River Rat Senior Night

Last night was the final game of the regular season and Senior Night. Naomi is one of the four seniors on the team and they all were honored with a huge poster, a collage, lots of flowers and balloons, individual gift bags and a fancy cake. She also played quite well against Chelsea. Their center was a former friend of hers from travel volleyball. I say former as this girl kept calling Naomi 'bitch' and hitting her in the face. Surprisingly Naomi did not retaliate, which she has been known to do in the past but her assaults upon Naomi did not go unnoticed by the rest of the team and the Chelsea girl soon found herself flat on her face. The refs were unbelieveably bad. I always wonder if there is a racial undercurrent behind their bad calls or maybe in this case they were rooting for the underdog as the score was quite lop-sided. (Huron's team is largely African -American). It was their last game at Huron. Districts start next week. Naomi felt quite honored by all the attention.

My myalgia thankfully has almost disappeared. I was quite sore last night but the Neurotin helped me sleep. I think I can be drug-free for today.

I had lunch at the good bento box place on campus with Josh. I am so proud of the way he turned out. We always have good conversations and am so glad he doesn't have to move out of state as we all feared.

Yesterday my brother-in-law had surgery to remove a suspicious node in his neck. I assume that the pathology report isn't complete yet. He was diagnosed with primary brain lymphoma almost 3 years ago-a puzzling disease as there isn't a lymphatic system in the brain. The odds were very much against him and he went through hell with chemo yet he has survived. On top of it all, 2 years later, he was diagnosed with melanoma but thankfully, a very early stage lesion (he has red hair and pale skin). Complicating everything, he had an aortic valve replacement about 11 years ago so he needs to take coumadin to prevent blood clots from forming on the artifical valve. Coumadin levels are very hard to stabilize. To have surgery, he needs to be off coumadin for several weeks, which puts him at risk for clots. This has very much complicated his treatment. That such a nice person has to go through such hell is just another example on how unfair cancer is.