HAP

Dear Texylady, Welcome. In your hour of need you have come to the right place. We all of us wish none of us were here because it would mean our spouses were still with us. I arrived in February of 2011--about two months after my wife died of cancer four months after being diagnosed. I'm in no hurry to leave, though my work takes me away for stretches with some frequency. I still remember the night I cam home from the hospital for the last time. The house was so silent it was unbearable. I slept about three hours that night, then got up and turned on the stereo so loud it probably woke the entire neighborhood. I had to kill that silence somehow. This is my way of saying we all lose our minds for a while after the death of our spouse. The shape of that madness varies from person to person. Some people do exactly what you are doing. Others hang on to those clothes. I still have not unpacked the bag of my wife's things from the hospital. Sometimes I open it just so I can smell her scent again. I'm still pretty crazy sometimes. It took me two years to open her closet and start emptying it. Don't worry about the crying either. I had to give up on the grocery store we used for years because every time I walked in the door, I'd lose it. At home, I'd scream at the ceiling periodically. I didn't cry at all for the first few weeks. I was too numb to feel much of anything. When the tears came, it was hard to stop them sometimes. They still ambush me periodically 41 months later. But for each of us it is different. The books on grief tell you there is a pattern to it all--that you'll feel this, then that then this. If you are going to read a book on grief, get one by someone who has been there. Too many are written by "experts" who've studied grief but have no idea what it really is. Others have said this, but i'll say it again--in greater detail: Self care is critical right now. People talk about getting through one day at a time. For me, five weeks in, I was living one second at a time. It was all I could do. I remember getting to the point where I could go a full minute without the loss pushing me to the edge and feeling like I had conquered the world. Meditation helped, but structure helped more. I got up at the same time every day, made the bed, had breakfast, took a shower, shaved, went to work, came home, took a walk, made dinner, washed dishes, I blocked out specific things to do for the entire weekend. People made sure I got out of the house socially--much as I wanted to sit in a corner and hide. I hated every social minute, but it was good for me. Drink lots of water. You can't believe how much grief dehydrates you. Don't drink alcohol. It's a depressant and grieving is depressing enough. Make sure to eat healthy meals on a regular schedule. No junk food. The sugar is as bad as the alcohol. Go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every day. there will be nights you don't feel like sleeping, but try any way. There will be days you don't want to get up. But get up any way. And write. Nothing gets the feelings out in front of you like writing. Keep a journal, write here--blurt it out on the page or on the screen. One of my professors once said, "We discover what we are thinking and feeling when we put it down on paper." She was right. Remember, there is no timetable on any of what you are feeling. We each go about this in our own way and at our own pace. What I've written above is what people told me when I got here. It helps. We have people from all over the world here--and I'm not sure Marty and Mary ever really sleep. The light is always on. We are all of us in the process of learning to cope with our loss. In the process, we found each other and realized that coping is a lot easier when you have a caring group around who know--really know--what it is you are going through. Don't worry about posting too much--there's no such thing here. Be well. Peace, Harry

Be well, Fae. It is my sincerest wish for you. H.

Dear friends, I finished writing an article on the financial side of cancer today. It tries to share knowledge about different kinds of programs available for lodging, travel, and paying the bills that come with being treated for carcinoid specifically but largely applies to cancer in general. It got 20 views within five minutes of being posted. It has taken two weeks to write because it kept making me angry--not at the disease or the people, but at the way things are organized that we reduce cancer patients to beggars on the street--and their spouses and children after they are gone. I can no longer separate the fight against this cancer from the political and geopolitical things that are happening in the world. I am not sure how I will resolve any of those things, but I will find a way. On another note, the hummers are back. One buzzed me underneath a feeder yesterday while I was working in a flower bed. Another has been outside the slider to the deck boasting of his return to his possessions--or scolding me for the new feeder design--I'm not sure which. But with hummers colonizing the yard again, how can I feel bad? A dog I can't have for now. But the hummers will do. Peace, Harry

