Everything went amazingly well yesterday. Blood counts are coming up acceptably. He is being switched to a new, time-release version of Procrit that only has to be given every OTHER week. He spent about an hour in the Infusion Center getting his chemotherapy and his medication, came out and announced he was starving. Lunch? Liver and onions! He said, "Well, they ARE trying to build up my blood, aren't they?"

He is tired, but there is no nausea -- not even enough to take the mildest of his anti-nausea medications. He does not have to call Dr. Drakes nasty names. We can only trust that the Alimta is doing its job and busy killing cancer cells. We look forward with hope. Thanks be to God!

Monday morning. The waiting game. We're off to Sonora soon, with labs and Procrit first, followed by a visit with Dr. Drakes. Then chemotherapy, which should only take a few minutes. We'll know more tomorrow.

The website for Trinity County, California says, “Trinity County is located in the remote mountains of Northern California, bordered to the east by the northern Sacramento Valley, and to the west by California’s Redwood Coast…. Weaverville, the County seat, is approximately 45 miles west of Redding, or about a one hour drive on Hwy 299… designated the Trinity National Scenic Byway.”

Mike and Carolyn Burgoon live on Steel Bridge Road along the Trinity River in Trinity County. It had been at least 10 years since we last saw Mike and Carolyn, but had been such good friends when they lived in Tuolumne County that it was an easy visit. Mike is a kidney dialysis patient, and from Carolyn we learned that there are two methods of dialysis. One we knew about – visit the dialysis center, hang around for several hours while your blood is pumped through a filter and returned to your body, come back in two or three days. We didn’t know about peritoneal dialysis, which can be done by the patient at home. It still takes several hours, but because it is done daily tends to keep blood levels more stable. We also learned another lesson in how important it is to really understand what your doctor tells you. Mike knew he had renal insufficiency, but didn’t realize that “renal insufficiency” meant “kidney disease”. So when asked by another doctor if he had kidney disease, he said “No.” and was given medication that caused even more kidney damage and led to the need for dialysis.

We saw some of the sights – Douglas City, where they go for mail and where Carolyn is on the Fire Department Auxiliary; Weaverville, the county seat; and Lewiston, where we stopped for lunch at a pleasant little coffee shop with paintings and photography by local artists adorning the walls. Suddenly, with a threat of snow in the air, it was time to leave. We came off the mountain in a slushy drizzle, but by the time we reached Redding the roads were dry. Ray breathed a sigh of relief.

One of our favorite places in Redding is Turtle Bay Exploration Park on the Sacramento River. We spent yesterday there, enjoying the exhibits and just being out. Two galleries feature rotating exhibits. Currently, one is a traveling exhibit, a collection of spectacular original lithographs by John J. Audubon and his son John W. Audubon – not birds, but North American mammals. Many are done “life size” and you realize how small some of these critters really are. Next door in the Explorations Gallery is a display called “Pleasurable Pastimes” and features things people have done or still do in and Redding for fun – from water sports to skiing to camping to riding motorcycles to rodeo and listening to the radio.

The permanent exhibits include a small aquarium that gives you a sense of being “in” the Sacramento River, hands-on activities where children and adults can touch, feel, and see the results of their actions or decisions (particularly in use of natural resources). There are exhibits of the local Native American culture, and exhibits related to the building of Shasta Dam. There is a wonderful Children’s Museum, and the Sundial Bridge leading across the river to the Arboretum.

We took a picnic lunch, but it was too chilly to eat at a picnic table. So we ate in the car, then left Ray to take a nap (he was still tired from his marathon drive on Tuesday) while Dick, Joyce and I visited the Arboretum. Winter is not the best time to visit an arboretum. There are no leaves on the deciduous trees, there are few plants flowering, and many are in a dormant stage. But it was interesting to see how the gardens are laid out, and what plants have been included in the displays. It will be lovely in late spring and early summer.

Ray said there were some things he wanted to do before he begins treatment, not knowing what he will feel like afterwards. High on that list were visiting old friends Dick and Joyce Treu (say Troy) who live just north of Redding in Shasta Lake City; and Mike and Carolyn Burgoon in Douglas City, west of Redding. We had put off the trip until Ray could drive again, for even after nearly 30 years in Groveland I have never mastered the fine art of long distance driving.

So yesterday we hit the road. There are 90 miles of road between Groveland and Stockton, and another 200 miles from Stockton to Shasta Lake City. Ray drove every one of them. I kept offering to drive part of the way, but he kept saying, “No”. It has been so long since he has been able to drive. The pain medications did ugly things to his ability to concentrate, so (in his words) he’d “just zone out” – not acceptable when driving, either in traffic or on mountain roads! He was tired when he got here, but pleased that he had been able to make the drive himself. Under other circumstances we would be rejoicing at this new measure of his healing. Now we wonder how long the gift will last.

It has been long enough since we have traveled this way that the population growth is noticeable. More and more of the fertile agricultural land of California’s Central Valley – which we once called one of the major food baskets of the nation – is filling with houses and highways. It is more dramatic south of Sacramento, but apparent now between Sacramento and Redding. We wonder who will feed us when the farmland is gone.

A routine CT/PET scan taken in Nov 2005 showed a small, new, metabolically active spot -- on Ray's liver. We took our planned holiday, spending 3 weeks with my family in Hawaii. It was the best possible medicine! Then came home to a liver biopsy, which showed that the liver spot was metastatic lung cancer. At least we have a difinitive answer, although it was not the answer we wanted.

The oncologist said today that without treatment the AVERAGE patient with metastatic lung cancer lives about six months. There are two drugs which are used in these situations. The standard is Docetaxyl which was part of the original treatment plan last year. Ray was too sick from his other treatments to get to the Docetaxyl stage. Docetaxyl is known to make patients sick, loose hair, and have all the other nasty side effects generally associated with chemotherapy. The second drug is Alimta (generic: Pemetrexed), which was apparently developed to treat Mesothelioma -- the lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. It is supposed to be patient friendly, with little nausea and hair loss. It is administered in one injection every 21 days, for a total of four injections.

Ray is starting the preparation for receiving Alimta on Monday -- 1 mg/day of folic acid, Vit B-12 shots, and more of that terribly expensive Procrit to build up his red cells. He has not committed to going through with the treatment, although the options are not optimistic. Meanwhile, he has some things he wants to do, people to see, places to go.

Please hold us in your prayers.