Cancer

Sucks like an American vacuum plugged into a European power outlet

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…
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Cancer

Going Down

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…
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Cancer

Sunday Status

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…
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AppleComputer

Good Taste

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…
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Cancer

Setback

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…
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Wellbeing

Being stiff

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…
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CancerKitchen SinkPolitics

It’s not easy being green

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…
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CancerWellbeing

How do you spell “irritate?”

If my skin were a character on TV, it would have to be Archie Bunker. My skin is so irritable… oh who cares, we’ll just say it’s pretty fracking irritable and move on. It turns out my skin is particularly irritated by some bandages. “Elementary my dear simpleton,” you may be thinking, “it’s the latex.” Here’s the rub, bub. Several brands of…
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Politics

Gored

I really must get over myself with these corny titles… Anyhoo, most of my pre-chemo reading this evening has been on the un-candidacy of Al Gore. It started with a reference to the Time piece, and concluded with a piece from Politico.com. Here’s a little piece of the Politico.com article: Other Democrats note that Gore’s message, with its stinging indictment of both American…
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