Dear Anne, There was once a movement to get every cancer patient a "navigator"--a trained nurse whose job was to help patients, especially those who were alone--get through the kind of day you had yesterday. The idea seems to have become the victim of budget cuts, but is still a solid thought we need the medical community to follow through on. The problem with heart disease of any kind is that the cardiovascular system controls the blood flow to every other organ. When the organs don't get the blood they need they get neither the nutrients nor the oxygen they need to stay healthy. That causes a cascade-effect influencing a larger and larger swath of organs over time if the real problems don't get addressed. This is why patients--especially heart patients--begin to feel like they have a new problem every time they see a doctor. Both my father-in-law and my father have kidney issues, for example, that were caused by high blood pressure. My FIL has been on dialysis for five years. My dad had to have one of his kidneys jump-started because, for reasons I don't understand, dialysis doesn't work on him. Damned space alien genes, I guess. Doctors at one point discovered he'd grown his own coronary by-pass. More space alien genes. Both men delayed getting treatment for their high blood pressure for years. Like with everything else, early detection and treatment means less damage to the heart to deal with and less damage to the other organs that depend most heavily on the heart. That, in turn, means a better longterm prognosis. I've forgotten the exact number of pills the average 62 year-old takes in this country--I think it's at least 15-20--so while nine seems like a huge number of drugs to be taking, it's a relatively small number compared to the average. Of course the fewer drugs you are taking the less chance there is for those drugs to get into conflict with each other. But nine is a much better number than 30 where that is concerned. When I get to be a doctor--yes, I'm debating medical school again--and am in a position to push for things, I'm going to insist we get doctors a course in dealing with patients as people. The word "dear" is one of the words I want to ban from those interactions unless and until they have earned that level of relationship with a patient where the word is appropriate. Hell, I don't even use that word on my father and mother. Jane would have brained me with something heavy if I had used it on her in the wrong context. ARRRGGGHHHH. We're working on a bill in Massachusetts to educate doctors, nurses and patients and families about the real nature of palliative care. It's stuck in committee and one of the things I went up to Boston last week to work on was getting the votes together to get it to the floor of the House. We failed, but at least it still has a chance to emerge from committee by the end of the session instead of being sent to "interim study," a kind of Purgatory for bills the legislature wants to make go away so no one actually has to take a position on it. The running fear, apparently, is that it will be seen by the public as an "end-of-life-help-people-kill-themselves" bill with the attendant death panel boogie man nonsense people like to spew on health issues they don't understand. OK. I'm nattering at this point. I'll shut up. I know all of yesterday was exhausting for you. I wish I were there to give you a hug--or at least walk through all the testing, etc. with you. One of the worst things we all deal with now is going to the doctor alone and coming home alone with too little certainty that we caught and understood everything they told us. Another thing we need to find a way to change. Sigh. Be well, my friend. We need you here. Peace, Harry

