Luna continues to improve after her surgery. She has had her stitches removed and she was clear to be cone-free. Her energy level, appetite, and affection have all returned to normal. And we have been enjoying quite a bit of time together.

This is all good news, though her overall prognosis remains challenging. We will be going forward with her first chemo treatment in a couple of weeks, the first of up to four, depending on its effectiveness and how she handles it. The most important step was the surgery, but this will hopefully reduce the cancer a bit more and give her a longer and better quality of life. It still remains difficult to reconcile the dire diagnosis with the lively and affectionate cat that I still see every day. We will just have to take things as they come.

In the midst of Luna’s health crisis, I suddenly find myself facing one as well. Two Wednesdays ago, I suddenly started having distorted vision in my left eye and localized headaches in the vicinity of the same eye. I quickly went for an eye exam, and it deemed serious enough to warrant a visit to a retina specialist as soon as possible. That visit happened, and while I will spare the details in this article, it was pretty serious. (Those who are really interested can Google “central vein occlusion” and “retinal hemorrhaging”.) It’s not as dire as Luna’s diagnosis, but it remains physically problematic and has been quite disruptive – I have already canceled a few music gigs – and it reverberates though other aspects of my health. I’ll probably have a better sense of things in the next few days. Meanwhile, I have a few upcoming shows in the next two weeks that I plan to still play, but beyond that I am keeping things pretty low-key for September and October, focused on solitary creative projects (e.g., resuming work on the solo album), and on healing. Indeed, Luna and I are now healing each other together.