Rosemary Kirstein

I want to thank all the people who jumped right in and bought copies of the ebooks for The Outskirter’s Secret and The Lost Steersman last week — My royalty check for the month of March is going to look very pretty!   And since my disability payments are only a fraction of my regular wage, the royalties help me a whole lot — so, again, my thanks to you all.

(Yes, Amazon pays out royalties on a monthly basis.  There’s a two-month delay between the month’s final calculation and the actual payment, so I’ll get paid for March at the end of May; but I can see what my sales are, and what my royalties will be, in as close to real-time as makes no difference.  This is VERY different from traditional publishing.)

I’ve emerged from my steroid crash, and am once again awake and alert.   So, The Language of Power ebook will be out before the end of this month.

In other news: I was supposed to get my Herceptin-only infusion on Monday, but to everyone’s surprise, the day dawned with rain, hail, sleet and snow coming down in remarkable amounts at astonishing speeds.   Last day of March!   You know the proverb about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb — but apparently this year “going out like a lamb” refers to some poor lamb being born in a blizzard (which I understand does happen) and then DYING OF EXPOSURE to the cruel elements before the the shepherd manages to find it and carry it to the shepherd hut to warm up (I’m picturing Granny Aching from Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men series, here).

We tried to get out to the hospital, but every route we tried had a spinout, or an accident, or a bus spinning its wheels, unable to make it up an unplowed hill.  We had to turn around.

So, doing it today instead.  The Chemo suite is jammed with people: Tuesday’s regulars, plus those bumped from Monday.

The trend is still generally good — the tumor’s shrinkage means we’ll be doing a lumpectomy instead of a mastectomy.   This is excellent.  However, lumpectomies “come with” radiation therapy, as my oncologist puts it.   Previously we’d thought we might be able to do without the radiation.  But this is a trade-off I’m happy to make!  Because: no mastectomy.

One fairly inconvenient thing: a significant percentage of patients being treated with Taxol have a side-effect called peripheral neuropathy, where they develop pins-and-needles sensations and numbness, which starts at the tips of the fingers and toes, and can sometimes creep further and further up.    I’m one of those patients, unfortunately; but fortunately, my symptoms are comparatively mild.

But, a further downside: it can be permanent.   We won’t know if it’s permanent in my case, unless it actually fails to go away — and even the temporary kind can take many months to clear up.   But I count myself lucky that it’s no worse than it is.   Because: Hey, I’m not dead!   I win!

Other good news:  when my pal Brian was here filling in in as caretaker while Sabine caught some sea & sun in Florida, he discovered a good Indian restaurant just down the street from me.  Excellent, another win!

It’s Wins all around, basically.