OK, maybe I was a little quick on the throttle there.  The cuerpo spent about 30 days going in the right direction before deciding to make a u turn and go back in the wrong direction.  So here is another entry in this account of my health.  As promised before, there are no opinions offered only experiences shared. 

Sweat.  Sweaty.  Sweatier.  That describes me.  I thought it was just my body reacting to all the hormones and other things I was putting into it as a form of tumor control.  To bring us all up to speed, 8 injections a week and 12 pills a day are my life.  And the church I am blessed enough to work with.  They are my life.  The first I noticed that all wasn't just peachy was preaching for said church and putting on a powerful sweat.  I mean the kind of sweat where people who sit near the front are bringing me water and handing me Halls drops.  At the end of the lesson, which I did cut short, I went outside to dry off, which is saying something for Houston in May.  A lady from the church told me that if I wasn't careful I would catch pneumonia.  And I'll be danged if she wasn't right.  I was getting ready to go see my son at a family reunion and went to the doctor because I couldn't seem to shake a cold.  It was then that the doctor, the well known and respected ENT Dr Clement Chinkoff asked me to spit into a tissue he was holding.  He meant stuff from the lungs, not garden variety spit.  I obliged him and he looked at it, swore (either that or he was planning a vacation and already thinking of some exotic island, said "sunny beaches") tossed the tissue in the trash can, put on gloves and a mask and said, "let's look a little further."  Dr. Chinkoff is an Oriental man who doesn't speak like most Oriental doctors.  It's because he was raised in Bryan, Texas.  Or as he says it "Brine, Texas."  He did some sample taking, asked me if I had any fairly recent MRI's of my head (which I did, don't ask me why.  No go ahead and ask me why.  It's because I've been to too many doctors who asked me "do you have your latest test results with you?" that I always carry them with me, or at least in the truck.)  I duly went out and fetched my MRI and he looked at it and said, "Here we go, look at this."  I said, "and a handsome brain that is, and look, what an exquisite tumor!"  He said, "no, I couldn't care less about the tumor, I'm looking at the sinuses.  Look at those, they are jam packed!  He said this with gusto.  A gusto I used to associate with "we've got something" and now associate with "a follow up visit is in order sooner rather than later, pay the lady at the front."  He looked at me with gravity and said, "You aren't going anywhere.  You've got pneumonia and a mother of a sinus infection."  You are going to go on 8 weeks worth of antibiotics, nasal spray that is so addictive that they are willing to give you the first month free just to get you hooked, and ear drops that you will have to put in several times a day and pack with cotton.  You are going to puke from the steroids and antibiotics but you look like a few weeks of puke won't hurt you.  And puke I did.  I should be no stranger to puking.  In fact, I've done it so much for so long that if there was a way to gain pleasure from puking, I would have figured it out.  Nope.  As I've chronicled before, if you're puking your own mother will go out the back door to keep from having to check on you.  I had my own respiratory therapist come by the house two times a day to give me breathing treatments and what he called a sinus wash.  I called it waterboarding.  And for the record, I agree with the democrats on this one.  It's torture.  After the second wash I was telling secrets that I was making up, just to get him to stop. 

So I am back.  I didn't get to make the reunion and I am very disappointed.  I haven't seen my son since November and was looking forward to seeing him.  On the other hand, he and his lovely wife, Peach, were moving into a new place and had I been there, I would have been part of the moving brigade.  The difference is puking because you are taking drugs that have the last name "sone" and puking because you've helped carry a couch up three flights of stairs. 

There have been some other changes as well that I'll write about in this, the latest installment of General Hospital, which I have a far amount in common with. 

Take care and it's good to be back with you. 

Dave