. As it happens,t he building in question is under heavy remodeling, so I can't poke around in there anymore, but I find the bookshop and manage to waste an afternoon or two in there, and also pick up some puzzles for Kassie. Other than that, it's just the same four walls of the hospital room. Sometimes we have visitors, such as the financial counselors or social workers employed by the hospital. They have a rather nice thing there, a firm that helps people apply for medicare, medicaid, disability, SSI, the whole bit, walking them through all the paperwork (and let me tell you, there is a TON of paperwork) and everything, at no charge to the patient--the hospital picks up the tab. Real lifesavers, these people, no lie. Other than that, I just mind Kassie, keep her company.

Evening: shift change. New nurses come in, everything gets checked again. We're starting to know some of them by name and face, getting on with them quite well. I do what I can to help them, save them having to measure this and clean up that. We remake her bed for her, and I give her baths and so on. Mom said to make sure you're good to the nurses, and they'll be good to you back, and it works. They set aside extra milk and applesauce for her at night, when the kitchen is closed. They look after us pretty well here, all in all, and while I don't have a lot nice to say about this period of time, I will readily admit the nurses were great.

Night: Things quieten down. Everybody settles in, I sneak downstairs for a quick supper of something-or-other off the grill. More TV, phone calls all around, news and updates. Kassie has a light supper--milk and banana again, or something mroe substantial if she's feeling adventurous, but the food's so bland she doesn't generally eat more than a little. I watch after her, still at my station next to the bed.

Midnight: About this time ,I can't stay awake any longer. I recline the chair, prop the pillow under my head and wrap myself in the tiny thin blanket as best I can. The lights go out as much as they can, and I drift off far too slowly and fitfully to the never-ending chorus of blips and beeps from her monitoring equipment. With any luck, I'll get a solid four hours' sleep before I have to get up and do it all again.

The Waiting Game
OK, so here was the plan: Up at the usual time, clean, get pets set up for a few days; friend picks up at ten. We swing by work, I grab backpack with everything I need, off to hospital until biopsy results come back. All right. Straightforward. Let's do it.

Around 8:30-ish, I get a call. It's the friend; she's been offered some work. Can she come by around 3 in the afternoon instead?  Well, OK...so I sit around the house, kill time, wait til 3....which comes and goes, with no friend in sight.

You ever find yourself in a situation where you need to be somewhere, where important things are happening and you need to be a part of it, but you can't because for one reason or another you're stuck outside the loop, with no real way to get where you need to be, no way to know what's going on, no way, in fact, to be there for the person who needs you?  If you have, you know the level of frustration I felt as I spent the afternoon calling again and again, trying to get this person. After a while, I started calling other people too, trying to set up alternate plans. FInally, I got hold of Eric again, who promised to run me up after work. Nobody else materialized or returned my calls, so it was that around 9-9:30 I found myself sitting in the garage with the door open, reading one of the books I had brought with me to kill time in the hospital, waiting for him to show up. He was as good as his word, though, and got me up there. As for the other friend, well, to this day (17 April) we still haven't heard a peep from her at all--we even drove by her house this afternoon to see if she was all right or what. She wasn't there, but her dog was in the yard so presumabely she's okay. Still.

Anyway. Got htere late at night, and headed up to neuro-med.Now, I don't remember if they had moved her yet, but I belive they did. If I remember correctly, I ame in and go up there, only to be told they'd moved her down a floor, to the "step-down" ward. Apparantly this was for people who didn't need *quite* so much monitoring, but were still having an eye kept on them. Floor 4, west wing, room 17. A proper room with a visitor's chair and a little desk, private bathroom, sink, tv-on-a-stick (actually a long arm that extended from the wall), the whole bit. I visited with Kassie a little bit, then curled up next to her in the chair that almost-but-not-quite folded back enough to sleep in.   A long night, but with many long days ahead.

