Quick Update

----- Original Message -----

Looks like Karen's last few treatments are proceeding well. No new side effects, just some of the same ones as all along. She's not too tired, which is good.

Monday's bloodwork saw her white count fall back below normal, though the nurses didn't seem concerned or give her a booster. Her red count was also "low" but at least close to normal range. Another check in two weeks, at the same time we see the oncologist.

Looks like our sci-fi convention in Atlanta may be off the table for us. We're having trouble finding anyone to come in to take care of the cats while we're away. Something Karen had been looking forward to.

----- End Original Message -----

(Immediately after I sent that, the friend we were going to Dragon*Con with offered to stay behind to take care of the cats so we could go,. Then another friend stepped in to look in on them so he didn't have to and could come with us).

The Lair

We enter the final battle having tracked the grendel to its lair. Fetid air wafts from the entrance, bleached bones litter the darkened grotto beyond like an ossuary.

Before she proceeds, the sorcerer-engineer measures her to ensure she can squeeze through the cleft in the rock, remarking her in woad to reinforce the magic symbols already upon her side. I step back as he floods the cave with the final bursts of his scintillating ray, knowing it is too dangerous for me to accompany her any farther. Only she may enter the cave before us. Only she may slay the beast within. This battle will be settled in the old way, hero against hero, leader against leader. Mano a mano, or literally, hand to hand.

Throughout this adventure, we have been fortunate in our encounters. We pray our luck perseveres until the battle ends. Fortune favors the bold though not always the brave. But, the dice are hot and continue to roll our way.

Many believe their God does not play dice with the world. There was a time when the gods openly diced with men, a time before they retreated into deed restricted communities behind abalone gates where security stations turn away any who might intrude. Then, the gods walked among us, gathering in the agora for a quick game where the stakes could wager a life against immortal fame for no more than entertainment. Now, they skulk the back-allies of the keep, weaving drunkenly between the arsenal and the data mine like homeless addicts searching for a cure.

Perhaps others roam beyond the shadow of the wall, much reduced and mumbling though just as capricious when they throw the bones. I wonder if one watches over her, protecting her like Athena or Apollo shielding their heroes during the ten year siege at Troy. I don't remember doing one a favor, don't remember asking one to load the dice. Just another debt accrued, another payment due, one no dwarven lord with bear.

As she crawls inside and disappears, the dice go into motion, tumbling off the woodwork before they hit the cloth. Time stops. The cubes hang above the table, circling, spinning, deciding.

Alone for the moment, I focus on my surroundings: a shallow bowl, carved from the hillside by some long dead giant's hand, blocked in by a pool both green and stagnant. A narrow path leads around and in with a craggy wall behind like a rising gray crescent moon. A stream trickles from a stone encased well with an adjacent cell for meditation, perhaps a blessing or a baptism, or just rest and refreshment before our hero delves into the fissure by its side. The site is ancient and holy, its floor unexpectedly vibrant and alive. Orchids, white with blushing tips, cling to rough and tumbled walls. I wonder how they survive on only rocks and air, but that is what life does, in expected places, in unexpected ways.

I climb the rude stair that leads to the top of the hill where I can see across the straights to the caers and eyries and snowcapped mountains where griffins dwell. Up here lie the cairns of unnamed heroes shrouded with drooping bluebells that silently toll their forgotten deeds with each passing breeze lifted from the sea. Perhaps a benevolent god pauses to listen as it wanders this headland as it has since time began.

Part of the grendel's magic is induced amnesia. When she emerges from its lair, she will not remember where the dice have settled, whether she has slain the dragon or wounded it into sleeping, passing the years within it own contented dream. Either way, I will show her to this place before we depart for home. From here, we can watch the sun rise and set over water, passing the day in beauty and the peace that stillness brings.

Behind the veil, the dice clatter to a rest beyond our sight. The battle now has been won or lost, and we eagerly await the outcome.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

The Boost

----- Original Message -----

Today was Karen's setup for "the boost," the last week of radiation where they target the tumor sight specifically with direct radiation. They took more measurements and marked another place around the scar, though this time drawn with only purple, permanent marker.

This one goes a little different. Up to now, they have been using protons at a glancing angle for radiation. Now they switch to electrons with a straight on shot. The electrons don't penetrate like the protons, maybe 1/2 inch into her ribs, but not into the vital organs.

Other than that, things are still going well. Not as much redness as the doctor expected, though it could continue to develop for a week after treatment stops. The boost will likely increase that. Her fatigue has lessened after the red cell booster last week.

