#2: Michael R.

Treatment #2 is now over. I went to the hospital this afternoon to get unhooked. I'm feeling quite well. Many Thanks to all of you who posted comments yesterday. Hearing from people warms my spirits.

The handsome fellow above is Michael. Michael and his partner Ron lived around the corner from me in Oak Park, Illinois. They took good care of me during Cancer #1. They had me over for dinner on Sunday evenings. Michael would make something on the grill, and then we would watch "Desperate Housewives," since it reminded us of the repressed, creepy suburbanites who lived around us in Oak Park. Michael brought me groceries and did my laundry for about a month after my colon surgery. Ron works for the medical-insurance-industrial-complex, and he averted many potentially violent crises at the offices of HMO Illinois by telephoning the supposed "people" who work there and talking them through the bureaucracy of my disease.

I am not always an easy person to take care of during these treatments. I try to remain as cheery as possible, but most people who know me know that I am not all that cheery by nature anyway, much less when I've just been hit with a chemical sledgehammer.

For example, I was not very cheery I awoke this morning. Then I tried to log on to my email account and realized that Michael had changed something on my Sprint card (which I use to get online, and which he has been using while staying here). I had what can only be described as a "fit," which involved me yelling and then a long, uncomfortable silence. Finally, I apologized and Michael fixed the computer. In other words, I was a bad patient and an even worse friend.

But because Michael is such a good friend he forgave me, easily. We laughed. Then, after he brought me home from the doctor's office, he went to Bed-Bath-and-Beyond and bought me a laundry cart with wheels, so I won't have to lug my heavy laundry basket downstairs to the laundry room anymore.

Thanks for putting up with me, Michael, and for staying w/ me through treatment #2.