Hi:

Last on here the 22nd, where do the days go.  With Marian's son Joe and his partner Michele here we seem to be busy as hell.  I also have not been on the net much because I have been having trouble with my wi-fi on my office computer.  It takes for ever to get on this site and to move around.  So I have transferred the bookmark to my upstairs computer which is on a direct line.  Wi-fi drives me crazy.

I am beginning to get signals from my stomach that the tumor is progressing.  I am not able to eat much so I depend on the tube feedings.   Today was my lowest intake of a half of a yogurt.

I only have a few more  minutes before I have to hook up to my feeder so I will say goodbye for the moment.  With this new arrangement I hope to get on line more and get into some meat concerning atheists dying.   The loss of my ability to eat has taken a bit of a toll on my serenity (that is if I had any).  It kind of puts me on the blue side of life.

bye for now

Bob

Some update.

July  22.  Things are changing.  Here is a little note I wrote concerning  my current status

I try to stay busy every day and continue to enjoy pain free days (almost pain free).  There is a slow but detectable decrease in the ability for my stomach to assimilate food without painful consequences.  However, since I have to tube feedi at night  I am not concerned.   I continue to try to eat even with the unpleasant consequences since this way I am adding some calories.  I still weight over 162, down from 170 when I came home from the hospital.  They had been tube feeding me 24 hours a day for several days before I left. I was amazed at the weight I gained.  A lot of it may have been fluids.

A group of atheists have been coming to visit (twice now and one  scheduled for Friday) for discussion.  The sessions start around 7 and last until it looks as if I have had it.  Very enjoyable evenings.  Ann Andrews from the UU church have visited three times and we might work up a weekly schedule and I already have a weekly meetings with Margret Jones, the hospice Chaplin.  So you can see that at the moment  my time is being well occupied.

I am still not at the full level of acceptance (serenity) concerning   my future  loss of independence and the slow death that this type of cancer generates.  Thank god for hospice.

Got to go Bob

Just a note to say I have found out how to read the comments and respond to them.  A bit stoned at the moment so keyboarding and thinking  are not reliable.  Do appreciate the advice and up beat tone.

Bob

New revelations

It has been a while since I blogged here.  I see some people have signed up on the blog, but I do not see any messages and don't know how to find them.  I am pasting in a note I wrote to one of the people who are on the EC blog.

I had a real  set back in my thinking and feelings yesterday.  I have been having more trouble eating and I am    not sure how fast the cancer is progressing, but the hospice nurse thinks it is more aggressive then we suspect and that I should start getting prepared for greater limits on my activity.   She really dropped a bomb on me when she started talking about when I will have to make a decision about turning off the tube feeding when my quality of life begins to ebb.  As she points out the feeding is keeping me alive and feeding the tumor too.  There will come a time when the tube feeding is counter productive; IE: the tube feeding just prolongs existence.  The frightening thing about that is that  they are saying I have to pull my own plug.  That is down the road I know, but it is something to think about.  I am still churning over the thought.  But I gather that when I am in a situation where the quality of life has deteriorated to lying in bed in pain I will not be is such a conflict as I am now.  Basically I will be starving and dehydrating myself to death.  The book Final Exit does not have a very pretty description of this way out.  I can only hope that hospice provides sufficient drugs to limit that form of agony.  I also feel that when the decision has to be made I should move into a hospice setting.  I do not think Marian should bear the brunt of not feeding me.  The discussion  with the nurse was pretty hard on her also.

Two guys and a women from the mid-west Atheist group came over last night and we had 

a great hour and a half discussion.  It was a great lift for me.

Hope to work through all of this feelings stuff.  Maybe I have not accepted the situation the way I thought I had.  Right now I am going to try to focus on one day at a time.

Bob

Hi:  Bob here just back from the eye doctor and can hardly see.  But I wanted to get something on this blog.  I am still not sure how to use it and I do not seem to be able to find people who have answered or responded to the messages I have sent. I am going to need a tutorial in how to use these new systems.  If any one can tell me let me know.  I assuming posting means I am sending something.

All is going well  I am relatively pain free except when I eat and I can avoid that because the tube feeding is keeping me well nourished.  In fact I weigh more now than I did when I left the hospital.  I am trying to make these days productive and fruitful since I do not know how many I have left.

Still looking for discussions on atheists handling the final exit.  I have not achieved the serenity that I would like to have in preparation for when I will be less functional.    Hope this finds someone who would like to chime in on how we non=believers face death.

Bob