Hello and welcome to An altitude Problem, where sometimes we just have to let the pictures tell a thousand words. Today's hike was in Maroon Bells, just outside of Aspen. Hands down, the most mind-blowing fall colors B and I have ever experienced. My mom, Marci, B and I all took a day off to drive to Aspen to do this hike, wondering if the fall colors are this good every year, and we just have not taken the time to see them, or if this year is an exceptionally good year.

The drive yesterday was up Boreas Pass above Breckenridge. B came home from work with a bee in his bonnet to go on a color drive, which we did, but we came home so exhilerated, our brains washed in the glow of billions of quaking bits of gold, we just had to do it again.

My mom used this day to celebrate her last day of freedom, hair, and health before her first chemo infusion tomorrow. No telling how the chemo will affect her, but just in case it affects her badly, there will always be that one gorgeous day in the aspens.

Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where the altitude is lending itself to frozen fingers and toes in the morning. We dogsat Raisin last night, which meant I had to stand outside in the 20 degree temps for four times as long as usual this morning. Raisin has a backyard that she does her business in, so she has not learned about hurrying. She has to sniff and explore and has no idea why we are out in the yard. Andy is fast. Two sniffs and a squat and he is done. He knows that this trip outside is for business, not pleasure. Later, I will get out my bike and he will explore and sniff to his heart's content and he knows this and is okay with delayed sniffing gratification.

I got home late last night from another trip to Houston, after slapping my face, opening the windows to let in the freezing midnight air at 12,000 feet, and peering blearily through my windshield for the last 50 miles in an attempt to wake up. The trip back from western Kansas seems to pass more quickly every time I drive it. It helps that the closer I get to home, the more of my attention is required for driving. It is a different story driving out there from here. Since I always leave after work it is late by the time I hit the empty flatlands and I am the only living thing for miles around, except the occasional coyote or jackrabbit peering out of the weeds, or the deer that so far, have refrained from jumping in front of me. The trip to Kansas gets longer every time because of this. It is far more mentally draining than driving home, hitting Denver traffic and a mountain pass and radio stations that jar me awake instead of croon me to sleep about the time I start to nod off.

Since many of my parent's friends are also my faithful few, this seems like a good bulletin board to post an update on the cancer front.

We left Kansas for Houston early on the 9th and drove the 14 hours it takes to get us there, checked into our motel several blocks from May's clinic and the MD Anderson tower, and the next morning, walked over and met with my mom's oncologist for a long-awaited consultation, the consultation that has been pushed back once already because of a late-scheduled biopsy on her unnaffected side, which they thought, after lokking at mammograms, might be affected. Turns out, there was no cancer detected on the right side. That was the most encouraging news we heard all day, although in hindsight, it did cost us a precious two weeks of letting the cancer plot it's evil course unhindered.

Here is what he had to tell us. This tumor is a higher grade than previously assumed. A lumpectomy will most likely not be as affective as a mastectomy in removing all fingers of the tumor. If she did opt for a lumpectomy, radiation would also be required. Since this cancer is slightly more aggressive than originally thought, it is important to move on it quickly, but getting a consult with a surgeon will take at least two weeks, and it will be at least two months after that before she can actually get an operating room and staff booked. With the delay in surgery in mind, he wants to start her on chemo now to begin to shrink the tumor in the meantime, as well as kill any rogue cancer cells that might be the cause of recurrence in the future. If immediate surgery was an option, that would be his first choice, followed by chemo to clean up the excess, but since the United States seems to be experiencing a cancer epidemic, it appears that someone not yet at death's door does not merit immediate attention or a spot in an O.R. more needed by someone else, especially in a mega cancer center (our observations, not his). On a side note, after the surgery, the chances of reaccurance without chemo are 30 percent, 15 percent with it.

I must admit, we have been fairly cavalier about the cancer thing, thinking the most she was going to have to go through was the loss of one or two body parts, rehab and possibly reconstruction. We had expected to have this nightmare long behind us, except for lingering rehab issues, by the holidays. She told me before the consultation that she had stopped thinking of herself as a cancer patient, already accepting it as gone, so the news that she must now start two 12 week chemo sessions was an enormous setback to her happy, survivalistic state of mind and took a bit of reeling to absord. Unless she responds unusually well to the chemo, it will be next spring before it is behind her. The last 12 weeks of the treatment will be the hardest- the first 12 weeks, the most common side effect reported is loss of energy. The second 12 week treatment is a much more nasty sort of chemo, with all the side effects usually affiliated with chemo- nausea, tiredness, hair loss, etc. Which finally forces us to realize that this thing is about to get a whole lot more real.

