Memorial for JoAnn Asbury, health issues, cancer

     When a friend dies unexpectedly it is kind of a shock, and
when it is related to cancer, it gives you even more to think about. I felt I should go to be present for my English Club friend JoAnn Asbury and drove on roads that were getting a big sleety (is that a word?), but since it was a basically straight, level drive I thought it would be okay.
    The United Methodist Church where the service was held, (Pulaski, Virginia) was spacious-- well, it was weird. It looked like they had two santuaries/chapels, and I got there a few minutes late and couldn't seem to find anyone. But I finally found a "connecting" hall and someone directed me to the service in progress, which one of my English club alum from R. U. also came to late.
    The church chapel seemed, as I remembered it (Dec. 14) white and gold and with a poinsettias and red ribbons in a few areas. She probably wasn't expecting to miss the Christmas season. This memorial service, which I only happened to hear about through an email, surprised me as JoAnn had only been diagnosed with it in August or September, and she told me about it the beginning of October. I don't know very much at all about "multiple myeoloma" (sp?), but they are not sure what causes it. It is a cancer of the blood. She went for (I believe) a stem cell (or bone marrow) transplant, but had MRSA and pneumonia and so decided to go home to pass away.
     The immune system is implicated in this cancer (and many others, from what my research is showing). I knew she was overweight, exercised little, drank a lot of diet Coke and was under stress. Well, she had to put off retirement to put a roof on her house, then her older sister started acting senile after an operation and JoAnn mostly wound up babysitting her, and her husband has M. S. Some retirement! All this added up to a body not well protected from disease, though she did have a cheerful disposition when I saw her.
    A fellow teacher and another English professor, Parks Lanier, spoke about JoAnn, her laughter and  ideas when it came to teaching. She was an "untenured" professor (special purpose faculty), yet she won the "Dedmon" award for outstanding teaching. Yet that did not save her from cancer.
    There is really too much sugar (inflammatory to the system), especially at Christmastime, in the American diet. But I recently read you should drink cocoa and add some truvia and that will "Help" with inflammation.

Wondering Things at Work in the cafeteria

    Well, everyone is so close together in the revamped Dalton cafeteria that it's easy to eavesdrop on people. My adjunct colleagues (I guess to be economical) don't lunch here, so I lunch alone, which is fine. I read The Writer magazine and write down thoughts (like this one) amidst clanging dishes and the quiet roar of so many voices around me. There is a TV embedded in the building's support column, maybe 30 feet away. It has "closed captioning" but I can't really read it from here. I had a light breakfast and now, after a meal and a dessert, should I get another dessert....
    It turned out, yeah, I ate another dessert (gluten free chocolate cake with vanilla yogurt with it, like a frosting). Then later, after my classes, I was thirsty, but instead of buying a water bottle, I got a drink at a fountain and bought one of those "Cadbury egg" chocolates with the gooey center -- what a mess on my fingers as I drove!
    But before I had class and left the dining area I heard a woman across from me talk about how you should help a doctoral candidate more with his/her work, doing a book. I'm not that ambitious and don't have a doctorate.Well, I want to write a book that involves some research (about nature), but geared toward a general audience. But I should consider writing a book for my "Core" course, as the present handbook is lousy. Could I make money doing that?

School Starts, Getting into a routine is hard

    School has started and both classes seem pretty polite. Or maybe it's partly that they don't remember a damn thing about logic and are trying to get it all down. The fourth class I had them read and then write about a few "case studies," judgments concerning the  use of guns and cell phones. I hope they were at least a little interested in it. It was hard to tell.
    One student wanted to "sit out" the class and told me so. He said it was "too nice" outside. I said we would go on a class walk next week, and would he come to this class? He did and I hope he thought he made the right choice. This generation of college students is very distractible. I hope they are learning something-- we'll see with the first quiz next week.
   I'm getting into the "school" routine, but not the writing routine. Both things are very isolating and wish I was doing this "more" with someone. But that is the nature of both. I am a very independent person anyway, I guess, but sometimes I would like someone here to confer with and encourage me with my writing.

School is right around the corner

Well, I have enjoyed my visits to Mount Airy and Fairy Stone State Park, but soon I will be teaching again. Teaching is that less than perfect profession. College adjuncts aren't paid a lot for their time and students should appreciate all the effort  we/I put into my classes. A few in the past have been downright rude. I hope this semester's students are decent.

