I just glanced at the calendar and realized it's Monday, not Sunday. It's scary how my days have gotten all jumbled. I have to go to the clinic every morning this week to get a shot that boosts my blood counts, and tomorrow I also have to get a dose of one of the chemo chemicals (Bleomycin) which is needed every single week, not just once a month like the others. I'm not looking forward to it but at least I'll only be chained up for one hour instead of six. Yesterday when I went in, the doctor reviewed my latest CT scan with me and it looks like I have a small second tumor in the back of one of my lungs. It doesn't change the protocol.

The weekend was probably the worst experience so far, but I'm coming out of it now and I hope it'll be the brunt of my side effects until the next cycle (which is three weeks from now). All weekend I was nauseous, dizzy and weak, and I had a terrible cough that nothing seemed to help and which kept me up both Saturday and last night. I've been given a total of seven different prescription drugs (and three or four OTCs) in order to deal with all of the chemo side effects and I imagine they're probably messing me up in as many ways as they help, but they definitely do help. I hate having to take so many medications but then I guess I'm not doing any of this chemo business because I love it. I think I'm finally getting over my bitterness and anger about all this-- or starting to, at least, because I have a lot.

But you know what? I know that things could still be so much worse. I have a lot of amazing people supporting me and I'm going to be cured when this is all over with. That's the absolute simple truth, and it's something I'm incredibly grateful for.

My first week of chemo is over. I cannot even try to express the proper magnitude of this fact. This is the hardest thing I have ever gone through in my entire life. Right now I am drugged up and exhausted but glad to be home. The anti-nausea meds they have me on aren't working. I had a violent puking spell in the clinic yesterday and two more today. They got me a prescription for the legalized pot medicine, which they expect will help stop my nausea and increase my appetite. I hope it works, because I don't think I can handle puking much more. I'm going to sit here and quietly sip more Sprite and think about things over than puking my guts out.

Three days of chemo done this week. Two more. Changes I've noticed so far: 1) I've been sleeping about 18 hours a day. 2) Even with the two anti-nausea medications I'm on I'm a little queasy almost all the time. 3) I have no appetite whatsoever and thinking about all my favorite foods makes me sick. I also get bad cases of hiccups several times a day now but I don't know if that's related to the chemo or what. I think I'm gonna go lay down again now.

Oh, so this is the awful nausea the nurses mentioned. Nighty night!

I rarely wake up with any type of coherent thought in my head, but this morning when my eyes opened all I could think was "I'm not ready for this." Truth be told, though, the first day of chemo wasn't that horrible. It feels really damn weird to have all these chemicals pumped into a metal thing implanted in my chest near my heart, but was relatively painless and I actually slept through most of it. About half an hour into it, when I was still a little freaked out and upset, I got pissed off at myself and decided to just suck it up and deal with it. And that's what I did. Of course, it helps that the side effects don't start immediately-- the nurses said they'll probably start kicking in around the end of this week and all through next week. I'm glad I'll get a couple days without side effects first for "practice." It also really helps knowing how many people are thinking about me and rooting for me right now... It means so much to me. All day today I thought about how important everyone is to me. If you're reading this chances are you're included.

I'm also kinda starting to like my buzzed hair. One less unimportant thing to bother with.

Tomorrow's right around the corner and it's going to hurt.

I woke up at 7:30 to drive to the hotel and say goodbye to my mom over breakfast, then drove back home and slept till 1:30. I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping too, since there's not much else to do in the house and today was a day that everything decided to hurt or be sore. Chemo starts the day after tomorrow and I'm growing both more impatient for it and more nervous about it. I'm impatient because I'm tired of going through each day feeling like shit unless I'm doped up, and the chemo's going to play a big part in helping me get healthy again; tomorrow morning dad's going to help me buzz my hair off so I won't have to bother with it when it starts falling out. But at the same time, the chemo's going to make me feel even more awful fo a while and I'm going to have to deal with that all this coming week. I guess it won't seem like such a big mystery anymore after Monday, right? Jesus Christ, this is hard.

I am very doped up on Percoset right now so I'm going to keep this nice and simple. The surgery went okay. So now I have this odd little... metal object embedded in the top of my chest now. Hopefully I won't have to get IVs anymore. I got a cell phone too-- for those of you who know my other numbers, the cell number is 779 and the last 4 digits of my dad's home number. I really can't stand cell phones but I figure having one is going to make it a little easier for me to get in touch with people and vice versa. Now I'm going to go sleep.

I've been spending all of my time with my mom the past few days. She bought me some new shirts, which I'm thankful for, because most of my wardrobe seems pretty gaudy and embarassing to me these days. I no longer like the shirts I loved a few months ago.

I'm going into surgery tomorrow so that they can install a small little device called a "portacath" beneath the skin in my upper chest. They feed it into a major vain and use it for all the chemo injections since the chemicals tend to collapse veins when injected in a person's arms. I'm also quite glad to be getting this because of my hatred of IVs. This is a pretty minor surgery especially when compared to the other ones I've had, so I'm hoping and expecting it to be very quick and easy. We'll see how it goes.