The oncologist requested the name of an oncologist we would like to administer the chemo closer to home, and since we did not have a name, we agreed to email it to him by the end of the day. Then we left. We plugged in her laptop and tracked down the name of the oncologist closest to where I live, and my dad, who was ricocheting around the lobby, his preferred method of dealing with bad news, decided not to wait for her present oncologist to contact her future oncologist. While mom and I cringed a bit at his aggresive manner of handling crisis, and told ourselves it was okay because health care professionals deal with people every day in states of grief who are not their normal sweet selves and they are trained to be understanding, in the end it turned out okay because he got her scheduled to meet with the Colorado oncologist on Tuesday, day after tomorrow, snatching up the last opening for a few weeks. If all goes as planned (and anything can change at any moment) she may have a port put in under her skin on her upper chest as early as Friday, and begin receiving chemo.

We spent the rest of the day tracking down her medical records, pathology, trying to make arrangements to have all that information with us when we go to Edwards, which is where the cancer center is, on Tuesday. It was closing time when we finally escaped the glass buildings, mom with blisters from all the walking through skywalks between buildings, our shoulders tense from lugging a leather case full of laptop, paperwork, medical records, and books for all the miles we had walked that day between clinics and reception areas. In the meantime, my dad had spent two hours on the phone, my mom had found a gazebo in a park and had a bit of a cry, and we finally found food after we were all three of us hysterical from low blood sugar from not having eaten all day.

Then we crawled into a sweltering little car and headed for home- through Houston downtown rush hour. We made one tiny mistake, were in the wrong lane in a massive interchange and found ourselves on the wrong road, and the trusty GPS was completely confused by all the levels and concrete and had no idea where we were but we finally found ourselves sitting high above houston on a HOV overpass behind a single-file line of vehicles several miles long while the interstate zipped by us on the other side of the barricade. It took us two hours to get out of Houston, at which point B booked us two rooms in Ft Worth for the night.

We drove the rest of the way yesterday, then I drove home yesterday night an arrived to a clean house, thanks to B, and two large dogs, a Black Lab and a Golden Retriever, who acted as though I had come back from the dead. Raisin has lately begun to think that I am the doggie-goddess Andy thinks I am, so there was much tail-wagging and face licking and leaning against my legs

Tomorrow, my plan is to take my mom's records to Edwards and leave them there for her oncology team to peruse. My parents plan to be here tomorrow night so they can be at the cancer center first thing in the morning to start the admissions process and meet with the team of oncologists, radiologists, and surgeons. Already, it is beginning to seem easier dealing with a small cancer center than a big one. MD Anderson told us what we needed to know, with the added benefit of being a cutting edge facility, but now that we have the "best" opinion, it is time to find a second opinion, and in a place that cares about individuals, which is something we found starkly lacking in Houston. Houston turned out to not be the "one stop shop" we had expected. We honestly thought that in the course of two weeks, during which time we would stay down there, they would have her diagnosed and would present her with a course of action. Turns out, their biggest draw- that they are the biggest, have seen it all, and know first what works the best- is also their biggest drawback- they are too busy seeing it all to care about a walking statistic in their waiting room.

And now, I must run.

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Mario's Three Lives

Just a quick stop-by and hello as I am baking and cleaning and packing the camper. I look forward to seeing many faithful few this weekend!

If you are in the mood to sit a spell, or to turn up the speakers and listen while you work, enjoy this short story -the link is at the top of this post, entitled "Mario's Three Lives"- curtesy of www.podcastle.org. I listen to short-story fantasy podcasts from them on my ipod every now and again, while fluffing pillows and turning blind slats to ju-ust the right angle to let in light without letting in sunlight and folding towels into ridiculous little fans. This one is about 6 minutes, 45 seconds. I listened to it while driving home from work the other day, and it had me laughing out loud, and it has stuck with me because I just feel so much like Mario most days- asking, wondering, theorizing, jumping and landing on my ass (warning- if you take offense at the word "ass", it's in the story) in a world that simply does not have as many answers as I have questions, and when I fail, I wait for word that I may Continue, and I know my God from the clues I have been given, yet wonder how much more there is I simply can not know. You will have to listen to it instead of reading it, click the little arrow beside the symbol for the speaker under the written paragraph. The written portion is only the first few minutes of the story.

