Damnit...it's in my brain!

Okay, let's get this one over with.  To those friends on Facebook, you already saw my announcement there...now I have the gory details.

My brain looks like a snow-globe on the MRI scan.  At least a dozen flecks of light floating in my brain; right-side, left-side, inside, outside, front-side and back.  It's like a spring bloom in there.  Good news is they caught it early...most of them really are just flecks, and none are bigger than 3 millimeters (1/8").

They can't target the spots individually with radiation because they'd end up having to radiate my whole brain anyway just to get to all of them.  So the plan is low-dose radiation of my whole brain.  The docs speak confidently of being able to stop the current activity with few side effects, but recurrance is a common reality.

It's back on the roller coaster and it seems we're screaming downhill, but I still feel fine.  How can I be so sick and not feel anything?  It's not like I'm complaining, this is exactly the quality of life I was hoping to experience.  Perhaps even better than I had hoped, and certainly longer.  Still, this is tough news and it hasn't been easy to bear.  It's a whole new ballgame now...and the timeline seems like it just got a whole lot shorter.

But in the department of serendipitous timing, an old friend I hadn't seen in twenty years was in Palm Springs this last weekend.  I'd already thought about a semi-spontaneous trip to go visit and the timing on my news clenched it.  I left from my appointment with the radiation oncologist and drove out to California...then spent most of the next day (starting with brunch) drinking margaritas on their condo-patio and catching up on old times while old folks sliced their golf balls on the fairway twenty feet away.  We had made plans of some kind but didn't accomplish more than a golf-cart run to get more beer and tequila and go hang out at the pool.

It was exactly what I needed.