Brief report, rumination-free. More of the philosophical hoo-ha after Wednesday. Right now, I need to devote my attention to preparing to teach a class tomorrow.

Went for first chemo today. It’s hard to not be a little apprehensive about that. They started with anti-nausea in my PICC-line. Then they pushed a dose of Mitomycin. Then they got me started on a four-day continuous infusion of Fluorouracil — I have a little pump in a fanny pack that I carry around with me until Friday, when they plan to remove the PICC-line. Then I am slated for an identical treatment four weeks from now. So far, no nausea. We’ll see what we will see as the chemical builds up in my system. But right now is right now and right now feels just fine.

We had a couple hours before the first radiation treatment, so Judy and I had lunch at Emporio Rulli in Larkspur, then browsed around the Village. My Judy is a passionate and daily shopper and I am notoriously grumpy about shopping when I don’t know what I’m shopping for. Mamie is Judy’s more usual shopping buddy. So today was a little treat for Judy in that regard, and given the context of the rest of my universe, I couldn’t get in touch with my customary vague annoyance. So Yay for me not being an asshole.

Speaking of which, I had my own weird mental images of what radiation therapy would be like, and I got the impression from at least one other person who feared that I would be penetrated by some gleaming teledildonic probe. It’s actually just your normal apparatus: I lie on a table on my back, they use lasers and imaging to focus exactly on the reference dots on my body that allow them to deliver the radiation more precisely to the tumor and less to healthy tissue. Then they say the treatment is beginning. There are some innocuous clicking sounds, and it’s over in a few minutes.

That was today. I give it a “Yay!”