Fairy Stone Park peaceful, now back to work

    We were probably the  oldest couple there-- in a tent, that is. But all ages can stay in a tent, one of those "pop up" tents (a metal bottom with wheels the car pulls, and the sides "pop out" so you have some sleeping space) or an RV. And our air mattress inflated to a foot high! And at Fairy Stone State Park (VA) recently we had all three! It was relaxing, coming during the middle of the week, mostly. Wednesday evening it rained and we had to stay in the tent and it wasn't that much fun. But the other days we lit out.
    Ranger naturalist Janette Lavier pointed out loads of info on one trail, from the fluffy orange mushrooms called "chanterelles" to the red eft (juvenile) newt she and I saw on the trail. If you know something about what you are looking at in the woods that makes it so much more interesting.
    We didn't swim "enough" (not in my opinion) but we went out in a rented rowboat and saw those slider turtles (what the ranger called them, as they have a red marking on the side of the neck/ear area and can easily slide into the water, though they look a lot like the painted turtle) sunning themselves on logs and also some cute, furry baby herons -- and I didn't have my camera with me!
    At the visitor center we saw a pile of "fairy stones" on display and also went to a site off Route 57 where you can look in a creek bed for the distinctive cross shaped pattern. Needless to say, we took some little rocks but they weren't at all cross or crisscross shaped!
    On the way back we stopped in Floyd at the "travel through time" shop for some nice frozen yogurt. And the cat survived our staying away (we left out water and dry food for her).
    Now I have to revise my syllabus somewhat and have to teach again very soon!

Naturalists Picnicking, Getting Back on dieting wagon, loads of cukes

    When you have something coming up, like a picnic or baking for the fair, then it is quite easy to dump all your precious dieting plans, in favor of, well, stuffing your face. I am afraid I had one piece of pound cake (someone tempted me with whipped cream to put on it and I gave in) too many, and we were sitting around talking and eating. As Master naturalists, we should have been also walking and hiking, though those who arrived much earlier also had jumped into the fast moving little river nearby before it started to rain. But we did have a canopy or two to keep out the rain.
    Fran(k) played a bit of ping pong with Will and Michael Williams, and I watched and stuffed my face too. I did talk to a few new people and I realized they had done a whole lot more volunteering than I did. I really need to get back to water monitoring and some other projects. And I am going to try to go back to my dieting!
    And my square foot garden is producing a lot of cucumbers with all this rain we've had this summer. I put them in the fair and they won nothing. But the zucchini bread took second place!

The Lone Ranger "is" a good movie, the wild west

     At the end of the movie we hear The Lone Ranger, John Reid, has just said to his horse "Hi-ho, Silver, away!" I believe he asks Tonto what he thinks of that and he replies," Never say that again!"
     There were a lot of humorous moments in the Johnny Depp/Armie Hammer movie (the names of the lead actors) The Lone Ranger, and I found the movie to be rather entertaining. That is why I can't, for the life of me, understand why it was unanimously panned by movie critics. What were they expecting with a Johnny Depp movie? Doesn't he try extra  hard to be "quirky"?
     Quirkiness was the great appeal of this movie, where we see General (Colonel?) Custer already trying to oppress Indian tribes and the railroad pushing its way through Indian territory in the American West. Without giving it away, you could say it was Indian legend that brought the great 'lone ranger' to life, and Johnny Depp in his wild face paint also has a tale to tell about why he always looks that way, and really, why he shouldn't trust a white man. And yet, he decides to help lone ranger John Reid (Armie Hammer) in order to help justice prevail, at least in Reid's world. The world of the native American is already on the downward spiral.
     I read an article in Smithsonian magazine, with its great emphasis on history, on how some Oglala Dakota Indians in So. Dakota are trying to reclaim their heritage, in spite of great poverty and a lack of a plains territory to live off of like their ancestors did. It is close to where the "Battle of Little Big Horn" took place and ol' Custer met his doom. But so many native Americans were uselessly killed during decades of "Indian Wars," and this special note is hinted at in The Lone Ranger. The critics didn't like the fact that the movie could be both serious and funny, but I thought that balance was appropriate, especially when you have Johnny Depp in the movie! He made the Wild West look interesting.

