I hope you and yours have (had) a great Christmas. I hope nothing was delayed, but if it was, this may be the reason:
This may be another:
Not just another Stumbling Blog.
25
Dec
I hope you and yours have (had) a great Christmas. I hope nothing was delayed, but if it was, this may be the reason:
This may be another:
Tags: Christmas
23
Dec
…well today. I was originally told my hair would fall out 15-17 days after my first chemo treatment. Today is day 16. My hair loss is nothing if not punctual. I have always said, “I would rather have my hair turn gray than turn loose.” Well, it has turned loose. (with some chemical help) Boy, did it turn loose. I was pulling it out by the fistfuls today. It did not even hurt, just came right on out. I even thought about sprinkling some on my lunch just to get a free lunch, but thought otherwise. Debbi noticed a few new bald spots when I got home from work, so I broke out the clippers. I am not really interested in the ‘mange’ look.
The first thing I trimmed was any and all facial hair. Yep, that hair was loose too. I then ran the clippers across my head with the #1 attachment. Debbi helped me get the back and the left side. The bald spots were still pretty noticeable, and not looking too good. I took off the attachment and scalped myself. Once again, Debbi helped with the back and left side. What hair I have left is about 1/32” long. The bald spots are there, but do not look too bad. Now I can go out in public and not look too mangy. The stubble that I have will fall out in the next couple days, I have just helped it along and made it better looking. The final act was to blade shave my face, so it truly is smooth. Pics to follow shortly.
Tags: bald, cancer, chemotherapy
19
Dec
Chemo. Now there’s a fun word. Lemme tell ya about it.
First off, it could have certainly been worse, much worse. That being said, it could have been better too. Here are some of the highlights, and lowlights of chemo:
Overall Grade: C Chemo could certainly be better. It could also be much worse. The only fear (is fear itself) is what the cumulative effects are. If this is as bad as it gets, then the doctors are right. This is the cancer you want to get.
Tags: cancer, chemotherapy
15
Dec
Today was my first day back at work following chemo. I have been dreading this day just because of the toll it would have on me. Chemo could have certainly been worse on me, but it does have an effect. I am tired, worn out, beat down and sort of walking in a fog. That is not exactly the condition to be in for work. That being said, I plodded off to work this morning and arrived at about my usual time. I have a good view of my desk area from the employee entrance. I noticed a purple balloon at my desk. I thought that was nice. Purple is the awareness color for Hodgkin’s Disease. (For those of you who don’t know) I got to my desk and saw it had a card attached to it. Upon opening the card, four purple wristbands fell out. One for each member of my family. I bought two wristbands during my last MD Anderson trip, but Debbi’s broke Sunday night. That is perfect timing. I was almost brought to tears at the the thought that they put into this. I do not recall the exact words on the card, but it certainly was full of support. I later learned that there will be a shipment this week of more bands for just about anyone who wants one. My guess is in the neighborhood of 200 or so! Okay, now I really am about to cry. There will be enough bands for anyone at work who wants one with enough left over for me to hand out to friends at church and such. I was (am?) completely floored by this. Many thanks to the people that pulled this off.
Tags: cancer, chemotherapy, SHW
8
Dec
That line from Top Gun rings true today. I have joined the ranks of people who have intentionally let their doctors poison them. Yea! Treatment has started, and then came to an abrupt halt. I’ll fill in that portion later.
Last night I made a list of stuff that I would need for treatment today. I was prepared to be there all day, as I was told. I had my laptop from work, several DVD’s, portable hard drive with more movies, ipod, magazines, books, my chemo blanket…I was set. We loaded up and left a tad late and showed up more than a tad late, but 15 minutes was not a big deal to them.Â
continue reading "“I’ll have what he’s having, hemlock is it?”"
