Richard is home (so am I).

I would say it was an uneventful day, but that would only be in comparison to yesterday. And in truth, today had many more smallish moments, yesterday just had one big heartbreaker.

Richard did have surgery yesterday. The ‘oscopy’ he had was performed by slicing open his throat and doing stuff I don’t know about and I am totally content to maintain that status. He is a little sore, but all-in-all okay.

He starts radiology on next Wednesday. He has treatments every day, Monday through Friday for six weeks. They made it sound less than horrific. He has to go to Portland for the treatments. (The Dalles was an option, but for a number of reasons, Richard chose to stick with his team in Portland.) They say he can drive himself, but I plan to take him in for his first treatment, just because. All-in-all, they made it sound moderately benevolent. He will deal with exhaustion… but for the most part it will be tolerable.

He starts chemotherapy the following Monday. He does it for six days (once again Monday through Friday and the following Monday), then has a couple of weeks off and then does it again for six days. No one used the term benevolent when discussing chemo. It sounds really ugly, but many people do it and it is okay afterwards.

Richard went down to Radiology today. I went with him, but I had to sit in the waiting room. He got a special mold made, so the radiation only goes where it is needed. And he got tattoos: little tiny tattoos that mark the spots they are aiming for.

Next thing you know, he’s going to be ordering a Harley to go along with his tattoos. Hey, if I had a tattoo, I’d demand a Harley to go with it!