So just over two weeks ago I was reminded of a cartography conference that I had wanted to attend. It’s held in a different location each year and, though I’d heard good things about it, I’d never managed to attend before. I’m not a cartographer, of course, but I’d heard it was particularly welcoming to those working in neighboring fields and those who are simply interested in mapmaking. Since I am working on maps, I’d hoped at some point to attend and learn everything I could.
My tallest backpack, with food pouch at highest possible height and pump at the lowest, with cloth for catching dribbles
This year was to be a particularly simple year for me to attend, as the conference is right next door (3½ hours away) in Montréal.
Several people have asked me whether I’ve been sugar-coating my posts here — or at least choosing to write about only the good, rather than the bad or the ugly.
I will admit that, especially in the early days, things weren’t that great: I suffered from nausea and fatigue (mostly from the chemotherapy, I think) and pain (from my j‑tube surgery and the enflamed esophagus). These weren’t terrible, however, and I’d been led to expect that the effects of both the chemotherapy and the radiation therapy were cumulative over time — that is, that they would generally get worse over each week of my therapies.…
I mentioned in my first post 11 The reference to “my first post,” of course, means the first post on my cancer-focussed PostHope blog. The link here on this site is to that same post, but migrated to this official blog at erikmh.org. that I named this site Walking into Mordor only partially for the obvious reason — that in fact I’m also spending this time on a non-metaphorical Mordor-related project.
If all goes well, I will (finally!) be published, if only in the form of one chapter. The book, entitled Tolkien and Literary Worldbuilding, is being edited for Walking Tree Publishers by Dr. Thomas Honegger and Dr. Dimitra Fimi.…
So it occurred to me that perhaps some of you know as little about tube-feeding as I did a few weeks ago, and that you might be curious.
You can see from the photo that I’m relatively portable even when connected.
I’m eating a little solid food now — more than I was last month, in fact, because they widened my esophagus a bit during surgery in August, and perhaps also because the radiation is ensmallenating the tumor, too....
Well, things have been quiet here this week in Lake Wobegon….
Really quiet, in a way, though my dear friend Andy came up from Boston for the weekend to shake things up a bit (hi, Andy!). It was good to get the mental juices flowing again: Andy helped re-shelve piles of books in the library — which was very welcome! — but even more he acted as a terrific sounding board to help me figure out priorities for the Mordor project and for working out backup contingency plans for various other Tolkien-related things I’ve been doing (a few of which are spelled out at Vermont Softworks).…