Great news Karen. Fingers, toes and eyes all crossed that the inspection goes well. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I can only echo Fae's words above. I am not here as often as I once was for reasons you know too well. I want to be here more often than I am because so much of my time elsewhere and else-when is so cold and icy that it defies description. This place reminds me there is good in the world--there is warmth and caring in the world. This week, especially, I am reminded the world can be barbaric--not just to those of us who grieve, but also to those facing any form of illness--any form of poverty. I read Karen's posts and they make me want to scream: she has lost her husband, is losing her daughter--and the creditors are pounding on her door when anyone with an ounce of compassion would leave her debts alone so she can deal with the life-and-death issues she needs to deal with. Daily, I am confronted with the reality of our broken healthcare system. There is a man in Ohio who can't get his insurance company to pay for the meds that will keep him alive; another in Oklahoma who had to fight with his insurance company to honor the medical trials rider he paid for; a woman who daily fights not only the multiple tumors in her body, but the insurance company that appears to wish she would just die so they can take her policy off the books. Every day someone starts a new personal charitable fund to help them pay for the travel and lodging they will have to undertake to get the treatment they need to stay alive. Daily, I am confronted with the stories of the poor juxtaposed with stories about how this wealthy church or that pastor rejects any responsibility toward any of them. I listen to politicians rail against the idea of a living wage and condemn as lazy people who cannot find anything other than minimum wage jobs that leave them reliant on food stamps and food pantries to feed their children. And I hear, even among those Jane and I counted as friends, endless harangues against people on welfare and those who live in subsidized housing. It is all hard to deal with. I have been poor. I have had those times when I was afraid to go to the door or answer the phone. I have lived on ketchup soup and literally gone into bars to sing for my supper--thankful that I had a voice that offered me that much hope. I can never forget those days--nor the countless acts of kindness that kept me alive in those days. I drove by a campsite off the road yesterday and heard about a couple who died when the camping tent they had lived in all winter caught fire last night--and I know that there but for fortune I might have been. Jane understood that. She knew that sometimes those memories and the empathy they created could burn me like the hottest flame and leave me charred in my heart and in my soul. She could see and feel those times--know that I needed her mind to touch mine and remind me it was OK. She understood that sometimes I needed to act on things even when those actions might put me in danger. And she knew what those things cost me--mentally, physically, and emotionally. This circle serves a very different purpose than that most of the time. But sometimes the kindness here reminds me there is good in the world--and compassion. Gods, but I miss my beloved these past few weeks. I found my face awash in tears this morning. The hummingbirds are back and I read the last poem I wrote her on our 21st anniversary, which feature the hummingbirds as a metaphor. And I lost it--lost it because there is too much suffering in the world--and not enough help for it--and because my Jane is gone from the house and will not return to it no matter how devoutly I wish it--not in the form or way I need her here. But here--at this fire--in this virtual bar room i once likened to Callahan's Crosstime Saloon--I find the strength to continue the multiple battles that have to be fought every day. Thank you all for that. Peace, Harry

Dear Karen, I made that same decision for Jane. It was what we had talked about--and what she wanted when there was no longer a fighting chance. I move back and forth between thinking I should have let her go earlier and the guilt of having ultimately turned the machinery off that was keeping her alive. I wish I could tell you I had found a way to feel better about it. I haven't. Logically, I know I did the right thing. But the emotional side of me remains unhappy. There is nothing wrong with losing yourself in inane movies and mindless activities. As Mary says, we cannot confront grief 24/7/365. We need to escape the same way a person in physical pain must have relief. At the end of Jane's life, the palliative care people came to see me, not about Jane's pain--which was at an end--but about my own. They gave me good advice about letting myself run away when I needed to--though I did not entirely understand it at the time--and don't always remember to follow it even now--three years, four months and 24 days later. We each try to lift the burden of each other's grief here. I wish there were more we could do to ease these difficult times for you. Today, all I can offer is a virtual hug, a virtual shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen. Be well. I hold you in my heart and in my mind always--but most especially on these hardest of days. Peace, Harry

Be well Butch and Mary. I hold you in my heart and in my mind. Harry

Dear friends, I took my SIL on the Walk for Hunger today. We had a good time, but she was not up for the whole 20 miles. We did 12. I think I could have done the 20, but it would not have been pretty. I have a lot of work to do between now and September 21 to be able to do the 26.2 of the Jimmy Fund Walk. I'm taking the rest of the day off. Be well, Jan and Anne. You are both very much in my thoughts this weekend. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, The last few days have been really hectic. The next four look equally taxing. I went grocery shopping this morning, then fell into my chair after lunch and nodded in and out for most of the afternoon. Unfortunately, the phone woke me out of the one really good bit of sound sleep and now I have some prepping to do for two conference sessions tomorrow. I'm hoping for an early night tonight. After Tuesday, things mellow out a bit for a couple of weeks--at least I hope they do. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I've been too busy for words--and this will be short as i have another meeting to get to an about and hour. I met with my state senator this morning in Boston. He is starting the process to get November proclaimed NET Cancer Awareness Month by the governor. We're starting early this year in the hopes we can leverage that proclamation into some other, more public, events. He is also going to back a palliative care bill the ACS is backing. I spent the afternoon at UMass-Boston where I got my undergraduate degree. They raised the final beam for a new building today and asked me--and a couple thousand others--to sign the beam before they put it in place. I included Walking with Jane in what I put on the beam. No one will ever see the beam again once the building is finished, but I'll now it is there. Someone from Alumni Affairs collared me afterward. None of the early classes--mine graduated just 11 years after the school was founded--has ever had a reunion of any kind and they'd like me to help figure out what a reunion should look like for the eclectic group of crazies that were there in my era. Few of us have even seen each other since we graduated almost 40 years ago. This should be fun. QMary, break a leg at every opportunity with this play. As I recall, this is the world premiere for this. Enjoy it. Glad to hear the assorted travelers have returned home without incident and that Fae seems to largely be following directions. Karen, I hope that cabin sells fast and that you get to spend as much time with your daughter as you can. Be well, all of you. Peace, Harry