The Fourth of July happened

     Well, the town decided, with the local park partly flooded, to cancel the usual town festivities, except for the 4th of July fireworks. The spouse was a grump because we picked a different spot from which to watch them from, as I thought our spot near the museum on the hill was too close.
     This time, it was even closer! The fireworks filled the whole sky where we were, in a lot on the right side of Wade's Supermarket, and it was so loud I plugged my ears! Big sprays of orange, combinations of red, gold, blue and green were interesting, as well as gold shimmering and some "whistling" sounds. Today, July 5th, the water receded from the park so I can walk there later if I so choose. But it has already rained today again, at least in some areas.

Rain, rain, (go away) -- Gardening pros and cons, canoeing for litter

     It's been raining for days-- is this good for tomato plants, to be rained on every day? They have grown fairly fast in the last week and are now sprawled on the ground, probably not the best place now that they are producing green fruits. So we bought these supportive "sticks" at Lowe's (sp?) and could have put them next to the tomato plants but guess what? It's raining again!
     Certainly being in the garden and taking in the luxurious, pleasing scent of the tomato plants is better than dealing with sibling  rivalry or the lack thereof (don't ask -- just say my friends  have been better companions to me than my siblings have been in the last 30 years). Gardening and planning and watching over the tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini plants -- they're like your little green children you want to nurture along. Too bad you have to eat your children when they become big and tasty.
     The other day I "helped" nature by canoeing along the lake coastline at Claytor Lake State Park to do a summer litter pickup. I really worked out my shoulders, and yet, they didn't seem achy the next day, paddling against the currents of outboard motorboats passing by as the spouse and I used the end of the paddles to lift plastic, bottles and other refuse off the banks of the park's lake. The news said many others did this and came up with 100 bags of trash in all. My, but there are some big litterbugs out there!

Square Foot Gardening, Gardening healthy

     Well, we have endeavored to put a "square foot garden" into practice. I'm not certain how I heard about it, but it may have been my naturalist friend Carrie, who was pointing out several different "sections" of her property devoted to planting various vegetables, mainly. And she loaned me the "new square foot gardening" book by Bartholomew  and it provided a lot of helpful info in it , as well as a workshop/meeting I went to on it.
     So we needed to get together the 3 ingredients necessary: compost, peat moss, and vermiculite (perlite if you don't have the last, but it's not half as fine). I put off doing this till the first week in June because we didn't have much of a compost heap -- it was mostly sod (which Carrie told me was a no no but my husband wouldn't listen to this), which had not been turned much at all. With compost you are supposed to mash it AND turn it. But the spouse had put worms in it so I couldn't do much mashing and the  organic stuff I was putting in (cut grass, vegetable peelings, tea bags, coffee, egg shells) was taking a while to break down. So I thought we could get the other "ingredients" to put in this garden later.
    A "square foot" garden is "supposed" to be square or rectangular in shape, and easy to maintain. The three ingredients are mixed together and are "supposed" to be loose in a square structure,  6 to 12 inches high, and the plants planted in squares in the 4 by 4 cedar wood (we got 2 kits from Home Depot we put on top of each other). I don't think our inner squares were exact and the following day we put them in they were a bit wilty looking because they weren't watered much. In some ways a square foot garden is like a plant out on the porch or deck -- it seems to need a fair amount of water. But we've had rain the past few days and that  has been a good thing.
     We actually planted it below deck because we have a wooden fence in back and an oak tree, neighbors' maple tree, and our own house providing a lot of shade. But the deck has this "black stuff" on it and now we can't blast it off, because of the garden below. Fran(k) has suggested scrubbing it but I don't know with what!
     There is another little garden on the other side of the wood fencing (it only covers part of the yard -- that's what the house came with, not my idea) and it seems to be getting enough sunlight. It has tomatoes with green "fruit" on them, pepper plants, zucchini plants and onions. And they are all really growing. I suspect the square foot garden will be our second crop, maybe the end of July or August crop. I hope to attend a "old water" canning workshop to learn more about preserving tomatoes if we get a lot.
     So, if you don't have a lot of space or only sun in a certain spot, maybe you should consider a square foot garden. The initial investment was great ($200+) for the container and 2 of the 3 organic materials and plants (some of the plants being on sale we got them so late). We could have bought materials on sale maybe sooner in the season, but we bought them when we needed them, so that was that. We'll see if it was worth it.

