Day 204, Thursday, August 8th, 2013
Exciting news! I found dill pickle chips in America! I didn't buy them, though, because discovery was directly following my purchase of Cheetos, M&Ms, Reese's Pieces, and Skittles, as well as root beer and cream soda. I'll acquire a bag in the next day or two and deliver an update. I'm trying to break my junk food habit, and despite the impression delivered by the two sentences immediately preceding this one, it's actually going quite well. Gigantic hamburgers with two patties made of duck and pork don't count as junk food. You shut the hell up.
In other news: It is day 93, post transplant. I've had a week and a half of tests, scans, pokes, and prods, all of which revealed staggeringly good health for a transplant patient, no aggressive lymphoma anywhere, though perhaps a teeny bit of residual activity for my old, slow acting, lymphoma in the skin of my left knee, something that is not a big worry, as the graft-vs-lymphoma effect is ongoing, and this should resolve as I come off of the prednisone (a steroid which suppresses your T-cell response, which is exactly what would be dealing with this) and later on, when I come off of the tacrolimus (which is a straight up immune suppressant, and is doing exactly that, also limiting my T-cell response). The full GVLE can take up to two years, but I don't anticipate significant trouble. It's just that a vanishingly small number of the mutant T-cells that are responsible for my underlying condition are still there, until Shiny's Sparklehorse Mounted Division tracks them down. Haven't you heard? Mountie Sparkles always get their T-cells.
In short: I'm still free of the scary cancer, and this'll go away in due time.
The aforementioned burger was at lunch with Jaqueline, Brent and Andre, who were in town for a few days to watch the Jays play the Mariners. I am told that it was excellent sportball, and that Jaqueline was only a little bit bored at the ballpark.
Further on the visitor front: my older brother Jay (real name John, but no one calls him that), his lovely wife Christina, and my awesome nephew Blake, were down last weekend to hangout, see the sights, and eat the delicious, delicious food. Our time together was cut down by a full day, sadly, due to mechanical failure (injector trouble) just thirty miles West of Spokane, which they returned to, with the help of a tow truck. Forced to abandon their vehicle in Spokane to the tender mercies of a mechanic, a car was rented on Friday, and the trip resumed. I'm impressed that I managed to deliver navigable directions to their hotel that night, since I'd had a bone marrow biopsy that afternoon, for the purposes of which I'd had all the drugs, and, in direct point of fact, I was not allowed to make legally binding decisions until just before supper at the Crab Pot the following evening. Oh, we went to the Crab Pot, yes we certainly did. Boards, hammers, piles of shellfish; smash, fork, butter, get in my mouth. We'd also done the two-hour harbour tour through the Ballard Locks that afternoon, where, among other things, Jay got to see two of the boats from Deadliest Catch, and that tickled him somewhat beyond pink into chartreuse, I would say, more than making up for having to be in a city full of trendy people and tourists. Jay likes wide open spaces; Jay does not like hipsters; we're in Seattle. He had fun anyway, and got spend the next day's afternoon hiking through a park, then eating risotto with a pound of crab in it at the Seastar, that evening.
In seven days (and counting), I get my Hickman line pulled out of my chest, which, I am told, can be rather nerve wracking for the nurse doing the pulling, as the line is quite elastic. It stretches during the process, and a fair bit, so the nurse is a little unsure as to whether or not the line is actually coming out, and they can be caught rather off their guard when the line finally consents to dislodging from its comfortable position, seated down my jugular, where it hangs out, chatting, I assume, with my heart. It's supposed to give all at once and come out with a bit of a snap, as the line shrinks back to normal.
Personally, I can't wait. It's always nice to be on the other side of the nervousness or squeamishness. A nice little touch of schadenfreude, to see me off on what will also be my very last day at the SCCA; at least until next May, when I go back for follow up, vaccinations, and all the sushi and local alcohol I can cram into a week without causing myself significant shame, regret, or liver damage, which, hopefully, is a lot. I'm not allowed sushi, currently, for the same reasons that I'm not supposed to have rare meat, or raw vegetables that I have not washed myself (or seen washed by a trusted person): vengeful microbes and parasites, geared for intestinal warfare, using my immune-suppressed digestive physiology as a beachhead into the rest of me. This is a risk that is both trivial and non-trivial, depending on the source of the foodstuffs. The more fresh the item, the lower the risk, but raw fish is raw fish, and anisakis, while massively overblown in terms of public perception of risk, is a real risk nonetheless, and it would do terrible things to me.
I miss sushi.
Alcohol, I can actually have, it's just not, ah, particularly intelligent to do so.
I miss wine. Red wine. A lot.
Mom and Dad are driving down on for the 14th, and we're hitting the road on the 16th or 17th, depending on my recovery from a nurse planting a foot on my chest and taking out my Hickman like he or she is pull-starting a lawn mower. I think they have sterile slippers for that. Then it's two days on the road, and I'm back in Saskatoon, where I will be a studious, furiously exercising house-husband for the next year; a prospect I'm quite looking forward to.
