619 days, 20 hours, 3 minutes, 41 seconds

April 3, 2007: A woman suffering from a debilitating migraine headache who was mistakenly arrested for drunken driving has agreed to accept $1,500 to drop her lawsuit against the Portland police. She was driving home from Thanksgiving dinner with friends in 2004 when she suffered a migraine so severe it forced her to pull over and vomit.

619 days, 20 hours, 28 minutes, 49 seconds

He's getting too old for this, she recalls him saying. Every six months or so she'd get in the car and head for New York on a book-buying trip. She'd been high on Ritalin, some tranquillizers from the night before still in her system. And three times out of four she'd have an accident driving home, and her father would have to drive out late at night to rescue her. Too old for this. And indeed he seemed old. He turned 52 a week after she moved to the city.

619 days, 20 hours, 30 minutes, 25 seconds

Last Sunday, over dinner, her father talked about how awful it was leaving her in that hotel in New York. And then how he had to drive back up the next day to move her to a different hotel because the first was full of prostitutes. She tells him he's got it wrong. He took her to one hotel. And it was three or four months later when the prostitute was murdered in the room next door to hers. She'd been in Atlantic City for the weekend, and they'd driven her back. The little old woman on the other side of the hall, the one she shared a bath with, came out to give her the news. And she stayed in that hotel another month before finding an apartment.

619 days, 20 hours, 45 minutes, 32 seconds

Peru, Indiana: April 23, 2007: An 11-year-old girl stopped a van that went out of control when her diabetic mother became ill, police said. Besides stopping the van, Abigail kept her mother and 8-year-old brother calm and informed paramedics about her mother's condition. Deborah Parker, 36, of Muncie, who had been driving, was unaware of her surroundings. She was treated for low blood sugar. Abigail told police her mother had started driving erratically at about 80 mph. The girl said she climbed from the rear seat of the van onto the woman's lap and managed to stop the vehicle before calling 911.

619 days, 21 hours, 11 minutes, 21.4 seconds

It was 11 nights ago, driving home from Brooklyn. She'd had a bad headache all day. Her husband was beside her in the car. Up 6th St., left on Flatbush, over the Manhattan Bridge, somehow up to Houston St., then Bedford, then what she thought was Hudson, what she thought was 8th, the meat market, some torn up street (her husband ask where she's going ), what she thought was 8th, over on 14th St., east which she thought was west, the cops' lights behind her. One cop approaching each side of the car. Did she do something wrong? No, they pulled her over because she was weaving in and out of lanes. Is she okay? She's fine, she says. It was just that blinding headache, she didn't say, pulling out more slowly, heading up 6th Ave., trying to concentrate. She thought it was nothing more than a simple, if constant, headache. Later she'd admit she was in denial. Or weaving in and out.

619 days, 23 hours, 33 minutes, 54 seconds

Her husband imagines there will be another day-to-day photo sequence, much like the one she shot when the second cancer was diagnosed, when she realized all her writing would be maudlin. Day after day, from the diagnosis until she opted against blowing all the radiation on one minuscule area, she walked the streets every day, taking sometimes as many as 200 pictures. From which she selected only one a day. To get outside herself. Seeing more of her neighborhood than she'd ever imagined. But no, she says. No photo sequence this time. Her head's splitting. Even seeing some photo she needs as she walks along, it's all she can do to squint through that little hole. Whole.

619 days, 23 hours, 55 minutes, 21,7 seconds

Another picture, this from today's news. It's a hair dress that model's' wearing. A Croatian company has made it from 165 feet of blonde human hair. She modeled the dress at a fashion show in Zagreb, stunning crowds when she appeared on the catwalk.

But she's a long way from Croatia.

It reminds her of those medieval Catholic penitents going about in their hair shirts. For God's glory, Praised-be-His-Name. Blessed be He who created me according to His will.

She's thinking of getting in touch with a Buddhist shrink. Someone a balding friend knows.

621 days, 0 hours, 13 minutes, 36 seconds

Meet Hairy, the hot pink headache ball. Squishy, cooling sometimes, fun to pillow her head and let it roll out from under her. Now meet Hairy's flowers, a gift that same day, losing shape and color now. If she ever enters another contest on migraine art, she thinks to use this picture. The drooping, heavy head. The funny Hairy the Headache ball. Two gifts the same day from her Yoga teacher. It was, of course, when they just assumed the Botox wasn't working. Or the sinus infection. She bends down and picks a small pink rubber strip off her grandmother's soothing rug. Hairy's going to lose all his hair, she says.

