There is a certain happiness sighted when your bus comes along. It is of course a small specialized form of happiness and will never be a great thing.

-Richard Brautigan, The Old Bus

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Infusion of blogging (continued)


We're back at the University of California, Davis, Cancer Center. The machine whirs and clicks and pumps the drugs into the wife as she naps. We've settled into a two-week cycle -- a deep trough of tiredness followed by a slow but steady climb back to a feeling of general well-being -- and then back here.

This is the start of the third of eight cycles. There will be one more of this particular cocktail of drugs, and then four cycles of a different cocktail.

Getting laid off from work at the same time the wife started her battle with cancer has been useful, but it has put a real dent in my transit riding. This week I rode the bus to play Go with the Sacramento-Davis Go Club at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op on Monday evening and then got a ride home with the kid, who recently started work as a supermarket courtesy clerk.

The recreational reading that I used to do while riding to and from work has been the biggest personal loss. It's not that I don't have the time, but I feel I need to be doing something demonstrably more useful. So I've been teaching myself the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails Web building framework. I've finished one book and I'm working my way through the second. Soon I'll start rebuilding one of my Web sites to get some practical experience. And then I can add another line to the résumé.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your resume link isn't working.

Unknown said...

Dear anonymous,

The link works when I try it. But here is the actual URL: ipsosacto.com/files/20080623resume.pdf

And if that doesn't work for you, send me your e-mail address at jlhughes AT gmail DOT com and I'll send you a copy.

Me. Here. Right now. said...

John,

It appears as though your wife has the attitude of a winner from this picture. My prayer that she triumphs.

Unknown said...

Lori,

Thanks for the encouragement. Prior to the infusion yesterday, the wife met with a physician's assistant to check if she was OK for another round of chemo. After examining the results of her blood test and listening to her chest, he declared, "You're a real tramp!"

The guy turned beet red. Obviously he had started to say trooper, figured the lady fit champ better and then crashed and burned with tramp.

I've decided the wife's theme song is now "The Lady is a Tramp."