Going Back to OK

As expected, Mom worried everyone for no reason.  The bone marrow biopsy revealed that there were still no cancer cells in my bone marrow, which again is a really good sign that the leukemia is cured.  What's more, Dr. Yanovich (my primary doctor, now) felt around and he thinks my spleen is actually shrinking, that the CT scan was in some way anomalous due to the medication I received in the hospital.

So basically Dr. Akpek made my mom panic over nothing.  And panic she did: I didn't realize how worried she was until Billy came with her to the doctor last Monday.  She felt a little foolish after I explained things to her, but at least she's not as worried now.

Just to be sure, they did another CT scan on Monday.  I'll get the results tomorrow, but I'm sure my spleen will be smaller.

My appetite is becoming managable.  I think it has helped that I've had a lot to do recently, between Ted's parents being in town and with Bobby and Hillary leaving. I haven't had a chance to cook for almost a week, really, and I've been kind of forced to eat out more than I'd like given my neutropenia.  But the food was great, and I don't think I had to pay for anything.  Always a plus.

My energy level is waning, but I'm still getting in to work whenever I don't go to the hospital.  I'm just really tired afterward, you know, like a normal person.  At least I'm making progress again, finally, even if it's a bit slower than I'd like.  I'm still going to try to propose this summer, but we'll see if I manage it.

Finally, I think my depression is finally clearing up.  I was feeling pretty down while I was in the hospital, and I could tell because I didn't want to play video games.  But that's all cleared up now, and I'm enjoying Star Ocean: The Last Hope (even though I had to replace my PS3 to play it) and Civilization 4 (which I got to work in Linux).  It feels really good to be getting back to a fairly normal life.  Now if I could just cut down on the doctor visits...

Pre-Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is just two days away, and I've got a lot to be thankful for.  For instance, compared to last year, I've got my health!  I've had another wonderful year with Ted and I have a loving, caring family.  I've grown closer to my labmates and advisors, which I'm going to mark in the win column.  I've been incredibly (I would almost go so far as to say "unbelievably") successful with my work, between my Sigcomm, HotNets, PAM, and IMC papers (holy crap, were those all this year?), the Best Student Paper Award for Persona, and the fact that two of those papers will be going towards my thesis.  Sony and Obama are pairing up to get LittleBigPlanet in libraries across the nation, so I even have hope for the future of America.

Seriously, the game is that amazing. I only wish that I had more time to play it! Sadly, the slow and steady march of progress moves me on to other games, but LittleBigPlanet will always hold a special place in my heart, along with Super Smash Brothers Melee and Disgaea.

In any case, tomorrow I go to the doctor for a check-up, from which I'll leave to go to my cousin's place for Thanksgiving.  The check-up should be pretty interesting; I think I'm getting the results from my PCR, which should be interesting on way or another.  I also need to see what's going on with my next shipment of Gleevec.  It should be here by now, I would think, though I do still have about two weeks worth of Gleevec, so I'm not too concerned yet.

I'm sure my family will enjoy my mo tomorrow. I facebooked (shush, spellchecker, it is a word if I say it is, and so is "spellchecker") Anika today to ask about getting dye for it, and it sounds like she'll be able to give me some.  I'm thinking of going with a dark blue, and depending on my mood at the time and the quantity of hair dye she can give me, I'll dye my hair, too.  Look forward to a picture of that!  I may also have a mo-shaving party.  Dave suggested that I serve mojitos and mogaritas (with coconut shavings instead of salt).

Odds and Ends

Sorry for the delay between posts, but I'm engrossed in a video game at the moment. Demon's Souls is a very addictive game, and I initially thought I would dislike it due to the difficulty. It turns out, though, that the difficulty is deceptive, since the game is very hard in the beginning and gets much easier as you get a handle of things. I still have quite a bit to do to get the platinum trophy, but I'm well on my way.

I promised to post the picture from the Bodies exhibit in New York, but forgot... so here it is:

Speaking of pictures, here are two more. I've decided to participate in Movember to raise awareness and maybe money for the fights against testicular and prostate cancer. I'm not really the type of person to fund raise, but Carmichael is making me think twice about it. Besides... I think the concept of Movember is brilliant.

