The Plans for Tonight

Posted on by Brian

Well, it’s time for the End-of-Cancer present we’ve all been waiting for! Barb’s taking me into NYC today to see… The Colbert Report! If you have Comedy Central (11:30 EST people – get a nap today after work!), be sure and look for a bald guy if they happen to show a shot of the audience (it’s the Colbert Report. It happens.). Tonight we get to see Dr. Michael Novacek, dinosaur hunter – you know what that means: EVOLUTION DEBATE! YES! Al Franken’s supposed to be there too – sweeeeet.

You might have noticed I alluded to being bald. While I’ve had some hair grow back in since the stem cell transplant, what was there was short, fine and babyesque. I decided to shave off what I had in the hopes that stronger stuff might come out. Plus, it’ll make me easier to spot in the audience 🙂 It already feels like a good idea, ’cause my head feels a lot stubblier than it did when this stuff was growing back on its own. It looks slightly weird though, ’cause the stubble gives my head a sort of blue tint. Maybe that’s just what color it’s going to be growing back as.

No Wonder I’m All Sloshy

Posted on by Brian

So it’s time for me to go on another Doctor Quest. That is, a quest for doctors, not a father of an intrepid young explorer, his Indian friend and small dog. I’m getting ready to begin my quest for both a primary care doc (haven’t had one really since my cancer diagnosis) and a shrink. The ADD’s been getting pretty bad as of late, and I need someone who can tell me whether it’s that acting up or chemo brain. Or both. The fun never stops.

Since the shrink may very well prescribe meds for me, I gave my favorite Kathryn a call to see if she could make a list of all the different chemo regimens I’ve had. She was able to, and holy moly. Turns out, I’ve had sixteen unique chemo drugs in the past year. Even wound up having a few of them twice. How’s this for a list of ingredients:

  • ABVD: doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine
  • ICE: Ifosfamide, carboplatin, etoposide
  • No-name #1: Cisplatin, gemcitabine
  • No-name #2: Ifosfamide, gemcitabine, navelbine
  • British MOPP: Chlorambucil, vinblastine, Procarbazine, prednisone
  • BEAM: BCNU, etoposide, cytarabine, melphalan

Wow. That’s one thing about SuperCoop – he’s thorough. I was doing a bit of research on some of these and whenever there’s a family of chemo drugs with subsets, I’ve pretty much had one from each of the subsets. It’s all quite impressive when you lay it out on a big piece of paper. I would hate to be the doctor figuring out my drug interactions for the next couple of years.

The Most Important Video on the Internet

Posted on by Brian

Be sure you watch this video before you go to the voting booths on Tuesday! It could change your outlook on the whole politcal scene! Mom and Dad and others new to YouTube, click that play button to watch. Once I start videoing the squirrels, you’ll get used to doing this 🙂

Back to Work I Go

Posted on by Brian

Well, I did it – today was my first day back at work. That would be Day +122 for those of you keeping track of such things. I myself had to sit down with a pen and paper and do the figuring, so that number might not be right anyway.

Work went well. I’ve forgotten a lot of programming stuff, but I’m well underway in re-learning it all. I went up and down the stairs four times and was quite bushed when I got home tonight.

In other news (since I did no posting in the month of October – for shame!), we’ve rented out the Hartford house! They’re a nice young couple and love the house. So much so, that they’ve mentioned a couple of times that they really want to buy it when the lease is up in April. Cross your fingers that we have a mild winter so they won’t be freaked out by the gas bills. This came just in time for us, since we can now take the house back off the market and someone will be there to shovel the walks and keep the pipes from freezing. Plus, they’re covering most of our mortgage payment, which always helps.

Of course, the very day that the lease was signed and we got the first/last/deposit check, Barb’s check engine light came on. Then my airbag light went on. Barb’s car is gonna cost us $2600 to fix, and I’m pretty sure mine’s a short in the dashboard, as it does other weird things. For the truck, we’re doing research on trading it in and getting something that’ll be safer for me to drive in the winter. That’ll give me something else to write about out here, at least, right?

We had a moderate number of trick-or-treaters last night, with the best being our little next door neighbor. Her brother was dressed as Anakin and she was something furry (both near ten-ish). She asked Barb if Barb could guess her costume and after a little pause, perusal and a couple of spins, Barb asked “Are you a squirrel?” She was overjoyed, since in fact, she was a squirrel. Barb mentioned that squirrels were my favorite and how I take care of my little buddies. Turns out, they’re constantly feeding the little guys as well. No wonder we have such fat squirrels in our neighborhood!

One last sad Halloween note – I came very close last night to reporting some parents for child abuse. We had to return some pants I bought earlier in the day and around 7:30 the trick-or-treaters had slowed down to a trickle, so we went back to the store. When we get to the store, it was us, the employees and a family consisting of two parents and two kids, both within trick-or-treat age. Not only were the kids not dressed up for Halloween and out trick or treating, but they were in a clothing store SHOPPING FOR SHOES! Sure, if you have some wacked out religious beliefs, you can keep your kids from celebrating pagan holidays like Halloween, Easter and Christmas, but to instead take them shoe shopping? That’s just cruel and unusual.

Oh, and a quick website note – I’ve added some more warriors over to the Hodgkin’s Army list. If you’ve sent me your URL at some point, I probably have you added now. I’m going to make a resolution to start going through my backlogs of email and start replying to all of the people I didn’t get to reply to through the stem cell days and such. Better late than never, right? Right?