Cancer sucks. Steroids suck. Newspapering sucks. At least I married well.

I'm on the juice. And it's not going well. In conjunction with my chemo treatment designed to evict a tumour from the left leg, I'm on a heavy dose of Dexamethasone, which the good people at Wikipedia describe as a a type of corticosteroid medication that has anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant effects. I'll be on it for four-day stretches over the course of this little journey, and I've been told it's a hefty load of drugs. My chemo nurse looked at my dosage and said, "Oh...that's a lot." The pharmacist at the B.C. Cancer Agency warned my wife that I may not sleep a single wink when I first started taking it at dinner time on Chemo Day 1 on Tuesday. I did get four or five hours that night. Good for me. It makes me edgy. It makes me cranky. I had a phone conversation with former Province columnist Cookie Gilchrist this week where I believe I set a land-speed record for cuss words. I'm not usually so foul mouthed. I don't like it. I'm trying to slow my mind down and take a breath before talking, in a bid to keep from embarrassing myself and especially Carol-Ann. I was on a heavy course of steroids during that first cancer occurrence with the tumour in my back in 2010-11, and I was similar, much to my chagrin. It got better when I could start to get in the swimming pool and wearing out some of the ornery energy. Right now, I have 24 staples in my left leg from the stabilizing rod they implanted in a surgery two Wednesdays ago, and I see the surgeon on Tuesday in hopes of getting them out. That should help. I hope. Carol-Ann probably hopes even more. She continues to captain our little Crush team with grace and courage. I punted well past my coverage. I know it. I do feel better than I felt in 2010-11, when I was hospitalized for six months. I need to keep that in mind. I'm actually trying to work a little. It's helpful to the newspaper at this stage. Bluntly, it's mostly me being selfish, trying to give my mind something else to think about. With chemo, infection is a major concern, so I'm trying to stay out of public places for all but short stretches, so I'm doing stuff over the phone. It's hard. Stupid hard. I wanted to cover the high school girls basketball provincials last week. I didn't get out of the hospital until Friday and I wasn't nearly mobile enough to go to Saturday's finale. I've thought about going to the boys basketball provincials this week but I don't know if that's a good plan for me health wise. I feel rotten about it, though. With the way things are going in the newspaper business, we've hardly been able to give the two tournaments any coverage. In case you missed it, the parent company to the Province and Sun announced Friday that they wanted to lay off 54 people from the Vancouver products, including 29 from the editorial department. It's crazy. I'm still not emotionally over Jim Jamieson and Gord McIntyre being transferred out of sports to news a few years ago. Jim's retired now. He took a buyout. We lost another 20-plus people in the past few months to buyouts, including sports editor Jonathan McDonald, soccer reporter Marc Weber and high school/university reporter Howard Tsumura. Howard hired me at the NOW Newspaper in 1989. He loves newspapers more than anyone I've ever met. He was my first mentor. I helped Marc get hired. He was at our wedding. He took me to a radiation session back in 2010, he snuck into pre-op for one of eight operations during that first hospital stay. I talked to J-Mac often three or four times a day when he was my boss. Those guys love the business. The fact that they think it's time to try to something else kills me. It's so depressing. I'm still smitten with newspapers. I want to stay. I want to fight. I loved the Province and Sun as a kid. I ate them up. I grew up reading Tony Gallagher and Jim Taylor and Archie McDonald and Iain MacIntyre. (Shameless cheap shot at I-Mac, a current colleague who is only a few years older than I am.) I want to stay and fight for those guys. We've brought in some top-shelf young guys in the past few years, like Nick Eagland and Dan Fumano and Patrick Johnston. I want to stay and fight for them. I want to retire as a Province/Sun guy. That's my goal right now. I need to be realistic, though. I need another 20 years. The business may not last. I need to at least be open to other options. At the plus side, I'm not dwelling COMPLETELY on cancer. The next chemo is Tuesday. We'll see how that goes. My understanding is we've got three or four months of chemo, and then likely a stem cell transplant.