Side effects lately have been pretty mild. My stomach hurts for a few minutes when I wake up in the morning, and my muscles have been aching quite a bit but that didn't stop me from going to the gym on Monday and Tuesday. It did on Thursday and Friday, but now that I no longer think my expanding spleen is my expanding fat belly I'm willing to take it easier on myself in terms of working out. Other than that, there was one day where I was a space cadet and had a headache, but those effects seem to have passed.

Paranormal Activity

Well, I don't think I'm going to get back to sleep any time soon, so it seems like a good time for a blog entry.

Things have been pretty quiet here ever since my last doctor's appointment. I've been preparing for my Bond Breaker presentation at work, and I'll be heading up to New York for that tomorrow afternoon. At home, I've mostly been trying to play as many video games as possible because I have had a serious backlog ever since the PSP Go came out. I'm currently working on Wild Arms XF (which is pretty good!) and Demon's Souls. The latter really bothers me because the title is so stupid and they really made some terrible game play decisions. Unfortunately, it's for the PS3, so that means I'll need to keep playing it until I get the platinum trophy (or risk breaking my current streak!).

This weekend was somewhat busy due to a day with Ted's friends on Saturday and then lunch with his dad on Sunday. The biggest thing of note was that we went to see Paranormal Activity with Kevin on Saturday night. I really enjoy scary movies, so I had little doubt that I would enjoy it, but I'm pretty sure that this movie is the scariest movie I've ever seen. It's not that there are a lot of things jumping out at you suddenly (though there are a few). Instead the movie relies on a steady build of tension as the events unfold and escalate to an inescapable conclusion. The part that makes the movie really scary, though, is the fact that it seems so realistic and that it all takes place in a fairly normal couple's bedroom.

After watching the movie, you're left with a bunch of haunting images of events from the movie that would freak the crap out of you if they happened in real life. Then when you try to go to sleep at night, your imagination gets the best of you and you really start to think about those events and worry more and more that something like them could happen to you. You remind yourself that the paranormal isn't real, but it's a small comfort since you can't shake the images from your head and they seemed so authentic.

So, that being said, I've had trouble falling asleep the past three nights. Not a lot, mind you... eventually I find a new topic to occupy my mind and have no trouble falling asleep. But the movie is usually the first thing that comes to mind and so it takes some time to get past it.

Tonight, on the other hand, I had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep. On the past three nights, as is typical, Ted fell asleep before I did, but tonight I fell asleep first. I think that could have been the difference. I'm not quite sure what happened, but all of a sudden I found myself bolt upright in bed. Ted was already sitting up and screaming in genuine terror. I grabbed his shoulder and arm to try to calm him down and he started looking at me and continued to scream, at me, for about five more seconds. I finally calmed him down enough to get him to tell me what was happening, and he said that he must have heard Shabby knock over a glass or something. Vaguely in the back of my head I felt as if I had probably accidentally tapped my night stand, which has three glasses on it sitting side by side so they would clink together, enough to make a noise but not enough to wake me up at least.

Needless to say, this whole incident freaked us both out quite a bit, but I think we're calming down enough now to go back to sleep. Immediately afterward my heart was racing really fast and I was actually a little worried about it, but it's fine now. I guess I'm just surprised because I didn't think Ted was really having any after-effects from the movie like I was, but I guess he must have been...

Another lazy weekend

Ted and I just had another lazy weekend. I'm still feeling great, but rather than take advantage of that fact I spent the entire weekend playing video games. I didn't even get any work done, as I had planned, so I'd better just buckle down and really work tomorrow in the lab. I'm pretty sure Bobby will be expecting a report from me about our SIGCOMM plans -- and possibly also about the Bond Breaker slides which I haven't touched -- so I'd better be ready. Maybe I can think about SIGCOMM while I work out tomorrow morning. I'm planning on starting my Wii Fit workout routine in the morning as well.