It's 4:30am and I'm sitting here instead of sleeping because I'm in a great deal of pain and there's nothing I can do about it. I have some heart tests and a CT scan tomorrow morning and they told me not to eat/drink anything after midnight, and I don't know if painkillers will mess with any of the tests. I had a nice evening, though. My mom drove down from Falls Church to spend a few days with me and we went out to dinner and talked for a while.

Goddammit, I want to sleep.

Holy shit. The latest sniper attack was in Falls Church, VA. That's where I went to middle and high school. That's where my mom and grandmother and all my high school friends and their families live. I know the Home Depot they're talking about. Suddenly this is all way too close for comfort.

I failed to mention that dispite my dislike of television I have made an important discovery, and that is Trading Spaces. I want to kiss whoever cooked this show up over at TLC, or at least cook them a really nice dinner. If you haven't seen it, it's the show with 1 host, 2 designers, 1 carpenter, and 2 couples who agree to spend 2 days and $1000 each redoing a room in each other's houses. This show embodies everything good about television. In the hour that I spend with these couples I come to know them as though they were my cherished friends, and I am right there with them when they see their resigned rooms for the first time, always ready to share in their joyous shouts or bitter tears. And already I have noticed some important trends on the show, such as:

1) In one way or another, this color will invariably be used as the perfect accent to somebody's room:


2) If someone absolutely does not want a certain piece of their furniture messed with, it'll be the first thing painted.

3) Die angegebene URL ist syntaktisch nicht korrekt.

Okay, I am going to go look through these Before and After galleries now.

I am still here and in good spirits! A lot has happened, but since I don't feel like regurgitating the past four days into a long drawn-out post I think I'll just cut ties and skip most of it. I learned more about my official diagnosis and what's going to happen in the next few months. The reason I've been having such terrible pain in my abdomen for the last 6 weeks or so is not because of scar tissue (if you haven't guessed). Due to a tumor growing in it, a lymph node has swollen to about 4cm and is pressing into my left kidney, messing up a lot of nerves there. (Lymph nodes are normally smaller than a pea.) There is also some fluid accumulating in my pelvis, but the doctors aren't sure what it is, where it came from or what it might cause, so they're simply watching it for now. I start chemo next Monday, the 21st. I will have four cycles of chemo, each of which lasts one week, and there are three weeks between cycles, so I will be here until January. Each cycle lasts five days (Monday-Friday) and is six hours a day (8am-2pm). Starting tomorrow, I have at least 1 appoinment or surgery or test of some kind every day this week in order to get ready for the chemo. But I'm not scared, really. I'm just looking forward to being cured. This has gone on too fucking long.

Since I don't have my car here in Asheville or much to do in the house, I've been watching a lot of TV and remembering everything I despise about it, and I guess American culture in general. Staring at the TV during endless specials on VH1 devoted to Hollywood fashion, with talking heads going on and on about gorgeous a star is or how vital they are to popular culture just makes me wonder what the fuck people are living their lives for in America these days. I hope these people are happy that the accomplishment of their lives was illustrating to the American public how Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. are our ideal American couple. Well that's great. That's just fantastic. We're a nation of stupid, spoiled, entertainment-obssessed cretins sucking the world dry of culture and resouces yet we can't even imagine why rest of the world thinks we're so horrendous. I'm mad because TV (and the rest of pop culture) feeds us this tripe before we know better, so we grow up believing things like fashion and image and popularity and where Hollywood stars go for vacations are somehow worthwhile and important in our lives. It's not just channels like VH1, either; it's all commericals and sitcoms and everything else, too. I'm frustrated that we're constantly getting sucked into worshipping frivolous shit that discourages us from thinking there might be far more meaningful things in life-- which, by the way, there are. I used to let it happen to me. Some people very close to me are still letting it happen to them. We're just raised to be like this, and it seems like year by year, it's only getting worse.

See? TV always gets me riled like this. But I do think that the first thing I want to do after my chemo is done is get out of America for a while and see the world.

My sister drove in from Atlanta last night to be with me, which meant a lot to me. She helped me pack this morning, Dad drove down to get me around noon, and we were back in Asheville by 3:30 or so. I didn't do much today besides unpack. I have a consultation tomorrow at 4:45 and after it, I'll know a lot more about what's going on and what's going to happen. I don't have much else to say. I think I'll go to bed.

My cancer's come back. I'm withdrawing from classes tomorrow and dad is driving down to pick me up. I'm starting chemotherapy on Monday.

I'm thinking about everything that's happened and I'm starting to get scared. I'm realizing exactly how much class I've missed this semester, and during the past few days I missed several important assignment deadlines too. I don't know what to do. I tried calling my advisor but she's not in, so I emailed her, and I don't know who else to talk to. And this is something that's going to get worse with every passing day as I fall further and further behind. Right now I just need to concentrate on getting healthy, but I have all these other things to worry about. I need help...

The CT scan went alright. The iodine injection wasn't that fun, but it was better than last time because I knew what to expect. Right now I'm just holing up in the house, waiting for them to get the results back. One of the doctors at the clinic mentioned the possibility of scar tissue wrapped around a nerve... I'm just hoping I'm not going to have to go into surgery for it.

