which began but did not end at the hospital.

tee was feeling pretty wretched when she woke up this morning, possibly out of anxiety around the prospective tube-swapping procedure. the energetic jeanne simington plunked her down at rogue valley medical center in time for her check-in, and the radiant eileen (everybody’s favorite e.r. doc) joined the festivities.

let’s take a moment to say that in this household there is a general dislike of doctors whose response to “that hurts” is “it’s almost over” rather than the more courteous “i’m sorry i hurt you.”

the doc in question also didn’t prescribe antibiotics. he put in a larger tube (which was uncomfortable), and sent tee home.

the procedure in the rearview mirror and a bottle of pepsi taken onboard, tee’s mood improved markedly.

joann and dennis brought over their (wonderful) recent drawings. after dennis left, joann entertained tee by reading from the chronicle of higher education. by 4:30 it was obvious that the bag wasn’t filling right, and by 8:30 it clearly wasn’t filling at all. also, tee’s temperature started going up.

kim and karen came over around 7:00, bearing smart water and also prepared to minister to tee in their respective ways. the water helped, and tee’s temperature stabilized. several conversations with doctors ensued, with the upshot that tee will be seeing another interventional radiologist tomorrow (one with a more sympathetic bedside manner and better overall results than today’s).

lordess willing and the creek don’t rise, tomorrow the tube will get repositioned, and tee can continue with her successes in eating, drinking, making art, and raising consciousness.

the first batch of cds arrived, and they are glorious. if the dragon were a better person, she’d put them online so everyone could see. maybe later in june i’ll have time.

judy, a certified Morning Person, got tee to chemo in time for the tape and the lecture. go judy!

they got the needle in first try, and started a saline drip, which combats dehydration (another of the things tee needs to be careful about).

apparently chemo is preceded by a Very Nice Drug indeed, which not only relieves nausea, but, in tee, actually stimulates appetite. it’s a miracle. during the course of the chemotherapy session, tee consumed half a quiche, and then afterwards got down a drumstick at kfc. (repeat after me, all you wholesome people: “there is no such thing as a bad calorie.”)

all afternoon, she felt great. a very auspicious beginning.

jesse drove her to pick up her mail and some medication, and then just before she was about to leave, the plumbing started acting up. tee called susan, the terrific home health nurse, who said she’d be there in a half hour. and she *was*.

in susan’s opinion, the pipe needs changing. in dr. rao’s opinion, it wasn’t an emergency, and tee could just slide in to providence tomorrow (wednesday) morning, and he’d swap it out. tee’s an old hand at this by now, and she’ll probably be home in the afternoon. she has some errands she’s planning in medford.

thank you all for the great billowing cloud of light and healing that surrounds our tee. i’m convinced the day was a tribute to all of you. and, of course, to tee’s indomitable spirit.

last night barb won all three games of canasta. i hope you all have your affairs in order. tee says it’s a very sophisticated, sneaky kind of game she plays.

apparently there’s a mouse in or around the stove, which made just enough noise to disturb tee’s sleep last night. she spent the day feeling pretty drowsy.

susan the home health nurse came (on a holiday!), and marilyn and jeanne came over and whizzed around doing things. mara brought over roasted sunflower seeds. tee is grateful for all the care she gets.

she finally gave in to the sleepiness and napped deeply for a couple of hours, and awoke feeling pretty chipper. that lasted for about an hour, and then she was sleepy again. being sick is hard work, which people hardly ever credit.

tee’s been talking to a couple of women who’re looking for a house and not finding anything in their price range. perhaps something can be worked out among them. negotiations continue.

right now, judy is reading to tee from the chronical of higher education. tee likes the publication, and she also finds it lulls her to sleep.

no canasta this evening, so the apocalypse is yet in abeyance.

they say be careful what you wish for, and tee’s been wishing for more canasta in her life for years. it’s as if the make-a-wish foundation were paying special attention.

this morning she took her cell phone and her dog out for a walk. georgie loved it. poor dog’s been pining lately, and disdaining her food unless it’s tarted up (with subsequent gastric and air-quality issues). since tee’s started walking her again, her appetite is back. routine is so important.

tee spent some time on her own this morning, and got a lot done, including some communication with the smithsonian about some images they own. meant to do it last year but things got … complicated.

judy miller visited, and tee thinks she’s just fascinating. judy manages to look like a traditional blonde, while doing whatever she sets her hand to. judy brought paintings, which they discussed. tee says they were all good. judy then wandered around, noticing things that needed to be done, asking if it was okay if she did them, and then doing them. tee thinks anybody who was ever lucky enough to hire judy must’ve been smitten with her after, like, three days, tops.

