caveat emptor

An Update on My Susan's Cancer

What follows is an update on my Susan's cancer. It's a little stark and sad, so you might want to skip it if you'd rather not read such a thing.

As we feared, Susan's cancer is back. It's in the same place again and in a new place also. Now Susan has to decide what, if anything, to do with regard to treatment. Statistically, there's no chance the chemo they're offering her will cure her and very little chance that it will even prolong her life much, though there is a slim chance. There is, in the other hand, a 100% chance that the chemo will make her bald and miserable for as long as she can tolerate it. If she decides to forgo treatment, of course, there will still be suffering eventually as the cancer attacks some vital organ, most likely her liver, though nothing is certain. The doctor says it will be months. He doesn't know how many. The treatment might add a small handful to the total number. There is no perfect choice from here, but I support Susan in whatever she chooses.

Hello, friends.

Divided We Fall

Somewhere between drought and flood we've likely crossed paths unaware on the road from calamity to calamity. Rarely do we commune these days as we once did when our disasters were more aligned, when we fought your fire with mine, hand in hand as the waters pulled us under. Today our aftermaths rarely factor together. Tempests plucked us apart long ago and dropped us in the settings of different tragedies. Maybe one day our luck will run out and we'll succumb united in our separate fates. I'll meet you at death's frontier. We'll jump together into the flames, hand in hand like in better bad times.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Verdant

Sitting in a dusty, dry country where there was no rain I saw the word Verdant written incidentally in a place that didn't concern me. "Verdant," it said as the last of my sweat beaded among the hairs on the back of my head. The muscles of my throat rolled and scratched through a dry swallow. The word seemed foreign, alien. What could it mean? What could it signify here in this arid universe, dry all the way out to the edges, all the way in to the core? Somewhere overhead a buzzard screeched its ultimate cry and winked out in ash and smoke, another sacrifice to the insatiable sun, the sun that consumed even its shadow on the ground, wisped away like a daydream that wakes with a start. "Verdant," I whispered through lips parched and cracked, but the words evaporated before anyone could hear. Dragonflies buzzed in their thermal rivers, convection stirring under the unblinking daylight star. "Verdant," I thought to myself, trying to remember what it stood for as the mountain peaks on the horizon began to waver red glowing and drooping melted. The sky was blinding silver as I looked up and everything went ultra white and beyond. Flakes of cloud ash fell hot on my cheek and the heavens screamed for mercy. "Verdant," I tried to console her, but I was already too far gone, a wisp of smoke like a burning sigh.