Breaking News!

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog, I guess since everything is pretty much status quo.   

Well, except for my hair.  There is more hair!  Dark hair on my head, not red hair, dark hair!  More hair on my face thanks to dexamethasone (the steroid).  Also, annoying hair growing on my ear lobes and upper lip.  Nice fine blonde hairs giving me a little beard and whiskers on my chin.  Wonderful.

I knew this time would come when the hair fell out of my scalp with the chemotherapy treatment.  I think, to be specific, the drug Taxol is the culprit.  Ugh! How awful to have no control over the hair on your head.   Well, I guess I could have had control over it and stopped treatment altogether.  But I made an agreement with myself to do a chemo treatment and I knew this was a side effect to expect, but it was still one of the most difficult things I have done in my life.  Now it’s growing back and I can’t just be happy about  it.  It’s growing now in so many places I never thought about.  Much of it due to the steroids.  

I’m trying to focus on the hair on my head.  DARK hair on my head!  How funny.  I was hoping for a change and I got it!   Pretty far from the cornsilk color I was hoping for though.   I think it’s going to be straight and not curly hair too.

I finally did something I’ve been thinking about for awhile and bought a Kindle this past week.  I enjoy the size of the Kindle, it fits so well in my hand and is so light weight that I can hold it for long periods of time without needing to adjust the pages or my hand or whatever may be bothering me at the moment with a book. It’s been really useful when lying down I have to admit.  Best of all there are no hard copy books to store somewhere never to be seen again.  I’m really enjoying the Kindle and at the moment I’m reading the new biography about Walter Cronkite.  

Breaking news!  I have a disability retirement date of June 9, 2012.  That will give me a total of 28 or 29 years working for public safety agencies in California starting with the Riverside County Marshal’s Office in May of 1983.  However, in 1984 I moved over to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office and from there moved to the Riverside County Fire Department in 1987.  After a nine month break from full time work, in 1990 I started work with the San Jose Police Department and spent eleven years with them until 2001 when I changed agencies – again! – and went to work for the Placer County Sheriff’s Office in Tahoe City.  That was almost eleven years ago and it’s 2012 and I’m retiring with a disability retirement from both Placer and San Jose.