white knights. . . .

i came to florida with my usual mission:  meet facebook friends face to face.  learn from them.   enjoy their avocations, their joys, their fears, and their lives.  and take friendship out from behind the laptop or the cellphone updates and into reality.

but i got a little sidetracked.

my father justin is receiving provenge treatment for cancer. experimental? yes. expensive? try ninety thousand a pop. weird? yeah, they take all your blood out and ship your white blood cells to a lab to be enhanced and reconfigured and then they put those white blood cells back in your body and say “cancer begone!”

i arrived in tallahassee and was a bit surprised.  my father’s wife was heading out on a business trip and asked me to take him to his first appointment the next day.  this required a cancellation of friendship appointments for monday and tuesday but i still figured i could do wednesday.

white blood cells (leukocytes) are the ruthless knights of our bloodstream. they fight diseases–cancer, strep throat, ebola. without them, we are without defense. tomorrow (friday) my father’s white blood cells–with new shields and swords–will be reintroduced to his body.

my father was feeling poorly and i cancelled the rest of the week’s travels through orlando, spring hill, tampa–but two facebook friends stopped by tallahassee to take me to lunch.  bill taylor, who lives in the city, and ron winegar who drove in from panama city.  the distraction was a great gift!

tomorrow i will take justin to his appointment to get back those white blood cells back into his system and then. . . alas, i’ll try to make it out of the state of florida!