Q: Star Trek Sex/Kill/Marry: Kirk, Picard, Sisko.
A: Trick question. Kirk has sex with everyone, Data saves the ship, and Odo finally beats up Quark.
Addendum: Of course you marry Picard. I mean, come on.
In other news: It is day 93, post transplant. I've had a week and a half of tests, scans, pokes, and prods, all of which revealed staggeringly good health for a transplant patient, no aggressive lymphoma anywhere, though perhaps a teeny bit of residual activity for my old, slow acting, lymphoma in the skin of my left knee, something that is not a big worry, as the graft-vs-lymphoma effect is ongoing, and this should resolve as I come off of the prednisone (a steroid which suppresses your T-cell response, which is exactly what would be dealing with this) and later on, when I come off of the tacrolimus (which is a straight up immune suppressant, and is doing exactly that, also limiting my T-cell response). The full GVLE can take up to two years, but I don't anticipate significant trouble. It's just that a vanishingly small number of the mutant T-cells that are responsible for my underlying condition are still there, until Shiny's Sparklehorse Mounted Division tracks them down. Haven't you heard? Mountie Sparkles always get their T-cells.
In short: I'm still free of the scary cancer, and this'll go away in due time.
The aforementioned burger was at lunch with Jaqueline, Brent and Andre, who were in town for a few days to watch the Jays play the Mariners. I am told that it was excellent sportball, and that Jaqueline was only a little bit bored at the ballpark.
Further on the visitor front: my older brother Jay (real name John, but no one calls him that), his lovely wife Christina, and my awesome nephew Blake, were down last weekend to hangout, see the sights, and eat the delicious, delicious food. Our time together was cut down by a full day, sadly, due to mechanical failure (injector trouble) just thirty miles West of Spokane, which they returned to, with the help of a tow truck. Forced to abandon their vehicle in Spokane to the tender mercies of a mechanic, a car was rented on Friday, and the trip resumed. I'm impressed that I managed to deliver navigable directions to their hotel that night, since I'd had a bone marrow biopsy that afternoon, for the purposes of which I'd had all the drugs, and, in direct point of fact, I was not allowed to make legally binding decisions until just before supper at the Crab Pot the following evening. Oh, we went to the Crab Pot, yes we certainly did. Boards, hammers, piles of shellfish; smash, fork, butter, get in my mouth. We'd also done the two-hour harbour tour through the Ballard Locks that afternoon, where, among other things, Jay got to see two of the boats from Deadliest Catch, and that tickled him somewhat beyond pink into chartreuse, I would say, more than making up for having to be in a city full of trendy people and tourists. Jay likes wide open spaces; Jay does not like hipsters; we're in Seattle. He had fun anyway, and got spend the next day's afternoon hiking through a park, then eating risotto with a pound of crab in it at the Seastar, that evening.
In seven days (and counting), I get my Hickman line pulled out of my chest, which, I am told, can be rather nerve wracking for the nurse doing the pulling, as the line is quite elastic. It stretches during the process, and a fair bit, so the nurse is a little unsure as to whether or not the line is actually coming out, and they can be caught rather off their guard when the line finally consents to dislodging from its comfortable position, seated down my jugular, where it hangs out, chatting, I assume, with my heart. It's supposed to give all at once and come out with a bit of a snap, as the line shrinks back to normal.
Personally, I can't wait. It's always nice to be on the other side of the nervousness or squeamishness. A nice little touch of schadenfreude, to see me off on what will also be my very last day at the SCCA; at least until next May, when I go back for follow up, vaccinations, and all the sushi and local alcohol I can cram into a week without causing myself significant shame, regret, or liver damage, which, hopefully, is a lot. I'm not allowed sushi, currently, for the same reasons that I'm not supposed to have rare meat, or raw vegetables that I have not washed myself (or seen washed by a trusted person): vengeful microbes and parasites, geared for intestinal warfare, using my immune-suppressed digestive physiology as a beachhead into the rest of me. This is a risk that is both trivial and non-trivial, depending on the source of the foodstuffs. The more fresh the item, the lower the risk, but raw fish is raw fish, and anisakis, while massively overblown in terms of public perception of risk, is a real risk nonetheless, and it would do terrible things to me.
I miss sushi.
Alcohol, I can actually have, it's just not, ah, particularly intelligent to do so.
I miss wine. Red wine. A lot.
Mom and Dad are driving down on for the 14th, and we're hitting the road on the 16th or 17th, depending on my recovery from a nurse planting a foot on my chest and taking out my Hickman like he or she is pull-starting a lawn mower. I think they have sterile slippers for that. Then it's two days on the road, and I'm back in Saskatoon, where I will be a studious, furiously exercising house-husband for the next year; a prospect I'm quite looking forward to.
Q: Star Trek Sex/Kill/Marry: Kirk, Picard, Sisko.
A: Trick question. Kirk has sex with everyone, Data saves the ship, and Odo finally beats up Quark.
Addendum: Of course you marry Picard. I mean, come on.
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