Everything Went Well on Thursday. (Except the World Series.)

Bill had his blood test Thursday morning, and his body had heroically recovered to a completely normal blood count.

So he got to have a little blue doo-dad stuck in his left arm and taped in place, and they squirted a variety of beverages into it. He got saline solution, anti-nausea stuff, steroids, some other stuff, and then some other stuff, and finally the Gemzar (gemcitabine). That's the chemical that is the gentle one that doesn't bother him.

Though his hair is thinning. And that's SAYING something.

I was looking at the wig collection they have, and I found a David Bowie one that I thought would look good on him. Brown and blonde, short (brown) around the bottom, and on top, sticking up 5 inches, real thick and blonde and punk rock looking.

I dared him to tell the nurse he wanted to try it on, and then to wear it all during chemo and see if she would keep a straight face. He told me those nurses are probably trained never to laugh at the wig selections people make. I said I wanted a job that involved training nurses not to laugh at bad wig choices. Dude. If there really is a job like that, I actually do want it.

Then I told him that maybe it would be easier to just take 5 barbie doll heads--the kind with long blonde hair--and glue them onto the top of his head in a line from front to back, creating a blonde mohawk effect. This suggestion he seriously did consider.

Yesterday, he had such a hilarious character getting chemo and sitting next to him. It was an older fellow, around 80, in jeans and work boots and a checkered flannel shirt. He said he's lived up in the mountains all his life--calls himself a true hillbilly. The accents on the locals here are just fabulous.

This guy had everyone on our side of the Chemo room laughing so hard telling stories in that gorgeous and rarely heard accent. One of the things he said was that he was proud to say that in his entire life, he had never once hit a woman.

The nurse replied, "That's because you're a smart man."

He said, "Wail, truth ee-uhz, ah awlmos dee-id hit a womun wuntzt. Ah was a-standin in a parkin lot, and this-yer womun was a-fahtin' [fighting] wiff her boyfreeund, and she got maddern da dickens at 'im, and 'stedda hittin' HEE-UM, for sum reezun, she decided she'd juss take it out on me an walked up 'n slapped the livin' far [fire] outta me. I dun took off runnin after that womun, an iffn I'da cawt her, I'm sure I'da hit her. Heck, if I'da founda rock, I'da frowed it. Good thang for me, there warnt no rocks, and she was fastern I was."

........

The night before, I was reading this novel in which an old man says to a young man: "Here's the secret of life, and I'm going to tell you, but you're not going to understand it for a long, long time, till you're much older. Ready? Here it is: Everybody is Christ. And everybody is crucified."

If that's true, and I'm not saying it is, but if it's even KIND of true, then that might explain why something deep and mysterious and strangely beautiful always seems to be visible when Bill is at chemo and when all the fellow sufferers there are having conversations with each other. While they are each in some degree facing the danger of death, nonetheless, at a time like that, they want to make some kind of contact with the co-sufferers beside them.

Was there a little of that going on between the thief on the cross and Jesus?

I don't know, but maybe it was something like that.