I Can Go to Sleep Now

Posted on by Brian

Ahhh… looks like everything’s all sorted out. Like I said, there’ll be some more tweak and changes and refinement to the site once I decide what else and where else I’m putting things. Consider this the alpha version of the site design. I would’ve waited until I was completely done, but I couldn’t take those round corners any longer. Now we’re back to sharp and pointy and I can relax for a day or two.

Speaking of relaxing, tomorrow morning is my PET Scan to see how the cisplatin/gemzar combo did. Then later in the afternoon I get my weekly bloodwork to see if I can have my wisdom tooth extracted on Thursday.

Yay me.

Slowly Going Insane

Posted on by Brian

So I’ve been working a bit on the site design today, as well as getting Barb’s site up and running where she can get back to posting things too. I gave up on coding everything with the new site’s design and made do with hacking and slashing through the default template’s code until I got what I wanted to see. You’ll notice that the site still looks the same. That’s because something wonky’s happening with my webhost right now and it’s driving me insane. I have the new design ready (well, the bones of it – it still needs a LOT of refinement), but I can’t get it uploaded right now for multiple reasons. Plus, I’m looking to do some domain name switching around so there’s that little headache I’ve given myself too. Whee.

Percolating Dendrites

Posted on by Brian

Well, today was another blah sort of day. The Power of Neulasta is wearing off, so I don’t feel as sore and achy (yesterday was back to old-school Neulasta – feeling like I’d been beaten by a sack of potatoes). Today I primarily felt sleepy tired, which I’m guessing is probably due to lack of caffeine. You see, I take my caffeine in Coca-Cola form and something about the chemo working on my tastebuds is not compatible with Coca-Cola. Sometimes if I get my Coke from a 2 liter bottle the taste thing isn’t quite so bad, so I think it might be more of a carbonation issue than a specific Coke issue. Either way, my ass is draggin’.

Aside from the whole tired thing, parts of my brain seem to be waking up again. I’ve been coming up with some good coding/design ideas for the new site, though the tiredness makes me feel so blah that I don’t have the energy or focus to try to implement any of them. At least I’m coming up with ideas of some kind. That’s a welcome change from the stupor. Now if I can just get over the “staring at the blank screen” syndrome, I’ll be fine.

One thing I did today was change how my RSS feeds are picked up. I’ve noticed that a couple of people seem to be reading the site that way, so if you are, you might want to change the RSS URL. If you don’t understand what I just said, don’t worry – it’s a geek thing. If you’re one of my RSS’ers, the new RSS feed link is through feedburner. You can still use the old feed link for now, but once the site starts changing, the old link’s not going to work any longer. Probably. You know, while I’m typing this, I think I might go ahead and put a feed button over there on the right. Look at me being proactive.

The Root Canal of All Evil

Posted on by Brian

Well, after an exceedingly crappy day, I got the verdict on my tooth problems. The old root canal appears to be just fine and while the cavity that was drilled and filled was pretty deep, the endodontist says it should be fine for now. Later on we might need to do something about it if it starts to bother me, but it will get me through the whole stem cell thing.

So where’s all of this pain coming from? It’s the wisdom tooth! The back part of the tooth is chewed up pretty bad and the doc says it’ll be better to just yank it rather than spend the time, pain and money on root canaling it. Plus, between the way the tooth sits in my jaw and the way the decay is, it would be very difficult to do the filling/crown part. The cavity is in the back part of the tooth, so there’s nothing to build against.

Now comes the fun part. Apparently a wisdom tooth extraction is a big deal in the best of circumstances. When you have cancer and you’re going through chemo and you’re about to have your immune system taken offline, it seems to get trickier. The endodontist (Dr. G) I saw was really awesome (I’ve been having great luck with doctors ever since I got cancer. Go figure.) and wants to get this done as soon as possible so I won’t be in pain any longer than necessary and so I can be all healed when I get to the Big Chemo. We have to wait on my bloodwork to come back in line, though. Remember the white blood cell issues? So Monday I’ll be having my usual bloodwork to see where we stand (later in the afternoon, since my PET scan is in the morning).

So Dr. G gets her office to call the oral surgeon to set something up for me on Tuesday. Tell people you have cancer and things get done, lemme tell you. They say they want to bring me in for a consultation because of my medical condition. She tells them they do NOT need to do a consultation because SHE knows it needs to come out and THEY just need to get off their butts and DO IT because we have a special patient here who needs this done NOW!