Current Mood: frustrated

Uneventful day
So. Kassie had her biopsy today. I was back at work--the Sunday web deployment had been a long one, but we got everything out and running so that was all right; needless to say I wasn't entirely focused on my work, kept expecting the phone to ring any time with the news of whatever it would turn out to be, and it kept not ringing...I'd repacked my backpack with extra clothes, toothbrush, netbook, etc with an eye toward a long stay, and let the Boss know today that I probably wouldn't be in Tuesday at the least. Checked in with Kassie when I could. She is nervous as I am, of couse, and is apparantly not happy being up there alone. I'll fix that as soon as I can.

I brought the backpackpack in to work with me, hoping Imight catch a lift up to the hospital in Columbia directly from work, but unfortunately it didn't work out. Coworker gave me a lift home instead, and I brought in the mail, let the dog out, and sat down to relax...only to realize that I had left my backpack in the coworker's car and didn't have his number.

Damn.

Anyway, Kassie had aranged for someone to pick me up in the morning and come take me up to her, so I figured I could just swing by the office on my way up in the morning; hopefully he'd still have the bag in his car. A good plan--simple, elegant, very little to go wrong. Naturally, it didn't happen that way at all...

Current Mood: anxious

Quick return home
Saturday. I woke up a little before visiting hours, and found my way down to the cafeteria. The nurse last night had taken me down to the basement and told me where the cafeteria was, but it still took me a bit to find it as it was way down at the end of the hall and instead of calling it "The cafeteria", they had to give it a cute name like "The Grille....Downstairs." Fancy.

Actually, the food there wasn't bad. They had ready-to-eat stuff in coolers, a line that head eggs/bacon/biscuits & gravy/etc at breakfast and hot lunch items at lunch., and a little grille with pancakes/french toast/etc to order during breakfast and burgers/fries/other sandwich and junk-food-to-order items for lunch and dinner. The chow was pretty good, all told. Except the biscuits and gravy. Pretty damn bland. I ate fairly well over the next couple weeks, if nothing else. Kassie mostly ate bananas and milk for the duration, though she would have other stuff as well on occasion, especially as treatment progressed. I made sure I got regular meals; it gave the day shape, adn gave me time to decompress a little bit, be by myself. That was important, because otherwise for a while there I was hanging out with Kassie 24/7 otherwise.

All that was later. Today, I was heading back because of some work I needed to do--we were putting out new updates for some of our websites, and were putting it all out Sunday afternoon. Cancer or no cancer, I had to be there to help get everything rolled out. So, I got a ride back home, and started packing and getting ready to go back as soon as I could. I hung out with Kassie til early afternoon, then headed out with a promise to come back as soon as possible. They figured they'd do her biopsy on Monday, so I began to make plans. WIth any luck, they'd ha ve her out of there ina few days.

Unfortunately, luck was just not on our side.

Current Mood: anxious

Things Get Bad
So. Since the accident, Kassie's been taking things very easy. She stays at home, takes her medicine, and I go to work and back with a friend. Sometimes on the weekends Valerie (a wonderful friend of ours,without whom we quite simply would not have made it through this time) would run us around to the grocery store or elsewhere that we needed to go. We'd gone to the clinic in Osage a couple of times before the accident to see about her swelling, and the purple veins that had shown up on her chest and right upper arm, but they thought it was maybe bronchitis or sinusitis and things like that. After the second time produced no results, they suggested going to see a specialist--a ear/nose/throat person in Osage, near the hospital. The swelling had gotten worse, and was starting to show up in her left arm, so we arranged her a ride up to see the doctor this morning.

I got a call during the morning from her; it seemed the specialist hadn't found anything wrong with her per se, but could n't explain the swelling. So he was going to send her to the emergency room at the hospital for a CAT scan. She'd let me know what she heard.

A couple hours later, I got another message. They'd found "a massive mass" on her long, and didn't know if it was cancer or lymphoma or what, but that the ywere going to keep her for a while; she said she'd see about aranging transportation for me to come up and see her there. It was right here when the bottom dropped out of my guts. I just...that first realization that this was THAT serious. As you can imagine, I spent the next few hours in a daze until I got the next call...

