8:56 a.m.

It is a cool morning, refreshingly so after several days of scorching heat. I see it’s raining some more! We had only a dampening of the ground during the night.

Yesterday evening I connected five hoses and stretched them out to the vegetable garden, preparing to water it, but decided to wait till today because a storm had threatened. It blew over, which was a disappointment, although the temperature had dropped several degrees in a very short time so one can’t help thinking of tornadoes and such being a possibility.

After laying the hose alongside the row of tomatoes, I wandered over to the strawberry patch and nibbled on juicy red berries while filling the crook of my arm with as many as it could hold. Those I dropped off at the other house before heading out onto the road for a walk.

Dusk’s wildlife sighting was a deer bounding onto the road ahead of me, both of us stopping to stare at each other for five or ten seconds before she scampered down through the ditch and leapt over the wire fence to join another white-assed doe and disappear into the trees.

There is a double batch of granola baking in the oven right now; four rib steaks have been marinating in the fridge since yesterday; Karen is coming over this morning to pick up the screen tent for a family reunion on her in-laws' side this weekend; Mom goes for her third radiation treatment.

When I called yesterday she was a bit depressed over the delay in starting the experimental drug treatment. They insist on repeating bloodwork, a c.t. scan, and a bone scan, within two weeks prior to the trial’s start date. So she has to go through them all over again after just having them done a couple weeks ago. I’d be frustrated too, particularly since they still haven’t actually given her a start date.

Since talking to her, I’m depressed too. I tried to cheer her up by reminding her that the timing up till now has been perfect for her to get onto this trial, and surely it is still perfect, no matter how it seems.

But when I got off the phone, I was thinking that this drug concoction they are going to treat her with will probably, at best, if successful, only prolong her life for a little while. It isn’t likely going to be a cure. And it isn’t going to prolong her life enough for my liking. But she might go through hell in the meantime, with god-knows-what side effects.

My instinct is to search out every alternative cancer treatment known to mankind and consider them all, pick one or two, and start applying them. I don’t care if they are not medically, scientifically proven. What have we got to lose by trying something else? But Mom and Dad’s hopes right now are all hung on this experimental treatment, even though they don’t expect a cure. They only hope for a reprieve. And while they are focused on this trial drug, they seem to have no energy to consider other options, and are afraid that alternative treatments might interfere with the drug trial.

So I am walking a fine line between presenting ideas for alternative treatments, and being pushy. They need my support, not added pressure. It is not my life and death, and none of it is my decision to make. Their trust is in doctors, the medical system. Mine leans toward herbs and naturopathy, areas where doctors are woefully under-educated. Yet I have to try to be positive about Mom's choice of treatments, even when I fear it may not be the best one, or at least that it shouldn't be the only one.

We need it to rain all day, but it already seems to be slowing down.