Down but not Out

Yesterday marked four months since my most recent surgery, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. No, not going to say “four-month anniversary,” a major pet peeve, because the “anni” in “anniversary” is Latin for “year.” I regard the misuse of this term as one of the many symptoms of our ongoing decline, if not an actual cause. So far […]

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Back in the Saddle Again. Sort of.

I am back at the office after nearly a month of recovery, following major abdominal surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. This surgery was necessary to correct damage caused by earlier surgeries, and to quash a stubborn and injurious infection left over from those earlier interventions. Many thanks to Alicia for holding down the fort while I was out […]

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Hard Choices

Had an interesting week, punctuated by an extended back and forth with Dr. Cima at the Mayo Clinic, my surgeon, through the Mayo Patient Portal. I had been unclear about some of the details of the upcoming operation, so I asked some hard questions. The answers were unexpected and not what I wanted to hear. In brief: To eradicate the […]

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Of Road Trips and Journeys

So there I was, hauling along about 80 or so, northbound on I35 a few miles south of Waxahachie, when suddenly there was a “bang,” followed by a sharp drop in speed and a loud, rhythmic popping sound at a rapid tempo, which dropped from prestissimo to andante as I decelerated. Instantly, multiple warning lights flashed red alert. My first […]

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A Very Long Year Indeed

Today, February 21, marks the first anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. An eventful year, as you might imagine. It’s all better now, but for a while it very much wasn’t. For some folks, a cancer diagnosis is a bombshell, a bolt from the blue. Mine was more like the confirmation of a nagging suspicion, following years of minor but mostly […]

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