Olympic Update...
SKELETON - gotta be my most favorite Olympic sport! Going headfirst at 80 mph down a bobsled track! Yes! That's my kind of sport! Now, it hasn't been in the Olympics since 1948, but this is primed for those X-Games types. In Men's Skeleton Jim Shea won Gold!. Very touching - he had his Grandfather's picture in his helmet (His grandfather was a Gold Medal Speed Skater and his dad was also in the Olympics, making this the first time in Olympic history where 3 generations in one family were Olympians). In Women's Skeleton Tristan Gale won Gold and Lea Ann Parsley won Silver! Great day for the sport and a great day for Sledding Medals for USA.. Too bad that's it for Skeleton - I want to see more!

In Ladies 1500m Speed Skating Jennifer Rodriquez won Bronze, and Chris Witty came in fourth. In the Men's 1500m Short Track Speed Skating, well, Apolo Anton Ohno won Gold - only after Kim Dong-Sung of South Korea - who crossed the line first - was disqualified for something called "crosstracking" and interfering with Ohno. Great - another skating controversy. In Men's Hockey Play-offs Quarterfinals, USA shutout Germany 5-0. The real upset in Hockey today was unbeaten Sweden being beaten by Belarus 4-3.

Today's downsides - nothing in Ladies Short Track 3000m Relay Finals, nothing in Ladies Slalom, nothing in Men's 4x7.5 km Biathlon Relay (but Ole Einar Bjoerndalen of Noway won his 4th Gold Medal of the games) . In Women's Curling Semifinal USA loses to Switzerland 9-4. Nuts. But I think we might still be in a Bronze medal hunt.

It was 52° this morning. It's ugly outside, that drizzly pissy rain. Got the parents to Loyola Medical Center early for Dad's 1:30 appointment for a radiation therapy "practice" session. The Radiation Therapy waiting room is tiny - only a dozen chairs. I've always heard that these guys just crank through the patients - not today. Things are way backed up. This, needless to say, isn't "pleasing" to Dad, who, as he's been getting older, gets more and more impatient over these things. I walk around, just to walk around and get out of the room that seems to be getting more crowded and claustrophobic. While I'm out, there was a discussion with Mom & Dad and Dad wants me to go in with him - he thinks I can read his lips better than Mom (I can). I don't remember when he got called - it was a little before 2 o'clock - and we go in. Dad has to strip to the waist, so I've got to help him with his shirt & undershirt. He's so much smaller than me. It's the first time in my life that I'm doing something for him - for his care. He's got to take his glasses off and hearing aids. Then climb up onto a table that's is precision controlled to line him up correctly with the equipment. The techs - Jack & Lela - get a white, plastic mesh form-fitted mask (that obviously was molded sometime in the past, probably during his Simulation CatScan), but it over his head and lock him into the table. Then Jack puts a piece of plexiglass under Dad's feet with ropes tied to it. Dad has to hold onto the rope. I remember him telling us about it but we couldn't understand what the ropes were for. So I asked. The idea is for the patient to reach down and grab the ropes, but not to pull - this gets the shoulders low and out of the way of the radiation. Dad looks very uncomfortable locked into the table. There are laser lines all over the room to align his body correctly with the machine. The techs are taping things around him and are marking the mask and his chest in blue markers. The lights darken and we have to leave - everybody but dad, who's still on the table. Films are taken - three in all, all of which take time to load the films, rotate the radiation "thing" (I don't have a clue on what it's actually called - it's the thing that actually shoots the radiation). Jack doesn't think Dad is tolerating this well, and they get the last films but don't finish-off drawing on his chest. They get the face mask unlocked, and that's when dad tells me that he couldn't swallow with it on, so he was having some problems. He looks really weird - I had no idea that the mask was so tight against the skin - he's got marks from the mesh all over his face and head - he looks like a cheap alien from Star Trek or Babylon 5. We help him sit up - a bit too fast and he got dizzy & lightheaded. Then I help him get back together - hearing aids, glasses, and shirts. We finally shuffle out of the room, when a nurse - Dolores - says she wants to talk to us. I go get mom and Dolores talks to us about what to expect from the treatment. Basically, there should be no side effects except the sore throats and dad has no restrictions on his lifestyle - just keep doing what he's been doing. The side effects won't show up until about 10 treatments in. since radiation therapy is cumulative. Dolores gave mom some cream to help with skin care - keeping the skin moist. We look at the clock and it's 10 to 3. We're off. Tomorrow - the actual treatments start - every weekday for about six weeks.

This has got to be one of the worst nights of sleep that I've had in quite a while. The brain just wouldn't shut down. It was frustrating. I tried to think of other, peaceful things, and it still wouldn't detach. I think that my dad has a lot to do with it. I couldn't shake him from my mind. First, today is when we take him for his 3-D radiation therapy "rehearsal" or "practice" scan. Tomorrow he starts his radiation treatment - every weekday for 6 weeks. I wonder if I'm stressing about driving him every day? I don't think so. I think what's getting to me is something we found out about yesterday - my cousins Kathy & Jane are going to be vacationing in St. Maartin for Easter - the family is starting to fracture a little bit, now that Jane is going to get married in June - and I think it's bothering me (I know it's bothering my mom) that they're not "interested" in sharing the holidays with us. (Not interested is a bad term - it's more that we feel that they don't try to share, but it's a matter of too many family pieces each pulling in different directions). I think that now that dad has cancer, they're not interested in seeing him. I don't know. I think this just really got to me last night. I'm feeling really groggy, slight headache. And I think I'm rambling, it's like there's a stop that's been pulled and the brain just wants to dump...