This weekly update is a bit late because I had chemo last week and the neuropathy has been taking me to town. It’s all I can do at this point to keep up with my daily Inkvent posts. So this update will be shorter than usual, but still hopefully satisfying.

Health

Chemo 11 out 12 was on Tuesday last week. Wednesday-Thursday was all about steroids side effects, and then the chemo side effects kicked in. I’ve completely lost my sense of taste, plus I had the horrible rusty metal taste in my mouth (if you think that doesn’t make sense, so do I, but chemo begs to differ). The metal taste subsided on Sunday, but I still haven’t gotten my sense of taste back, and the neuropathy has kicked in. I didn’t have a break from it as of last treatment and I knew that it was going to be rough, but it still takes me by surprise each time. As of writing this I can only very faintly feel my fingers and toes, and every once in a while a wave of pain sears through them. A friend of mine said that it sounded like torture to him, but I told him that I’ve gotten used to it. I just make adjustments for these days, and count my blessings that I can still type by muscle memory, and still use pens if I go very slowly and carefully.

I did get a very special visitor during this round of chemo, and to celebrate it you all get to see me for the first time.
So that’s me, Nofar, on the left, and that’s the wonderful Jenny, the Irish Setter therapy dog on the right. She utterly made my day.

Reading

I finished “Cibola Burn,” the fourth Expanse book by James SA Corey. Rarely do science fiction novels manage to create compelling characters (especially a large cast of compelling characters), a rich and believable and interesting world, and also highlight something about humanity that speaks to our current affairs. “Cibola Burn” pulls it off, by portraying how people, as individuals and groups, behave under extreme circumstances and when they think that the normal rules of engagement are off. It was written well before Covid and is in no way about plagues, but is very prescient about how certain people take advantage of these “frontier” situations to their advantage, others just try to survive, and still others rise to the occasion, ignoring previous political and social divides, and work for the betterment of humanity at large. The best of “The Expanse” books so far, and a very good sci-fi novel in general.