Rich Dubielzig's Conversation Piece
One of the things I planned to do before going back to California was to put together a little web site detailing my experiences with Lymphoma. If this website looks bad, it's because it's the first thing I ever made in HTML other than posts on plastic or everything, and I'm self-taught, so bear with me.
Diary/News
Essays
Reading List
Timeline
Pictures
Email MeBack to top
What's New
2002-10-09: Looks like the typo problem is (usually) not one of ignorance, but something going on between my saving my file and it appearing on Earthlink's web page, since after I made my last upload, the Timeline link looked screwy, and i know that was good before. So I'll take my chances, and count on you guys to tell me if you see anything that looks too bad.
2002-10-06: So much to say...I've been just doing follow-up visits, getting CAT-scans, and MRIs, and there's really no news to note. My back is feeling fine (I just carried a huge computer monitor up the stairs today, doing lots of bad back-lifting in the process, and the only complaint is that my arm is sore), and I'm totally free from any symptoms of relapse.
2002-03-02: Stick a fork in it, this site is done. I've finally updated the timeline , and as I have additional appointments in the future, I'll just post the expected "all clear" to here, but there's going to be no major new material. Next step is to start working on just a normal web page for myself. Thanks for your patronage.
-Rich D.
2002-01-16: I'm officially in remission! officially in remission! I got my blood looked at and my lymph nodes probed by Dr. Chen today, who gave me a clean bill of health. Now it's just a matter of going back every 3 months to get them probed for about a year.
I got a CAT-scan on the 3rd for my orthopedic surgeon to check on bone growth in my back, and I'm still waiting to hear back from him on that, but so far I feel fine.
I came back to work as of the 10th of December, and I've had no problems with it, other than the fact that I'm not working on any "real" project at the moment, but just an in-house blue-sky thing we're doing.
Sonia arrived from Guatemala on the 15th, and my parents from Madison the next week. We spent our time in San Diego doing the Tourist thing mostly, going to the Zoo, Sea World, the Wild Animal Park, seeing seals in La Jolla, and driving up to Mount Palomar. Dad knew someone who worked for the zoo, so we got a behind the scenes look at the zoo's animal hospital, and an up-close look at a frighteningly healthy black jaguar who was living there while his cage was being renovated. I also got us passes for the photo caravan tour at the WAP, which allowed us to feed apples to some Indian rhinos, and giraffe pellets to giraffes. Everyone went back to Madison on New Year's Eve, but I was left with some good books, with some good books, some good cheese, and a good game for my PS2 to remember them by.
Finally, to try and make up for the fact that it's been so long since I've posted anything on here, I've put up one last cancer-related essay for you to peruse. After that, all that's left is to add a couple of books to the reading list and finish the timeline, and I'll officially declare this site complete, barring a relapse.
2001-12-05: I'm Today was my 20th and last radiation treatment, and I'm looking forward to not having any more obscure medical treatments performed on me for a long, long, time.
There hasn't been too much news since my last note, because I haven't really done anything newsworthy, other than get some new side effects of the radiation:
On Monday, I go back to work. I poked my head in the office last Friday to give this news after the company meeting, and also to take advantage of the after-meeting food layout. Maybe it's an odd time to start work again; two weeks before Xmas vacation, but I'm tired of sitting around my apartment not doing anything; I'd rather be doing nothing while surrounded by coworkers.
Also, I finally broke down and got a Playstation 2 on Monday. I've been playing enough Gran Turismo lately that my thumb is threatening blisters on me.
2001-11-14: I've been on Radiation for a week and a half, and I've got to tell you, I FEEL GR-- ok, so I don't feel great, but I do feel a little weak and tired, which has led to too much wasting of my time in front of the laptop. But at least I get to modify the page a little. And I have cracked those textbooks on Lisp and Scheme that I got so long ago. It also looks like my hair is starting to grow back. It's not long enough yet to determine whether it's going to be curly or not.
The radiation is a pretty straightforward thing. I go into the hospital, sign in at a computer, wait my turn, get called to the room, lie down, get aligned, get zapped, have the linear accelerator turn over to zap me from the other side, get zapped again, get up, get out of there. I didn't believe Dr. Pardo when he said that the whole thing would take less than half an hour, but sure enough, I'm getting in and out in less than 20 minutes. For the first week, the machine was aligned to marks drawn on my body with a marker and hilighted with special paint, but yesterday I got 3 tiny dots permanently tattooed on my chest that do the same thing, so I can now scrub myself in the shower.
