GRATITUDES:
1. My kid’s cooking (their first choice before being bitten by the art bug was culinary school and it shows!)
2. I’m still able to maintain a good amount of autonomy
3. The sunflowers that appeared yesterday afternoon and are now smiling on my dining room table
4. The robins singing outside

Lookie. They’re beautiful!

Vincent knew what he was about when he painted these.😊❤️ Rory brought them home yesterday as an early Mother’s Day gift and I LOVE them.

I had weird unsettling dreams last night, no doubt brought on by all the uncertainty of my treatment schedule. They were uncomfortable enough that I had to reassure myself that they weren’t real. It’s been a long time since I’ve had dreams of that sort – mostly they’re repetitious flickering little ephemerals and occasionally they’re astonishingly beautiful. One dream I had while still in the hospital was of the desert after a rare heavy snow. The snow’s surface was hard, almost glacial, with brilliant clear turquoise pools of snowmelt everywhere I looked. At the bottom of almost every pool was a cluster of desert wildflowers, somehow blooming despite being underwater. Just gorgeous, and all in my head!😄 I love water dreams. They’re the most common of my “pretty dreams” and usually the most vivid.

The holding pattern continues. I’m scheduled for some blood work on Monday here in town but then I have to drive into San Antonio again on Wednesday for (I think) the bone marrow biopsy. I wish I could just get it over with – I’d like to know whether or not I’m in remission again. Dr. Santiago is hopeful but we. Just. Don’t. KNOW. There is some reason to be hopeful though. Two years ago I was first admitted to the hospital with an abnormal cell count of 51%. After four chemo infusions, all of which were relatively high dosage, no trace of cancer cells could be detected. This last cycle, I was admitted with an abnormal count of only 18% and received nine infusions – three of Daunorubicin, four of Vincristine, one of Cytoxin and one of Asparaginase. These were lower doses but still, they knocked me flat. I’m hopeful that the drugs were able to scrub my marrow clean because there were fewer mutant cells to begin with and more chemistry. (*Sigh*) These are the mental gymnastics that are occupying my brain.😑