A few days ago I went and watched a John Marshall (the local high school) soccer team’s game. I could have watched the whole thing but I would have had to push myself to do so, and would have been exhausted afterwards, so I left at half time. Still, that showed I am slowly starting to get a little stronger as a month ago I wouldn’t have even considered going.

I coached in a local recreational spring soccer league for 10 years while Tulalsi and Marken were going through it. Some of the kids who were playing in the game were on the team I coached when Tulasi was a senior, so it was fun to see them playing in a real game that goes into the record book, knowing I played some small part in their development as players.

Another little benchmark in recovery from treatment is that I can walk from the house out to the car in the driveway without panting. Little victories.

We are starting to bring wood into the house for winter. We split by hand the wood for the cook stove smaller than most people do who just use wood for heat. I only split the stuff that is easy to split — any difficult pieces go into the basement for the space heater there that we use when it gets really cold.

I have had a couple of sessions where I was able to split wood for about 30 minutes without being exhausted afterwards. Tired, yes, but not exhausted. A big difference.

I can’t split continuously the whole time, I have to take little breaks, but it still adds up and I feel good about being even minorly productive. I’ll go out after writing this and have another go at it, as a matter of fact.

One tipping point I have achieved is that I am able to be up more than lying done for the majority of my waking hours. At the worst points of the treatment, if I would sit up for more than 3 or 4 hours, I would be wasted and have to lie down. I was up for 8 hours or more, albeit mostly sitting, for several days in a row, and not getting exhausted behind doing it.

The other thing is that if I had done something like chopping the wood, I would have been finished for the day. Now I am able to recover after some rest, and still be able to sit up or go to the temple for lunch or something.

The brain chemistry storms have abated noticeably and I am almost back to my normal grumpy state, which is, at this point, looking good. “Been down so long it looks like up to me.”

A lot of the minor symptoms that are unpleasant but not to the point of affecting productivity so they were ignorable are also clearing up.

The illusion I will play soccer next summer is starting to seem more real. Besides chopping wood, next step will be to see if I can do some dancing at the temple. That is great cross training for soccer, though devotees may think about it differently — that soccer is good cross training for dancing.

You say toomato, I say tomahto.

I was watching World Music on Link TV and went to go to another room and caught myself throwing a little dip and slide into my glide on the way. Spontaneous dance steps — another good sign.

For the medical professionals in the house, here are the lab results (which I typed up to email to my nurse coordinator to see if I have to continue the Procrit and Epogen (to save her the trouble of looking them up)):

WBC 3.6 low 4.5-11.5 (previous test 2 weeks prior 2.7)
RBC 3.73 low 4.3-5.9 (previous 3.14)
HGB 12.6 low 13.9-16.3 (previous 10.7)