Final Radiation Round, Difficult LIves, Exercise

Yesterday marked the last scheduled round of radiation therapy, set to end at the close of six weeks just before the year's end.  Sweet Melissa drove me down there to the Davis Cancer Pavillion at UF Health and we saw two oncologist physicians nearly immediately afterwards.  Then I "rang the bell" to mark this minor milestone.  Before that I wrote a couple of sobering sentences into their guestbook. This is that text:

It is good to complete the six weeks of brain cancer radiation treatments, in spite of the headache side effects. My struggles against GBM continue, and it promises to be difficult and challenging. God bless you all!

The reactions I received to this somber message weren't exactly exuberant, but then again, I never asked or prayed for an easy life for myself.  After all, Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee had a difficult go at it throughout their J.R.R. Tolkien-authored Lord of the Rings saga.  Harry Potter also had to undergo quite a bit of suffering throughout J.K. Rowling's excellent Harry Potter series,too. Yet these characters' experiences strengthened them and provided transformational growth because they showed up for the challenges and followed through.  This is the optimistic message I add to the first somewhat abrupt lines.  I didn't exercise this afternoon or evening, but I have confident hopes that I won' t let myself down and will dutifully perform some C-V exercise while watching virtual runs on TV..  More virtual miles to come.  Now it's eight in the evening and I just finished my daily exercise, closing out at 4.8 total virtual miles...

Songs of the Month and Year, Exercise and Cancer Treatments

 Today was an open Sunday spent at home, with me largely withdrawing to our living room couch.  I did exeerise a bit, doing a total of 3.1 virtual miles...don't feel like I did anything, though.  I have Steve Miller Band's minor 1968 singles hit Living in the USA as my Song of December.  Also, Garbage's 2025 song There's No Future in Optimism gets my nod for 2025 Song of the Year...more about that one later.  I'm due to get another round of brain cancer radiation treatment at the UF Health Davis Pavillion.  To all of you a very good and blessed day... 

More Radiation, Headaches, TV Football...and About Sleep

 Today Melissa took me down to the UF Healh Davis Cancer Pavillion for another round of radiation treatment, after which an oncologist assigned to my case consulted with us.  Then, following a weekly lab blood draw, I talked with Amy, the nurse practitioner working under Dr. Rinonos, my chief oncologist.  We discussed the possibility of surviving a limited and pessimistic lifespan prognosis following diagnosis with an aggressive variety of brain cancer, which I just underwent.  I guess I"ll just live as long as I live...hopefully enjoying life as time winds on.  I did little-to-no home exercise, My virtual miles for the day being a little more than one.  The featured televised pro football was uninteresting, and I probably slept through much of it.  My FitBit has recently been very uninformative regarding my length of sleep time and my sleep quality...I don't know when or if it will resume being useful.  I have more radiation scheduled tomorrow.  I'm hoping that my headaches in the morning will be light...

Catching Up on Late Blog Articles

 I'm writing this article retroactively, by one calendar day, as I've slipped a little behind in my daily habit of posting blog articles.  With the cancer treatment regimen I'm in the middle of, the radiation therapy, now with 19 sessions behind me, appears to be causing the side effect of brain inflammation.  This can lead to pain, and Melissa has been great at communicating this with my physicians.  Now I have some medicine that should mitigate the symptoms.  The radiation treatments are scheduled to run to the end of 2025, and i'm fervently hoping (and praying) that I'll be able to sustain them without too much trouble on the side.  Tonight they had a college basketball game on TV between Florida State and Dayton.  The Flyers, playing at home, were clearly better shooters and ball handlers: it wasn't even close.  Well, let's see if I can't crank out today's article before midnight rolls around...