Cancer Walk, How do we solve cancer?

    They tried to be amusing, with kids singing and clogging and otherwise distracting those who had taken a respite from walking. It was supposed to be an "all night" walk, this RELAY for cancer benefit, but how many stayed that long? I certainly didn't. I was surprised to see that you had to walk "12 times" around our elevated indoor track in order to make just a mile, though others were planning on walking several miles. Though not me.
    I wanted to exercise but was not that ambitious. AND, the spouse was going to pick me up and was not all that ambitious about walking either. Of course, when you are walking around with an old high school injury to your knee, PLUS you are diabetic, then walking whenever and wherever you want becomes problematic --- for him, at least. But he was my ride so I couldn't stay all night (it would be past his bedtime).
    I think these fundraisers are a good way for former cancer patients like myself to come together, but where the heck does the money go? Into finding new, more targeted cures? Toward helping someone afford a wig or some of those 'yucky' health drinks ( I never found Ensure to be palatable when I was sick)? Where does all the daggone money go? How about helping me afford healthcare NOW, like seeing a nutritionist or someone to help me de-stress?
     Cancer funds should go toward alternative treatments and cures, and cancer prevention. Does the American Cancer Society even "try" to promote prevention? I believe it should be one of their goals.

RU "tree walk" and Wytheville "foraging" food walk

                                       Violets are good for eating raw in a salad or dip flowers in sugar.

     It was a warm spring day, something we'd looked forward to for a long time. It's been a weird spring, with high temperatures one day and cold air and snow the next. But finally, toward the end of April,  my R.U. classes gathered for our "leaf collecting" expedition.
     This time of year the leaves out there are actually pretty small. At the fountain where we started out I began by pointing out the small 5 pointed maple leaves -- this is the leaf on the Canadian flag. Specifically, our fountain was surrounded by a circle of sugar maple, the tree used for making maple sugar, with a ratio of 30 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup.
     Actually, at a "foraging" spring walk at Gordon Wright's farm in nearby Wytheville (about a week later, without my students), visiting edible plants biologist Craig Russell, who'd actually gotten to know Euell Gibbons, who'd written Stalking the Wild Asparagus, pointed out many different trees can be tapped or "sugared" in order to make syrup. Norway and red maple can be tapped, along with the sweet birches, black walnut and hickory. The tree needs a diameter of 10-12 inches in order to qualify for one "spile" to be pushed in 2-4 inches. And Russell recommends that you cook this down outside the house if you don't want to get your kitchen walls all sticky. Of course, the students weren't interested in this. I think they were glad to have an outdoor class where they didn't need to turn in an assignment.
     On campus, I showed them something I'd saved for this special day -- refrigerated little light green brains, the fruit of Osage orange. I wasn't certain whether the Osage Indians had been named after the tree or vice versa. According to an Arkansas website, the "sky people" brought us the Osage tribe. They lived in the Midwest and so I think the Osage orange tree is originally from there as well. But we only have male trees on the RU campus -- the "female" trees produce this big orange (in size) fruit with a lot of little grooves in it, like our own brains, only more so. I was told there were once female trees on campus, but the students liked to toss the fruits around and make a big old mess. One student wondered how these trees could survive without a female tree. Well, they are probably pollinated by wind and if there is no female tree nearby then those male trees stay alone (and frustrated maybe).
     Other notable trees on campus are a big ol' oak tree that would make a great climbing tree, ginko biloba (the tree that provides brain power supplements -- but not that one in particular), and the very attractive redbud tree. In April the redbud produces pretty, very small blooms that start out a purple, then get to light purple in shade, then finally light pink. They are never actually "red," so I've no idea why they are called "red" buds. A shorter name than purple bud? And I asked the class the legend -- of course they didn't know.       
     The reason that they are a small, ornamental size tree is that supposedly, after Judas betrayed Jesus, he regretted it. So he hanged himself (yes, hanged, not hung, which you do with a picture on the wall) on the redbud tree. In shame, the tree never again has grown to a big, thick tree someone could hang himself  from. And they aren't. Even the tall ones are spindly and not too wide.
    I pointed out on campus that violets and dandelions are edible, but at the Wytheville spring foraging walk on the farm and in the woods violets and dandelions were "gathered" and we ate them. The violet flowers and leaves can be put in a salad. Or you can dip the flower in egg white and sugar, or just wet and dip in sugar, for dessert! Other edibles in the spring include watercress, wintercress, garlic mustard (wild mustard family), poke weed (you need to boil the redness out of it and it will be okay to eat), goose foot, and the white innards of cattail stems. Good to know if you are ever lost in the woods. But a guidebook and some instruction about edible "foraging" plants would be most desirable.
     With our commercially grown vegetables containing less and and less concentrated nutrients, learning spring and fall foraging is a good idea for your health. I didn't tell the students that but maybe they will take more an interest in nature as they grow older.
   

