Ray’s Blog

It’s time to start writing again. Man it has been a while. Just to let everyone know I’m felling pretty good save for the h1n1 I think I have at the moment, although that is almost gone by this point. I may go back and fill in some of the important highlights as I get back to writing but you should know that I am about as healthy as I can be right now. For whatever reason that’s how things have turned out. I’ll be trying to add some more regular features, work out a redesign, add a twitter account, ticking out wordpress, and anything else I can think of along the way. So for now there is no big rollout, things will just evolve when they do.

Well, my statistics show that things are slowing down on this site. But that’s to be expected, considering all the big hubbub is over, like being on chemo is nothing, but usually things are exciting at the beginning and kind of peter out soon after. That’s OK. I know people just aren’t visiting as often, especially if I don’t keep up my end of the bargain and produce content at a good pace.

But the stats showed some other activity. From a google search I can be found using many different keywords. The top search is “ray schwartz” which makes sense but those who use it have to persevere because I don’t show up until the fifth page of results (not too bad). Then, the second most used search term is rayschwartz.com which brings me up as the number one result (yay!) but that’s a little weird, searching for what you already know it is. Google also asks “Did you mean: jayschwartz.com?” But when you search for, Jay his search doesn’t say did you mean Ray? So, somehow, Jay is more important than Ray? I don’t think so, but Google does.

There are all sorts of variants on ray schwartz like “ray schwartz blog”, “ray schwartz cancer”, someone even used “ray schwartz christina.” One of the strangest ones of that ilk was “ray schwartz dance.” I don’t think I’m dancing away my cancer and that person was probably very disappointed once he got to my site. Now, you know that on a lot of these keyword searches I’m down in the depths, maybe on page 10 pr 15 or 20 of their results and they still are getting to my site. That is determination. I thought attention spans were short with the young folk. Maybe not. But here’s the best one. The picture speaks for itself.

I don’t know. Go to the vet. So, this guy witnesses his dog yawn EVERY TIME and, somehow, knows the dog is in pain, in his jaw. Yes. Definitely the jaw. How the heck does he know that? Did he ask his dog? Probably.

The other great thing about those stats is that I can see some people are hopefully getting something out of my blog who have or know someone who has cancer. There have been quite a few searches where I come up that have to do with portacath and pictures. So I’m hoping that this blog is answering some questions that some may have. I’m number two for a search on “portacath installation.” That’s fantastic.

I’m fartin’ up a f*ckin’ storm right now. Luckily, Christina is asleep already.

Two topics today: 1) progress report 2) where did this title come from?

So if all goes according to plan (and I don’t die) my portacath will be installed the week of September 1st and my chemotherapy will begin on September 9th. Yesterday, the last 6 staples were removed from my incision and today I gave the blood for my genetic testing as well as discussed my course of treatment with my oncologist. I want to start exercising which for someone in my present condition consists of walking, so that will start tomorrow. My focus needs to be on healing. more…