World’s Best Joke Stinks - Comics Laugh at British Scientific Quest

I just got home from the Health Center, where I've been since 11 this morning. Just like last time, I basically fell to pieces as soon as I got there. They gave me something for the pain (a shot of Toridol in the ass), ran a bunch of tests and for the most part just let me sleep through the rest of the day, since I hadn't really slept since Saturday night. It felt so insanely good to shut my eyes and drift off. None of the tests came back with anything conclusive which lead the doctors to believe this might be some kind of musculoskeletal problem. I'm going to have a CT scan of my abdomen done tomorrow morning and hopefully something will turn up.

Seeing as my classes are swiftly going down the toilet, I'm thinking about withdrawing for the semester or at least cutting my five classes down to just a couple. Need to call my advisor tomorrow and discuss it.

The trip to Atlanta was fun. I was very surprised on Saturday night when my family, discussing which movie to rent, decided unanimously upon Monsters Inc. Afterwards, they all liked it a lot.

I made the mistake of helping my dad move some furniture last night and did a great job at tearing that scar tissue in my intestines wiiiiide open again. This time around it is not a gigantic unplaceable throbbing ache in my abdomen, but a rapid razor-sharp stabbing pain around the area of my left hip. From what I can tell, it seems to be made worse by positions such as sitting, standing and laying down. And as an extra bonus, neither Advil nor Percoset nor cold packs nor anything else I have has helped to allievate the pain even remotely. I sat up watching infomercials all night and squirmed frustratedly through my classes today. I'm squirming from it now.

And all I can think is that coming back to school so quickly after the surgeries this summer was a huge, huge mistake.

Just listening to the birds outside, waiting for my dad and stepmom to arrive. I didn't mention that I got the results of my monthly xrays/blood tests back yesterday. The protein marker was 4.4 this month, but only 1.7 last month. When I started getting nervous the doctor assured me that it's not uncommon for large spikes like that to happen: "it could go from 4 one month to .5 the next or vice versa." Still, I think I'd be happier the closer it stayed to zero.

On a side note, would anyone care to buy The Sims complete in box and in excellent condition for $15? I haven't played it in a long while and the stores around me only offer store credit.

I wake up Monday morning, I turn around and the next thing I know, it's Friday night. I'm still not used to this.

At exactly 4:02 Thursday morning I got a call from a friend downtown who was completely sloshed and hence unable to drive home. I picked him and his lady friend up, dropped her off at her house, and went to his house to drop him off, when he then insisted that I spend the rest of the night there so that I could drive him to campus the next morning so he wouldn't miss his class. Looking back, I really have absolutely no idea why I agreed to this, but nevetheless I did. I didn't get much more sleep, and at 7:30 I got up to be sure we had enough time to get everything done that we needed to before our classes started. My friend mumbled that he would find some other way to get to class, rolled over and went back to sleep. I drove home and went upstairs to my room just as my alarm went off, and showered and dressed and caught the bus to campus like I always do. I don't think there's any real moral to this, but it was an interesting experience. I still feel like I did the right thing.

Today I got the much-needed new tires for my car and spent most of the night with Matt. Some unfortunate things have happened in his family and I don't think he's taking it very well. I was hoping to cheer him up a little, but I'm not sure I did a very good job. He didn't want to talk about how he's feeling so I couldn't do much but spend time with him and tell him that I love him and that if he feels like talking, I'm here for him.

As for my own family, my parents are driving down tomorrow; I haven't seen them since I came back here for the semester. We're heading to Atlanta to spend the day and night with my sister and brother-in-law and driving back Sunday morning. I'm thrilled about seeing them, but I sort of wish that the lion's share of my weekend wasn't already accounted for-- especially considering that I also have to work Sunday night. I want to be there for Matt if he needs me. I invited him to come with us, but he said he had things to take care of. I feel so completely powerless.

Today I went to the health clinic because I am sick yet again. I've had a bad sore throat and cough since Saturday-- I made the mistake of going for a short, pleasant walk with Matt in the Botanical Gardens and basically fell to pieces when we got home-- so they put me on some antibiotics. From Saturday until today I tried to fight it off with vitamins and lozenges and fluids, but nothing helped and I just gave up. My immune system has truly been shot to hell since this summer. On the good side, though, I'm at the clinic so often these days for one thing or another that most of the nurses and doctors know me or know of me and are always especially nice. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, but that's how it is, in any case.

Right before hopping in my car to head to work tonight I discovered that one of my rear tires was completely flat. I was treated to an exciting drive down the highway with the tire flapping in the breeze like President Bush's mouth as I looked for a gas station with an air pump. Since I'm sure by this time tomorrow it'll be flat again, I guess I'll be heading to the mechanic after class tomorrow. I need two new rear tires and a new serpentine belt anyway ($$$$$).

I don't feel like saying much else here. I do feel like cutting off my hair and bleaching it. I'm starting to feel like my wardrobe is too gaudy. I wish I felt like sleeping.

Home from work; got an A on my art hist test. I have more to say but I'm too tired (at 10pm...?). Visit somethingawful.com (especially this article), those folks are a lot more amusing than me.