Remember Tomorrow

July was a busy month for us. My sweetie was still feeling good...
For the 4th of July we all went up north to visit friends in Pine City who were having a party. We try to make it every year. They deep fried a turkey and put together a pretty tasty meal with all the fixings for all of us, and later we had a good time sitting around the bonfire chatting with everyone. Usually on the ride home we are able to catch all the fireworks from the small towns between here and there while driving down the freeway if we leave at just the right time, but this year we didn't leave on time to catch them. We were having too good a time hanging out with our friends and missed most of them. No biggie - our neighbors always seem to have the good aerial stuff from out of state and they buy a lot of them. We just watched theirs when we got home.

Back at home, we continued to enjoy the flowers and bird watching out on the deck. We got a big patio umbrella and set it up on the deck so we'd have more shade and be able to spend more time out there during the day. At night it was our favorite place to hang out, it was cool and quiet - we'd sit out there watching the stars and I'd point out the satellites in the sky. One time we spotted the space station flying over. It was our alone time when we'd just relax and unwind.

During the day we worked on our yard and he helped me with a planter I was building out of old tires and concrete. I didn't want him to over do it, but he wanted to help build it and I was glad he was there because I had never worked with concrete before; he knew how to mix it and what consistency it should have. I hired the son of another friend to do the actual mixing. He and my friends (the dungeon master and his lady) joined us in applying the concrete and we all had fun. It reminded me of playing in the mud as a kid.

In the middle of the month, my sweetie had another scan and we kept our fingers crossed, hoping for good news. A few days later we were back in the doctors office to get the results and I knew as soon as the doctor came in that the news was bad. He told us that although the tumor in his right lung had continued to shrink, the cancer had spread to his left lung and his liver. We asked if this meant more radiation and chemo, and the doctor said no. He said my sweetie had already had the max allowed radiation on his chest and discouraged the chemo. He said that the chemo they'd have to use this time was very strong and most people didn't tolerate it well, he said it would leave my sweetie in a severely weakened state that he wouldn't bounce back from easily. My sweetie tried to stay optimistic and said that since he was still feeling good he saw no reason to rock the boat. The doctor said he'd schedule another appointment for October and we left feeling like we'd both been punched in the gut.

My sweetie refused to let the bad news get him down and continued on as though everything was fine. I'm pretty sure that was mostly for my benefit. He was still taking taking the same dosage of pain meds twice a day and they seemed to be working for him at that time.

Shortly afterward, he accompanied me on another picture taking excursion. The Red Bull Flutag was in town and we went out to try and get some photos of it. I wound up not getting any pictures at all. We had a pretty good spot, but I saw a better one and when we tried to get there we got caught in massive amounts of traffic. By the time we got to the new spot there was no place to park so we left to go back to the old spot and by then those spots had filled up too. Ahh well. Maybe another time then. It was a miserably hot day and I would have been willing to just skip it and stay home, but he never complained and enjoyed the excuse to spend time outside.

He also hopped the Amtrak for Chicago with his buddy former roommate #2 to see Iron Maiden in concert. Chicago was as close as the tour was going to come. They had a good time and enjoyed the show, but I missed him terribly and was overjoyed when he returned. The Amtrak goes right past our house and I hung out near the track waiting for the train to go by and then raced it up to the station after it did. I won. When we got back home I made him something to eat and looked at the pictures he took on his phone in Chicago while he told me about the concert, the hotel, the people. He loved going to concerts, I'm glad he was able to go.

By the end of the month we were having a full on heat wave here and spending our time hiding from the sun, sitting inside with every fan we had blowing at high speed.