There are two aspects to this update. First is the medical.  Second is the professional/social/demographic/financial/emotional.

First, my oncologist was all smiles yesterday.  So, I am about half-way through this, with three more chemo sessions and three more spinal taps.  Nancy and I are pleased, encouraged and blessed.  The side effects have been minimal, but I will let you know if I have vomiting, diarrhea, rash, joint pain, muscle pain, mouth ulcers, numbness in my feet, or severe grouchiness.

Second, I retired from the full-time practice of medicine today!  Nancy and I shared some tears…not of sadness, but rather just because of the heaviness and change of direction for our lives.  Personally, there is a goal that I have had for many years; and that is simply to be like Caleb.  You may recall that Caleb was Joshua’s buddy.  They were the two out of twelve spies that told Moses that we can take the land, but the other ten convinced the people otherwise, and forty years were wasted wandering around the middle east.  After the promised land was secured, Caleb spoke this to his friend Joshua: “And now behold, I am this day eighty-five years old.  I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as was my strength was then, for war and for going and coming.  So now give me this hill country…” (Joshua 14:10b-12a).  That hill country would require of Caleb another battle.  My “hill county” has smaller hills and less square footage than Caleb’s and I am only sixty-eight (sixty-nine on April 21, San Jacinto Day, Aggie muster day, Steve Morris’s BD), but I trust that I want it just as much and welcome the challenge.  I suspect that a lot of you have a “hill country” as well.

Dave/Daddy/Granddaddy/Doc Dave