The techs seem to like the radio-oncologist. They say he is one of the most on-time doctors they have ever worked with and generally a nice guy (of course, he's a sci-fi fan. How could it be otherwise?)

On a logistical note, I'll probably only send out 2 or 3 more updates. One next week after radiation is over (next Thursday, yeah!). I'll be going with Karen that day and she may take it off so we can celebrate after. Possibly one each following after the follow-ups with the radio-oncologist (8/8) and the medical oncologist (8/13) though I may combine the two.

For those who have been receiving the creative messages, there are three or four of those still in the queue, which should go out over the same period. If anyone wants the full compliment of creative chronicles, either Karen or I can handle the request. At some point I will do something more with them, though I'm not sure what quite yet. At some point they may appear on a website, though I'm not sure when that will happen.

Thanks for bearing with my sometimes chatty updates (like this one), especially those of you who don't know me that well. I know for those who work with Karen, it may have been strange hearing from me with her back at work. It has given me something to do during all of this other than focus on the negatives. I've found some peace in the creative messages even if it may not seem so.

That's it for this week. One more week to go and the day to day of this adventure is done.

----- End Original Message -----

Exchequer

The adventure is nearly over but for the counting.

Deep beneath the data mines lie the stone-lined vaults of the exchequer, pale and patterned gray, echoing and empty. For years we have maintained a contract with a dwarven lord, complete with provisions against bad stars and ruinous undoings, subsidizing his excavations in exchange for his fiscal expertise. Each month we navigate the maze of tunnels that lead to the hall of this mountain king where his agents pay our factors with script and promissory notes until more ore is processed and new coins minted.

From atop his granite dais, he directs an empire of which we are only an insignificant acre, arranging payments, brokering munitions, procuring provisions all discounted in bulk. He negotiates like a miser, mean as a magpie atop its pile of sparkles. He engages a syndicate of mischievous German house gnomes, moneylenders, coin-changers, pawnbrokers, who dole out silver to impatient lines of mercenary henchmen and sorcerers' apprentices. They are immune to threats and coercion, demanding precise protocol in their interactions.

We receive regular reports as transactions are booked and parchment pushed from pile to pile. Every newt's eye is classified, each ounce of bat's wool catalogued. Adders' forks are coded and blind-worms' stings collimated. Golems and trebuchets are itemized down to the eyelashes and strands of hemp. Each herb, each poultice, every potion that boils and bubbles is checked and cross-referenced to ensure the proper procedures and eliminate duplication before it garners the appropriate mark on the appropriate page of his personal Doomsday Book, where even jots and tittles bear a price.

Like a crouching spider at the center of this web of collation, the byzantine Nibelung lord remains still and sensitive to the vibrations of each strand and cross-thread of his financial network, his beard barely twitching as the confetti chaos flies around him, sprinting into action only once gold brushes against his sticky snare.

Practicing a proxy war game, he pits supply against demand on our behalf. His ink-smudged clerks, armed with quill and abaci, perch atop their desks, islands in a tumultuous sea of paper. Singing pirate ditties and brandishing their pencils, they prepare to hop island to island along the archipelago and storm the coastal fortress constructed of account books, their battle-map resembling Kafka's office, if Kafka were Bedlam's official CPA.

Each month we emerge from the maze slightly more befuddled and confused, never remembering the precise progression of tunnels in or out. The surface air clears our heads and slowly brings contentment. No wizards pound the postern gate, no mercenaries tap swords to hands upon the bailey, no pitchforked peasants threaten to storm the castle walls. Somehow the accounts of the exchequer remain in balance with this dwarf's twirling slight of hand choreographed like a ballet company of tiny angels pirouetting on a pin.

Slaying this particular dragon brings no hoard of treasure, no gold or magic rings, only reams of fine-printed, twenty-four pound paper that previously lined its cave.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Fractions

The sorcerer-engineer works in fractions, one of twenty-eight, one of five, one of thirty-three. Each day dawns with a three-percent solution until his magic reaches effulgence. He watches through his crystal ball as shaft of lights whittle at the grendel like wood from a carving or clay upon the wheel until nothing is left but a pile of dross to be buried beyond the wall.

No monument will mark the grendel's standing save the scars across her side. She will never see its body, never touch it, never know it is well and truly dead. Though its arm was nailed to the central pillar of her hall, she will always wonder how the monster could survive such a grievous wound and still drag itself toward home. She remains uncertain whether scattered kin will rise to demand a wergeld, whether its mother will swear vengeance before raising a retributive army of her own.

