Just back from a very pleasant walk around Stanford corral and golf course with faithful Australian Shepherd Cassie. It’s a beautiful, crisp autumn day, the sky is deep blue and cloudless, the oaks and eucalyptus sparkle in sunlight that is starting to take on its winter mantle as the sun gets lower in the sky, and becomes softer and more diffuse. Days like this make the ridiculous cost of Silicon Valley living worth every penny.

Today I’m juggling: I’m catching up some Adobe work, blogging a little, looking forward to a trip to Fry’s with stepson John this afternoon. Linda is on a businees trip – at my insistence. We need a little normalcy (if not a lot of normalcy) back in our lives, and, frankly, the hovering of my dear and beloved spouse was starting to get a bit much. She’s already called me 7 times since she left yesterday afternoon, and will be back tomorrow mid-day after God knows how many more calls.

Cassie the dog and I got up, made and shared a breakfast of coddled eggs and toast, and hit the trail. Breakfast time is pill time for me, and I gobbled down my regimen of anti-convulsants and the blood pressure medicine I’ve been on for a while. Usually Linda and I rise at 6:00 and go out, previously for a jog, now for a walk. The reason for walking rather than jogging is not the weakness in my left side, caused by the brain tumor, but rather the effects of Dilantin, one of the two anti-convulsants I take.

The Dilantin has reduced the severity of the focal point seizures that I experience: most of the time I just go on doing what I’m doing, at least as far as no left arm is reqired for the task. At worst I pause and take a few deep, slow breaths for the 2 minutes or so while the left arm twitches, jerks or goes numb. A couple times, I’ve had seizures so mild that even my ultra-attentive wife has not noticed.

Unfortunately, however, I’m one of the lucky guys who is on the low end of tolerating Dilantin’s side effects. After the first dose of Dilantin, administerered in the ER in San Jose, I almost fell over when I tried to stand up. Dilantin affects the motor cortex, and is very good at keeping small seizures from turning into big ones. However, it can cause coordination problems: given that I’m already a klutz, 200 mg of Dilantin makes me walk like a sailor on a 24-hour pass. 300 mg is almost comical, and a couple of times now, other walkers, spying my erratic and wobbling Dilantin-induced approach, have given me a wide berth.

Linda and I usually rise at 6:00 AM and get our walk in before the morning dose. Today I slept in to 8:00, and took the pills as soon as I had a little breakfast in me. My regimen has just changed and I managed to take 300mg of Dilantin (I was supposed to take 200, but can adjust this PM). Darn. I knew this would kick in about 20 minutes into our walk, but the day beckoned and the dog was eager, despite her near-13 years. I leashed up my loyal beast and we made our way down a short stretch of Oak Street to Sand Hill Road, and thence onto Stanford’s grounds.

A cross-country meet was in progress on the golf course: I could hear the booming PA announcements and the sharp crack of the starter’s pistol. It took me back to autumn in Ohio, when, as a student at Western Reserve Academy, I would watch the start of cross country meets, and cheer on classmates Tim Warner, Mark Weidemann and Dave Hunter as they approached the finish in Reserve green and white.

A young couple passed by, jogging smartly, as did spectators streaming in to the meet. A man perhaps 15 years my senior, driving a small electric cart and wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat wished me a cheery good morning. You go guy, I thought: let’s both make our way as best we can. Sure enough, as I rounded the construction on the new practice golf course, the Dilantin kicked in, and I began to roll and bob like a cork in choppy water. I had already thought that perhaps today I would go no farther than Campus Drive East, an almost 2-mile round trip, rather than my customary 3 or 4 miles, given the Dilantin-induced wobbles.

Cassie grumped a little at being denied the circumnavigation of Lagunita, Stanford’s usually-dry lake, and its wilder back side where she sniffs racoon, coyote and fox, I think, given the intensity with which she investigates the scene. The Dilantin demands a weird combination of rolling with it, and staying focused to keep upright: I felt it would be OK, under the circumstances to abbreviate this stroll. Lagunita’s dirt trails and steep banks present more broken ground, where I have fallen even at the peak of my fitness. We might take another walk this afternoon to bump the mileage up.

As we walked back, thoroughly enjoying the day and familiar sights like Skyline’s ridge of Redwood-covered hills as well as the air of college bustle, a seizure struck: the left arm went numb, then curled up about a foot out from my side and began to spasm gently. Cassie chose that moment to poop, so I moved off the paved trail into a deep litter of leaves: I was standing with a pooping dog and an arm that, this time, was pretty clearly doing something weird: it almost made me laugh to think what I must look like to others. When we could progress again, I wobbled on, left arm still twitching and raised to half mast as it were: mercifully, only a few people passed by, and, in a few dozen steps, the spasms subsided leaving only the Dilantin-induced stagger.

Tonight I’ll have dinner with friends Mike and Cathy Podell, Jacob and Terye Levi, their son Josh and stepson John and our beautiful daughter-in-law of a year, Julie. I may bring some wine that I’ve been keeping for a special occasion. All things considered, life could be much worse…

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