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short version is i don't need surgery. whats left of my tumor is all scar tissue, like as not, so they're just gonna scan me frequently. it feels good to be done.
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Friday, February 16th, 2007
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i am fucking done. no more chemo.
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Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
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i don't feel bad... i just don't feel good. stomach is vaguely discontent (albeit fullish, which is a mild to moderate victory all things considered) and things ache with little reason.
i keep telling myself this isn't that bad, that i'm going to beat this, over and over again. when i get particularly cynical i look at my arm and laugh the way people laugh when bad things happen to them, and wonder at the yardstick i'm being drawn against in all this.
i am sufficiently strong to endure this trial. do i resent the complications? fuck yes. i'm doing chemo, i didn't need a bad tooth or having to shoot immune system boosters into my arm (oh yes, didn't i mention that one? more needles woo!) but these things will not knock me down. they just piss me off.
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Sunday, December 31st, 2006
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so i'm bald now. not sure how i feel about it. least my head isn't so itchy.
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Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
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So i'm through the first week of chemo. All last week i was in for four hours a day, getting the cisplatin and the etopicide. Each monday, the first day and yesterday, i got an injection of bleomycin as well. It takes four hours because cisplatin damages your kidneys if you don't... ahem... evacuate it as soon as possible.
Anyway, the first day was rough. The combination of all three drugs, plus it was the first time with bleo (which i'm told is by far the gnarliest), made for an unpleasant day. The subsequent days i felt, unsurprisingly, increasingly crappy. The nausea sucks but isn't real common. the biggest problem is managing my stomach. you got to eat, or you feel worse, but everything smells/tastes uninviting or worse. figuring out what to eat, when becomes a fairly constant concern. As far as the fatigue, i am getting a lot better. i'll feel okay, then suddenly get wiped out.
i went into work for the first time today, and did allright. i got almost to noon before my fatigue washed me out. Now i'm working from home, and feeling a bit better. Its nice to get out and act like a normal human being, do the things i did before i got sick. its nice to be invovled at work, and certainly nice to see how needed i am.
going forward, the next two weeks, i've got one more bleo injection on the 26th to look forward to, but otherwise i'm in recoup until after the new year, then the whole cycle starts again. it remains to be seen if the effects of the chemo will be cumulative, in which case each cycle will be rougher than the last. I'm told it varies person to person.
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Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
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long time no update, i get that.
i got the cancer again. or rather, the cancer i'd already gotten has come back. i've got a 2 cm mass on a lymph node in my lower right abdomen. I found out a week ago. i start chemo on monday.
it feels very sudden. i was laboring, for a couple days, under the impression i'd wake up at any second and thank the god i had been dreaming. it didn't last long. I've a bit too much pragmatism for that. now i'm in what i can only describe as a logical fugue. i'm doing fine, i'm processing all this data, i'm feeling positive, but i'm just not sure that its sunk all the way in.
i'm not in any significant danger. the cancer is one that responds very well to chemotherapy, and even tho i have to do four cycles (3 weeks a cycle) with the support drugs that are out there now, i shouldn't be too terribly uncomfortable. truthfully, i'm more worried about getting stuck with needles five days in a row.
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Tuesday, August 15th, 2006
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i have given tmobile the mighty punt.
new cell number is 415 686 7387
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anyone in SF wanna do me a favor and look in on my cat this weekend? i gotta wedding and my usual catsitter is off being too cool for school in florida.
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this is a real update, because i don't really need a fake testicle.
So whats new with me. Hrm. Been eliminating my old name, bit by bit. I've got a fair number of my friends at least trying. Pretty much the only place i hear it is at work anymore.
Work has been positively insane, but not in the normal way. the last few weeks have been all hurry up and wait, as i've had THREE projects delayed. That sucked. I'm keeping busy, but i'm also pretty ready to go back to having normal projects.
i've been taking sanskrit, which is freaking awesome. The place i take it is at this ashram in the mission. Let that phrase sit a minute. an ashram in the mission. now recall my not even remotely mild aversion to hippies. there ya go. now consider how impressive it is that i'm enjoying hanging out with hippies. thats how much fun sanskrit is.
not doing much beyond work these days. My always EXCITING personal life slowed down a fair bit since both elli and ashley are out of town, but the summer nears its end, and hopefully people will eventually come home and rescue my evenings from the television.
Health wise, i'm doing very well. I'm pretty much in full remission at this point. I'm on quarterly scans, which beats the shit out of monthly scans. My arms were getting sick of getting poked.
Speaking of arms, i'm waiting to get more tattoos. The new one on my arm is mostly healed, and so i'm already considering whats next. I've got designs in mind for three more, mostly my left arm and a bit on my chest. Should be fun. just a matter of funding at this point.
THERE BITCH! i updated. keep your plastic balls away from me.
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OH MY GOD UPDATE
only no.
no update.
HAH.
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Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
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the fact that i'm awake is insidiously disheartening. it bodes ill for tomorrow.
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Thursday, June 22nd, 2006
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1. showed off my new tattoo, which everyone agrees looks fucking badass
2. got a raise to 25 dollars an hour, totally out of the blue, which was very cool
3. flush with success from the first two, i elected to tell my dad about my name change, and was subsequently disowned.
awesome
i wish i could say it had or hadn't ruined my day. its hard to tell. mostly i'm just pissed at him, but i suspect that will fade.
fuck it. oh well.
