Cancer and . . . Camping

Church campout was this weekend, and I was pretty thrilled that it fell on the very best time in my chemo cycle. It was good for all the reasons I usually love Shalom (Tucson) church campout - get out of the city into beautiful mountains, hang out with some of my favorite people without any work to get done, doing creative things like making music and delicious camping food and acting bizarre skits, going on walks and hikes in the desert, and did I mention the mountains all around us?

This year there were some new reasons to love campout, too.
First, there are several families with young children who've moved in during the past year, so this year we had ample young folks with lots of energy for spontaneous games of badminton, Set, tree-climbing, dramatic acting, etc. That is to say, if my entire right side hurts tomorrow, it's not some weird chemo side-effect - it's because I got to hit around a birdie with some new friends who really, really like hot chocolate (making me, as the designated Bringer of Hot Chocolate Mix, a very, very important person).
Second, I took along the accordion, on which I can play songs just written as chords and melody (provided the chords are all major and one of these: A, D, G, C, F, or Bflat - bonus points if you're a band geek who recognized the circle of fourths!). But you can do a surprising number of songs with just three or four chords, so I got to play with the impromptu folk band that tends to assemble itself at such occasions, as well as for Sunday morning worship. If you haven't sung Over My Head accompanied by a free-reed instrument, you need to broaden your hymn-singing horizons.
Third, my Mom was there. Good things are even better when you get to share them with people close to you.

So maybe the title of this post is misleading, as camping had very little to do with cancer, which seems like a sensible sort of turn for my life to take. Ah, but of course, tomorrow (Monday) begins the "big" week again. I'll gain 12-15 pounds by Wednesday, get stopped up by Thursday, and feel like my whole upper body is bruised for all of Saturday and Sunday. They'll knock me down, but at least I know what's coming. And the plan is that this is the last chemo cycle, and then I'll be done with that nastiness.