I was told to only expect a lump in my throat as a side effect, but I am also noticing that my skin is becoming irritated where the beam passes through, as well as an increased general weakness, and soreness in the back around the irradiated area.
Today, I had my first meeting with Dr. Stephan Garfin, my spine surgeon in San Diego, and also my first post-chemo meeting with Dr. Chen.
Dr. Garfin's office was very busy, as he shares it with 17 other doctors. Apparently, there are more people suffering from back problems in San Diego than there are from cancer, which I suppose is a good thing, but you'd think they'd be more efficient with the reception desk than they are in the oncology clinic. After hearing my recent medical history and taking some X-Rays, Dr. Garfin had this to say: It's impossible to tell from normal X-Rays whether the bone has grown back around the Harm's Cage, until the X-Rays show movement or deformation of the cage caused by surrounding bone. Not having the patience for that kind of thing, he wants to CAT-scan me in January to get a clearer picture. If it looks like the bone is not returning (he gives about 10% odds of this happening), he wants to do what Tribus wanted: to go in through the back and put in some supporting hardware.
When I came in for a meeting with Dr. Chen, I was told that they wanted told that they wanted a blood draw from me at first, so I went to the lab and got one of the worst ever: They were out of "butterfly" type needles, which usually work on me, and the technician who drew my blood jabbed the needle into my arm pretty badly the first time, hitting a nerve, which caused a painful sensation in my right wrist. He was a little more careful in my left arm, but I'm still PO'd at the inconsiderate treatment. My meeting with Chen softened the blow a bit, however, when he told me that he was no longer interested in doing stem-cell harvesting (I'd heard it referred to as "aphresis", but he called it "leukaphresis") on me, since he was quite confident in my remission. Yes, you heard right; he says I'm in an excellent "partial remission", which is only partial because my blood is still a little affected by the chemo treatments. Once I am stable for 8 weeks with no evidence of a tumor will I be officially upgraded to "full remission" status.
Finally, it looks like my sister Sonia is going to be coming up to stay with me soon. A couple nights ago, she left a message on my machine I couldn't make out, then sent me an email that gave her flight time and flight number, although no date of travel. So I'm sure it will be I'm sure it will be a pleasant surprise when she shows up. Assuming, that is, that she hasn't shown up already and gotten a busy signal from my phone while I was on the internet, forcing her to sleep in the gutter or something.
2001-11-04: First, the news:
On Friday, I went in for a simulation of radiotherapy, which means that I lay down under an X-ray machine that looked like a linear accelerator, and the radiation technician painted some marks on my chest and twiddled the knobs on his machine until he got a radiation plan that he would use for the Real Thing, which begins next week, 8:30 AM sharp Monday morning.
I'm getting a total of 40,000 rads shot into me, or 40Gy, over the course of 4 weeks. This is a change from the original 5 weeks quoted by Dr. Pardo, but other Rad Onc doctors seem to agree that 2 Gy a day for 4 weeks is preferable to 1.6 Gy a day for 5.
Also, my White Blood Cell count is returning to normalcy once again: The results from Monday's blood draw are a count of 4,000.
Finally, for all you lymphomaniacs out there, I've got a new essay for you, and it's one that probably should have gone up way back in the beginning: What Is Lymphoma?
2001-10-24: OK, so it's been waaaaay too long since I updated this page, and now I'm paying the price by writing this big summary of what's been going on.
Let's start with the visit from Mom: It's been a couple weeks since I dropped her off at the airport, and I'm still alive and functioning here in San Diego. The visit from Mom was fun, because it gave me an excuse to go see a lot of things that I'd wanted to see but never had time for while I had a job, such as the zoo, Sea World, the Wild Animal Park, the salt evaporators, the Scripps Aquarium, etc.
Final chemo treatment was on the 10th, and I think I prefer the UW Hospital to UCSD Thornton, even if the Reader calls it the best luxury hospital; nurses were spread too thin between too many patients, the blood lab somehow managed to hemolize one of my blood draws, the infusion nurses were somewhat inexpert at sticking me (I think everyone who starts at UCSD gets a port, or at least a PICC line, so they don't have to do this often), and there wasn't any TV to watch. However, my mother did document the procedure with a camera, and I am looking forward to seeing scanned pictures of the events coming my way soon.
