Good evening, dear reader. Please allow me to begin by apologizing for my long absence. As I will relate over the next couple of days, there have been a number of reasons that I have been unable to post anything for the past couple of weeks. The most pressing of those reasons was physical; I have been awash in the rather unpleasant sea of side effects from radiation and chemotherapy of late. This was so much the case last week that I was placed on 96 hours worth of bed rest by my radiation oncologist. Normally, I am the type of person who will do something while confined to the bed – read, write, be thankful for the invention of notebook computers, etc. This time, I slept. A lot. Huge swaths of time simply do not exist in my memory. As I recall, I had just returned home from my morning radiation session on Wednesday of last week – I had already requested the day off from work since I recognized that I was becoming overtired easily; I thought I could use a day to myself – when I lay down to rest for a few minutes. When I opened my eyes, it was about midnight – over fifteen hours later. I spent the next few days in bed and finally began to catch up on some much needed sleep.

At this moment, in fact, my eyes are begging me to permit them close. Since I am also having trouble typing, I believe that this is a solid recommendation. Please know, dear reader, that I am still alive, still crafting contributions to this blog, and still searching for that silver lining in the thunderclouds that are rediation and chemotherapy treatments. I will return tomorrow with much more detail.

Until then, take care of each other.