The dog days

We are officially in the dog days of summer.  Why are the called that?  I found this explanation:

In the summer, Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, “dog days” after the dog star.

The one thing I am enjoying about this long string of hot weather has been swimming pool maintenance, specifically, monitoring the solar heater output.  The high temp so far is 93 degrees and I wanted to try pushing it further but those who actually swim in it tell me that it is too warm.  That and the fact that the solar panel sprung a leak set me back some 10 degrees.  I was actually supplementing the panel by laying a long garden hose in a serpentine fashion in sunny patches on the deck, moving it as the day progressed, and occasionally turning on the water and shooting streams of hot, hot water on to the surface of the pool.  The leak turned out to be more of a problem.  What started as a drip became a spray and finally a stream.

My loved ones frowned on me climbing on the roof to try and fix it.  But since the leak was right at edge of the roof, I thought I might be able to manage a repair of some sort.  I started by slathering the leaky area with PVC pipe dope from the top of a ladder.  That seemed to make it worse.  The leaky area is at a junction of plastic and rubber and may be the fault of a corner piece of the solar kit.  I contacted the manufacturer about replacement parts but have yet to hear my options.  I snooped around in the Meijer plumbing "section", remembering the days when the plumbing section was like a plumbing supply store instead of the half an aisle that it is now.  I found a promising product for under 3 bucks; a rubber wrap that holds together by pressure.  Wind it tight and the leak stops.

The job required that I loosen some bolts holding the supply hose taught and jamming a brick adjacent to the leaky section so that I could manage the whole 360 degrees around the pipe.   It sure looked like it was going to work.  I used up the whole roll just to be sure.  It did fix the stream but only reduced it to a trickle again.  The problem is not yet solved.  Mary thinks I should not use a solar panel with a leak but i just cannot bear the thought of all this sun not heating up the pool.  So I'm wasting a bit of water instead of wasting the heat.  Them is some wrong priorities in a heat wave, eh?

The "other" dog days oppressing me are the dog days of chemo.  Monday morning (tomorrow as I write this) will be my last dose of Xeloda, my twice per day chemotherapy in pill form.  I've been describing my experience with Xeloda like this:

 I force myself to eat a little bland food just before a dose, as "take with food" is required.  This has typically been in the form of egg custard, cottage cheese, pea soup, jello, yogurt or applesauce.  I suppress a temporary urge to gag and the pill goes down.  Then for the next 6 to 8 hours I experience an agitated feeling.  Social interaction is the last thing I want to do... well, the 2nd to the last.  Eating food or drinking a beverage would be the last thing I want to do. Towards the end of the 'grumpy" cycle I start to think about cooking food.  I fantasize about delicious food.  I've caught myself saying out loud that I'd trade a year of life for a slice of pizza that tastes the way it looks.  Sometimes I actually start cooking but it can only be for others because textures and tastes are not right and I have no desire whatsoever to put anything down the gullet anyway.  Then it is about time for my second dose of Xeloda.  Mary comes home from work and I try to suppress my proverbial half-empty glass of negative, impatient, mean-spirited things to say.  I'm not always successful.  I'll strap on the food pump for a 12-hour liquid food infusion and read or watch a movie and eager anticipate bed time when I can sleep and take on nutrition and perhaps wake up energized and positive and write sentences like this one before I have to take another Xeloda.

So I am quite excited counting down to the last couple of pills rattling around in this lonely bottle.

On Monday I will also have a CT scan that will evaluate the effectiveness of my chemotherapy regimen. Dr. Scott has been playing it close to the vest so I have no idea what to expect.  Good news might mean I get a break or it might mean that I double-down on chemo.  I guess bad news would be they have to try something different.

I am visioning that the spot on my liver will be completely gone.