Even though I got Vincristine and regular doses of all drugs at thees of all drugs at the final chemo treatment, i've been taking the side effects pretty easily. I have had few problems with my digestive system since the 10th, made it through the nadir without trouble, and have even gone biking on the beach a couple times, although the first time I tried, I had to pull over from exhaustion going into just a stiff head wind.
My meeting with my radiation oncologist, Dr. Pardo, was also pretty good. He does not forsee too many problems with radiation, other than difficulty swallowing (the esophogaus is in the same area as the tumor region) and a remote possibility of damage to the spinal cord. We also talked about the chances of recurrence for the tumor: He says there's about a 25% chance of the recurrence, which will most likely happen within 3 years, if it happens at all. Also, I found out that all this chemo I've been getting hasn't been so good for me, and in fact it can give you cancer: The chances of a secondary tumor due to chemotherapy and radiation can be up to 10%. Dr. Pardo didn't like quoting these numbers to me, because extranodal lymphoma cases like mine are pretty rare; there's not enough of a data set to really give accurate numbers. He thinks the actual probability of a secondary tumor for me is lower, as we caught mine pretty quickly, and the cancer seems to be pretty beat-down already.
My cousin Carl also came out this way last week to talk with some Mexican bureaucrats about dealing with environmental issues in their cities. During his stay, we spent a couple nights out on the town. On Tuesday night, we went to a very good Mexican health-food joint in Ocean Beach, and I made him eat a fish taco. On Thursday night, me, him, and his attractive, engaged cohort hit the San Diego Art Museum to see an exhibit of impressionist works by Frieske, then caught, purely by chance, the one-night-only showing of the Short Attention Span film festival, in which 60 short films are shown over the course of 100 minutes. Personally, I preferred Spike and Mike's Sick&Twisted film festival, which I caught the week before, but that may have just been personal preference. By the time we were done, we were hungry and it was late, so we hit a 7-11 for dinner.
OK, so here's what I did to the site: I updated the timeline so that it now covers the Great Emergency, and I made minor spelling edits to a few of my essays. By the way, if you find any spelling or grammar problems on this site, don't be afraid to email me about it.
2001-10-03: I'm back in San Diego! I came back on Monday morning with my mom. Since coming back, we've been mostly working, either organizing the mess I left in my apartment when I left, or assembling my grandmother's table I received in June, or grocery shopping, or performing emergency repairs on the car (the first time we tried grocery shopping, we discovered that the battery had died during my time away, and it needed replacing), or meeting with Dr. Chen at UCSD's Cancer Center. Dr. Chen seems competent enough, although he wants to use Vincristine on my final Chemo treatment next week. Tomorrow: Lube up the car, drop by work, and go to the San Diego Zoo.
It was only after the meeting with Dr. Chen today that we were able to do any sightseeing, going to the Scripps Institute Acquarium, then to look out from Mt. Soledad. Mom is really enjoying San Diego, and it may be difficult to shove her on the plane at the end of next week.
I used the time on the flight out to get up to date on book reviews, and this evening I finally got around to incorporating some pictures of myself into the page. In addition to the photo ofdition to the photo of me at the top of this page, and the one in the reading list, I've also put a couple more at the bottom of the pictures section.
2001-09-23: A big update for you today: Two new essays, one on chemo, the other on all the NC-17 stuff that's happened to me so far. Also, I've written book reviews through North to the Night. Also, the pictures section now includes a somewhat more annotated MRI image, outlining exactly what is tumor and what is spinal cord.
2001-09-19: Had Chemo treatment number 5 on Monday. Didn't get any Vincristine, since it had made my feet numb and had some other side effects. Number of sticks required for an IV setting: 2. For some reason, I'm getting a psychosomatic reaction to the chemo drugs before they're even put into me: Sitting down in the chair, with just saline solution going into my veins, I wasg into my veins, I was sneezing like a maniac in anticipation of the upcoming Cytoxin drip. I think my next essay is going to be on chemotherapy.
Oh yeah, and I also put my Dad's web pageup. Go and take a look.
2001-09-12: Got the MRI image properly linked, and my ICU experience is now part of the essays.
2001-09-06: Finally got this page up! Now I just have to flesh it out a bit
email me
2002-10-09: Looks like the typo problem is (usually) not one of ignorance, but something going on between my saving my file and it appearing on Earthlink's web page, since after I made my last upload, the Timeline link looked screwy, and i know that was good before. So I'll take my chances, and count on you guys to tell me if you see anything that looks too bad.
