Warm Beer & Cold Pizza

Once a month the Activities Department here at the Assisted/Independent Living Center where I currently reside hosts a Social Gathering for men in the South Commons Living Room. There are generally about a dozen of us who show up to eat cold pizza (typically sausage and onion, but sometimes also pepperoni or plain cheese) and drink warm beer (yesterday Bud Light, with a single Silver Bullet tucked in among them...but sometimes also Heinekens or something from one of the local craft breweries: Shipyard Ale, Gearys Winter Ale, or the Long Trail Pale Ale). And then there is always Ginger Ale (and sometimes even Root Beer) for the teetotalers among us, one of whom has been attending AA for over 50 years.

But moving right along, yesterday I attended this pathetic but well-intended effort to create male camaraderie because on Monday I learned that my most recent CT scan shows that the primary tumor in my right lung has once again started to grow, which means that NEXT Monday I begin my second regimen of chemotherapy. This time I'll be taking two drugs named Olympta and Avastin, probably only once every three weeks for a total of 4-6 cycles, which may then be followed by a course of treatment with yet a third drug, Tarceva, which is an oral medicine rather than an IV infusion. But a lot of this is yet to be determined, since what we do next really depends upon how well what we do first actually does.

Even so, this news was obviously a big disappointment. I've always known that there was more chemo waiting for me somewhere down the road, but I'd anticipated it starting up later this spring, and being able to tiptoe through the holidays without letting cancer become too big a factor. But apparently that's not the way it's going to be; instead, it looks like I'm going to be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah, (a.k.a. Feast of Lights, Festival of lights, Feast of Dedication, Chanukah, Chanukkah, Hanukah); Yule; Saturnalia; Shabe-Yalda; Bodhi Day (a.k.a. Rohatsu); and whatever else may happen to stumble along my path with a tube in my chest, rather than painted blue and dancing around a bonfire in praise of the Huntress, the Horned King, and the Lord of Misrule.

Or to put it another way, all I asked for was a little wassail and some figgy pudding, and instead I'm left to make due with warm beer and cold pizza. Bud Light, fer crissakes. I hardly know what to say next. To memories of better Christmases past! And the hope of many Christmases yet to come...