No. It’s not really summer, yet, but today sure seemed like it.
Summers seem harsher here than they used to be. Maybe my tolerance is faltering. Lots of things at my age are faltering. I am glad to be still be here.
We have been working long hours in Olive Branch, Mississippi, in the throes of finishing a substation. We are also starting a new one in historic Como, Mississippi, just on the edge of the Mississippi Delta. We are glad to be busy.
I went to see Hemosapien last week. It had been a while since I saw him, being on the clinical trial from BATCC. I go there every two months, so getting blood work done and seeing Hemosapien has been somewhat redundant. He is glad I am doing well on the trial, and that it is working for me. He and his clinic are an important part of my health care team and they do an excellent job of serving the Meridian, Mississippi, area cancer patients.
Hemosapien and I discussed my visits to Houston. BATCC is a world class cancer research and treatment facility. If it is not the top such facility in the world, then it is close to it. One won’t get many arguments about that. Hemosapien and oncologists all over the world do not have the luxury of focusing on specific types of cancers, as they treat cancers of all types. What they do need, however, in order to serve their patients, is all the procedures, tools, and treatments that facilities such as BATCC develop which later become the standards for treatment.
On the 9^th floor east of BATCC, there are half-a-dozen of the world’s top research physician/scientists focusing solely on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. There are other places like this….to name a few, the University of California at San Diego Medical Center, The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, The University of Ohio Medical Center, Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Sarah Cannon Cancer Institute in Nashville, and others. Other oncologists have to be familiar with and treat a variety of cancers, which may mean they don’t know everything about one’s particular cancer, but these doctors all talk to each other. They attend seminars where research physicians talk about the latest things. Hemosapien, being a hematologist as well as an oncologist, could very well attend seminars put on by the American Society of Hematology (ASH), where he could hear Gooday himself talk about cutting edge treatments. He may well have done so. If not, I’m sure he reads their quarterly journal. Doctors must keep abreast of current developments if they are to stay on target and serve their patients. Their education is never finished.
As for me: after two years on the trial the ruxolitinib has served me well, though like me, I think it is beginning to falter in its ability to help me manage fatigue. I am extremely tired….weary actually. But, we have been working extremely long hours in trying conditions with no chance for a real rest. My sleep has been hit and miss. I will soon be sixty-one. All these things contribute partially, or totally, to a general sense of fatigue with it being hard to pinpoint any one thing that may be causing it. Likely, the fatigue is a combination of them all. As my son points out, I am still far better than I was two years ago. Today, it does not seem so to me. I am weary and just cannot seem to catch up.
I know that when we are through with these jobs we are working on that have looming deadlines, I am taking a long vacation. I am going to rest.
Tomorrow is mother’s day. My mother is still here with me. I went to see her today, sort of a pre-mother’s day visit. I love my mother. She is where all my musical talent came from. I am glad to have her as my neighbor just down the road.
There’s a lot of people who wish they could give their mother a big hug and tell her, “Happy Mother’s Day,” who will not have that chance.
Weary or not, I am able to count my many blessings.
And now, I am too weary to write any more. I want to write something clever. I want to write something funny. I’d like to write about some political things which irk me, which I wouldn’t even if I had the energy. All those things are just disjointed pieces floating around in a tired brain…a brain too weary to assemble them into anything more useful that what I have already written.

What this lacks in content, I hope it makes up for in honesty.
Happy Mother’s Day!!!
©2018 Mississippi Chris Sharp