They were moving her. She didn't know where to, or when, but would call me as soon as she knew anything at all. Valerie was coming, though, and would pick me up after work. Finally, word came down: they had sent for transportation from Columbia, the University Hospital. They would come sometime after 5, but she would try to delay them so I could at least get up there before they left. I got a ride home; Valerie was waiting there. I ran into the house, grabbed a backpack and threw some things into it, and off we went. I called her to let her know we were coming, and she said the Columbia guys were already there and to hurry. Valerie took me across the lake to the emergency room, only for me to find that it was too late. She was gone.

The nurse was friendly enough, though; she gave me a folder with directions to the hospital and nearby hotels, etc. I called Valerie again, and she took me home. She had a party to go to that night--one of her kids was having a birthday--but she had a friend who'd cone through a similar experience with a loved one, and he volunteered to take me up there. His name was Eric, and he was a graphic designer and sign maker (did the sign out at my workplace, in fact). One bright spot about going through things like this--if there is a bright spot--is you do find some really, genuinely good people. Valerie, for one, and Eric and others I'll name as I go along. He talked to me about having it happen to someone you're close to, and this and that, and all the way up we chatted or I made the round of phone calls--over the next couple of weeks I became a sort of news bureau, doing periodic rounds of calls as new information emerged. Her mom, my mom, my dad, Valerie, always keeping them in the loop as much as possible. And there was a lot of news to come.

I got there...oh, tennish? Something like that. Straight into the emergency room. I went in and joined her just in time to escort her upstairs to intensive care neuro-med, on the 5th floor. This ward is a kind of panopticon, open-front rooms going around a central desk. I had to go sit in the waiting room until they got her properly situated, during which time I made phone calls and fretted. Finally I got to see her again; we sat and visited, and I held her hand and kept her company as best I can ("Keep upbeat and positive," mom had told me. She'd lost her husband last year after a 2-3 year battle with cancer, and during this time she's been able to give me good advice, and lots of it). After a while, however, they announced she needed to sleep. I asked about hotels nearby, and it turned out the nearest one was a block away, and $100/night, even *with* the hospital discount. Would I like to stay in the waiting room?

One last thing before I go--I dug into the bag that I'd hastily filled nearly six hours beforehand, and pulled out a bedraggled stuffed white tiger named Heart. Heart was a favorite of Kassie's; she kept him in the bedroom up on the headboard most of the time. When I brought it out, she started to cry, and hugged him tightly--she later told me that just the sight of having something familiar and loved from home was medicine in itself. I just smiled, told her if I couldn't stay with her the night I would hardly leave her alone. Anyway, time to go.

The waiting room had several people camped out in it as it was--it sort of looked like a cross between an airport terminal and a refugee camp. But there were pillows and blankets, and I found myself a too-small couch next to an outlet, so it was good enough. I had purchased a netbook (a Samsung NC10 ) with part of my tax refund, and had taken it along. It kind of became my lifeline after this; all the time I spent in the hospital, it was my way out to the world. I sat online, talking to friends, giving them the news, scared out of my mind. Eventually, sleep finally overcame me, and I put everything on to charge for the night, and folded myself up to almost fit on the couch, head resting on a pillow that didn't quite cushion the wooden arm underneath. Between one thing and another, it was a good while before I actually dropped off, but finally I manged,and spent my first night curled up in a hospital chair, trying fitfully to sleep.

It would not be the last.

The Drama Begins
This is the story of what happened when Kassie got lung cancer, and what we both were/are going through as a result. I don't know where it's going to go or how it's going to end--as I write this she has had the first two successful weekly chemotherapy treatments of an initial round of six--but I'm going to make a point of getting it all down as much as possible. While in the hospital I got into the habit of writing simply everything down, so I'm trying to keep that habit going as we proceed.

Looking back (I am writing this from the perspective of almost exactly two months), it's hard to say where this started. Perhaps I should start with Thanksgiving, when we went down to visit Kassie's relations and I took ill. Or perhaps over the winter, when we both kept getting sick but somehow Kassie never quite got all the way better. In the hospital, the doctors said it had probably been a good six months, but the first time we realized things were serious was the accident.

All this time, I've been meaning to write it all down, to make a record for memory, so whatever happens, I know what and when and who. I'm starting it a bit late (Apr 16) but hopefully details are fresh enough in my mind that I can bring back as much as I can.

