Bad Day, Today.

Nurse Practitioner Nancy was wrong with her Good News/Bad News routine when she said, “I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that it shouldn’t be any worse than the last round. The bad news is that it won’t be any better than the last round.”

It was worse; I’m still shaking.

I got up and started to get ready to go in to have my pump removed. I couldn’t even stand long enough to shower; I had to take a bath. And the onset of diarrhea this morning didn’t help any.

Because Ben’s schedule had become compromised, leaving him the only guy to be able to do his job during the critical timeframe, I called Dee and Oscar who came to my rescue. They took me to my appointment and got me home safely again. Thanks, guys, I really appreciate it!

Nurse Margaret was very helpful and solicitous with my condition, even if I was the only one that she was seeing today! I totally understand when they say they wish there was something they could do to make me feel better. I usually feel the same way myself when someone is sick. It’s part of that empathy thing. But took care of the pump and gave me plenty of help and suggestions.

Apparently, with the storm that’s brewing and everything, the Powers That Be (PTB) decided on Friday that they could give me my WBC booster shot today instead of tomorrow so I’ll be able to sleep in. So, I read the name on the box, copied it into my iPAQ, and decided to look it up. It’s called Neulasta. When I get some time to think, I’ll read all about it.

I’ve had some pizza. I’m going to have some ice cream. But I am going back to rest in the recliner, NOW! Thanks for checking in!

PS: I hate it when I get curious; I had to know. "Although Neulasta is almost imperative for someone who has been diagnosed with certain types of cancer, the cost can be very high. Depending on where you buy your dosage from, the cost of Neulasta is between $3000 and $7000.00 per syringe, but you will receive discounts if you buy more than one syringe at a time." THAT'S why they won't let me give it to myself.

You ever wonder who's getting rich off my suffering?

Pump Removal Tomorrow!

Speaking of cats, guess who just showed up to visit me @ 8:30 in the evening after being absent all day.

I haven’t done a blasted thing all day. I went into the basement once to get my sleeping bag from the dryer. I’ve either been in the recliner watching 8, count ‘em 8, episodes of NCIS Season 3 or in my office chair for the short time I’ve spent in front of the computer. Or in bed.

I’ve had 3 square, OK maybe not square but at least obtuse, meals. Plus ice cream. I’ve hydrated and gargled with my saline rinse. I didn’t even get dressed and go out to get the mail. And I’m still wiped out! That’s how fatigued I really am. Plus, I have a slightly elevated temperature, for me. I usually run a degree cooler than normal. Something to do with another chronic issue.

I still have at least 5 emails in my inbox awaiting my reply, one from last Friday. I’ll try to get to them tomorrow in the AM. I apologize, but I hope you’ll consider the circumstances.

It's 9:00PM and I think I'm going to call it a night!

Did I mention I get the pump removed tomorrow? And no one still wants to respond to my curing all those cancer patients back in Proof of Efficacy?

Sweet dreams, all!

Ramblin’ On!

Yup, I’m a gonna ramble tonight. The mouth sores are starting early; I was hoping the slightly acidic root beer and OJ would help keep them away. Maybe I’ll just keep the candidiasis at bay. Ya think?

The hiccups are still disconcerting, especially with the cough! *sigh*

~~~~~~~~~

I was up at 5:00AM, had breakfast, got on the computer for a while, and was tuckered out by 8:00. So, I was ensconced in my recliner—thanks again, Amy—when I got a call from a friend. Not was I was expecting! Apparently he’s going through some trouble and needed to talk. I was honored that he thought of me to call. I’ve had some experience in his situation, but somehow that just isn’t enough, sometimes. All I could do was ask some questions, make a few suggestions and basically just commiserate with him. I hope that I helped.

Why can’t people just learn to Coexist? Is that too much to ask?

~~~~~~~~~

I have been receiving my Short Term Disability (STD) benefits from my place of employment. I noticed that payments were being removed from the check but I didn’t pay too much attention to them. I had other things on my mind. So I assumed my insurance payments were being withheld. I was wrong.

My STD term was for 13 weeks. It’s been all of that, now. I think I just received my last check. So I contacted my HR rep to see what was going to happen and how we were going to handle it. The answer I got back shocked me.

First, let me say that I haven’t always been a real big supporter of my company. With my previous work experience, there were many things that I could have improved for them. And I actually offered to help. Probably my biggest complaint was their Management By Rumor style of communication. Remember that game where you tell a secret to the person next to you and then they tell the person next to them, and so on, and so on? Once the secret completes the circle the last person tells the group and everyone is amazed at how much the story changed. Yup, that one.

But they are coming around on that!

