First Day of Cancer Treatments, a More Positive Attitude

Today marked my first day of cancer treatments, as prescribed by UF Health.  I woke up around six and Melissa already had my anti-nausea pill ready for me to swallow.  An hour later it was TMZ, my first chemotherapy pills (three in all per day, seven days a week).  Since the side effects of chemotherapy treatments tend to be cumulative, I really didn't expect my appetite to drastically decline over the first couple of hours after taking the very first dose.  No fatigue yet, either...Melissa and I did a reasonable 1.7-mile walk through our home neighborhood as well.  In the afternoon I underwent my first radiation treatment, followed by a blood draw and then Publix.  Anticipating dinner, my appetite is still intact...let's see where it goes.  I just wish this gloomy brain cancer diagnosis hadn't just randomly dropped out of the sky on me without any traces of origin from elsewhere in my body...that's not so cool.  But I've learned in a very short time (nearly four weeks since October 21st) to take the time allotted for me in this life one day at a time and to adopt a more patient attitude toward others and my circumstances.  So after posting this, I think I'll brew some decaffeinated coffee and put on my daily serving of outrage news before digging tonight's Monday Night Football contest between the Oakland Los Angeles Oakland Las Vegas Raiders...or wherever else they happen to be playing for the moment... and the Dallas Cowboys...

Boys with Toys

While shopping with Melissa the other day, I was very carefully steering our shopping cart past other customers along an especially crowded stretch of the store.  And then, straight toward us, an employee was casually pushing an imposing-looking pallet jack.  I watched him as he approached...and then he took out his cell phone and started looking at it while nonchalantly navigating his jack past without regard to anyone around...I guess it was up to us to get out of his way.  People whipping out their phones...what a scourge of our times.  Have you ever found yourself talking to someone, only to look over and see that they're zoned out and ignoring you, scrolling on their phone?  The only thing worse I know is the increasingly frightening circumstance of people...in anger...pulling out guns without any sense of restraint in using them.  It's become far too commonplace on the news to be met with the story of a shooter at a school, church, home or business...and often it's a minor who has committed the crime.  In the 1995 James Bond flick Goldeneye, Agent 007's Russian female partner Natalya Simonova had a contemptuous name for this phenomenon for pervasive and often harmful obsession with gadgetry: Boys with Toys.  So we're now living...or trying to stay alive...in the "Boys (and Girls) with Toys" era: whoopee...