September 13, 2007
Perfect days of September continue in Sanctuary. The Monarch butterflies are here in the gardens and the forest – they flit about, in pairs or trios, gathering food and strength for their long flight southward into Mexico. Most of the spiders have packed up their webs and returned to the mysterious places where they must stash their food and propagate their species. On our morning walk, Alphie and I pass under a number of dead cottonwood trees where birds love to gather upon their topmost branches to catch the first sunlight of the day. On one of them, I have noticed flickers in groups of four to six – they seem to be having intense discussions while rapidly climbing up and down the branches, now getting closer to each other, then moving to a different branch and carrying on with a different bird. Perhaps they are deciding which one gets the best dead tree trunk for a winter’s nest, or whether some must leave town. I do know that flickers are a part of our winter residency, but I don’t know if they limit occupancy.
I went back into the archives of this blog and read what was happening a year ago and behold, the commentary was about the perfect September days and flowers and birds, etc. A circle complete, with myself enjoying a time of peace from the illness and planning activities just I have been doing this year. The greatest difference is in the Alphie report, since he had not yet been to reform school. Now, at the great dog age of about 17, Alphie is mostly mellow and we can have guests in the house without having to worry that he will fling his body on them and deposit dog spit on their persons. He does live an exceptional life of several long runs through field and forest each day, at least one ride in the car on an errand into town, and our polite stepping over his body as we work in the kitchen or elsewhere because he chooses to fling himself down in the midst of wherever the action is taking place.
Always, the weeks go forward in the framework of the blood readings. As long as the white blood cell count
remains above 2.0 (which is low, average begins at 4.5 and goes upward), I do not need additional injections of Neupogen. When it sinks below that number, the oncologist orders more of the medicine to encourage the body to work harder on the project. On Tuesday, the reading was at 2.2, going down from the previous week’s 3.3. I still feel quite good, with energy to enjoy life and nature’s nuances in this small quiet place in the universe. There are many hymns that live in my mind that put words to the emotion and make me smile as their words spin past – for example, to the tune “Lasst Uns Erfreuen”, (a melody that has verses and verses of happy thanksgiving) I can hear:
Your morning rises with a song, and lights of evening sing along, sing your praises, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
Your wind that blows the tempest by, your clouds that sail across the sky, sing your praises, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!”
