They Came, They Hopped, We Closed the Doors

Art Hop was a great weekend of activity. The studio was bustling both Friday night and all day Saturday, and it was great to see people coming through. Paintings flew off the walls! Well, not literally, but there was a lot of movement.

On Friday, we also met with a urologist, who advised Carol that her kidney issue was no cause for surgery. Even though the surgery would have been outpatient and quite minimal, there was much rejoicing. Now she gets ready for her next cycle of treatment, which starts tomorrow. I can hear her in the kitchen, trying to get in some extra calories before she doesn't feel like eating for a few days.

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"Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell."

-- Ernest Hemingway

Every Hour of Light and Dark is a Miracle

If you think you've seen the title words to this post somewhere before, pat yourself on the back. You either have a great visual memory, or you're marvelously well read!

Carol has the quote sitting in her studio, inside Bren's "mailbox", from a show at the Flynndog a few years back. The quote is from Leaves of Grass, a copy of which now sits in our house, having made its way from Pop's house (remember, Rob?) almost thirty years ago, with a brief stop at the Weybridge church where we were married.

This past week, a CT scan revealed that Carol's condition hasn't changed very much. Through the light and dark of the scan, doctors discerned that there is a partial blockage in one of her kidneys, but this can be dealt with through outpatient surgery -- in in the morning, out in the afternoon. The timeline for that isn't set yet; she'll meet with a urologist later this week. Other than that, the CT showed that there has not been any spread from what the doctors already knew was there. Best news would be if things were shrinking, but stability isn't bad. And she feels good, which says a lot. I certainly couldn't have gone out and ran eleven miles yesterday.

The South End Art Hop is this coming weekend. Hope to see many of you coming through the rabbit warren of studios in our beloved South End Arts District.

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(click on the pages to make them more readable)

Healing Winds Vermont

Thanks to a great vision and the efforts of many hardworking volunteers, Healing Winds Vermont offers sailboat tours on Lake Champlain for individuals, as well as their families and friends, who are dealing with cancer. We were able to take advantage of this great resource a couple weeks ago, and it was a blast. Captain Sandy and mate Kathy (both volunteers) led four of us out on the open waters, through a quickening rain spell, past and around Juniper Island, to a swim just off Redrocks, and finally back to the dock at Perkins Pier. It was a wonderful afternoon. 

This cycle, Carol has felt better than she has in a long time. The usual two-week period of pretty intense nausea and pain has been noticeably calmer this time around, which has been such a relief. Knowing that she also has an extra week off makes it even better.