I'm not glowing yet...

Sorry it's been so long between posts. It's spring - the time of year you are least likely to find me spending time at my computer. Before I get on with the update, I had a request to explain what the heck woodcock banding is. No, it's not anything dirty, woodcock are birds. Here's a picture of one

They come to the northern states and Canada to breed, from Minnesota to New England, and they migrate to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast for the winter. In the fall you can hunt them. The Fish & Wildlife Service has a banding program that uses volunteers with hunting dogs to locate broods in the spring. The chicks leave the nest and walk around right away with the hen, so the dog finds them and points them. The hen will do a flutter flight when she has chicks, flying a short distance and acting injured in order to lure the predators away. The dog has to be well trained to be able to resist the urge to chase her. The chicks defense is to sit motionless and blend in with the forest floor, and they are good at it. Here's one pretty close up (makes it look easy to see - they're not!).

We then locate the chicks. There are never more than four, so we search and search until we find four or give up. They are totally dedicated to sitting still and staying invisible, so 9 times out of 10 you just walk over to them and pick them up. We measure their bills, because you can tell how old they are by the length of the bill, put leg bands on them, and let them go. The past two seasons a graduate student has been putting little radio collars on them and tracking them to see how many survive and learn about their behavior. It's been kind of depressing for me, because now I get to find out how many of them get eaten by various predators. I liked it better when I just banded them and let them go, imagining that they all lived. Here's one last photo of a chick with its little radio collar on.

Now on to the medical update. I did finally get the drain tube out, and it wasn't as miserable of an experience as I was expecting. The nurse practitioner said that the tubes have gotten more "patient friendly" recently, and judging from some horror stories I have heard from others, that is true. Unfortunately, the fluid built up again after the drain came out and I had to go back to have the doctor drain it with a giant needle. That wasn't as bad as it sounds either though, since most of the area around the incision is totally numb. The fluid stopped accumulating after that though, and so a week later I went in for the radiation planning, which consisted of another CT scan and getting tattoos (just tiny spots) that they will use to line me up every time. I had this last week off from treatments and enjoyed several days in the woods looking for birds. Friday was the best day, we found two broods within 100 yards of the car.

I never heard back from the clinic and they told me that we would be starting last week, so I finally broke down and called them Friday afternoon. They were still putting the finishing touches on my plan and booked my first treatment for this Wednesday. I was surprised that it took so long, but on the other hand, I do want them to get it right. They have to map each person's body and program the machine so that the beam is targeting just the areas that they want to hit, while avoiding other things, like the heart. So like I said, I do want them to get it right. So Wednesday I start the daily commute to get radiated for the next 5 weeks or so.