Dear Fae, You are most welcome. It is why I set the site up: so people could quickly learn the basics of the disease and what is available to help. I am very happy you are finding it useful. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, It's been a busy and productive couple of days. I spent Easter with my in-laws and ate too much. Yesterday, I posted our clam cake and chowder dinner, yard sale, and 24-in-24 challenge day online, ran the poster and ticket designs to the printer, mowed the lawn and finally finished getting the fence up for the garden, all while listening to the Red Sox lose and an American win the Marathon. I still have some work to do on the fence project--I need to order sand to fill it and the under the deck patio/beach I started on in the fall. And I have to continue the planning and pre-writing for Thursday's social mediathon. But I've spent the morning being lazy after breakfast just reading posts and getting caught up with the mail. The next two weeks get busy starting Thursday between cancer stuff, alumni stuff, the hunger walk, and journalism conference stuff. Then things quiet down again a bit. I'm planning for a couple of weeks off in early July where all I will really need to do is take long walks. Sounds like we all had quiet Easters. Peace, Harry

Mary, your post is beautiful. Happy Easter to you all. I will spend at least part of the day with my in-laws. I am going out to hear a local band play tonight that features a former student on vocals. I did an interview for the local paper on the Marathon Walk yesterday afternoon and spent most of today working on fencing the garden--a task that has become more important since I have now discovered deer prints and poop in the yard and the garden. The fence will not be tall enough to truly keep a determined deer out, but I'm hoping it will be deterrent enough that the creature will settle for what is in the flowerbeds rather than what I raise for me to eat. I am a massive jumble tonight. Be well all. Peace, Harry

I repeat: I ain't no damned officer. I work for a living. Nor am I a damned knight. I work for a living. I am a simple yeoman and archer. --H.

Thanks, Kay. I had wondered how she was doing. Will keep her in my thoughts. H.

Now don't go knighting me either, QueenieMary. That's as bad as being an officer. Maybe worse.

Marty, you are too much. As I used to say to my students who tried to use "sir" on me: "I ain't no damned officer (nor royalty either); I work for a living," a line one of my favorite DIs used to use with some frequency. I'm too much enamored of anarchistic democracy to ever be comfortable with even the idea of a crown on my head. But I'm still chuckling over this one. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I got the permanent crown put on this morning that replaces the 40+ year old one I chipped last month. This means I have half my mouth back in working order again at last. They also took impressions for a "Night Guard" so I will not be able to grind my teeth at night and wreak continued havoc on my teeth and dental work. The price was pretty steep, but not too awful compared to what I've spent on the oral surgery the last month. I still can't eat any acidic foods until this gum transplant finishes healing--nor anything overly spicy. So I am stuck on this bland and boring diet for at least another two months. But it has helped me lose the extra 15 pounds I put on this winter a bit more quickly than my goal. I'm three pounds from my June 1 goal and think I will be there by May 1. But I'd kill for a pizza right now. My dentist says I heal fast, though. Time to get back to work. I read there is a new broad scale test for NETs this week and need to go find out more about it. And this fundraiser I am working on--a clam cake and chowder dinner--is about to drive me to drink between trying to coordinate a venue and the guy who does the cooking. Running a non-profit is not for the faint of heart. Be well, all. Peace, Harry

