OK, OK some content this time…

Sheesh, what’s a brain cancer patient gotta do to keep the readers happy? Apparently, more than I’ve done these past 2 days.

Fair enough. Y’all know my last 2 days were (for me) hard, because I grumped about it, and did little else. Trips back up to the hospital by car and train, back into chemo, yada yada and yuck! But, for all I know, your last 2 days may have been really shitty, compared to my measly hemiparetic grumping.

I appreciate that my woes are peanuts compared to some folks, many of whom I bump into in the neuro-oncology waiting room at UCSF – I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a grimmer space in a first-world hospital. UCSF’s world-class neurology and oncology clinics attract many very, very, even desparately-ill people: my heart aches, particularly when I sit on the intake side on the 8th floor at 400 Parnassus Avenue, as I did this past Tuesday. There is no such thing as a ‘good’ neurological ailment, particularly a cancerous neuro ailment, and the waiting room, sadly, is, often, a little (or larger) shop of horrors.

So, if you’re reading this in a wheelchair, and using a straw clenched between your teeth to access my, probably, poorly-accessible blog, my apologies (and sympathies). You made an effort that few able-bodied people would even begin to appreciate, only to be greeted by the line “We drove up this time (!), but still, find ourselves too tired to write much,” and, saints above, would you just love the opportunity to be exhausted by driving to an appointment that included navigating, on your own two legs, a giant campus? My sincere sympathies and mea culpa for not thinking of you.

Given how I felt at the near-helpless nadir of my hemiplegia/hemiparesis, I’ll bet you feel like I should be out there, pushing my limits and wrangling interesting things to photograph, and write about. You know what, you’re right, even if you aren’t in a wheelchair…