Basketball!

I played basketball today, for the first time since I got sick! I've been shooting around in the evenings, which I find relaxing, but this was the first time I've played a real game with other people. Half-court, so I wasn't running up and down the court, but still, it's a start! (Note: if you don't speak hoop, you may not follow all of the following, but you can get the gist.) I played two games of half-court to 21, by 2s and 3s. We won them both. I scored the winning basket in the first game and assisted on the winning basket in the second game. I wasn't moving as quickly as I used to (guys like Nick Sanchez seemed to be moving at warp speed), and I didn't go for any rebounds that weren't coming right to me, but I didn't embarrass myself. Once I took and made my first shot (spin dribble, short right baseline jumper), I felt things would be OK.

I remember many plays, but I'll just tell you about the two winning baskets. On the first, I had the ball, left foul line extended. I passed to Randy Senf on the baseline. My man turned his head to look at the baseline, and I cut behind him to the hoop. Randy fed me a perfect bounce pass for a give-and-go lay-up, game over.

On the second, I had the ball right foul line extended. Randy flashed from the foul line to the right block (he was cutting well without the ball all day). I fed him the pass to his outside shoulder and he banked it in, game over.

It helped our team that Lucky Tedrow made a bunch of 3s. I was 1 for 1 from 3-point range (I was wide open, but still). My buddy Troy showed up and we got to play together in the second game. I got to feed him in the post for his patented fade-away-and-kick-the-defender-Reggie-Miller-style shot. I was fortunate that my defender (Mike Henniger, former football player) did not rattle my bones with any picks, as he can do.

In other news, my dad arrived late last night and will be here through Labor Day. Miles was very excited to see him this morning and requested to play with "Chuck" all day. Seth came over from Lynn's house around Miles's bedtime and took over playing with Grandpa - they played golf in the yard as the sun was setting.

We met with my oncologist this afternoon. For the next round of chemo, which starts Tuesday, I decided to add back the drug that we had taken out for this round. I'm trying to balance cancer-fighting potential with side effects/quality of life, but I'm going with cancer-fighting potential for now. The fact that everything is so unpredictable, however, makes these decisions unclear. We don't really know whether the chemo drugs are having any additional benefit at this point (because there's no easy or clear-cut way to measure the extent or spread of the cancer), and we don't really know what the side effects will be from round to round. So we'll see and hope for the best.

Ethan