Been a while since we updated the blog. Actually, the past weeks have been sprinkled with the same ups and downs... great day...then two terrible days... pain, then a short reprieve, pain never in the same place...

Round 6 of chemo has resumed. The initial numbers were not especially great... seemed to be some kidney function loss, which means he needs to concentrate on ingesting more fluids, which seems easy but is strangely hard, they way this all has hit Jim. His blood pressure was worrisomely low when we got to the hospital but by morning it improved. A few days he stays up and gets things accomplished, but more of the time he is in bed asleep. All the ups and downs feel like we are screaming through the Himalayas on a runaway pogo stick.

I am agog that the process of stopping work and getting onto long-term disability and social security and medicare is such a poke in the eye. There doesn't seem to be anyone obvious to help shepherd you through this Valley of the Shadow of Retirement. The websites are confusing and vague, trying to take on all possibilities at the same time.

"If you were an employee of the Commonwealth since before 1986 and currently drive (or have ever owned) a 1999 Honda, and also suffer from amblyopia, you must bring a roller skate key to your local Social Security Administration office on the third Saturday of the month, except in February. We only see people people of Acadian descent with green eyes that day."

BTW, they have NO sense of humor at SSA. I think they absorbed all the cafeteria ladies who got jettisoned from the Registry. Before 1986.