“Two down, six to go” – Lynn, after completing Chemo treatment #2 yesterday.

Lynn began feeling “normal” at the end of last week, so much so that we escaped from Elk Grove for a couple of days and visited a city near O.J. Simpson’s new residence. Our view of the mountains was probably better. Despite driving through two snowstorms (alongside drivers who don’t know how to drive through snowstorms), it was good to get away.

Yesterday’s treatment went much like the first one; it went very well, all things considered. Lynn’s cancer is (clinically) stage 3, T3, N1. The Oncologist said he thought the tumor was smaller than two weeks ago – which is terrific news. This means the Chemo seems to be doing the job so far. We remain optimistic that this trend will continue over the next 14 weeks, and that when it comes time for surgery the tumor will have shrunken like the U.S. equities markets over the last year.

One side effect of the Chemo doing its job is that Lynn should be losing her hair this week. I have been randomly pulling on bits of it for a week now (strictly in the interests of checking medical progress), but the only result has been Lynn saying “Ouch! Stop it! That hurts!”

I suggested to Lynn that we start a pool on when she will lose her hair. We could set it up like a football pool. We could post a calendar online with 4-hour time slots, and we could sell the time slots for $1 apiece, pooling the proceeds to offer as prizes for the correct or closest-to-correct guesses. After giving this some thought, I realized that this might be just short of legal in California. Thus, please feel free to post your guesses on the post blog, but there will be no remuneration for a correct guess.

In any event, we hope everyone has a "good hair" Christmas. We have much to be thankful for, your prayers and support being at the top of the list.