Karen just reminded me that I should let you all know that I had my six-month follow-up check-up at the end of June, and that there was no sign of any cancer. (I didn’t send an update then, because they were concerned about elevated bilirubin levels — but it looks now as if these are due to a completely benign condition called Gilbert’s Syndrome — so that’s all right!) It’ll be another 4½ years before they’ll give me the “all clear,” but for this particular cancer, the first year is by far the most likely time for any recurrence. So this is really good news! …
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Hi, everyone! Just a quick update to let you know that I’m still here. Life is nearly back to normal (although I look out the mid-April windows at ice and snow and a gray sky that hasn’t broken in more than a week and I wonder!).…
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Some of you might know that my “new” plan for the “Mapping Mordor” chapter had been to get all toponymic research done before the surgery, so that I could simply write between then and Yule — submitting a text draft in late December (only six weeks late) and telling the editors how many graphic images I’d be supplying (and where they’d need to go and what size they’d need to be) — and preparing the graphics in January while the editors and lay readers were looking at my draft text.…
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I mentioned in my first post 1
1 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.…
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