Anyway, I got a reply. It seems that work has been covering not only their portion of the insurance, but mine as well! They said that we’d work out something in the way of an affordable repayment plan when I come back to work. My place of employment just took a big jump in my estimation, especially after the next two statements: “We will not discontinue your insurance, we will continue to pay the entire premium. This is something you certainly don’t need to worry about right now, we would never cut off anyone’s insurance when they need it the most.” (Emphasis theirs!) As cynical as I am, this was certainly most unexpected and very much appreciated. Maybe there is some good in the world.


~~~~~~~~~

I ran out to the grocery store to get a few things. I picked up a replacement and fixed the kitchen faucet spray nozzle that I broke last night. That was pretty much it for the day. After a late lunch, I was plumb tuckered out. Spent the afternoon in the recliner under a sleeping bag watching old NCIS episodes.

I get a kick out of Ben’s cat, Mousebane. He knows when I’m not well. Sometimes I try just to block it all out and just “grump” through it. Some of you know what I mean; I just put my head down and try to bull through. But when Mouse starts jumping up in my lap and insisting on attention, and then purring and spending an inordinate amount of time “kneading” his paws on me, the sleeping bag, etc. I know something is up.

So he’s been pretty attentive lately, which only exacerbates the situation by calling attention to my discomfort.

But he certainly caught my attention tonight. He had been on me in the recliner when I needed to get up for an ice cream cone and to make a rest stop, not necessarily in that order. When I got back, he had crawled up into the warm spot in the recliner, so I had to disturb him. Now, normally he doesn’t take my place unless I’m feeling bad. Just another indication that he knows what’s going on.

So I removed him gently to the chair next to me and got settled. He immediately climbed back into my lap. That’s the third thing he does when I’m feeling bad; he gets right back on me. So there I was, having to defend my ice cream cone, and get him settled down.

But he got even with me. Some time later, he got up and threw up twice on the sleeping bag. It was either that or on the carpet, and I figured in my condition it would be easier to wash the sleeping bag. Which reminds me that I should go check the dryer. So, while trying to stay away from kitty emesis, I got the bag down to the washer.

Now, I’m just finishing up the dishes I got dirty last night, typing this up, and getting ready to head off to bed.

One last item tonight. Remember the chili fiasco? Well I’ve been paying attention to the dates on the food in the cupboards. So I was looking at some of my Mexican condiments, my Mole, Sofrito, Adobo, and Pipian. I noticed that some of them were out of date, so I decided to toss them.

Now, I’ve always thought that the recycling craze was kinda funny. You buy stuff in glass and then you throw it out into the recycle bin. These condiment containers reminded me of my youth, when the jars your food came in could actually be reused for household purposes. These jars are just like juice glasses, so I washed them out and put them in the cupboard for when I don’t want as much to drink. Am I still making sense?

Well, my last visitor stopped by the blog about a half an hour ago; time to get this wrapped up and posted. I suppose everyone is getting ready for bed and work tomorrow. It’s been 3 months since work for me, and it looks like it’ll be another 3 months considering the surgery.

I’d rather be working!

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

Nettie had added a couple of links in a comment that would let us view her pictures on Photobucket. Now, I could be having a "senior moment" here, but I haven't been able to access those pics. I don't know how anyone else has fared.

So, I went out to photobucket and actually joined!!!! Just to try and see if that was what was necessary to view the pics. Still nothing! I tried to add the link, directly to my blog, see the photo on the right or rather the lack thereof.


I don't know what's going on.


So, I asked Nettie for copies of the pics and will post them now, if I can even do that this morning!


Now, let's add Kenny, his deer, and Nettie's S-I-L! (That's Sister-In-Law)




And finally, the Future Hunter (with his pants issue). After a few trips out in the woods like that, I'm sure that the pants thing will not be an issue long. It gets cold out there!!


If I'm not too terribly mistaken, the little future hunter is Tommie, right? I seem to recall that lovely smile....


How's it look? OK?

Round 4

Wishing you well in Round 4... I hope it's going OK, so far ;-)! Remember to use your punching bag!

xoxox,

Amy

All I Want For Christmas….

Round 4 started today. And apparently, there will be a Round 5 which means there will probably be a Round 6. You know how they like to “round” things out!

I have to wonder why I’m starting to have trouble swallowing again. And now with the SFX (side effects) of the drugs it really messes things up. I’m trying to eat leftover Chinese (Mayflower) from last night. Already it doesn’t taste the same even allowing for the fact that reheated Chinese food never tastes the same. So when I have trouble swallowing and the hiccup SFX starts, does that make things interesting! Looks like I may go back on the Ensure.

Even the steroid, Dexamethasone, nearly dumped me on my face coming up the basement stairs just like what almost happened at Teo’s house. The muscles in my legs just don't seem to work as fast.

Nurse Practioner Nancy Carl (NP N C) when I asked about how rough this round would be said, “I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that it shouldn’t be any worse than the last round. The bad news is that it won’t be any better than the last round.”

