As you may know, I’m in the hospital. The chemo is done and modern medicine is doing its best to rescue me from cancer’s cure. Therein lies the rub… or more appropriately, the tub. In order to flush out my kidneys I’m on a near constant IV drip of fluids. Further, I’m on a regular diet; strongly encouraged to suck up as much of the wet stuff as I can.
Unfortunately, I…
The Rays game was on in the background as I fiddled with the trusty PowerBook. The Rays were down their customary 3-4 runs after 3 innings when I was finishing up the last entry.
Then I looked up and saw Greg Norton smack one over the fence, and my brain said, “that’s got ‘you’re such a big, strong bat… and I deserve a spanking’ written all over it. And…
In the last 24 hours I’ve had two phone conversations with my children.
Beth hasn’t been sleeping at night and needed another run down of all the drugs I’m taking, how they work, and why they’ll make me better.
Beth is a happy child; everyone usually says so.
So it broke my heart to hear the anxiety in her voice, and not be able to take it away.
Adam has been telling…
The Euros run more juice through their sockets, right?
No matter. Fact checking is for sissies (as they say on The Report).
The latest word from the good doctor is “wait,” as in, “we’re going to have to wait before we send you home.”
Here’s a few more words he used: “next,” “week,” “uncomfortable,” and the ever popular…
The other day, one of those “other days” which are now relegated to the blur of my defensive mind, I was exceedingly nauseous. I was having chills, my back was spasming, and I wanted relief. The good natured nurse came in to play twenty questions (she lost by the way), and I got her back out the door to fetch me the appropriate pharmaceutical relief. That relief came in the form of two…
I don’t much feel like typing, but I feel even less like talking… so here it is. My apologies to those of you who’ve called and I haven’t answered.
The fever is lingering, but so far the blood cultures have been negative – so it’s increasingly likely the fever is just a side effect of the chemo and not because of some opportunistic infection. My nausea has stuck…
I just wanted to close out this first evening in the hospital by congratulating a number of you on your exceedingly good taste in computers. The picture of my 20th Anniversary Mac got more views on Flickr in the first week than any of my other pictures.
Given the poorly concealed looks of contempt from our Windows network administrator at work, it’s nice to see some evidence that there are…
Around 4 a.m. this morning I woke up with nausea, a little dizziness, and a pounding headache. I took a quick check of my temperature, and it was 102 degrees (Fahrenheit… but you probably knew that… naturally ocurring boiling innards is pretty rare). My instructions from the oncologist were to call if I had a fever above 101, and luckily for me this qualified.
It’s now 15 hours…
Like many of my fellow vertebrates, I’m particularly protective of my head. It’s evolutionary my dear Watson.
Like many of my fellow sentients*, my behavior is not always perfectly consistent with my fears or beliefs. It’s what we call rationalization.
None of this has anything to do with what follows… I thought I’d tie it in somehow, but it didn’t pan out.
So I…
No, this is not an homage to Jim Henson’s famous muppet, although little Kermie was my favorite.
I don’t recall how it happened, but my wife got on Al Gore’s email list, and we’ve had the pleasure of some one-way correspondence ever since. I’m sure we didn’t do anything special to get on the list. The only qualification was probably an address… and…