Dear Fae, The most important link to send them is to the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation (carcinoid.org). They have the best resources for doctors and the broadest range of information--as well as the oldest reputation. There are five doctors that are quite open to talking to people: Dr. Richard Warner at Mt. Sinai in NY is the father of the field; Dr. Matt Kulke and Dr. Jennifer Chan at Dana-Farber in Boston--Jen was Jane's doctor; Dr. Eric Liu at Vanderbilt; and Dr. Gene Woltering in New Orleans at Ochsner. The last two pop into patient support groups online periodically. There are others who are in the same league, but I don't know them as well--and they strike me as a bit more distant. My site is aimed more at patients than at oncologists and other specialists. One of the big problems with these tumors is they don't show up well on standard CT, PET scans, and MRIs, even with contrast. Your doctors need to know that. The best chance of catching a tumor on a scan is octreoscan and Gallium-68. These are not widely available, but they are the gold standard. But even these will not snare everything. That will give you enough to start. Now go rest some more. Peace, Harry

Dear friends, I am having a difficult day today. I should not be. The last two days have been very productive both on the cancer front and on the yard work front. I met this afternoon with a group of students from the school Jane and I worked at who have volunteered to help put together a fundraising event for us next month, despite none of them having a clue who we were. Some of them also want to join our Walk teams. But one year ago today, two lunatics decided to turn the finish line of the Boston Marathon into a disaster area. It is an emotion charged day for everyone here, but especially so for me. At the time of the bombing I was online having a conversation with an old friend I had not seen in 40 years--and with whom I had only exchanged a short series of notes a few years earlier. What Katherine did not tell me that day was she had just been diagnosed with a recurrence of the Triple Negative Breast Cancer she believed she had successfully banished four years before. It had spread throughout her body, though she did not know that yet herself. She did not tell me about her condition for another three or four months after that. I wonder, sometimes, how things might have been different if those bombs in Boston had not gone off that day. I had friends who planned to be near the finish line, knew people who were running for various charities, even knew a couple of the officials with the BAA that runs the event through my work with the Jimmy Fund. We broke off the conversation so I could focus on making the calls I needed to make to find out whether everyone was OK or not. Was Katherine trying to work herself up to tell me what was going on with her body that day? If she had told me, would we have gotten together face-to-face last summer? Would it have made her life better or easier? We tried to arrange several times for me to go down there last fall and into the early winter, but the weather and her failing health prevented that from happening. She died in late January. She killed her cancer the same way Jane did--the way so many do--by dying and taking it with them. I miss her in very different ways than I miss Jane--but I miss her. I miss all the dead I have seen take down their cancer that way--and there are dozens of them dating all the way back to when I was a teenager. Katherine's death set off a chain-reaction in my brain. It brought back every piece of Jane's death in vivid detail--and I had to stop doing virtually everything for a time as a result. Unlike most of those I have lost over the years, they had each--at different times and places--saved my life and delivered me from the dark places in my soul. People say I am a good person--and I think I probably look like one from the outside. I don't see that person others see. One of my favorite science fiction characters is told by one of his enemies that he will not do something because he is a good man. He replies that good men have no need of rules,--they do the right thing instinctively. But people capable of doing great evil have rules that keep them from doing bad things--and he has more rules governing how he acts than anyone he has ever met. The villain immediately backs down, realizing the truth of that statement. I don't have as many rules as I once did--but that is largely because I have been able to consolidate nearly all of them into one rule: Love everyone unconditionally. If I contemplate doing something that is not born out of unconditional love for everyone else, then I don't do it. But it's still a rule, for all that it makes me sound better than I am. Jane and Katherine both helped me develop and refine that rule--a rule that I absolutely needed given the events of my youth. Others also helped me get there--but they are still alive. I suspect their deaths, if I should outlive them, will also be hard to deal with. But I wish I could have done more for Jane and Katherine. I wish I could have found some way to save their lives--to cure the awful sickness and ease the pain they endured. Those were beyond my power--and may have violated my cardinal rule, as well. Sparrowhawk, in Ursula LeGuinn's Earthsea novels, learns early in his career as a mage that one can cure the sick and heal the wound, but that we always have to let the dying go. It is a lesson i still have not learned--a rule I still cannot contentedly follow. As a character in Red Noses, a musical comedy about the Black Death, says, "We all know we have to die, but when Death comes knocking, don't go quietly: Fight Dirty." I hate cancer. I hate what it does to peoples' bodies. Even more, I hate what it does to peoples' lives. It reduces their humanity and scars every relationship they have. I want to turn cancer into this generation's polio--the disease they tell their children about--and the children believe could never actually have existed. And part of me is willing to abandon all my rules to do it. I won't of course. Like a reformed alcoholic, I know how dangerous even one sip of that strong liquor is for me. But it doesn't mean I won't fight dirty when i have to. For now, what I can do about cancer is learn and teach and think. I can work on supplying the funding for research and try to guide that research to things others have not thought about. The danger of the kind of mind I am cursed with is that I combine pieces of knowledge from very diverse fields of knowledge. Sometimes that can lead to new discoveries--but it can also lead to wild goose chases as well. Fae is in trouble. Karen's daughter is in trouble. I will do what I can for both of them, not because they are here and I know them, but because they are sick and need healing. To put it in Christian terms, we should treat them as we would treat him. That is why this place works so well: we offer each other that level of unconditional love that people like Christ and Buddha had for everyone. They just saw a bigger tribe and a bigger family than most of us can perceive or accept. The concept of this thread is that talking about things helps us heal those things we talk about in our own hearts. Tonight, at least for me, it has really helped. Thanks, Anne, for starting this--and all of you for maintaining it for more than a year of talk. Peace, Harry

