Inside the pinball machine

This morning Peg felt good enough to help put sheets on the bed, crawl around hooking up the electric blanket, and go for coffee with our friend Mary. She worked in a visit with Suzanne, her office partner. We took a brief walk before dinner.

And wham, it all caught up with her.

She said after dinner her legs felt like cement. She's watching "Mad Men" on DVD right now, which is all she has energy for... her short-term memory does short-circuits on and off during the day. She gets weepy and profoundly sad, seemingly out of nowhere, then she's fine a few minutes later.

And yet we laughed really hard today thinking about lines from the movie "Baby Mama," which we saw as a family last night. She loved feeling the breeze and the sun on her clothing on our pre-sunset walk. We both delighted in seeing our daughter being a teenager, skipping through the house and yakking about homework with her friends.

And so it goes inside the pinball machine. Chemo is not a trajectory, as we had thought, where you can predict your "good days." It's all over the map, like some bizarre gizmo with the seven dwarves, three stooges, the four horsemen of the apocalypse and Pee Wee Herman pulling the levers. Surprise!