I’ve got the weekend to myself. Everyone at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Montvale (MSKCC) were so happy to have the weekend ahead. Everyone wished me a happy weekend several times. Must be a slog to work in a cancer center. Can’t say I blame them but the Montvale facility is bright and cheerful at least. Lots of art on the walls and lots of art books.

I’m feeling the radiation in my neck and throat but mildly. 3 zaps down, 33 to go. Only a little smoldering this week.

I have had feedback from many people who have had the malady or knows someone who has. Almost all say the same: stay the course, there’s Life on the other side. Stunning statistic: 1 in 3 men and 1 in 2 women will contract cancer in their lifetime according to Siddartha Mukerjee in the Emperor Of All Maladies. (mary Ann and I heard him sing with Jog Blues at St John The Divine in New York. He is partners with the artist Sarah Sze)

i appreciate all the love and concern my circle have expressed. I’m surprised at how I grab for control to feel like I have some agency here. I marvel at the mechanisms that I cannot take any responsibility for but are none the less mine: dna, rna, all the healing mechanisms in the body and so on that I rarely give but a fleeting thought to. Our frontal lobe, our conscious mind, sits upon a mountain!