We got back yesterday from a quick camping trip over by Buena Vista. It was good, we hiked Poplar Gulch, hung out at Mt Princeton Hot Springs, camped in our camper under aspens and pine trees. We shared several beers and several meals with our friend Scott, who lives there, and I found a big cluster of enormous King Bolete mushrooms, which I have cut and in the fridge, awaiting a stir fry.

Andy provided a bit of entertainment for us a time or two on the trip. Besides being a huge baby and not at all at home in his new surroundings-he has yet to accept the camper as his new doghouse- and besides his insisting that he sleep between us, which led to paws in our faces when he rolled onto his back and stretched, he also provided several surprising clues into the workings of his doggy brain. One assumes a dog is not capable of deduction. But the more I watch Andy's brain work, the more I wonder.

We were loading up after watching the sunset from the deck of Bongo Billie's, a coffee shop with a view of the surrounding Collegiate peaks, and after having him tied to my chair for a half-hour, and his hour in the truck while we ate, I was pretty sure he needed to "go". I took him to the parking lot, and told him to "go potty". Now, I should mention that the books on dog training say that going potty on command is not a fancy trick, it is the dog being reminded that he has to go by word-association, much like the sound of running water does for us. And they say that a dog cannot make the distinction between the big job and the little job, so don't try to teach them to "go poop". Well, this dog, who is not exactly a rocket scientist most of the time, knows the difference. He knows which command means a quick trip out to the yard, and which command means he should start sniffing and circling and preparing to hunch up. But out there in the parking lot, he must have been dehydrated from a long, hot day, because he ran back and forth at the end of his leash when I told him to go, and did not go. I kept repeating the command, thinking he was just distracted by all the smells, and finally he stopped, looked at me reproachfully, and squatted for a split second. Then he ran to the pickup, ready to load up and hit the road. I looked where he had squatted, and the ground was bone dry. Which left me wondering- did he deliberately mislead me? Did he try, but there was just nothing there? Are dogs more devious than we think they are, giving us humans whatever it is that will shut us up in order to just get on with it, without being purists, knowing that just the illusion of obedience will shut us up, as well? I know people say lying is a human folly, but I know that on more than one occasion, he has waited until my back is turned, sneaked things off the table, hidden them, and has been lying on his wondowsill calmly staring out the window when I come back into the room, and only later, I find the evidence that he has unearthed his people food and savored it when he had more time. He did that once with an ice cream bar in the car, and it was only because of a tell-tale smear of ice cream across his ear that I began to dig beneath piles of dirty linens until I found it. I know that a dog's nature is to hide his bones, but just that act tells me that they do not have the angelic, loving, sharing personalities that we humans give them. And they do lie.

The other thing that entertained us was that on the way home, on the switchbacks over Hoosier Pass, he began to brace himself to keep from sliding across the armrest/console in the middle of the pickup's bench seat before we began to make the turn. This, in my mind, takes a lot of reasoning, recognizing patterns and adjusting to them. He realized, by looking out the window, that we always stayed between the lines, and when the lines curved in a certain direction, he slid in the opposite direction. He began to watch the lines, and as soon as he could see in which direction they curved, he threw himself the same way, with his paws off the console in our laps, tensed, and waited for us to start to make the turn.

It has been proven lately that a dog has the reasoning, deduction skills, and counting skills of a two year old human. When three treats disappear behind a screen and only two are revealed when the screen is removed, a dog and a two year old reveal the same signs of bewilderment. Dogs are the only animals to comprehend what a pointed finger means, and follow it's path to what it is they are supposed to be seeing.

All of that really had no point, except to say that I am beginning to realize more than ever what animals comprehend, and like Aristotle, I am beginning to see them as my brothers, with mutual respect and a working relationship. Beating them or eating them- both criminal unless absolutely necessary.

In the meantime, I wait for "Continue", and do not know what I am to do until I am doing it.