they played canasta. tee won.

then barb came over, with a whole new style of canasta play, very closed, very different from how tee’s been teaching the rest of southern oregon. at this report, barb had won twice and a third game was in progress.

in other words: apocalypse any time.

the morning meeting was swell, and then tee had a nap. brenda savin came over and gave tee a treatment, and the greyness that had been creeping into her outlook lifted. so she had another nap.

charlotte cook and francis etherington visited for the specific purpose of learning canasta. tee and jennie played doubles with them. it’s lovely how, no matter how listless and out of it tee’s feeling, when the cards are dealt she’s alert and interested and mostly pain-free. magic. and, of course, winning never hurts either.

during the course of the day, tee completed two watercolors of the poppies that are lately in bloom at poppyseed.

and, of course, another nap. there were negotiations and changes made in the sleepover schedule. that’s ongoing. the main thing is, it always works out, even if sometimes it waits until the last minute.

tee’s still working on the nourishment conundrum. protein shakes and tofu and ensure, and, lately, watermelon. hey, it’s not the burliest food ever, but it’s pleasing, and it stays down, so it makes us happy.

the evening’s canasta game, with charlotte the statistician, fell out in a statistically pleasing way. which is to say, apocalypse later.

jennie council stayed two nights in a row, which is nicer for tee. (as the dragon learned in computer science, “context switching is expensive.”)

tee herself walked georgie this morning, which is good for both of them. dogs like their rituals, and tee’s an important part of georgie anna’s morning ritual. ann has been doing a wonderful job, and remains available for on-call walkies, but tee’s giving her some time off, with profuse thanks.

the wonderful ginger lei came out of the refrigerator for a bit, and graced the table, perfuming the air. jeanne whisked tee off to grants pass for business stuff, and to pick up the new reading glasses. tee’s delighted to be able to read again.

then she had a nap.

then tom introduced tee to pam, his wife. tom’s been doing so much stuff for tee, and pam’s been admiring the ceramics he’s been bringing home. tee took pictures of tom earlier, and was pleased to give prints to pam.

another nap.

leslie came over, because in bernie’s estimation the asparagus beds needed weeding, and bernie’s a whacker, not a weeder. leslie, bless her, continued to weed, even in the rain. she visited with afterwards, and had words of wisdom to impart on the subject of weathering the chemo storm. tee sent her home with some well-earned asparagus.

then after a little rest, tee made some order in the house, evicting some science experiments from the refrigerator, and made some easy-to-get-down silken tofu, baked with soy sauce and yeast. it’s also good cold, and went especially well with the noodles jennie brought. tee’s been thinking about nourishment, and drinking protein drinks, and giving some of the supplements another go, this time reading the directions. she took the bile salts with dinner, and they seemed to help with digestion.

all evening she felt pretty darn good, and she had two helpings of watermelon. it’s a good thing she was feeling so well, because jennie won the evening’s canasta game, by a considerable margin.

then they watched some video jennie’d shot, and the beginning of “before stonewall.” then it was time for bed.

i think we should all be sure that the people we love know it. the way canasta’s been running, there’s no telling how much longer the center can hold.

mara lost (though not by very much). life as we know it can continue for awhile yet.

even so, mara stayed the whole day with tee, learning the flushing ritual from susan, the wonderful home health nurse. max turned up with a gorgeous, fragrant lei woven of white ginger flowers. (can we guess where max has been?) some fragrances are too strong for our favorite delicate blossom, but this one was just lovely, and made tee happy.

jeanne visited, and made order, which is one of her many special gifts.

then linda long and an associate from special collections at the university of oregon library arrived in a van. they took away a great deal of stuff: so much stuff that tee had to take a couple of tiny naps before they left, and a longer one after. tee’s house is now lighter to the tune of most of her negatives, most of the (analog) prints. prints of most of the digital work. she still has the cds with the digital files, and her hard drive is nestled snug in its kennel at connecting point.

still: very hard work, saying goodbye to so much of the work of a lifetime. i think the feeling must have been a little giddy, a little dizzying. definitely calling for a nap.

the initial chemo experience has been scheduled to a fare-thee-well. tee has someone to stay with her the night before and take her to the treatment, there-there-ing as needed, somebody to come over after and stay until the overnight person arrives. so that’s covered. now all we have to do is lift her clean off the chair with love and light and healing energy. it’ll be next tuesday, so let’s do a midnight-to-midnight blast.