Tags: chemotherapy, Lymphomaniac
7
Dec
This is the last of the South Beach updates for awhile. We are in transition from the South Beach Diet to the chemotherapy diet. I should be on the chemo diet for somewhere between 4 – 6 months. If I still need to lose weight after that, I will go back onto the South Beach Diet. I do not know how chemo will effect me. I will no a little bit more 24 hours from now. I should know a whole lot more 72 hours from now. I lost a total of 30 pounds on South Beach, which I am very pleased with. The new clothes that I am buying are four inches smaller in the waist. I have gained back 6 – 8 pounds the last couple months due to travel, apathy, cancer etc. So, my original goal was to lose 56 pounds, the new goal is about 32 more pounds or so. I am sure I can reach it, I just need to be diligent in my pursuit of that goal. Chemo has been such a wildcard that I have backed off of a proper South Beach Diet. Chemo update Number One will be tomorrow, if I am feeling up to it.
Tags: chemotherapy, South Beach
2
Dec
“I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life, as it has been, is over. From this time forward, you will service us.” Jean-Luc Picard as Locutus, Star Trek TNG
Today was assimilation day. I took the second step to becoming Borg. Step one was having lasers reshape my corneas over eight years ago. We had a little communication error and left a tad late. I was a tad stressed. Traffic was not good and we had to re-route due to a wreck on the Tollway. We showed up about seven minutes late. That is not too bad. I was pretty happy with it actually. The first half hour was just hospital check in and insurance type stuff.Â
continue reading "Resistance is Futile…."
30
Nov
What do you get when you cross the apathy diet, the coping diet, and Thanksgiving? Weight gain. How much? Enough. The chemo diet had better pull me through….Yikes! I get the port installed on Teusday and first treatment the following Monday.
Tags: South Beach
29
Nov
Yes, this South Beach update is six days late. Ask me if I care. The beachhead is secure, the front is miles away. So business at the beachhead is normal. We don’t war here, we just plan wars. So my plan is to rely on chemotherapy to help fight this battle. It may not complete the battle, but I expect it do the Yoeman’s share of the fighting. Some might say I have fallen off the wagon. My respnse is, “What wagon? Is there a wagon around here?” My focus is on other areas right now, the diet has been thrown under the bus and that is the way it will be for a while. I use to be apathetic, but now I just don’t care.
Tags: chemotherapy, South Beach
29
Nov
Well, maybe not Lazarus, but my server has come back from the dead. After two trips to CompUSA and one trip to Fry’s, the server is back in service. While I did have a hard drive fail, the fix was not as simple as replacing a hard drive. That is the way I started. I put a little bit of thought into server design and what that means for future expansion. It also meant a complete wipe of the good drive and a complete reinstall of Windows Home Server. I now have a smaller 160 GB, but dedicated, drive for the OS. I will eventually have two 500 GB drive for the storage pool. Right now it is just one drive. I will add the second once I get it back from Seagate. This will leave two bays, and SATA ports, for expansion. I had originally filled thosw with two new 500 GB drives. That was CompUSA trip one. Once I knew my data was lost I started rethinking the design of the server. I had a greater understanding of how WHS worked and decided it was best to have a smaller IDE drive for the OS. That was CompUSA trip number two. That would leave all four SATA ports to be part of the storage pool. Two of those are initially filled. The last two are expansion as I fill up the server. Those drive will most likely be 1 TB drives, but time will tell. The Fry’s trip was to get a converter to hook up the drive via a USB port. It is a very handy tool that has already been used several times. I will need to return to CompUSA a third time to return the first two drives I bought there. Sorry guys. I plan of getting a KVM switch while I am there too. I had a spare keyboard and mouse for the server diagnostics, but I did not have a spare monitor. Next time it will not matter. I will have the switch.
The local computers are now attached to the server and have been backed up. That is the most important thing. getting the computers backed up. Everything else is just gravy.
I should have a lot of time on my hands pretty soon. I plan on delving more into the WHS OS, taking online courses at the University of Phoenix, passing my MCSE, solving the Arab – Isreali conflict, and the energy crisis too. Afer doing all that I’ll see if I can manage to paint a couple rooms in the house, finish painting Crisana’s furniture, and a few other odd jobs Debbi has in store. I think we better start picking colors soon.
Speed, cost, accuracy. Choose two.
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