Did You Know Violets are Edible? Foraging helps health

   At a gathering of like minded souls, we had the opportunity to feast on raw violets, fried fern fiddleheads and munch on cooked poke weed covered in cheese sauce. Yes, we had poke weed -- and didn't get sick.
    It doesn't hurt to go "foraging" for raw vegetables on a farm and in the woods. Our commercially grown vegetables have been produced in the same soil year after year and aren't "half" as healthy as goose foot, violet flowers and leaves or even dandelion. We try to obliterate dandelion with pesticides. What a waste -- they contain vitamin A, can be put in a salad and are good for "detoxing" your liver.
     I learned most of this from Craig Russell, an edible food biologist from Pennsylvania. He came to Wythe County (VA) to Mr. Wright's farm to show a group of us "nature foodies" what is edible on the lawn and in the woods. Dandelions, violets, chickweed, watercress, wintercress, the inner white stem of cattails, can all be eaten raw. The cattail innards can also be put in soup, like onion. It tastes like a cross between cucumbers and celery.
    Yes, what you can forage in the woods is jam packed with nutrients. It would be a good idea, though, to get a guide book on edible plants and maybe even attend a class if you are not sure about a plant. And poke weed: you can eat the young shoots and put ripe berries in a jam. With the shoots you cook them (boil) till the redness goes out of them and into the water. Then toss some cheese sauce on them. Yum.

Early Spring is here and showed my students!

                                           Barely blooming "saucer magnolia"

      It was cold for the 5:00 class, but we bravely met on the steps in front of the college library so I could show them "a bit" of nature on campus. By nature I mean budding and not even really in bloom trees, a type of "cedar waxwing" that had flown into one leafless tree, and places to sit and relax on campus.
     When the wind is a cold whip of air at your back (and front too!) there is little time to sit still and relax. So we didn't. I took them to a quiet place, the Alumni gardens, and pointed out the peeling bark maple, and then we saw a fairly dirty koi pond (the koi and goldfish were "under" a grate that was covered with rotted leaves and some litter people had tossed in). And pointed up to a squirrel's nest very high in the tree sitting next to the pond.
     I also pointed out what will soon be the "prettiest" flower on the campus (see photo above). The soulange or saucer magnolia has these huge flowers, which look like big, elongated tulips with almost wine red and white stripes. They were getting ready to open and you could see some red, but were not open yet--- aw shucks! We have had a long, cold winter in Virginia and we really needed a break from the cold. Hopefully, in the next week these pretty, pretty blooms will make an appearance. I look forward to these classes with my students. They are too connected to technology and should enjoy this bit of outdoors when they can. Put down that durn cell phone and enjoy nature!

An old fashioned train arrives

   One of my students mentioned in class the fact that an old timey locomotive would be arriving in town from Bristol, TN/VA. My husband received even more info -- it would arrive near the Glencoe Museum in town!
    Well, partly yes. I had taken my temperature a second time (the first time, around 9 AM, it said 100.2 degrees)and it was now down to 98.2 and so we went. We arrived close to noon at the road behind the museum. We heard the plaintive "waaaa,   waaaa" of the train whistle and it disppeared. But someone walking back from the sighting said we could still see it, and headed to the old main street depot. We parked a bit past the old depot area as the parking lot was already packed. There were brownies out selling cookies, a customed Yogurt yelling to come to the yogurt shop, and some people selling food and jewelry and book marks at a makeshift farmer's market. WE pulled into the parking lot generally reserved for the red college commuter buses, which were also near the depot area, and got out.
    We took a lot of pictures, me with the digital camera and Frank with his ipad, of the front of the train, the old timey black engine with the white and also grayish smoke/steam coming out, a symbol of a bygone era. Behind it were two modern diesel engines pushing the old locomotive, and a string of Norfolk Southern wine colored passenger cars. I'll bet they haven't been regularly used since the seventies. But gas is so expensive. Should we go back to using trains?
   

