It's been a good while...in a good way...

It's been a couple of weeks since I've entered a report -- but it's been a couple of very good weeks. As I noted the last time, I'm in Montana and points east and west for a few weeks, visiting friends and mostly hunting. Weather has been largely very good here, despite heavy snow further south in Wyoming and Colorado. My health has been very good, relatively speaking, of course. The Avastin-Every-Other-Monday event is going well -- I've made two flights from Missoula to Seattle and back, and if anything they're quicker and cheaper than flying from Ketchikan. Planes aren't as big, though... Temodar is a bit of a different story, since I have been really feeling it now when I take it. Fortunately, it's only five days out of 28, so I can move past it and get over it. By about day four, my appetite is gone and it's hard to eat. By about two days past day five, I'm back into the eating business.

Hunting, both alone and with friends, as been great fun. Some things, like trying to find an antelope during the one snowfall I encountered, proved to be pretty unlikely to happen. It was great fun on my friend's ranches, but no meat came out with me. Deer hunting, however, has turned out very nice indeed, in part because the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks has a very hard-working and very nice set of people working to re-assign tags that are turned in because people are unable to use them. I had been only able to buy a "B" (doe) tag for mule deer, until Monday, November 2nd. Then they made available some leftover deer-elk combination licenses that had been returned to them, let me know, and put one aside for me to come to Helena to get -- because, you see, when they let me know on Monday, I was in Seattle getting an Avastin infusion! Monday night I flew back to Missoula, Tuesday morning I drove through Helena on my way to my hunting area near Ft. Benton, and Wednesday morning...

Not the biggest mule deer buck I've ever killed (though it's plenty big enough), but might be one of my biggest celebrations. It's hard to describe how good I felt, having come through my needed treatments through the summer and made it back to my life well enough to go out by myself and begin filling my freezer for the winter. I have some hunting trips to go, including an elk hunt with some good friends; a visit to South Dakota that will be grand; and a trip here from my daughter Erin for her hunt near Ft. Belton. We'll end up with Heather and Faith joining us there for a few days to conclude my venture to the Lower 48 and celebrate Thanksgiving and our anniversary. So far my trek has been wonderful, and I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks!

Hope your month goes well too...

Dennis & Faith