Well, not now, but after my bloodwork is done. See why I like this doctor?

So they set up an appointment for Thursday morning for the extraction, depending on what the bloodwork on Monday shows. This throws Dr. G into another tizzy. “If you’re getting the bloodwork on MONDAY you need to be seen on TUESDAY! We don’t know what could happen to your levels between Monday and THURSDAY!” When I left, she was going to have a personal chat with one of the oral surgeons once they got back from wherever they were. She’s going to make sure they understand the time pressure, the pain pressure, and…

THE DR. G PRESSURE!!!!

Time Flies When You’re Asleep

Posted on by Brian 2 Comments

Wow, what a week. All told, from Wednesday through Thursday, I think I was awake for 12-15 hours. Saturday wasn’t much better, though I think it was the first day I was awake more than I was asleep. Sunday we had Bev’s birthday over here at the house and I did pretty well all day, moving from one chair to another. About fifteen minutes before people started getting ready to leave, I just crashed. I was sitting in front of the fireplace and every ounce of strength went out of me. I don’t know if it was obvious enough to cause everyone to leave or if they had just decided it was time on their own. Either way, I discovered that when I hit my limits, it’s like a wall.

My bloodwork was bad on Monday. The white blood count was kind of low, but the AMC (the number of the cells that actually fight the infections) was in the basement. They wanted to see 1500. I had 500. At first, they weren’t going to give me the treatment, but they knew I would be getting Neulasta today, so they went ahead and gave me a lowered dosage of the gemzar. Whatever it takes to keep the treatments going.

Today was a much better day – still really tired, but I stayed awake. I can feel myself crashing, though. It’s not happening just yet, but it feels like it’s a few minutes away. Time to limp over to the bed before it hits, I suppose.

C’mon Devils…

Posted on by Brian

So I’m watching the Devils/Flyers game tonight, and during one of the intermissions they start talking about the rest of the Devils’ schedule (a word that I just had to retype three times). As they’re going through the dates it hit me – aside from being immunodepressed (a word I typed only once) and reeling from the heavy, big-time chemo, I’m going to miss a lot of the playoffs. Most of the initial rounds aren’t going to be on the regular stations and I’m going to be locked away in a hospital or hotel room for most, if not all, of the run to the Stanley Cup. This blows.

Great quote from between periods. Matt is interviewing Peter Forsberg and asked him that since he’s such a highly skilled and awesome player, what skill does he have that no one ever points out. Forsberg just grins at him and says “I think I’m pretty overrated, to be honest with you.” Why’d he have to become a Flyer?

On the cancer front, today was an extraordinarily crappy day. I slept pretty much right up until 7:00 tonight, with brief moments of lucidity and getting up to go to the bathroom. Luckily I did wake up at 7, ’cause that gave me 30 minutes to make it from the second floor to the third to watch the Devils.

I made it with two minutes to spare.

The Whole Tooth and Nothing But

Posted on by Brian

Well, I’m back from the dentist. I talked over the tooth situation with Dr. D yesterday before my treatment and he said my counts looked good enough to go in and see about some drillin’ and fillin’. My dentist was named Dr. Paul, which is quite deceiving as Dr. Paul is neither a hairdresser nor a man. Picture Charlotte from Sex and the City (the one with the brown hair and big eyes). Same kind of look, same kind of attitude. Really apologetic any time she was about to hurt me. And hurt me she did! Well, no more than a usual dentist. She’s couldn’t tell definitively if there was an infection brewing at the site of my old root canal (where the pain seems to be coming from), but there was a cavity between that tooth and the one behind it. She went ahead and drilled and filled there and on the front of my two front teeth, which were looking a little bad. She also suggested that when my counts are really good, I come back for a cleaning and to extract a wisdom tooth that’s looking pretty bad. Both of those can hold for a bit, but she thinks it would be good to get them taken care of before I get hit with the hard chemo. I’ll be discussing with the cancer docs to get the recommendation.

Here’s something I really hate about the chemo – it’s really starting to affect my brain. Part of it is just typos. Everywhere. I’m sure you can look back a few days and spot many, ’cause I haven’t gone back to look. Some of these are due to stumble fingers, others I have no idea where they come from. I was writing an email to Barb the other day where I typed the phrase “it’s one of his buddies.” I looked up at the screen to see “it’s then of his buddies.” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Other times, it’s hard to make the words come in out any proper order. I’ll start typing a sentence and I’ll get about halfway through and realize it makes no sense whatsoever. You people are probably used to this from my emails and my various posts, but it’s new to me.