As for this weekend, I finished "Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?" and have moved on to Wild Arms XF for the PSP. It's pretty fun! Also this weekend, Ted and I have started playing LittleBigPlanet again. We previously took a hiatus because our PS3 memory was wiped, but over the course of this weekend we've unlocked most of the items in the game. Really, the hard parts are over, so now it's just a matter of time. When we're done, we'll be able to make some stages again, so I'm looking forward to that. It really is a fantastic game.

Sorry to keep it so short, but I'm tired and I'd like to get some sleep tonight (unlike last night). I'm currently looking forward to Thursday so that I can get confirmation that my CBC is looking good...

Doctor's Appointment

Today was Thursday, and that means that it was time for an appointment. The appointments have been a little frustrating for me. Back in February my car died, so ever since then I've just used Zipcar to get around. This has worked very well for me; I can get to most places by foot, bus, or metro. However, I live in College Park, and the Greenebaum Cancer Center is up in Baltimore, about a 30-45 minute drive away.

It wouldn't be so bad to do with Zipcar, except Zipcar is pay-by-the-hour, and I spend a lot of hours at the GCC. My typical appointment goes like this. Someone in my family picks me up around 10 and I get to GCC about 15-30 minutes before my appointment time. I sign in, and then almost immediately get my vitals checked. Then I have to wait until my appointment time, at which time they draw some blood and tell me to wait in the other waiting room. And I wait, and wait, and wait, while they do a CBC (Complete Blood Count) test on my blood. Then I see my doctors, Dr. Singh and Dr. Rapoport, and they tell me that my blood counts are low but that that is to be expected. For a while, I would then have to go fill a prescription for Gleevec, but now that I've been approved for the patient assistance program the Gleevec is shipped directly to my house. Back when I had to wait for the prescription, I would be at GCC until 4:30, but now I'm "only" there until 3:00 or so.

The CBC is pretty interesting. I started out at 480 thousand white blood cells per millimeter cubed (which I will from now on denote as 480 WBC). They put me on Gleevec and Hydroxyurea (which is what most people think of when they think of chemotherapy), and that entire week at the hospital I dropped by about 50 WBC each day. I was at 70 WBC when they discharged me, and the next week I was in the normal range. Now I'm actually a little low, on white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets, you name it. Today they gave me a procrit shot to try to convince my body to make more red blood cells. Since my WBC is so low, they also gave me the flu shot and advised me to get the H1N1 shot when it becomes available.

Also today, we had a bit of a snafu. My brother came to the appointment with me, intending to get some blood drawn to test if he's a bone marrow match in case we decide to do a bone marrow transplant in the future. This of course confused the nurses --- they took his vitals, drew my blood --- in short they mixed up a lot of information and failed to take my vitals or draw his blood. They eventually corrected the mistake after Dr. Rapoport came into the room and jokingly mentioned that I had put on a little weight; at this point I told him that they never took my vitals, and then questioned how he believed the numbers he had in front of him. After all, I weigh about 150 pounds and my brother weighs 180, and I'd think it would be pretty unhealthy to put on 30 pounds in a week. In any case, we eventually got the matter sorted out. The thing I found so weird about it is that we knew there was some confusion, so we each checked the names on the sheets and they had Billy's name for the vitals and my name for the blood. Weird, huh?

Despite that eating up most of my day, I did manage to have a lot of good times today. In particular, I was one of the lucky "few" to get a Google Wave invite, and playing with that has been really fun. Though, Google Wave is all about collaboration, and my friend invites haven't taken effect yet, so there's not a lot to do with it yet. I did create a list of video games that I plan to purchase. I normally keep such a list in Gmail, and reply to the mail to update the list, so Google Wave really is exactly what I want for that. I will likely also move my "command line" folder to Google Wave, and probably share that with my friend Katrina as well. That folder is what I use to store useful command line calls that I would otherwise forget, and again, since I edit them and append to them, Google Wave seems like the perfect place.

Then, much later, I also managed to snag a PSP Go. I'm especially happy about this because NISA is having a 50% off deal on six of their games, five of which I plan to buy, this week only in honor of the Go's debut. Since I didn't own a PSP previously, the PSP Go is a great buy for me, especially now that I'm spending entire days at a time on the go waiting in GCC for my appointment with the doctors.