It's been too long--I don't have the ticket in front of me, but when I do I'll double check the date on this entry and, if needed, change it (nope, I'm pretty sure it was the 16th after all--I remember because we'd had Friday the 13th (which for me paradoxically tend to be good days) and Valentine's day (which for me tend to be horrible). I had joked to her that this year, at least, I had dodged the usual Valentine's day bullet. Well, so I thought, anyway...this time it was a delayed reaction, so to speak). Suffice to say that Kassie had been ill, but no more so than one would expect in wintertime. Since her seasonal job had ended come November, she had gotten into the habit of dropping me off at work and picking me up again afterward. We were on our way home--we'd just been on the road a few minutes, in fact, when she mentioned she didn't feel well..

I asked her if she felt she needed to pull over, and she said that yeah, she'd better...so I waited for her to find a place, but before I knew it, we were drifting into the oncoming lane...and there were cars headed right for us. What happened next I will never forget. I grabbed the wheel, and yanked us back onto the lane. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep us on the road, and took us off at a place where there was a dip between two hills. We crossed over onto the grass, shot through a gravel parking lot in front of an auto customizing business or suchlike, slalomed madly between telephone poles as we charged up the hill alongside the highway, in the cleared-out area they make for the utility poles to follow. All the while I was steering from the passenger seat, screaming "BRAKES! BRAKES! BRAKES!" stealing glances at Kassie who was just sitting in the driver's seat, shaking, not able to do anything. I ran us through the underbrush and finally thought to shift the car down into park and grab the parking brake and then, finally, two-thirds of the way up the hill, we came to a stop.

How we avoided hitting anything in that minute-or-so is beyond me. I can't think of the cars and things we *almost* hit--they are too legion. But somehow, we staggered from the car unhurt. Kassie was still shaking, she kept apologizing over and over...I told her it was all right, that we were unhurt, but she was pretty shaken up, as to tell the truth was I. Fortunately, someone had seen the accident and stuck around until we called the cops, made sure we were all right. We unloaded the car, and Kassie started calling around to get us a ride home.

It was a long night. When the cop showed up, he was amazed--how had we gotten the car up there!? We explained the whole thing to him, of course, and in due time the tow-truck came. The body was mostly intact, but the undercarriage would turn out to be a mess--enough that we wound up having to total the car. A friend came to take us home and we moved everything of value from the car into his truck. By the time we got home, it was past nine and we were exhausted.

Little things I remember:
The headlights of the oncoming car, when I first realized that we were heading right for them. Talk about a heart-in-your-mouth moment.

Kassie telling the cop she just wanted to shake his hand because she felt so happy to be able to do so after all that, and him replying, "Well, you may not want to do that, because I'm just about to give you a ticket."

The lady at the 'adult store' on the other side of the hill, where we parked as we waited for the tow truck to drag our car back down the hill (no point and trying to take it back down the way it came). She was very brusque, didn't care that we were waiting for the car or that we'd had an accident, just wanted us out of her parking lot immediately. Some people just fail at being human sometimes. There was another car parked there, and she threatened us that she was going to have it towed. We told her "It's not ours--but if you want a tow truck, stick around: there's one coming in a moment with what's left of our car on it."

For weeks afterward, I didn't have any reliable way to get to work, and had to bum rides. It was horrible. And Kassie didn't get any better...she would collapse walking across the room, and started to swell up around the face, neck, and right arm. It was the overture, of sorts: it was the first indication that things were about to go straight to hell.

Current Mood: terrified

WHOOT!
So we decided to bum around a bit this weekend, and wound up at a local gallery. It was a fine art gallery, so the lights were mostly out when we showed up. I think we caught the guy by surprise. Not a lot of demand for that sorta thing int eh Ozarks. Anyhow, we had a looksee, fell to tlakin'. I wound up going out and fetching my li'l portfolio I put together a while back.and showing it to him, and he started talking about maybe me bringing a stack in for them to sell(!) So now I'm dusting it off, adding ozarks-related content, trying to get a nice souvenier photobook together suitable for selling there. So I'm back in the saddle, yay!

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