Extremely incredible...incredibly extreme. Yes, both.

I've just finished a truly fascinating book, surely the strangest novel I've ever encountered. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel by Johathan Safran Foer invokes the surreal absurdity of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: A Novel. As are these two, Foer's novel is anti-war, anti- the new war protocol we call terrorism.

You'll love it or you'll hate it. No In-between. If you can tolerate its strangeness, it's probably best to read it in as few sittings as possible. Too long between sittings and you may get lost in the shuffle between characters and their telling of the tale. Stay the course! You'll be rewarded in the end.

As for me, I loved the book and as a bonus I acquired a pithy new quote for my "Life is..." list. [See previous entry in this blog: Feb 2, 2011.]

To wit: "Life is scarier than death."

But I knew that already.

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Update # 13: See spot. Run!

I just spent a very anxious month since my last Update. A routine CT scan in early February found three "spots" on my liver. Yikes! My doctor ordered a liver biopsy, which involves what is delicately called "taking a tissue sample"–and uh, we're not talkin' Kleenex. I won't go into details as to how the liver tissue was extracted except to say that it involved a long hollow needle. Shudder...

A blissful sigh of relief greeted the news this morning that the biopsy results were negative, i.e., as far as can be determined (one gets used to these medical qualifications) the spots are not cancer, but are perhaps only inflammation. Whew!

So at long last, the post-Whipple chemotherapy will begin next week. In two months time there will be another CT scan to monitor the progress of the spots. Out, damned spot!

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the balmy winter in Waxhaw, NC. Woodsy walks with Marley. Making plans for the summer garden with my brother. Anticipating a new brood of chicks and the eggs they'll provide. Life is good. Don't I know it!

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