Still awaiting medical test results, neurotic cat

    Don't you just hate it when doctors take forever to get back to you? It's been about 10 days since my abdominal ultrasound, and I haven't gotten any results back. The xray of my hips didn't seem to turn up anything unusal, according to the report I just got in the mail. So I don't have ovarian cancer? What about my liver and lungs (still have a soreness in my back)?
    Once you've had cancer once you can get it again, it seems. And as I am typing this the cat is at my feet and trying to get into something (the closet, a space near a drawer) or into my lap. the spouse says she is neurotic because the dog is gone. Possibly. But in the winter she is "in and out" and in and out of the house, though there is a "cat door" in one of the porch doors so I don't have to get out in the cold to get her all the way outside.

Got ultrasound to see if I have cancer,the dog, Gerson therapy

   Well, it was a "really long" ride to the Bristol Wellmont hospital so that my husband's insurance can "sort of pay" for medical expenses. First they tell me there is a $300 deductible for the ultrasound on my middle region (abdominal area, under both ribs and the middle, where the vital organs are and I have felt some pain) so I put $150 down, THEN I FIND OUT my lab service connected to my husband's insurance isn't even in the hospital anymore. That is a financial bummer. But "most" of the healthcare in this country is a financial bummer. My mother is spending "all" her extra dollars on doctor bills. We need a healthcare tax that is "better" than Medicare, that covers lab work and some specialists. Healthcare is just too expensive.
    So they tell me his lab service moved down the road near Kroger or some such place. But if I did go there after the ultrasound then I probably wouldn't have eaten a bite till 11:30 (as I had to fast and not eat/drink from the night before for the bloodwork AND the abdominal ultrasound-- the bloodwork had to do with insulin fasting, I think and they like your abdominal area 'flat' so it is easier to take pictures). And I was kind of exhausted, so I took the higher deductible and had the blood work done at the Wellmont hospital.
    I was exhausted as the dog, Grover, had been yelping on and off all night. Should I have taken him to the doggie emergency room that evening? I almost did, but I knew I had to leave by 7 and thought I wouldn't get any sleep if I did. Well, he was yelping on and off (we think it was constipation but I say he had a blockage) and I got almost no sleep. Finally, at 6 am the husband took him to the doggie emergency room but he died on the way. We should have taken him that evening, put him out of his misery sooner, as I don't think he would have survived then. He collapsed twice at home that evening. And he'd had seizures since being put on the heart medicine for an enlarged heart -- could the drug have had a bad side effect? I felt bad we waited to take him to the vet. We haven't had much luck with dogs and this is the last one I want to take care of. I'm not really a small dog person anyway; they can be whiny.
    So after the medical 'stuff' I got with natural friend Carrie and she told me about a man who had bone cancer and had been on the Gerson Therapy (alternative cancer therapy) for 2 years. It involved juicing everything, coffee enemas,  and supplements, but he hadn't gotten better. In fact his cancer had spread. I don't think I will try that if I have cancer, but the Kelley therapy is kind of similar. I think I'd rather do a targeted therapy and do "Protocel" instead.

Still don't have a doctor's appointment

      I think our  health insurance is schizo. ON  the one hand, my husband's doctor was distantly related to the "Wellmont" health netwoek and he was able to see him and sort of have his visits and lab work covered. But for me, two doctors later, they say they are "not" in the Wellmont network (it's all about networks, not people, it's all about profit, not health) so can I go to these
people or not? They are 50 minutes away on the interstate. I risk having to see another dr.
2 hours away because his network doesn't reach this far. It stinks.

Decent doctors anyone?

   I believe I have serious health issues and yet my husband's doctor can't take the time to call back and let me know if she can take me on as a patient or not. That really sucks. With back soreness/pain and pain under my ribs, that is not a good sign. I hope it is my gall bladder but I don't think I'll be that lucky.
     Why can't doctors treat you like you are somebody? I know this doctor is new, but geez, how about fitting in a really sick person? I may have to travel a very long distance to see a doctor "in my network".