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Wednesday, June 21st, 2006
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i'm seriously as bored now as i've ever been
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i'm stuck
i'm in this weird half inspired, half lazy state. i want to write, but i can never get going. i need to put myself into a better environment maybe? i dunno. its frustrating.
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HA
now that we've all had a good laugh
so i got my grades today, and miraculously, i didn't fail anything. point of fact, i got 3 As and a B. I'm particularly proud of the B, as it was in modern philosophy, which i was moderately sure i'd barely pass.
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anyone have any idea where to learn: sanskrit, latin, greek, or possibly tibetan? i find the prospect of three months without some sort of education a bit daunting, and i'd like some dead language to go with my dead white guy pontification
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A few brief (HA!) comments on hope and epistemological skepticism
Category: Religion and Philosophy
I've had hope on the brain lately, or more precisely the paradox of hope and occurance. Perhaps this paradox is unique to my own world's metaphysics, or perhaps its more universal. Thats where the skepticism comes in. i don't even have any certainty that other people exist outside of my perceptions of them (this isn't some sort of pathological arrogance, its just a philosophical view), much less if they inhabit worlds unique to themselves or if we all walk in one, but thats fairly besides the point.
i wanted to talk about hope, because i know nothing more dangerous.
Seymour talked about hope, but i'm not sure he'd approve of my take on it.
'Could you try not aiming so much?' he asked me, still standing there. 'If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck.' ...
'How can it be luck if I aim?' I said back to him.... He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. 'Because it will be,' he said. 'You'll be glad if you hit his marble - Ira's marble - won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it.'
Wanting something, someone, anything, anyone, is the most dangerous kind of hope, because its invites the opposite. As seymour would have it, you'd be happy when you got it or them, and thus there'd have to be quite a lot of accident in it. Perhaps its just my luck, but i've found that in such cases, hope doesn't just invite accident, it invites failure. To desire a thing is to ask to be dissapointed by the lack of it.
I think Beauvoir was close to this when she said, famously, "Love in the renunciation of possession". The fact that i think she was in pretty strong denial at the time, effectively making this a sarcastic statement, only adds to the perfection of this quote. Sartre was off boffing his american heiress, and left berefit of his presence, she wrote that her love was superior because she renounced her possession of the man. She understood the metaphysics of desire.
The desire for a thing necessarily increases the likelihood that you will not get it. the buddha would have said it simply increased the likelihood that you'll be upset when its gone. he understood suffering, but i don't think his world had quite as much capriciousness in it as mine does.
ive been thinking a lot about hope and desire lately. i wonder, and worry (lamentably) if trying to restrain ones hope, for the purpose of increasing ones chances of success, is self defeating. problematically, its a black box situaiton, ie the mechanics of it is concealed from me. if its some sort of law of interpersonal dynamics, and thus an external phenomenon, i'm inviting disaster. But if its an internal principle, some sort of psychological thing that i cannot remove but i can be aware of and work around, then perhaps i've got a chance.
to crib the aforementioned existentialists again, "les jeux sont faits". Loosely, "the chips are down". I've layed my bet. theres naught left to do, at this point, but hold to it.
postscript: this is seriously what goes on in my head. its no small wonder i'm not crazy.
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Wednesday, May 10th, 2006
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"There are some arenas so corrupt that the only clean acts possible are nihilistic."
"The personal, as every one's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here — it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL, well, fuck them. Make it personal."
"War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?"
"a preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one"
"In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don't, then the agenda-makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay."
"I have no excuses, least of all for God. Like all tyrants, he is not worthy of the spit you would waste on negotiations. The deal we have is infinitely simpler, I don't call him to account, and he extends me the same courtesy."
"Face the facts. Then act on them. It's the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it's harder than you'd think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts. Don't pray, don't wish, don't buy into centuries-old dogma and dead rhetoric. Don't give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked-up sense of . . . whatever. FACE THE FACTS. THEN act."
"They come to me with
Progress Reports
But all I see is change and bodies burnt;
They come to me with
Targets Achieved
But all I see is blood and chances lost;
They come to me with
Choral flicking approval of every thing I do
But all I see is cost."
The preceeding nuggets of wisdom courtesy the incomperable Quellcrist Falconer. The question becomes, whats weirder... that quellcrist falconer is a fictional character, or the content of the quotes?
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Wednesday, April 26th, 2006
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today, on my way to work, i ran into my landlord in the lobby. we talked about greek again, as we typically do when i run into him, but since my semester is finally ending, i'm gonna have the time to persue it. he's of the opinion that the way to start is with pronunciation, and to demonstrate, he recited a passage from the illiad (some of ajax's lines, which are good), with such vigour and pomposity...
i already liked my landlord, but his enthusiasm. its hard to describe, but its encouraging. he even took a moment to clear his throat and compose himself before he began reciting. it was great.
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Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
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i wasn't keeping track, but at some point recently eating became more hassle than pleasure. it isn't about cooking or bad food, lamentably, but simply that i can't eat a meal anymore without feeling sick afterword.
truth be told, this has been both good and bad, in that i find myself becoming somewhat indifferent to that state of my stomach.
anyway, thats my news. my stomach hates me.
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