For the most part, it was just typing that was bothering me. Now it’s leaching into the real world. I stopped by CVS to pick up my next batch of meds and decided to get some 8 hour Tylenol since I’ve been hitting it pretty hard as of late. I look at the shelf, going through the bewildering array of Tylenols until I get to the 8 hour section. I look back and forth through the different quantities until I found the one with the most (I mean seriously, 24 pills? What can I do with that?). I looked at it, saw it was 8 hour, picked it up off the shelf. I get home, open the box, open the bottle. “Hmmm. These look different.” I look at the bottle. Extra Strength Tylenol. Son of a… How could they screw up and put the wrong bottle in the right box? I check the box. Extra Strength Tylenol. Crapola.

So now I’m getting Barb to pick some up on her way home and I’m not going to shop by myself anymore. Here’s hoping the brain cloud takes care of itself before I have to go jump in a volcano.

And I didn’t keep exact track, but I would say I’ve retyped a minimum of 50 words in this post, some more than once. Chemo sucks.

It’s Always Something

Posted on by Brian

So here’s a bit of fun: I have a toothache. Actually, I’ve had it since last week and I’ve been trying to muscle through it with Tylenol. You see, when you’re undergoing chemo, going to the dentist and having holes drilled in your head is a big no-no. For one, it can lead to infections going all crazy in your head. For two, it can be an issue if, say, your platelets are low, in which case you might, I dunno, bleed to death in the dentist’s chair or something.

Whee.

So today I’m going to give my transplant coordinator and run through the options with her. Above all, I do NOT want my chemo schedule to change. If I have to be on morphine and antibiotics until May, I’ll do it if it means I don’t have to draw the chemo out any longer.

On my page that I use to post these little tidbits, I have the quote randomizer set up as well. Interestingly enough, my Ovid quote is showing right now: “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.” As much as that phrase means to me, there’s just one thought in my head right now.

Bite me, Ovid.

Yup, Still Bald

Posted on by Brian

So here’s the weird thing about having no hair. You think your head’s going to be all cold and you’re going to lose all of this body heat and such, but really, it’s all just weird patches of cold. For instance, put your hands behind your head. You know, like you’re going to kick back in your chair and put your feet on your desk, satisfied in a job well done. Watch out for the pencil holder. Feel where your hands are right now? That’s where my head is cold. Right about where my skull curves under in the back. Just above the collar, just below a hat. Son of a… So instead, I sat at my computer today wearing my stocking cap and feeling Canadian.

Speaking of Canadian, how about the big Olympic flop for North America? The one good thing about it is that now the Devils only have one player left in the tournament – Viktor Kozlov. All of the rest get to rest and relax until the NHL starts back up again. I’m cheering for the Swedes now. Here’s hoping Peter Forsberg plays a LOT in the next few days.

One thing I liked about watching Olympic hockey? No TV timeouts. Just a whole uninterrupted period of hockey. Nice. Plus, I didn’t have to worry that I’d have a lame announcer, since Doc Emerick would be doing all of the US games. It is astounding all of the bizarre and random hockey facts that man has in his head. One of the many reasons he’s the best.

AWKwaaaard

Posted on by Brian

Here’s a semi-uncomfortable experience – being the bald guy in the company cafeteria when the cancer commercial comes on TV.

I’m still being reminded of my baldness at random times during the day. Friday was my first shiny bald headed experience, where I saw my reflection beaming in the glass door on the way in to work. When I was getting the Moondoggie Consortium of Sites together, I put up my old “Don’t Panic” page before realizing it no longer looked like me. Now it does. Every now and then I’ll try to do something else, like run my fingers over my hair when I take a hat off or just put my hands on my head and realize “Hey, that’s SKIN!” I’m sure I’ll get used to it one of these days…

Oh, one extremely happy moment in my morning: the realization that the children of Connecticut have all week off on vacation. I’m not a parent, just a homeowner who unfortunately lives next to an elementary school. Silence truly is golden.

And now I realize I need to work on the site design sooner rather than later – my links are the same color as my text with no underlining. Idiot.