High in his tower, the sorcerer-engineer drops clear, cold marbles into a boiling cauldron to reflect on the patterns that emerge. Most shatter internally with a resounding crack but do not come apart. The sudden change brings beauty in the imperfections, a spiderweb of fractures refracted through the glass. He reads the sparkling veins like the lines of love and life etched into her palm.

She relies on his assessment. Like the captain-general, she works with her hands and does not practice magic, unless in the way that farmers do as they encourage the earth to grow. Or the Buddhist mage who transplants rather than terminates life, whether newly sprouted, green and out of place or many-legged and wandering astray. Perhaps in these simple actions, she has been buying back her own life one fraction at a time.

Fractions descend like fragments from a shattered ornament. Broken shards tumble from our eyes like the scales of a translucent dragon. Alternating days of war and peace, of mirth and woe, gift and loss flash and circle in the falling light. One by one, they trickle into our hands where we piece them back together to create a whole, a new beginning.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Appointments

----- Original Message -----

Busy day for appointments. Karen saw her dermatologist in the morning, radiation and bloodwork in the afternoon.

Radiation is still on track.

Bloodwork came back mixed. Karen's white count is up into normal range, but her red count was down slightly. That means she got an Aranesp shot (to increase her red count), but she also gets a week off from bloodwork. Yeah! The red count could be why she got tired a little easier this weekend, though that could be the radiation. Or the heat.

The dermatologist had another fun fact to share. In about 10-15 years, the radiation sight has an increased chance of seeing skin cancers. Something else to remember and watch out for. Not that the dermatologists don't like taking biopsies on Karen as it is. Must be her pale Swedish skin and Viking red hair.

That's the report for this week. Not many more to go.

----- End Original Message -----

Malaise

Hour by hour, day by day, time slips away in waiting. Waiting for the next day to come, waiting for the battle to end.

Keeping the sentries awake and on the wall requires effort with the battle beyond their sight. Defections have risen among the whites. The reds barely hold their numbers at the level to be called a company. At best the whites would be classified as understrengthed.

Battle fatigue has infected the veterans, pre-post-stress. Without action to engage them, they dwell on the details of what might have been and what might yet be. They think about returning to the routine they left behind, the coming harvest a distraction. The urgency has left them as they try to recall the puzzle of seven months ago, which pieces to pick up, which to leave lie.

Challenges go unuttered, rounds unattended. Orders go unwritten, unread and unexecuted. The discipline of duty becomes more difficult with the quiet of each day. The heat siphons our energy, our vigilance, our will. Dogs of summer have replaced the dogs of war.

The grendel becomes more ephemeral each week its once powerful army remains unseen and unheard. Only the most experienced warn of its specter lurking in the miasma behind the waves of humidity. One lightning raid could see our hasty retreat to the tower keep while the remaining whites conduct a sacrificial holding action in the chapel above the gate praying for an infusion of reinforcements.

But summer beckons with blue skies and long lit evenings. Squirrels chase and frolic on the front bailey, occasionally congregating in strange conclaves. Blue jays splash through sun showers by the water gate before teaching their young to feed. Turtles scoop burrows from cool, dry sand to insulate their eggs until they hatch. Snakes entwine around each other on the flagstones like caducei.

Life breeds life, and we long to forget what follows, as eventually we should. We want to linger in each moment, each sliding instant slicing past from future like a well-stropped razor. Adrift on this languid raft, the sea carries us farther from shore with each backward wave that slowly lulls us toward midday sleep.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Half Done

----- Original Message -----

Today marks halfway through Karen's radiation, 17 of 33. 11 more broad blasts left, then 5 boosts that focus on the tumor site specifically. Yesterday was her weekly x-ray to re-check positioning. Today, her weekly meeting with the doctor.

Still so many appointments, radiation every day, Monday blood counts, Tuesday x-rays, Wednesday radio-oncologist. Fortunately, most are in the same place, or very close. She got a notice yesterday from the surgeon to schedule a mid-year mammogram, then a follow-up with the surgeon. Another with the medical oncologist next month. And a miscellaneous dermatologist next week, with an annual gyn coming soon. And the port eventually has to come out. Busy, busy.

