NOW it begins

I have been pretty good (at least, in my opinion) about posting on a daily basis and I have purposefully left the weekends alone.  Saturday and Sunday I don't receive any treatment and I have used those two days to relax and recover at home.  I am posting today (Saturday) because I didn't do any writing yesterday.  The reason for that is because I was dealing with some rather severe discomfort and I spent the majority of the afternoon and evening curled up in the fetal position on my bed, dozing in and out of consciousness.  The nausea really hit me yesterday and I couldn't shake it.  Thus far, I have been able to do various things to either take my mind off of it or to make it somewhat bearable while I continue doing my daily activities.  Yesterday and today have been on a totally different level from what I have experienced thus far.  The bright side still is that I have yet to actually vomit and I can still find positions that lessen the overall impact of the most intense nausea sensations, but it has been getting considerably worse.  It is not really that it comes and goes either, it seems to just be a constant feeling of a sick/sour stomach that I can't completely get rid of.  Currently I can still only be up and moving around for a few minutes at a time before I have to sit or lay down to get the worst of the sensations to calm down.  I am forcing myself to eat (albeit not completely healthy AT ALL, but at least it is calories) but even drinking water has seemed like a daunting task the last couple of days.  I am still hopeful that I start to turn things around tomorrow and Monday, so I can go back into Tuesday feeling a little better and let the process begin again.
On to more pleasant thoughts...

2011 OBF

Currently going on in Portland, Oregon is the 26th annual Oregon Brewers Festival.  My brother and I (along with Robby) had the pleasure of attending this festival 2 years ago and it was an awesome beer fest.  I hope that once I am finally through with all of this crap and can move on with my life that we will again take up the task of meeting once a year at a beer festival somewhere to enjoy some beers and some good times.  The first picture is of our first day at the festival (before things took an interesting turn with a few too many full pours).  It was a great overall experience and I would recommend anyone with an interest in good beer to take a trip to Portland to experience one of the best beer cities in the US.
The other picture I feel I need to share today is of my beard in its glory days of late 2011.  This picture was from November of 2011, about a month before I got my initial diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma.  I had been growing it out to win "Best Beard" in the Warrior Dash run outside of Austin (actually it was in Bastrop), but it was so hot and windy and dusty that we left the party after the run early and I missed out on the whole competition.  Oh well, it is still my best beard ever, so I thought I would share as I am still losing more and more of it every day.  I am definitely going to have to wear my MD Anderson id bracelet every time I go in to get treatment if I have to shave much of it off.  They will not know who I am when I first go in there.
Time to go try and eat some soup and hopefully get a few more calories in me before I fade out for the night.