Early last week, Randy Pausch responded to e-mail questions on how he was feeling. He had been hospitalized in mid-March to remove fluid from his lungs, after his chemotherapy treatment had affected his kidneys and heart.

This is what he had to say:

Q: How are you feeling right now?

A: I'm mostly focused on my physical recovery, which is happening, slowly but surely. It's really annoyingly slow, but I hope to be back on the [exercise] bike in seven-10 days. I suspect the first rides will be short.

Q: Are you planning to resume chemotherapy, or do you plan instead to try other therapies you've mentioned on your Web site?

A: We're investigating that hard right now. Default thinking is a liver-specific treatment for the next month or so. There's some sketchy evidence that the cancer may have spread to a few small spots outside the liver, but we can't tell for sure. In any event, the stuff in the liver is established and larger (biggest tumor is about an inch in diameter), so hitting the liver now makes sense. I'm not yet strong enough for systemwide chemo, but when I am, I'm sure we'll return to that.

Q: Is there a schedule yet for the TheraSphere treatment [which would infuse his liver with irradiated glass beads]? Can this be done on some kind of outpatient basis?

A: It might mean a night in the hospital for observation, but yeah, it's basically outpatient. It's much less tough on the body than the chemo options would be, because it's isolated to the liver. I plan to visit the doctors for evaluation this coming week, then there's a brief delay [while the glass spheres] are custom-created and shipped from Australia.

Q: On the work [at the TGen Laboratory in Arizona], I understand they will explore treatments that may work on samples of your tumor in the lab. Any details on that?

A: That will take a week or so for us to get any data. Basically, they try to identify which chemo agents might work best on my specific tumor. Unfortunately, their results tend to be more like "this one is more likely," than "this one will work," But at least we're getting as much information as we can.

Q: How have the kids reacted to your being in bed? What have you told them so far?

A: The experts have continued to counsel us that until I look sick (jaundiced, vomiting, whatever), we should not tell the kids. Amazingly, they don't seem to think it's at all strange that I'm in bed so much.

Partly that's because there's an "out of sight, out of mind" thing; I'm usually off in my bedroom with the door closed, so they don't see me "in bed" concretely. And I've spent as much of every day playing with them as energy allows, so they still see me every day, just in short bursts.

Q: What lies ahead for you in the immediate future?

A: The doctors are working overtime to both get me stronger, and to pursue the next lines of treatment. No going gently into any good nights here!

Best wishes,

Randy