620 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes, 10.9 seconds

This is so good you could die, he says, waxing poetic over a Blimpie this time, probably from a rat-infested back room. She tells him that's not a good comparison right now. He says he realized that as he was saying it.

620 days, 11 hours, 56 minutes, 53 seconds

Walking into the neurologist's office yesterday, she detected a faint sweet smell, as of flowers or air freshener (she didn't see any flowers). And she almost said how this often triggered headaches, and how surprised she was to find it there. But by that time she was seated in the low recliner and the doctor had started talking.

620 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes, 20.2 seconds

1995. A formerly close friend, living in Wyoming, developed cancer that quickly spread throughout his body. He left his wife. As he put it, he'd been caring for her (she had MS) for years, not out of love but out of duty. And before that, his marriage at a standstill, he couldn't bear being away from his children. He always thought at some later point there'd be time for himself. But the cancer pushed that point. Another two or three years, they said. He lasted more like eight years. He married his lover, spent their honeymoon at the Casper Hospital. But what sticks out most in her mind is an email he wrote about his mother coming to visit, and how distraught she was at the prospect that her son would die before she did.

620 days, 12 hours, 49 minutes, 43 seconds

At this moment she'd sell her soul for Bush's brain.

620 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, 21.5 seconds

She takes her wedding ring off before going to bed. She puts her ring back on.

620 days, 23 hours, 11 minutes, 6.7 seconds

First it was: will this computer last until there's a new president? Then it was: will either or both of their fathers die while she's writing this blog? At the moment none of that matters.

620 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes, 32 seconds

Yesterday's news: Misdiagnosed man seeks compensation. John Brandrick, 62, was told two years ago that he had terminal pancreatic cancer. He decided to spend his remaining time in style, quitting his job and spending his savings on hotels, restaurants and holidays. A year later doctors reversed their diagnosis. He was suffering from pancreatitis, a non-fatal ailment. Meanwhile he'd spent everything.

621 days, 0 hours, 3 minutes, 6 seconds

The question is who to tell, who not to tell. And who the hell reads this blog. Because the political IS personal, she said at the start. She just had no idea how personal it might become less than six months later. Her husband insists she owes him another twenty years. Her husband buys her dinner. Her husband asks if she can see any reason why she's gotten cancer three times now, and she gives the answer she gave before: all those chemicals in the back of her father's trucks, then her father's car. Sure, he was exposed to them much more than she was, but she was an infant, they were in her system before she had defenses. And this time he doesn't contradict her. Try not to blame your father, he says instead.

621 days, 0 hours, 13 minutes, 36 seconds

Lesions. Metastatic. Cancer. Two lesions, both small, one swollen. It's taken her ten hours to write these words. But writing doesn't make it true. It's early yet. More doctors. More tests. Her neurologist's out of the country until Monday, this was his assistant who got the report, a woman who's worked with brain cancer patients. A very young, warm doctor, but she might have come to this through what she knows already. She starts a steroid to lessen the headaches, and maybe shrink the swelling. She goes back on Glucophage to counteract the steroid. Chances are the Botox wasn't enough this time, lesions this small shouldn't have caused this sort of pain. So, once again, she lucked out. But the headache's still there. And even the newest Tylenol's sugar-coated.

621 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes, 29 seconds

I might have a brain tumor, you know, she says, home from her MRI, as he crawls into bed behind her. No, he says, you'd need to have a brain. How did he know? Tonight she rediscovered the "Give Bush a Brain" game. One time she managed to drop in seven brains, but most games only two or three. Even Dubyah wouldn't have any trouble matching that score, the final screen taunts. Bully! Still, it was fun for awhile.

622 days, 13 hours, 6 minutes, 2.4 seconds

She tries out the Day of Death clock for her father. Born September 7, 1916. Neither optimistic or pessimistic: Normal. Body mass index below normal. Never smoked. His time has already expired. He should have died Tuesday, June 19, 1990. Less than three months after they married. When her mother was still alive. When his mind was still sharp. She could go through a hundred Whens. They mean nothing.

622 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes, 32 seconds

A red letter day. Not only one intelligent person at Duane Reade, but three: the clerk who didn't try to argue, just passed it over to the pharmacist; the first pharmacist who saw sixty pills wouldn't fit in that small bottle but turned it over to her supervisor; the supervisor who didn't ask any questions, just gave her another thirty pills. And here she'd brought her husband along to defend her. He's sorry now he yelled at the repairman. Mostly, he says, it was a language problem.