Cancer Update5/7/2005
The pathology results finally arrived on Thursday just in time for my
appointment. Apparently I was a complicated case and they had a lot of
difficulty getting the results, because I didn't have just one kind of
tumor but a "mixed tumor" with several different kinds of cancer cells.
This is apparently not uncommon and doesn't affect my chances of
recovery, but it does change the next step.
Instead of radiation, they slice me open again - much more invasively, this time - and take out my lymph nodes.
Apparently based on my CAT and blood test results there's a 70% chance
that they won't find anything, in which case that's all that needs to
be done. The next most likely scenario is that they find a few nodes
with cancer, but not many, in which case they still don't have to do
anything else.
If they find a lot of cancer, though, then I probably need chemo.
I'm trying to see this as a good thing. Instead of definitely having radiation, and definitely
having to cope with feeling like crap for a couple of months and still
having to function normally, this way I get to recover from the surgery
for a couple of weeks without any other demands on me, and then
hopefully everything's over and done with.
The only cloud in this happy picture is the possibility that they'll
find a lot of cancer and it won't be over and done with at all.
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A traditional chant5/1/2005
Ten points[1] to the first person to identify the source of this piece of traditional poetry...
Teegul teegul eeya ka,
Awi awa ahdi ah;
Ubba ubba ahdi aye,
Ahdi ahdi idi aye,
Teegul teegul eeya ka:
Awi awa ahdi ah!
[1] And points mean prizes![2]
[2] No actual prizes offered. Additional restrictions apply, call for important lease details.
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Movies5/1/2005
Still not king!
Yes, I've finally achieved one-third of one of the items on my list of
things I wanted to do while recovering - I watched Return of the King
Extended Edition last night. I was struck by the similarity between
Minas Tirith and the monastery from Syberia II. Other than that and the
fact that I've given up on the idea of finding 11 consecutive hours to
watch all three extended editions in succession, I found the movie
suitably impressive, epic and enjoyable. But you all knew that because
anyone (except Janene) reading this blog has probably seen it at least
3 times by now.
(Janene, on the other hand, referred to it as "sci fi"...)
I also watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was an
interesting movie with a rather disturbing premise - that it's possible
to completely erase someone from a person's memory, and that a company
set up a business offering exactly that service to people who have just
broken up. I was surprised by just how much of the movie took place
inside the protaganist's mind, but it worked pretty well. I think it
might have worked better if it hadn't been obvious quite so early how
the scenes shown at the start of the movie fitted in to the overall
timeline. I also was ambivalent about the ending - it didn't really
resolve the outcome to my satisfaction. Overall, though, I liked it.
Switching from movies to TV, my new favorite show is Andromeda.
Interesting characters, ongoing mysteries, lots of butt-kicking, but
all done with lots of humor and verbal sparring. Particularly memorable
moments recently have involved the characters of Doyle and Rommie, who
are both androids and tend to get on each other's nerves for treading
on each other's turf. Examples include "Well, that's the bot calling
the metal black", and, upon being faced with a large number of
intruders, a sequence like this:
(hand wave) "We are not the droids you're looking for."
"What the heck was that?"
"I don't know, but it didn't work..."
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