I know I am a poor substitute for Doug, Fae, but consider your hand held and your forehead kissed. i assume the guy from Vanderbilt is Eric Liu, who makes my list of the top ten most knowledgeable people in the field. He is also one of the best at putting things in human terms, though the people at the top all do that pretty well. The faerie dust scattered on the site is more than ample recompense for whatever you find to be of use there. And you have change coming back for that as soon as I find my stash--I know it's around here somewhere. And there is nothing wrong with reading romance novels. I have an old friend who swears by them as a heal-all for every mental and physical issue. Swallow them whole or devour them piecemeal. And never be embarrassed by any of it. That and regular rest are your best friends right now. Jodi, in Fae's absence, I will say this much about art. I've spent my life writing and teaching. It defines who I am--just as it defined in no small part who Jane was. We edited each other, talked out teaching strategies together. I gave up my formal classroom seven months after she died. We had decided before she got sick we would retire in 2011, and I honored that decision. But I could no more stop writing or teaching than I can stop breathing and still be alive. If you are the artist I think you are, as painful as that is going to be, you need to pick up the tools of your life again and start making art. Move your studio if you have to, buy new brushes and paints and canvases if you have to, but do it. I know how painful it is because most of what I write now has to do with the disease that killed my wife--as is most of my teaching. But if you are a writer or teacher or artist down in your soul, you have to take up the tools of your craft--the tools of your art--no matter how painful it is. Out of that pain will come great work that will speak to others who have not been where you have been--that will never quite fully explain the thing that loss has made you feel and confront--but will help others understand that pain when they themselves encounter it--or, if you really manage it, before. It is what artists--whatever their art--do. You may not be ready to go there yet--three months is no time at all in this journey through grief--but the day will come when the art calls to you--and you need to be ready for that call and answer it. You have said above that it is wonderful that Fae has this big family here to love and support her. That family is here for you as well. All you need to do is take up the outstretched arms extended toward you. This is a warm and good place--and there is always more room at the fire and another place set at the table. Rest here and be easy. Marty, what you and Mary do here--what you have done against all odds to keep this little Inn open and functioning--is the thing that is truly astounding. What I do in the battle against this disease is as nothing by comparison to the healing place you create and maintain here every day. On a good day, I touch one or two lives. On your bad days, you touch hundreds and influence thousands. I wish I could do more. But, Mary, I know I have to rest periodically and watch my own health. As Jodi says so well in her post, we were each of us there physically to hold our loved one's hand--as they were there to hold ours. Now we all face the reality of facing sickness--and eventually more than that--on our own. It is not a comforting thought. But here we all are, trying to hold whoever's hand needs held and kissing the foreheads of whichever of us need that kiss at the moment. Be well, all my dear friends. Life may have cast us all on rocky shores, but we still have each other. Peace, Harry