~~~~~~~~~

Someone, I believe NP N C, wants me to get my white blood count booster shot the day after my pump is removed.

I have to go back in on a Saturday to get my pump removed. Nurse Martha will have to come in to remove it. I hope that she’s getting paid overtime. Or maybe there are a couple of pump removals occurring on Saturday. I did see a few pumps walk out today. That’s not saying they’re all on 5-FU which is a five day schedule, though.

So, to get my booster shot, I have to drive back over there on Sunday and go to the hospital portion and talk them into giving me my shot. The insurance company won’t let me give myself a simple sub-Q shot. Since I’ve given them to Amy, I should be able to give one to myself. But no-o-o-o-o! I even mentioned that Ben is giving Himmy sub-Q insulin shots. Same answer!

~~~~~~~~~

I thought that there was more that I wanted to say but I can’t think of it right now, so I may come back and edit this post.

Which leads me to this:

~~~~~~~~~

Fair warning! It is now officially the Christmas Season; I heard Christmas songs in Wal Mart today! That means that Vince Vance and the Valiants Christmas CD All I Want For Christmas Is You comes out of cold storage (pun intended; actually though I listen to it all year ‘round) and will be heard in the HBen household!

Follow the link to Amazon.com, page down to the Listen to Samples section and click on your choice of player for the first cut, the title song featuring Lisa Lane. I hope I’m not betraying my age when I exclaim, “What a set of pipes!” I love her jazzy version of this song!

I’m listening to the CD right now; all the girls have great voices!! And, if you stop to think about what the songs are saying, the snow will turn your eyes just a little misty, I’m guessing.

Now, kids, you gotta humor me this year! :-D And I’m sick! :-D And I’ll just be getting off the pump on Christmas Eve! :-D And I might be getting a shot on Christmas Day! :-D I need all the good cheer and good feeling music I can get! :-D

Proof of Efficacy?

“What possessed you to write your Proof of Existence post?” you might ask.

It’s quite simple. We all have a “preferred” view of the world, a 'paradigm’ if you will. A way that we react and respond to what happens around us. (And yes, Nettie, I know that k.d. doesn’t like the term ‘paradigm.’ He’ll get over it, eventually. Or…. he won’t.)

Anything that challenges our worldview is usually discarded and considered by most people to be unworthy of even thinking about. Just because someone says it’s so, doesn’t mean it’s so. And conversely, just because someone says that it isn’t so, doesn’t mean that it isn’t so. But then again, I’m a freethinker; I always have been, always will be.

I guess I’m not alone. Today Jean Alexander, in her article, Mothering, over at The Libertarian Enterprise, described her attempts to teach her children right:

I make sure to educate my children to not blindly follow. . . anyone. We teach them to question and use their intelligence, rather than emotions, to review and analyze information. We've made clear that just because it comes from our president (or other government or corporate official) in a televised speech doesn't mean it's true. We've made sure they question even *us*, their parents, if they feel they are right or don't understand. We've made very clear the difference between opinion, fact, and emotionally charged rhetoric. And so, my three will be. . . less handicapped.

I tried to do the same with my kids. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they, or I for that matter, will always be right. But it does mean that they won’t always be wrong. I have to admit that there are times when I wish I had trained them to believe their father, but I'd rather know that they believe me because I'm right rather than from some conditioned response.

In a response to B.W.Richardson’s article Attack of the 50-Foot Quotidian, Sunni Maravillosa, in her article Why Not a Quotidian Quest for Greatness? (Or, Fuck That Shit, and All Ye Who Peddle It.), quotes John Taylor Gatto as having said:

I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

(Shelly, you may remember that we discussed JTG and that I forgot to loan you his book Dumbing Us Down when you were here. You GOTTA remind me about these things!!!!!)

Now, just for grins and giggles, let’s say that I was born back before the Prussian style of education, designed to produce good little soldiers and workers, got too firmly established in America. Born out in the central Midwest, somewhere like Kansas or Nebraska, where it takes a while for the depredations of the educational socialists to be felt. How about we say Nebraska, in the year 1888?

Being able to manage myself--remember Gatto’s quote--I exercised my ‘genius’ exploring my passion for microscopes, microbiology, and electronics. Not having anyone to tell me that it can’t be done—not that I would listen at all, believing like Richardson and Maravillosa—I designed a microscope with over 6,000 parts, over two feet tall, weighing 200 pounds, and capable of enlarging an image over 61,000 times. With such powerful resolution I would be able to see viruses. And since I’m using radiation in the visible and near visible spectrum of light, I wouldn’t be killing the virus by simply looking at it like electron microscopes of today do.

I invented technology that is still in use in quite a few fields; optics, electronics, radiochemistry, biochemistry, ballistics, and aviation. It is only recently that my “Universal Microscope” has been equaled but not necessarily duplicated.

