Good hours

The daylight hours of Saturday went pretty well. I set up a table at a local craft fair and, while sales were not particularly good, I talked to lots of people about NET cancer who had never heard of it before.

Someday, perhaps, I will love again…

Where I come from we call that a minister’s delight. It means you can use an old sermon and no one knows but you. A new audience reacts differently and the talk feels new even to the speaker.

Better hours

I also read Matt Kulke et al’s –and that certainly boosted my spirits. We still have a lot to learn about this new drug that stands before the FDA for approval between now and spring. But it clearly will improve life for many patients.

…we call that a minister’s delight.

It’s not a cure, but, at first reading, it seems to have cut the number of daily bowel movements in half for many patients. It also cut 5-HIAA levels significantly. I’m planning to write a more detailed piece on the study later–I want to review it more closely–but it brightened the day considerably.

Dark hours

I came home, finally took the Halloween decorations down, and made myself a light dinner. I ate at the small kitchen table. A week’s worth of mail buries the dining room table–and I only eat there when I have company anyway.

It’s not a cure…

Then the sun set and the loneliness settled in as it does most Saturday nights. Jane and I didn’t usually do anything special on Saturday night. We’d sit in the living room and read or watch what we’d taped over the week. She’d put her feet in my lap and I’d rub the soreness out of them.

Consequential hours

I miss that. It seems inconsequential when I look at it logically–but it is somehow the most painful reminder of what is gone. I’m alone on Saturday night in ways I simply am not the rest of the week–even when no one is here.

…I’d rub the soreness out of them.

I would not wish these nights on Satan himself–even as bad as the Bible makes him appear. Even Judas deserves better. But every widow and widower lives in this bit of Hell.

Loving hours

People ask me, periodically, how I do what I do. I shake my head because I don’t feel I do enough. I haven’t figured out how to keep people out of this Hell I live in. To me, that means I’ve failed: failed to keep others healthy and alive, failed to keep someone from losing the one they love.

Even Judas deserves better.

Love defines my life. The search for love shaped who I became and how I became who I became. To live without that defining love–the love Jane and I shared every day–tears at me every second.

Loving hours

I envy those of you who have that love in your lives. I will not take it from you. Instead, I will do all I can to keep your love alive in the way mine cannot be. That means finding answers to this disease–and all the others.

Love defines my life.

Someday, perhaps, I will love again as I loved Jane. That does not feel likely on a Saturday night in November. The expression, “Once burned, twice shy,” comes to mind. Love requires leaving yourself open to a repeat of this kind of pain. But I would not give up what we had even to avoid this searing emptiness.