Keeping you all in my thoughts today, Steph

In a blast from the past Buffista birthday news, today is Fred Pete's birthday. The Buffista birthday calendar has five members this week whom we miss.

A while ago, Fred was visiting Miami, and we got together for lunch on South Beach. We intended to buy him lunch, but since one of our customers was a Miami bank, and Fred worked in the banking regulation area of government, he said he couldn't let us do that. Do you remember when civil servants had ethical responsibilities they took seriously? No, even though there was no conflict of interest, and we weren't even going to discuss work-related matters, he felt it wasn't proper to have any appearance of inappropriateness. Sigh. Those were the days.

Lots of health ma to Tim.

I'm so sorry he has cancer but I hope this is something that can be resolved really easily.

I found out that one of my dad's cousins (who's is actually much younger than dad) has throat cancer that is entirely gone now and you couldn't even tell he had cancer at all. I hope that is the outcome for Tim.

I'm at Mom's today. We came up yesterday, it's mom's birthday tomorrow and so we are celebrating early. I had no idea what to get her so we are having an "art day" which I've wanted to do. So once M is awake he'll be sketching, mom is going to play with water colors and I'm going to make some kind of mixed media thing..

I'm hoping to do something similar Labor Day weekend when E is here for a visit .

I haven't gotten any great definitive answers to all my myriad of health issues. I'm getting an MRI on my shoulder next Wed so to figure out if there is something causing the pins and needles issues there.

Next Tuesday I see a dietician and I'm really excited about that. When I talked to him he said the FODMAP elimination diet was really the wrong approach unless it's clearly needed. He also said ...I can't remember exactly way he said it ...but it sounds like he has been doing a lot of work with peri menopausal/menopausal women which is nice. Especially because he sounded young . I'm hoping I can come up with a way to avoid stomach issues and eat healthier.

Wal-Mart also has an contract or something with Planet Fitness and Anytime fitness for really reduced rates. I've been telling myself I really need to go and start once a week working the muscles I don't use daily to help build them up . But I'm going to wait until after the MRI. My idea is to start once a week and then build to twice a week so I don't feel overwhelmed and overworked.

And since I'm getting close to hitting my out of pocket maximum I think I'm also going to try and see a podiatrist . And I need to schedule my dermatologist yearly check up.

I finally hung out with Crafty Friend again. We don't text as much and I do enjoy her company but only in smaller doses. She can be very intense in some ways.

M has gotten really into collecting Magic the Gathering, especially with the Final Fantasy collab. He doesn't play it but I've been encouraging him to spend more time at the comic book store and maybe try to meet some people there to play MtG with. He has also started a new anti anxiety medication. I think it's Cynbalata or something along those lines so it's a few more weeks before we can see if it works. He was also encouraged to start journaling. I know he got one but I don't know if he has started using it. But I'm really proud of the small steps he has been taking for his mental health, especially when it has been it is hard dealing with the VA.

Right now he is asleep, mom went off to run some morning errands and I'm back to reading He Who Fights With Monsters, which is a series I wasn't sure if like (it's LitRPG like Dungeon Crawler Carl) but has actually turned out to be really enjoyable despite the fact the author keeps recapping and repeating things a lot. I don't understand why and so I'm skimming quite a bit.

Art day with your Mom is such a great present, askye!!

Okay, the PET scan results are basically: Yup, that was a malignant lump that was removed, and there seems to be one location that lit up on the scan (meaning it showed cancerous activity) — the base of the tongue near where the left tonsil was (he had his tonsils out as a kid, but this type of cancer can hang out in the place where the tonsil used to be). SUPER importantly, the scan did NOT show any metastatic activity to any other part of the body, thank God and whoever else people prayed to (Tim's very Catholic brother told us that St. Peregrine is who to pray to when you have cancer, so thanks, St. P, I guess).

Anyway, the result wasn't my dream result of "All the cancer was removed with the lump," but we honestly didn't expect it to be. However, this really seems like a very, very good result. The cancer is very localized, which should make it easy to zap with radiation.

Next steps are to talk to his ENT, and Tim has another biopsy scheduled in 2 weeks so they can biopsy the precise spot. And then he gets handed off to an oncology team.

I'm...as relieved as I can be when cancer is in play. Maybe I can dial back the Ativan dose. (I've seriously been taking it 3 times a day for the last 5 days to keep from completely melting down.)

That’s great to hear, Steph!

Woohoo! Fuck off, cancer.

It's still lingering, but now we know where it is, so the sniper is getting ready.

In unrelated news (or related only in the sense that this is a thing Tim is doing), yesterday Tim started writing fanfic for the podcast Midnight Burger. I'm so proud.

That sounds very, very encouraging, Steph and like radiation will do the job. Continued ~ma Ohio way.

Oh phew that’s good to hear Steph. Still sucks (radiation to the throat/tongue can be nasty) but way better than it could’ve been!