Yesterday I received my fourth treatment with Dr. Kübler–just 6 more to go! I’m happy to report that my veins cooperated on the first try again and worked splendidly for the whole treatment. All the love you are sending is doing the trick! I also got my slow drip of dendritic cells and then for dessert, 2 shots of the flu vaccine. As promised, my symptoms came on sooner than last week. In fact, I was in line at the grocery store a few hours later when I started to feel like I was going to explode! I don’t think the sweet-looking old woman, fumbling through her purse for exact change, had any idea that I was standing behind her trying to decide whether to leave my groceries and bolt for the door or just keep deep-breathing my way through it. I settled on the latter and made it home just in time!

Since I took Ibuprofin at the first sign of symptoms last time and that seemed to lessen them but I think also made them last twice as long, I held off this time. Bundled in bed with the heating pad and “24” playing on the DVD player, I progressively got more and more chilled, nauseous, and achey. Just when I thought I couldn’t stand it, the phone rang and it was Howard! What a difference to hear his loving voice and feel his empathy and encouragement. So, as he has been for me innumerable times since I met him, Howard was my saving grace, my angel again!

Also as promised, the worst of the symptoms worked their way through in about 4 hours and I slept well last night. I’m still in pjs after spending the morning getting lost in a novel. I don’t have big plans for the day: maybe a load of laundry, a little vacuuming, and if all goes well, a walk in the park at sunset (see if the gnats still look like fire sparks in the sunlight and my slightly-altered state). I’m grateful to rest. Tomorrow, I’ll hit the pool and be up to my old tricks of haunting the city asking people if they “schprekenze English?”

Last weekend, I took advantage of the discounted rates for visiting the state-run museums (1 Euro on Sundays) and saw an amazing photography exhibit called “Humanism in China” at the Pinakothek der Moderne. There were several rooms filled with photographs of the Chinese people in their every day life taken by numerous Chinese photographers over the last twenty or so years. Yesterday, as my blood was being pumped in and out, I spent a long time reviewing in my mind as many of the different scenes from the exhibit as I could remember. A few that captured my imagination included: children crossing a suspension bridge to go to and from school everyday and where the wooden planks run out a girl of about nine balances on the wire cable, her slippered-feet arched around it, her hands holding tight to the cables above; a young man covered in soap suds from head to toe, bathing himself from a bucket in front of some apartment buildings, his head tilted back and smiling widely; or another man who has created a make-shift bed on top of two occupied train seats on a crowded train and is holding onto the luggage rack to keep his perch. In fact, there were many incredible crowd shots, but two really caught my eye of commuters on their way to work. In one: hundreds of people are walking their bikes across a bridge, tire to tire. And in the other, a line of moped taxis, three across, take people to work, lined-up again, tire to tire, driving along the sidewalk. I could go on and on, but maybe I’ll save it for a poem…I think I might have to go back and see the exhibit again.

After the museum visit, I rode my bike to the Japanese Tea House in the English Garden just in time to observe a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony. I couldn’t understand the introduction before the demonstration nor the impressive amount of questions and answers afterwards because they were conducted in German; but, the silent reverence for each thing and act observed in the ceremony itself left me with an ethereal calm that I took out into the afternoon with me. Also, as the river runs right next to the Tea House the sporadic sound of duck quacking, coming through the rice paper walls, really rounded out the mix of languages I was experiencing: German, Japanese, English (in my head), and Duck. Quite a multicultural experience.

So, thanks so much for checking-in here. As I write, I’m picturing your faces and feeling your friendship and it’s almost like I’m with you––which is always such a gift!

On another note, I have heard that emails you’ve sent have been bouncing back. I think the problem was based in some emails with Shakespeare lectures included that I asked Howard to send me. I have saved them to my hard drive and I think there is room to receive new messages again. Sorry for the technical difficulties. It was weird, some emails were getting through…Go figure.

I am sending you my love,
Kathleen

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