Sounds like between the nurses, the doctor and the women who have gone through or are going through radiation, Karen has a lot of moisturizers she can put on the site of the radiation as it reddens (yes, Heather, they make a cream for that). So, far, so good on that score, no blisters. She describes it as being sore, like the first days of field hockey practice when she was in high school.

As a final aside, Karen found out today that the doctor is a sci-fi fan. So he must be ok. He asked her about vacation plans and she mentioned Dragon*Con. That set off a conversation. Cool to know she's in good hands.

----- End Original Message -----

Level

----- Original Message -----

Today's bloodwork numbers for Karen leveled out. Still low on the white count, about the same as last week. No Neupogen booster this week. A check again next week. She's still getting the lecture about running a temperature and infection (from the nurses, not me).

Radiation is progressing. She's nearly halfway without any major complications, thankfully. A few more weeks and it's done.

Not much more to report. We're almost to the point of getting back to our routine from seven months ago and remembering where we were.

----- End Original Message -----

Routine of Days

She circles back to where she started, the grendel retreating toward its cave, elusive.

Each morning, she enters the enchanted wood alone and unarmored, her red hood just coming back pale and baby fine. Armed only with a basket scented of butter and fresh custard, she appears defenseless, naked bait hinging the release of the sorcerer-engineer's trap each time the grendel's jaws snap beside her ear while she struggles against its cruel embrace.

From high within his tower, the sorcerer-engineer traces her progress through the simulacrum's crystal eyes, now his familiar, his black cat stalking her shadow on silent paws, his eyes upon the night. Locked outside, housecarls listen intently as each report drifts down. Should the horns sound, we ride with axes shouldered to quickly render aid.

But grendels are cautious, and cunning by nature. It will not approach should it scent sorcery upon the wind. She becomes the lure, the apple, the forbidden fruit whose temptation is too powerful to resist, the betrayal waiting at the end of each day in a sudden blaze of fiery pain that only it will feel.

Like a moth drawn to the flame that devours it, instinct compels it to return. Like the wax of that votive, to provide the light she, too, must prepare to burn. Transformed from fuel to smoke a little more each day, she lights her own way in the darkness, seeking out the path to her redemption and release.

Each morning finds her slightly more sunburned and sore from the previous in the field as her searching slowly spirals toward an end.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Simulacrum

Reborn in a baptism of chemicals and steel, she now exchanges art for applied science, alchemy for wizardry, an artillerist for a technologist. For the final phase of this battle, the mage-general is replaced by a sorcerer-engineer.

Part thaumaturgist, part diviner, his is a science of precision and calculation, of sortilege and scrying, of orphic formulae. Arcane instruments crowd his laboratory, an abacus, a tellurion, an armillary sphere. A clockwork orrery guides him in focusing the power of the sun and stars into a deadly, coruscating ray.

These are his tools in the fight against the grendel. Unlike the mage-general's, his is a push-button magic operated remotely from the safety of his tower. Specializing in the tactics of ambush, he seeks to grind the grendel down through a series of encounters. He preys upon its warring instincts, not dissimilar from our own, to seek its lair when injured but rarely to pass an exposed enemy without a strike.

Numbers dance across Napier's bones while a secret algorithm clicks and whirs through a difference engine until a pattern emerges, a solution. No matter how exacting his calculations, he cannot avoid her with his ray. His magic is lethal, to her as well as the grendel.

In preparation he places his mark upon her, tattooing her with esoteric runes inscribed in woad. Measure by measure, he records her dimensions, slowly crafting a homunculus, a golem shaped from blood-dampened clay, a miniature woman upon which he performs his sibylline rites and computations.

He binds his creation with powerful words and wardings. His ray could spark life within, though it cannot imbue a spirit. Unchained, the soulless construct would rampage within the wall, easily tearing down all she has bled to defend.

Completed with cast-off bits of nails and hair, with crystal orbs for eyes, the simulacrum stands ready to serve in her stead, absorbing what damage it may from the brilliant flash of each attack morning after morning.

The routine of days will bring more fatigue and depredation as the strain of each encounter depletes her reserves and leaves her increasingly short of breath.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Falling

----- Original Message -----

Another Monday, another set of bloodwork numbers, this week not as encouraging.

Karen's white count is lower this week than last. It's about half the lower end of "normal." So they have her on a different white count booster, called Neupogen (the Neulasta they had been giving her is only covered by insurance during chemo and a pricey $6k otherwise). At least her red count is where it should be, so no red cell booster.

Disappointing results. Means bloodwork again next week, hopefully with better news.

----- End Original Message -----