Some days, I write something good--and no one notices. Today, I wrote something and it went through the roof. It isn't the best thing I've ever written, but it has some good information in it for people newly diagnosed with carcinoid syndrome. That makes me happy. I met with State Rep Carole Fiola this morning about palliative care legislation that should come before the Mass. House later this year. The conversation was a good one that ended with her promising to look into the bill more closely than she had. That makes me happy. And I wrote the beginnings of a political piece about taxation and corporate profits that got some of the anger out of my system about the ongoing insanity at every level of government when it comes to corporations and the common human. That makes me happy. Didn't get any further with my garden projects today and didn't get in the exercise I should have but, on balance, I've had a productive day. And that makes me happy. Peace, Harry p.s. No snow here or in the forecast--and that really makes me happy. The picture is beautiful, Mary. But more snow would be just about the end of me. And the grass always is greener over the septic tank--as well as longer. Erma Bombeck, my mother's favorite satirist said that once. --H. p.p.s. Mary, the things you do with that face--just don't let it freeze in character. --H.

I have had a short note from Fae, most of which she has repeated here. I have sent her a short note back, encouraging her to make sure she gets lots of rest. There is nothing minor about any surgery when it comes to carcinoid. The good news is we know much more about that than when Jane was diagnosed and several surgical protocols have been changed as a result of what we learned from Jane's case. I'm sure those protocols were adhered to strictly. At this point, even dentists know about them. I found some faerie dust on the Walking with Jane website this morning, so I'm pretty sure either Fae or her minions have been there. I posted a piece she specifically inspired--a primer for new carcinoid patients--this afternoon. I drew on a note I wrote her yesterday about the basics and support groups, etc. If you are interested in the details of what Fae has been dealing with, here's a link to it: http://bit.ly/Qm2esD. It doesn't go into the symptoms very much--patients already know what they are dealing with where that is concerned because they have often been dealing with them for years. If you want the details on that, I wrote a piece on that about two weeks ago--though I will warn you it is not for the squeamish. You can follow this link: http://j.mp/1ku3a9I. Several people who are patients say it perfectly describes their lives. I've decided not to call her until she says she is ready for that. She sounds exhausted--and undoubtedly is, regardless of how good she sounds here. Fae, you need to rest, woman. We'll all be here when you recover some. But for now, take it slow and easy. Healing needs to be your focus and your watchword. I carry you in my heart and in my mind--as I do all of you, even when my work takes me elsewhere for a time. And now I know--it occurs to me--why I got sent off to check out online support groups a few weeks ago. Hmpf. Manipulative bloody entities, these 'higher powers." Peace, Harry

Dear friends, This is awful news. As you all know, this is what Jane died from. I've been absent here for a few weeks because I have been working on that, trying to straighten out some yard work, and get my mind to wrap around some other issues. I'm working from limited information, so people should take this with a grain of salt, but it sounds like they have taken out the primary tumor, which it turns out is important to long term prognosis--and a good thing. Not knowing more about how widely it has spread, whether it is producing identifiable hormones or not, and several other factors, I can't say much beyond that. I hope to get Fae on the phone later today. Peace, Harry