jennie, tee’s pet budding documentarian, brought a video for tee to look at, of nioadagain talking about owl farm. it made tee happy. the wonton soup also pleased, if only to the tune of a tiny helping. food is still a problem, which tee keeps whacking at.

jennie also appeared in the role of canasta neophyte. tee says “she played very well,” even though she didn’t win. life as we know it continues another day.

ollie came by to say farewell, and take a great many artworks with her. this cheered tee up immensely. she loves it when people like her work enough to pay cash money for it.

penny shipley showed up and pedicured tee to a fare-the-well. tee calls it “wonderful, sensual, detailed,” and thinks penny should be the sensei of pedicure. world-class.

it being wednesday, joann and dennis brought some of their latest work over, and the three of them discussed it, and then discussed art in general, for a considerable time. joann read quietly while tee napped, and then jeanne and joann were initiated into the cult of the flushing pipe. definitely need a secret handshake.

it’s been a day of wrestling with the nutritional hydra. tee just doesn’t much feel like eating, but she knows it’s her duty. (she plans to leave a good-looking corpse, eventually.) people send her things that are tasty, to tempt her, and she eats three bites, and then has to stop. perhaps, she thinks, she should just concentrate on stuff that doesn’t taste like anything in particular, just so she can get it down.

(it is the dragon’s observation that she eats much better when people are conversing entertainingly. i’m just sayin’.)

tee’s quite fond of parmesan flavor goldfish, and jane mara suggested adding toasted sunflower seeds to them, to increase the protein content.

canasta news: it’s interesting that even when tee’s feeling deeply “meh,” that once the game starts she’s alert and engaged, and forgets all about the “meh” feelings. this evening charlotte almost won, and (as of this writing) jane mara is in the lead.

tired. final results either in comments or in tomorrow’s post.

this morning after rebecca left tee was feeling sorry for herself, and sought solace in the arms of morpheus. which is to say: she went back to bed.

refreshed, she arose and found valerie taylor’s will (which was, mirabile dictu, right where she thought it would be). she packed it up with a new contract and sent it to cornell, to complete the process of transferring literary executivity to the library that houses valerie’s papers.

she put together a book of photographs of altered images of bev’s body to give to dr. sue, because (a) sue really admired the samples tee brought her last time, and (b) she was bev’s favorite oncologist.

tee gathered up stuff to take to irelock imaging, and printed out the text for “Scars, Stoma, Ostomy Bag, Portcath,” the cd project she’s been working on since before her diagnosis. the dragon read two paragraphs and announced “it hasn’t been copyedited.” a red pen magically appeared.

we got to the oncology appointment in plenty of time. tee gave blood (graciously, generously, visualizing a gently flowing river), and then we ducked out to take her wounded laptop to connecting point, to get them to fix the battery problem, because they were so kind and generous about returning it to minimal usefulness last time we gave it to them.

we waited for the appointment just about long enough to hear a new friendship swell from seed to bud to flower between two oncology patients who’d also found religion. we were grateful to be ushered into the quiet, rainbow-strewn halls of the examining rooms.

tee did not lose weight! she gained maybe four ounces, and the downward slide is broken. she’s been so good about eating whatever she can, whenever she can, whether she feels like it or not, and this is her reward: she’s looking good. also, her bilirubin’s down to 1.9, only 33% above normal. excellent numbers, and a tribute, in my humble opinion, to the cloud of love and healing intention that’s surrounded her for the last three months.

good work, everybody!

tee has decided to try chemotherapy. she has far too many projects underway, and she’s actually been feeling pretty good. if she can go on like this for awhile, she’s willing to brave the slings and arrows of chemo.

she starts next tuesday. there will be a four-to-six week course of once a week treatment with gemcitabine, at a fairly low dose. one of the pluses of this drug: her hair won’t fall out. she may be needing a chemo buddy, somebody who can drive her to treatment and say “there there there there there” as needed.

then we went over to irelock, where the door was opened by a bowing and rejoicing livvy-daughter (i’ll get her name next time). it was a very sweet visit. then to arby’s, for a roast beef sandwich and oh, those french fried onion thingies.

at home, a quorum gathered for canasta, and the dragon, tired of losing, asked prettily to be tee’s partner. butt was kicked. i name no names. but the end of the world is not at hand, i’ll say that much.

on the dragon’s advice, “mystery men” is being watched at the moment. it’s the early stages yet, but the watchers are not yet convinced. wait til janeane garofalo appears. she’s worth waiting for.

‘night.