2002-10-06: So much to say...I've been just doing follow-up visits, getting CAT-scans, and MRIs, and there's really no news to note. My back is feeling fine (I just carried a huge computer monitor up the stairs today, doing lots of bad back-lifting in the process, and the only complaint is that my arm is sore), and I'm totally free from any symptoms of relapse.
I've got a new oncologist, Dr. Ball, to replace Dr. Chen, who left for greener pastures under unspecified circumstances at the hospital (my suspicion is distaste with the establishment there), and he seems competent enough for what he needs to do.
The only other big news is that I was looking at this site today, and I noticed TWO GLARING TYPOS IN THE VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE PAGE that have now been sitting there for over 13 months, and none of you were so kind as to point them out to me so that I could fix them. Anyway, this page is basically dead now, so if you want more web-pagey goodness from me, head on over to my football rankings page, where I'm trying to see if I can beat the BCS with my homegrown ranking system. Gesundheit!
Oh yeah, I almost forgot since I only noticed it today--Hansen's soda has made the obscure urban legend reference in my page title a reality.
2002-03-02: Stick a fork in it, this site is done. I've finally updated the timeline , and as I have additional appointments in the future, I'll just post the expected "all clear" to here, but there's going to be no major new material. Next step is to start working on just a normal web page for myself. Thanks for your patronage.
-Rich D.
2002-01-16: I'm officially in remission! officially in remission! I got my blood looked at and my lymph nodes probed by Dr. Chen today, who gave me a clean bill of health. Now it's just a matter of going back every 3 months to get them probed for about a year.
I got a CAT-scan on the 3rd for my orthopedic surgeon to check on bone growth in my back, and I'm still waiting to hear back from him on that, but so far I feel fine.
I came back to work as of the 10th of December, and I've had no problems with it, other than the fact that I'm not working on any "real" project at the moment, but just an in-house blue-sky thing we're doing.
Sonia arrived from Guatemala on the 15th, and my parents from Madison the next week. We spent our time in San Diego doing the Tourist thing mostly, going to the Zoo, Sea World, the Wild Animal Park, seeing seals in La Jolla, and driving up to Mount Palomar. Dad knew someone who worked for the zoo, so we got a behind the scenes look at the zoo's animal hospital, and an up-close look at a frighteningly healthy black jaguar who was living there while his cage was being renovated. I also got us passes for the photo caravan tour at the WAP, which allowed us to feed apples to some Indian rhinos, and giraffe pellets to giraffes. Everyone went back to Madison on New Year's Eve, but I was left with some good books, with some good books, some good cheese, and a good game for my PS2 to remember them by.
Finally, to try and make up for the fact that it's been so long since I've posted anything on here, I've put up one last cancer-related essay for you to peruse. After that, all that's left is to add a couple of books to the reading list and finish the timeline, and I'll officially declare this site complete, barring a relapse.
2001-12-05: I'm Today was my 20th and last radiation treatment, and I'm looking forward to not having any more obscure medical treatments performed on me for a long, long, time.
There hasn't been too much news since my last note, because I haven't really done anything newsworthy, other than get some new side effects of the radiation:
- I've been sleeping poorly, not getting to sleep until after 1, and not getting up until after 10.
- I've had very little appetite. For the past 5-6 days, I've only been eating 1 meal a day, and not really desiring anything more. Soup seems to be more digestable to me than anything else.
- Starting last night, I started to feel a little sore in my throat.
- I'm developing a red rectangle of skin on my chest that fits with the
aperture they pass the radiation through
On Monday, I go back to work. I poked my head in the office last Friday to give this news after the company meeting, and also to take advantage of the after-meeting food layout. Maybe it's an odd time to start work again; two weeks before Xmas vacation, but I'm tired of sitting around my apartment not doing anything; I'd rather be doing nothing while surrounded by coworkers.
Also, I finally broke down and got a Playstation 2 on Monday. I've been playing enough Gran Turismo lately that my thumb is threatening blisters on me.
2001-11-14: I've been on Radiation for a week and a half, and I've got to tell you, I FEEL GR-- ok, so I don't feel great, but I do feel a little weak and tired, which has led to too much wasting of my time in front of the laptop. But at least I get to modify the page a little. And I have cracked those textbooks on Lisp and Scheme that I got so long ago. It also looks like my hair is starting to grow back. It's not long enough yet to determine whether it's going to be curly or not.