Having been the subject of newspaper articles, not to mention articles in Science, Popular Science, and California and Western Medicine magazines, in addition to The Smithsonian Institute documenting my accomplishments and my microscopes in their magazine, you’d think I was doing pretty well now.

You’d be wrong!

It all started when I found out that not only could I watch live viruses, I also learned how to kill them. Selectively! No one told me that I couldn’t do it so I tried exposing them to various frequencies of radio waves. Because I was watching them in real time, I could tell when I reached a frequency that killed them. I’d mark the dial on my transmitter so I could find that frequency again. We didn’t have frequency counters back then so that I could write down the precise frequency.

Mark Twain said, “What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.” (A tip of the tam o’shanter to k.d. for that Twain quote!)

So, while playing around with the killing of viruses, I mean ‘working’ on killing viruses, I soon suspected that cancer was caused by a virus that I named the “BX” virus. After 20,000 unsuccessful attempts, I isolated the particular virus I thought responsible for cancer and injected it into 400 lab animals. I caused 400 cases of cancer to develop in those lab animals. But, not only did I cause the 400 cases of cancer, I used my radio frequency techniques to cure those same cases of cancer.

This caused such a stir that, in 1934, a committee was formed to bring 16 terminally ill cancer patients to my lab and clinic to see what I could do for them. My work was supervised by the Chief of Bacteriology at the Mayo Clinic, the director of Northwestern Medical School, the president of the University of Southern California, the chief surgeon of the Santa Fe railway, along with folks from the Children’s Hospital in New York, the Metabolic Clinic in La Jolla, California, the Hooper Foundation in San Francisco, the Chicago University, along with various and sundry other folks, like doctors and pathologists.

That’s when everything hit the fan. I cured 14 of the patients within the 90 days that they had been expected to live. The other two took me another couple of weeks to cure. In one test, sixteen patients were CURED out of sixteen diagnosed terminally ill cancer patients!! That’s a 100% success rate in my book.

Remember when I asked how many flying saucers that it took to prove that flying saucers existed? Let me ask you this: “How many patients do I need to cure to prove that something that I’m doing is “curing” these patients of cancer?”

Now, I realize that putting your hands on the control panel of an extra-terrestrial saucer and playing with the switches is a bit different than me trying to control a multitude of variables to produce a desired effect, the complete remission of cancer. In addition to the sixteen patients I cured in the first test I, and others like me, continued to treat and cure other patients.

Now, with my memory the way it is now, I can’t recall the exact success rate that I, or anyone else, experienced. However, given the facts as I have presented them here, is there a chance that I have discovered a cure for cancer? One that deserves further exploration to determine whether or not it works as intended?

What do you think?

Proof of Existence

Earlier, I asked the question, “How many flying saucers does it take to prove that flying saucers exist?” The answer to that question is that it takes only one to prove the existence of flying saucers.

Now, what constitutes proof for you? Do you have to touch it? Do you have to see it fly? What if it has crashed and is incapable of flying? Will the testimonies of “experts” suffice?

The burden of “proof” is different for different people.

When I was in high school I worked in the woods one summer with my uncle and cousins “peeling popple.” We would cut poplar trees down, remove the limbs, peel the bark off the trunk, and then cut the trunk into 8 foot logs for the papermaking industry.

As we were sitting on the tailgates of the trucks one lunch hour, I noticed what appeared to be a round silvery object floating along with the clouds on the breeze that was coming down from the North. I called attention to the object, because I had never seen anything like it in my 16 or 17 years of existence. Our boss, Emmett, blurted out, “Must be one of them goddamn flying saucers.” It didn’t appear to be ‘flying’ at the time, however.

I thought from its behavior that it could be a silvery weather balloon until it suddenly stopped relative to the clouds and let the clouds float on by. I couldn’t imagine a weather balloon doing something like that.

It stayed in one position for several minutes until a big cloud covered the object. Suddenly, we watched as the object rose straight up out of the cloud and accelerated at high speed until we could no longer see it.

Now, by definition it was an Unidentified Flying Object. I had no reference for something shaped like that to be exhibiting that type of behavior. I couldn’t ‘identify’ it. Was it a “flying saucer” as our boss stated? I don’t know. “Insufficient data,” as Mr. Spock would say. But it was definitely outside my realm of experience and understanding. And, as Nettie opined in her comment to my original question, the existence of something like what we observed makes me open to the possibility that it might have been intelligently controlled. With all the stars in the sky and all the planets in existence, I find it difficult to believe that life here on Earth is the only life in the entire universe. Therefore, there may be intelligent life elsewhere that might be sufficiently curious enough to come study us. We study lower forms of life; why shouldn’t “they?”

That one incident didn’t “prove” the existence of flying saucers to me, but it did keep the possibility wide open.