What if I have cancer again

 I didn't do great with cancer treatments the first time around. I had breast cancer then. But I have this soreness in my back that is not going away -- a bad sign. It could be pancreatic (no) or lung cancer. I am not a very lucky person. Maybe I should have stayed on the Femara. I have tried to
lose weight but my intestinal tract and thyroid  I don't think have cooperated.

    I did lousy on chemo, but some people don't do chemo, or do it in combination with different things. I need a plan.

Beale Street, Memphis, Moving with son

     It was colder than normal  the one day I got to roam around a bit of Memphis (am told it is usually in the 40s in January, not closer to 20o F). Anyway, it was spitting snow and the rottweiler in the backyard of the house behind the one my son was now renting was howling, probably because with his short hair he was pitifully cold. We'd just finishing moving what things Zeb had into his ground level house, and were planning now on running errands and see what else we could see in this new hometown for him.
     He wanted to visit the ornamental 'metal art' museum. There were "several" other museum choices we could have looked into, like the one with the IMAX theater and the Underground Railroad museum. It was Monday and they either closed at 5 PM (we got kind of a late start and had errands to run) or were closed, period. So, after buying a few things  he needed for his new place, like food, we took it back to his place, got his new GPS device working, and looked for the Applebees we had a coupon for (which my middle son gave me as part of a Christmas gift). I tried this chicken recipe and the waitress brought me this alcoholic "milkshake" with kahlua  (sp?) in it. Son Zeb tried it, and, of course, the alcoholic aftertaste he so dislikes stood out. It's just as well. I think he'd have a hard time being an alcoholic with that attitude. But he's been a "soda-holic" in the past!
     So what was left to do? I thought we'd go on this Beale Street, the one mentioned in a song. There supposed to be some music venues on that street. But on a Monday?
     Yes, on a Monday. The waitress said if we followed the street we were on (Perkins?) we would hit Beale. Actually, we hit Riverside Drive,and viewed the pretty yellowish lights of the De Soto Bridge, which was strung across the mighty Mississippi, connecting to the next state, Arkansas, childhood home of President Bill Clinton. I'd gotten a map at a travel stop and Beale looked to be south of where we were, so we turned left and sure enough, we hit Beale. We pulled into the first parking lot we found, a very reasonable $5.00 to park, and then had to dodge pieces of ice on the sidewalk it was so cold. But we were in music land!
     There so no "you can walk" signal for the first big street we crossed so we had to basically run across. Then we came upon a theater, the Orpheum, where people like Louis Armstrong and I think Joan Rivers had performed, and their names were in metal and gold music notes that were a part of the sidewalk. Soon we hit the gaudy, colorful purple and blue and pink and green (etc.) marquees of the eateries and bars that are Beale Street proper. Beale looks to be an area of three to four blocks, with cordoned off streets open just to pedestrian traffic. Even on this cold night there were some people out and about walking by famous old shops, like Schwab's, and bars, one of them for BB King. We actually went through a bricked archway at one point and discovered the Fedex Forum. Guys on the street were asking if we needed tickets and we thought what for? Oh -- the L. A. Clippers were shooting baskets against the Memphis Grizzlies. I'd never heard of the Grizzlies. Are they a professional team?
   So we got out of that area and back to the Beale section and found a bar to go, Silky Sullivan's. In back in a case in the wall is this very gaudy black, gold and white custome with black bangles and feathery white wings, like a party angel would wear marching in a Mardi-Gras kind of parade. Maybe they have their own version of Mardi Gras there. Inside also were 2 men, a young one and gray haired one, facing each other and taking turns doing the main singing to songs on the piano they played.  Zeb said to request "Piano Man" by Billy Joel and I asked for "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John. I think the younger guy sounded a bit more like Billy Joel than the older man sound like Elton, but they were both entertaining and the sparse crowd there clapped at least some of the time, while we glanced up at a big TV screen and saw the Grizzlies play against the Clippers for nothing. Well, if you don't count our sodas and giving the pianists a few bucks.
     I think Memphis will be a very interesting city for my son to live in.