Melting Watch Day

Today it was 104 degrees.

It was a melting watch day, Salvidor Dali-ish. I worked on getting ready to add photos to this blog. Maybe I will have it together by the weekend?

Dash and Molly came over with Charley this morning. Charley said he was thrilled to see young women giving him big toothy smiles as he drove. He doesn't usually get that kind of attention since becoming a senior citizen. Then he realized that Dash was sitting up in the seat behind him with his big toothy and tongue grin. He is such a handsome and happy boy. See, you have to have a photo of Dash's smile.

Molly, ever the lady, was curled on the seat with her chin on the armrest. Her ear is much better. She is a trim and fit 12 year old. She didn't want to leave me to get her collar and leash on for the trip home.

This Friday I see my local oncologist. She should have the results of my blood tests taken Monday. The tests are general blood panel to see if I am ready for chemo again and a tumor marker test. She may have results back from the Mayo Clinic for a DNA test to see if I have a mutation of p53 which would give me an increased risk of sarcoma, breast, leukemia and central nervous system cancers. It could explain my having two primary cancers at the same time.

The oncology interns who took my cancer pedigree were horrified by the number of cancers. Both grandfathers died of cancer. One was a radiologist (osteosarcoma) in the 1920's and 1930's and the other an industrial engineer (don't know which cancer). I had always thought the cancers were byproducts of the times and their professions. My paternal grandmother had colon cancer in her 80's. One of her daughters had colon cancer in her late 70's. My mother's sister died of the same disease when she was in her 60's. One cousin on my father's side died of ovarian cancer a few years ago. She was less than a year older than I. One cousin's daughter had childhood leukemia or lymphoma. She survived and thrives today.

I just thought old ladies died of colon cancer after a lifetime of black tea and cake.

I guess spending a lot of my growing up years on the Texas petrochemical coast, I assumed I would get cancer. I am surprised it was not earlier. I remember reading about Los Angles smog in My Weekly Reader. We were amazed that they had so many cars. EPA's number one site on the first Superfund National Priority List ( on the first list) was located within a mile of my house. The old tin smelter in Texas City had a freshwater borrow pit that kids used to swim in - over the dumped barrels of waste. ( Was largest tin smelter in the world during WWII. The 140 acre closed facility had acid pools, waste water pools, process waste piles, dilapidated buildings and no security). When I lived there it wasn't operating. I don't think it was "cleaned-up" until the 1990's. I didn't swim there. I did end up in a borrow pit next to Amoco when I wrecked my Mom's new red VW. I was covered in crude oil and who knows what else? Later, 1967, when I lived in Chicago the smoke stacks of steel mills in Gary Indiana filled the horizon with pink and yellowish plumes. In the mornings I had to wash the black soot from my nose.

I think it turns out that having a grandfather with sarcoma was more risky for me.