Great News About Most Recent CT Scan of Yesterday!

We're very pleased to report that the results of my most recent CT scan, which I had yesterday, June 14, 2012 (Brandon and Anita Cook's 15th Anniversary--Happy Anniversary, First-Cousins-Once-Removed!), are most encouraging, indeed! The 4 rounds of chemotherapy (FOLFIRI + Avastin for the last 2 treatments) I've had over the past 10 weeks have stopped the recurrent appendix cancer tumors dead in their tracks! The tumors on my peritoneum are not growing anymore! What an enormous relief! Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Your mighty prayers have been answered! Keep them coming! The plan is to keep beating down on any remaining tumors for another 3 months or so and confirm further progress with yet another CT scan then! After that, we'll assess the situation and perhaps enter into a chemo maintenance regime where I might be able to keep the rather aggressive appendix tumors at bay using pills that are as effective as the 5 Fluoro-Uracil (5FU) and the Avastin, a monoclonal antibody that inhibits the formation of blood vessels that would otherwise supply the tumors with blood! Ideally, with the right combination of a much improved diet (I haven't had any red meat to speak of since mid-April!) that's largely whole food and plant-based, mostly vegan-ish (especially if you consider fish and other seafoods and the occasional poultry and dairy products to be "vegetables"!), lots more and better sleep, a modest amount of exercise, and continual prayer (although without much fasting!) coupled with sensible weight loss, I might even be able to wean myself off the maintenance chemo entirely! I'm so blessed and fortunate that so far the side effects from the chemo have truly been very minimal--I even have most of my greying mane of unruly Einsteinian hair! Thank God I'll be able to live long enough for newer and better and more effective chemo therapies to be developed, too! I'm receiving my 5th round of chemo (18th round altogether) even as I post this! Bless the Lord oh my soul! All is well with my soul and all is getting well with my body, too! Amen!

Excitied About the Transit of Venus Today, Don't Know Why!

Today our Sister Planet Venus will transit across the face of our Sun Sol!  Here in good old Houston, Texas it's supposed to happen toward sunset.  As with any eclipse of the Sun, you should never look directly at the sun lest you fry your retinas, although Venus will not be blocking off very much of the sun's surface, unlike our own Moon Luna, so the Sun's normal brightness should keep you from looking at it too long!  I've never actually tried fashioning one of those pinhole contraptions to shine an image of the Sun onto a piece of white paper to view it.  Undoubtedly the safest way to view this historical Transit of Venus would be to watch it on TV or on the web, such as on the wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day website!


Apparently transits of Venus are rather rare occurrences, although the most recent one happened in 2004, which was only 8 years ago!  The next one is supposed to happen sometime in 2117 when very few of those of us who are presently alive will be alive, presumably, barring some miraculous breakthroughs in gerontology!  I'm still somewhat astounded that we know how to calculate such things in advance, or at least that someone knows how to do that!  I'm pretty sure good old Newtonian classical mechanics suffices to do such calculations and computers are quite capable of doing most all of the heavy mathematical and physical lifting involved.  Still, pretty amazing!  Astronomical, in fact!


Speaking of Venus, by the way, one can readily point to Venus as a nearby example of what can happen to a planet like ours (Venus is just a little smaller than our own planet Earth) when you put a little too much carbon dioxide greenhouse gas in your atmosphere!  Granted, Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth is, but nevertheless the Greenhouse Effect has run rampant on Venus, creating a truly hellishly hot global environment there with surface temperatures averaging around 900 degrees Fahrenheit or so, which is about 500 degrees Celsius (give or take 32 degrees Fahrenheit or so), which is even hotter than Houston, Texas in August!


Sic transit gloria Venus!  Enjoy!