"This message will self-destruct in five seconds."

Not sure what I was doing with my hands. Waving?

I've been thinking quite a lot about moving to a quiet place with some trees around. It would be expensive. But actually the bigger factor now is all the work it would take to find a place. I'd like to be in a place that's quieter but not too far away, but it might be too late in terms of my energy level to look for it.

I haven't seen my calendar (paper) since before I went to Jikoji last weekend, so I have switched to my phone, based on memory.

Brilliant meditation practice day with Paramananda yesterday. If I choose the right cocktail of lying down, sitting in a chair, and sitting on the floor, I can occasionally be super comfortable sitting on the floor, even when there is some pain. My sacrum is sore and my pelvic bones are not happy.

Anyway it occurred to me that my body is self-destructing. In the old Mission Impossibles, a tape recorder would convey the mission, and then announce its self-destruction and start getting all smokey. It's like that with my body, except the self destruct took around 50 years. What was my mission?

My mom called me yesterday, which for other people is probably not that unusual. But my mom calls me around once a year, which has bummed me out a bit over the last while. Apparently Kathy told her to! Then she thanked me a few times for calling her. It was nice to talk to her. At one point she said more than once how people in her family are long-lived and that she's going to live a long time. There wasn't much I could say to that. When she asked me how I was, I said that my body is full of cancer. She said it was awful to hear that. I said it was awful to tell her, then she moved on to another topic. It kinda helped me realize how she can't deal with the reality of my situation. Her 80th birthday is next month. I'm going to try to get down to see her, probably for the last time. I can't imagine how weird and intense that's going to be.

"The sounds of an MRI" would be an interesting post. Suffice it to say that it's a combination of the sounds of a laundry room, a machine gun, and a buzzer. At the end it was a BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA t-t-t-t-t-t BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA t-t-t-t-t-t in call and response. It was interesting to listen to (with my head in a vice, though a soft one.)

It's funny how used to it I am now, people doing things to my body, shooting me up with "contrast", asking me about allergies, wheeling me into tubes, prodding private or public parts. As I have said before, keeping still in tubes while being scanned can be quite relaxing. I kept thinking today: How the hell is this thing looking in my brain?

I notice magazine articles often begin with sentences like, "Sam Smith was struggling with stage 3 prostate cancer..." This is a case study and may be interesting. But if one person is cured of cancer, by itself this really doesn't mean anything for anyone else. These kinds of things fill people with hope. A revolutionary new treatment was tried on Jane Johnson and now she is cancer-free! As I have said many times but possibly not on this blog, it's terribly difficult for the dead people to tell you how the experimental treatment worked for them. And I haven't seen any articles that try to show their point of view. It would be too depressing I guess.

I know this is a lot of random points, but I just want to say that I do have cancer symptoms, perhaps little ones. Tonight my chest felt very congested and my voice seemed weird. It  feels weaker, like there is no space in my chest. My sacrum aches for the last several days. I have less energy even than I did when I was on chemo before. Finally bought face masks today. I will make use of them. I (almost) don't cough at all when I have one on. Hoping my bladder infection symptoms don't come back.

I wrote to Dr. Nelson and said I have concerns about Avastin and asked her about her personal experience with it.

My sister Paulette and Paramananda are still here. We had a nice time today by Julie's pool.