Bay City, Michigan, is getting art-wise. Several new galleries have opened since I moved to town four years ago. Twenty of my paintings are making their first appearance in the window of my favorite: A & J Gallery.

Wanting to put my fish paintings to good use and needing something new to offer the galleries and bookstores that carry my work, I've come up with a series of Fish Therapy Cards.

My local Hospice organization, where I am a volunteer, asked me to please do a mural on both sides of two 36 x 48 pieces of a folding foam-core display. I got kind of carried away.

I did so well during my radiation treatments that I didn't expect the exhaustion I have experienced in the two weeks that have followed.

It was a day of bead-making that lead--by mistake, really--to yesterday's polymer fish.

It's odd, not getting up at 6:30 every morning to go get fried. I'm now a cancer surviver, not a cancer patient. I'm celebrating, but I feel as if a large part of myself is still back there getting zapped.

Two days ago I underwent my last, and 33rd, radiation treatment. In all I received 173 blasts of radiation that--by my one-thousand two-thousand count--endured from one second to (for the last five "boosters" on the scar area) a scary twelve.

Straight Talk About Breast Cancer is not only my pick as the best book for a person newly diagnosed with breast cancer, but my choice as an indispensible aid for choosing among later, difficut options.

Yesterday, realizing I can't expect anyone to read my mind, I sent an SOS out to a few friends and one, conveniently two blocks away and on spring break from teaching, came over within the hour, entertained me extravagantly, and went nuts over my fish.

When I got home from my fourth booster blast today and went to change my sweater so the indelible ink used to mark the target wouldn't stain it, I noticed that my breast had suddenly shrunk. Why is this so upsetting to me?