Well just an update for everyone. The latest round of medication not only didn't work, it put me in the hospital for a week. During Mardi Gras, no less. Evil shit, Xeloda. Makes your hands and feet swell and peel, along with other parts of your body I don't necessarily want to mention. Puts blisters in your mouth and makes your eyelashes fall out. Real fun ride, this stuff. They should force-feed this shit to convicted rapists in prison. Anyway, it didn't work.

So my doctor's latest advice is to quit chemo and go home and die. Not quite the upbeat update I was looking for. For the record, f*#@ him. He's a quitter, I'm not. He's the kind of guy who leaves early in the third quarter of a football game because the score or the weather may make him uncomfortable. Plus, you know, traffic, the damn traffic, what the hell are all these people doing here? They're in my way. I can't get home in time to watch the end of the game I just left.

TOUGH IT OUT, BITCH. YOU DON'T LEAVE THE GAME EARLY BECAUSE YOUR TEAM IS LOSING. But that's the kind of mentality that exists here, in Baton Rouge. People are so used to the Tigers winning all the time that losing is an uncomfortable experience that cannot be tolerated, and especially in public, where others may see how you handle it. The children cry and the talk radio is filled with bitterness. Beer warms more quickly and food doesn't taste the same.

Saints fans know better. We stay and watch, we've watched the misery of many a loss, right down to the last second, even after they stopped serving alcohol in the 4th quarter. The uncomfortable feeling towards the end of the game always is tempered by the thought of next week, next season, next something. You suck it up, you go down to Liuzza's on Bienville and drain a couple of mugs and eat a stuffed artichoke (best in the city, by the way, even now after the storm), and you start looking forward to what might be next week.

I know. I've been there. I went to the Saints playoff game in Chicago this year. But I've also been in Tiger Stadium at the end of LAST year, with Haslett calling time out with 1:05 left in the game, losing by 17, knowing the season and his job is over. The good, the bad, and the ugly are the parts of the whole that make up life. You don't like the last two, can't handle them? Then you aren't living.

But I am, and I am still fighting. Sorry, doc, you're out of the game. Not even a hug goodbye. Hugs are for winners.

And for the record, let me tell you my nurses have been absolutely outstanding. I don't know how they deal with a-holes like me day in and out, caring, concerned, worried, working their asses off for you. Underpaid, overworked, and then dictated to by the very type of guy described above. They aren't quitters. And my group of nurses are definitely Saints fans, true to the last game and the last second.

Just raging against the dying of the light. ok that is all.