The radiation is a pretty straightforward thing. I go into the hospital, sign in at a computer, wait my turn, get called to the room, lie down, get aligned, get zapped, have the linear accelerator turn over to zap me from the other side, get zapped again, get up, get out of there. I didn't believe Dr. Pardo when he said that the whole thing would take less than half an hour, but sure enough, I'm getting in and out in less than 20 minutes. For the first week, the machine was aligned to marks drawn on my body with a marker and hilighted with special paint, but yesterday I got 3 tiny dots permanently tattooed on my chest that do the same thing, so I can now scrub myself in the shower.
I was told to only expect a lump in my throat as a side effect, but I am also noticing that my skin is becoming irritated where the beam passes through, as well as an increased general weakness, and soreness in the back around the irradiated area.
Today, I had my first meeting with Dr. Stephan Garfin, my spine surgeon in San Diego, and also my first post-chemo meeting with Dr. Chen.
Dr. Garfin's office was very busy, as he shares it with 17 other doctors. Apparently, there are more people suffering from back problems in San Diego than there are from cancer, which I suppose is a good thing, but you'd think they'd be more efficient with the reception desk than they are in the oncology clinic. After hearing my recent medical history and taking some X-Rays, Dr. Garfin had this to say: It's impossible to tell from normal X-Rays whether the bone has grown back around the Harm's Cage, until the X-Rays show movement or deformation of the cage caused by surrounding bone. Not having the patience for that kind of thing, he wants to CAT-scan me in January to get a clearer picture. If it looks like the bone is not returning (he gives about 10% odds of this happening), he wants to do what Tribus wanted: to go in through the back and put in some supporting hardware.
When I came in for a meeting with Dr. Chen, I was told that they wanted told that they wanted a blood draw from me at first, so I went to the lab and got one of the worst ever: They were out of "butterfly" type needles, which usually work on me, and the technician who drew my blood jabbed the needle into my arm pretty badly the first time, hitting a nerve, which caused a painful sensation in my right wrist. He was a little more careful in my left arm, but I'm still PO'd at the inconsiderate treatment. My meeting with Chen softened the blow a bit, however, when he told me that he was no longer interested in doing stem-cell harvesting (I'd heard it referred to as "aphresis", but he called it "leukaphresis") on me, since he was quite confident in my remission. Yes, you heard right; he says I'm in an excellent "partial remission", which is only partial because my blood is still a little affected by the chemo treatments. Once I am stable for 8 weeks with no evidence of a tumor will I be officially upgraded to "full remission" status.
Finally, it looks like my sister Sonia is going to be coming up to stay with me soon. A couple nights ago, she left a message on my machine I couldn't make out, then sent me an email that gave her flight time and flight number, although no date of travel. So I'm sure it will be I'm sure it will be a pleasant surprise when she shows up. Assuming, that is, that she hasn't shown up already and gotten a busy signal from my phone while I was on the internet, forcing her to sleep in the gutter or something.
2001-11-04: First, the news:
On Friday, I went in for a simulation of radiotherapy, which means that I lay down under an X-ray machine that looked like a linear accelerator, and the radiation technician painted some marks on my chest and twiddled the knobs on his machine until he got a radiation plan that he would use for the Real Thing, which begins next week, 8:30 AM sharp Monday morning.
I'm getting a total of 40,000 rads shot into me, or 40Gy, over the course of 4 weeks. This is a change from the original 5 weeks quoted by Dr. Pardo, but other Rad Onc doctors seem to agree that 2 Gy a day for 4 weeks is preferable to 1.6 Gy a day for 5.
Also, my White Blood Cell count is returning to normalcy once again: The results from Monday's blood draw are a count of 4,000.
Finally, for all you lymphomaniacs out there, I've got a new essay for you, and it's one that probably should have gone up way back in the beginning: What Is Lymphoma?
2001-10-24: OK, so it's been waaaaay too long since I updated this page, and now I'm paying the price by writing this big summary of what's been going on.
Let's start with the visit from Mom: It's been a couple weeks since I dropped her off at the airport, and I'm still alive and functioning here in San Diego. The visit from Mom was fun, because it gave me an excuse to go see a lot of things that I'd wanted to see but never had time for while I had a job, such as the zoo, Sea World, the Wild Animal Park, the salt evaporators, the Scripps Aquarium, etc.
Final chemo treatment was on the 10th, and I think I prefer the UW Hospital to UCSD Thornton, even if the Reader calls it the best luxury hospital; nurses were spread too thin between too many patients, the blood lab somehow managed to hemolize one of my blood draws, the infusion nurses were somewhat inexpert at sticking me (I think everyone who starts at UCSD gets a port, or at least a PICC line, so they don't have to do this often), and there wasn't any TV to watch. However, my mother did document the procedure with a camera, and I am looking forward to seeing scanned pictures of the events coming my way soon.
