I spent the morning in the clinic and received my second day of chemo. Two down, two to go followed by total body radiation and then my bone marrow should be like a fertile soil bed, ready to be planted. So far so good. Tomorrow is more of the same and then as I understand the process the therapy becomes stronger with more potential side effects. I am taking this one-hour and one-day at a time.

Last weekend as I mentioned we visited the Amazon Spheres, an indoor terrarium like structure that contains thousands of species of plants from all parts of the world. As we were walking around we were talking to one of the docents who said the day before we arrived an extraordinary event had occurred – the blooming of a corpse flower. We had heard about this but the blooms are so rare and so unpredictable that they are difficult to be in the right place at the right time. Although we are told, when the bloom begins to open the scent is overpowering as in its name. By the time we arrived the scent was gone and the flowers still existed.

Given what I am going through the idea of seeing or even thinking about a corpse flower felt a bit sensitive. The photos that follow show what an amazing bloom these two plants produced.

Hope you are well.

Larry and Sharon