Even though I got Vincristine and regular doses of all drugs at thees of all drugs at the final chemo treatment, i've been taking the side effects pretty easily. I have had few problems with my digestive system since the 10th, made it through the nadir without trouble, and have even gone biking on the beach a couple times, although the first time I tried, I had to pull over from exhaustion going into just a stiff head wind.
My meeting with my radiation oncologist, Dr. Pardo, was also pretty good. He does not forsee too many problems with radiation, other than difficulty swallowing (the esophogaus is in the same area as the tumor region) and a remote possibility of damage to the spinal cord. We also talked about the chances of recurrence for the tumor: He says there's about a 25% chance of the recurrence, which will most likely happen within 3 years, if it happens at all. Also, I found out that all this chemo I've been getting hasn't been so good for me, and in fact it can give you cancer: The chances of a secondary tumor due to chemotherapy and radiation can be up to 10%. Dr. Pardo didn't like quoting these numbers to me, because extranodal lymphoma cases like mine are pretty rare; there's not enough of a data set to really give accurate numbers. He thinks the actual probability of a secondary tumor for me is lower, as we caught mine pretty quickly, and the cancer seems to be pretty beat-down already.
My cousin Carl also came out this way last week to talk with some Mexican bureaucrats about dealing with environmental issues in their cities. During his stay, we spent a couple nights out on the town. On Tuesday night, we went to a very good Mexican health-food joint in Ocean Beach, and I made him eat a fish taco. On Thursday night, me, him, and his attractive, engaged cohort hit the San Diego Art Museum to see an exhibit of impressionist works by Frieske, then caught, purely by chance, the one-night-only showing of the Short Attention Span film festival, in which 60 short films are shown over the course of 100 minutes. Personally, I preferred Spike and Mike's Sick&Twisted film festival, which I caught the week before, but that may have just been personal preference. By the time we were done, we were hungry and it was late, so we hit a 7-11 for dinner.
OK, so here's what I did to the site: I updated the timeline so that it now covers the Great Emergency, and I made minor spelling edits to a few of my essays. By the way, if you find any spelling or grammar problems on this site, don't be afraid to email me about it.
2001-10-03: I'm back in San Diego! I came back on Monday morning with my mom. Since coming back, we've been mostly working, either organizing the mess I left in my apartment when I left, or assembling my grandmother's table I received in June, or grocery shopping, or performing emergency repairs on the car (the first time we tried grocery shopping, we discovered that the battery had died during my time away, and it needed replacing), or meeting with Dr. Chen at UCSD's Cancer Center. Dr. Chen seems competent enough, although he wants to use Vincristine on my final Chemo treatment next week. Tomorrow: Lube up the car, drop by work, and go to the San Diego Zoo.
It was only after the meeting with Dr. Chen today that we were able to do any sightseeing, going to the Scripps Institute Acquarium, then to look out from Mt. Soledad. Mom is really enjoying San Diego, and it may be difficult to shove her on the plane at the end of next week.
I used the time on the flight out to get up to date on book reviews, and this evening I finally got around to incorporating some pictures of myself into the page. In addition to the photo ofdition to the photo of me at the top of this page, and the one in the reading list, I've also put a couple more at the bottom of the pictures section.
2001-09-23: A big update for you today: Two new essays, one on chemo, the other on all the NC-17 stuff that's happened to me so far. Also, I've written book reviews through North to the Night. Also, the pictures section now includes a somewhat more annotated MRI image, outlining exactly what is tumor and what is spinal cord.
2001-09-19: Had Chemo treatment number 5 on Monday. Didn't get any Vincristine, since it had made my feet numb and had some other side effects. Number of sticks required for an IV setting: 2. For some reason, I'm getting a psychosomatic reaction to the chemo drugs before they're even put into me: Sitting down in the chair, with just saline solution going into my veins, I wasg into my veins, I was sneezing like a maniac in anticipation of the upcoming Cytoxin drip. I think my next essay is going to be on chemotherapy.
Oh yeah, and I also put my Dad's web pageup. Go and take a look.
2001-09-12: Got the MRI image properly linked, and my ICU experience is now part of the essays.
2001-09-06: Finally got this page up! Now I just have to flesh it out a bit
email me