#and they had to give me a large dose of zofran because I have bad reactions to MRI contrast

[cookinguptales]

man, I don't know if it's like. residual emotional effects from yesterday, the physical toll it took on my body, hormones or just like. a general sense of malaise. but I just kind of want to lie in bed and cry today.

I just finished a work project, which is generally call for celebration, but I just. every time I try to work on a creative project instead, I feel like everything I make is awful. every time I try to just veg and watch something, I feel like I'm wasting my time. my brain is very... scratchy today, for lack of a better word.

idk, maybe I'm just mentally exhausted. I had to put on kind of a brave and friendly face for most of yesterday, but it was a pretty awful experience. the actual migraine(?) was terrifying, especially because the experience wasn't anything like other migraines I've had, the tests were stressful and painful and I'm having quite a few physical effects today because of them. and no matter how often it happens to me, there's something so specifically demoralizing about paying several hundred dollars to go to the hospital and stay there all day just for them to say "good news! we can't find anything wrong!" like that makes you feel any better at all when something clearly is.

idk how I feel so simultaneously over and underwhelmed today.

[oddfawnn]

New Diagnosis, New Me

I was an EMT for about 3 years. I started when I was 20. On my 21st birthday they put me on a truck for the first time. I was so scared. EMT school did not prepare me for the things I had to learn on that truck.

It took a good while, but I got pretty good at my job. I was so proud of it. I felt like I belonged to a family.

When I was a freshman in high school, I’d been diagnosed with depression. I’d been through many psychiatrists, counselors and medications when I started working as an EMT. I thought I was as stable as I could get. Looking back, I was never stable. I was on extremely high doses of various antidepressants, and they’d frequently get switched around because they just weren’t working. I had no idea how to compartmentalize or cope. I had no stable relationships aside from my mom and dad.

Obviously as an EMT I saw things no one should have to see. Some people deal with those things in a healthy way. I was not one of them. Somehow though, I thought I could do it. I though the therapy and medications would make it better. For a long time I thought I was handling it. I thought I was socializing but really I was just finding excuses to drink and do stupid things for laughs.

I started taking less pride in my work. I became bitter and cynical. I’ve always been an extremely empathetic person, and I considered this to be a strength as well as a flaw. I saw that empathy fading. The few friendships I had were not being nurtured in a healthy way and I think at some point I made decisions that sabotaged those relationships. The “family” I thought I belonged to as an EMT was not there for me when it mattered. I was not given the support I needed. In fact, the environment was so unhealthy and toxic. They (not everyone, but the majority) tore me down when I needed picked up. The gossip was worse than a hair salon and I’m ashamed to say I was a part of it all. By the time I was able to be honest with myself and acknowledge the damage that was being done to my mental health, I was diagnosed with PTSD. Seems extremely obvious now.

I continued counseling. I tried to work part time instead of full time. It didn’t change anything. I was still just as bitter and I dreaded work. I didn’t know what I wanted for my life anymore. I dropped in and out of various classes and changed my major a few times searching for the right direction. I was so, so lost.

Somewhere along the way I met my now husband. He was the only light in my life at that time. He was an EMT too and I could talk to him about things. He supported me even when what I was doing wasn’t logical. To this day I’m not sure why he stuck around during such a tumultuous time in my life.

After I quit EMS completely I had an identity crisis. Who was I if I’d always defined myself by what I did as a career? I started a job working with mentally ill people like me. I was supposed to be in recovery with my mental illness but my doctor at the time did not see that I was very much not ok.

I married my husband in 2017. About a month after our wedding, I hit an all time low. I was very afraid of where my head was. I was going to weekly therapy, taking my meds and seeing my doctor regularly. I was doing everything right, so why wasn’t I ok? I began to feel hopeless.

When I finally was able to see the only psychiatrist in my city that has consistently treated mental health in an effective way, it was the middle of 2018. My husband and I had a very rough start to our marriage, in large part due to my declining mental health. I had no friends. I couldn’t hold a job. My family was worried about me. Heck, I was worried about me.

My new doctor, (God bless him) discovered that for nearly 10 years, I’d been misdiagnosed. It was obvious as day to him at my first appointment. He said the large doses of antidepressants I’d been given were even making me worse. At the time of my appointment with him, I was taking a medication that made me throw up every morning unless I took it with Zofan, an anti emetic. He was very upset with my previous doctor because the medications weren’t even slightly working, so there was absolutely no need to make me so uncomfortable. Also, Zofran is not meant to be taken regularly like that.

I am Bipolar. Type 2, specifically. That means I have very low “lows” and mild, less frequent “highs.” But the antidepressants I’d been taking for 10 years had me tilting back and forth way too often. He took me off everything I was currently taking and put me on a low dose of a mood stabilizer with a very low dose of an antidepressant. Simple.

You guys...within a week I felt like a new human. So much so that my brain decided I could handle some of my more traumatic memories. It’s insane to me how our minds can file things away until we are at a point where we can handle those memories. For this, I was sent to a specialist that utilized EMDR therapy to help me process those traumatic memories. It helped so, so much. I’m no longer afraid to think about those things, even though they’re still painful. They no longer have control of my life.

Today, I still have bad days here and there but I know how to handle them. My marriage is so much healthier, though we’re still learning. Earlier this year, my parents and my husband and I found our chrch home. I am saved, and I know that even in my lowest lows God loves me so, so much. I’ll go more in depth on my spiritual journey in a later post.

I want to take the time and thank my husband for standing beside me when I so didn’t deserve it. He is so gracious with me. I also want to give a shoutout to my parents and my husbands family for not giving up on me or judging me when I was going through tough times. Love y’all so so much.

[braindamageforbeginners]

The Morning After/Diet

Cycle 9, Day 16

POST-FINAL INFUSION, CYCLE 9

Thankfully, a quasi-legal medical substance allows me to get through the night, and wake up feeling mostly-okay on post-infusion days. I’m still exhausted and fatigued, but caffeine does help with that, too. I guess the DARE program’s message should have been that recreational drug use was bad, but as an entire lifestyle, it might be neccessary (I say that knowing they’ll eventually have to stop chemo, because, again, these are dangerous, expensive drugs that will burn out one’s innards. Good news, the outtards are doing pretty well at the moment, which plays well to my plan to ask for more napalm doses until those wretched new cells on the block give up. There are a few people who know me personally who know there’s a non-minor chance I’m just too stubborn to die. Of course, it’s easy to say that now, after a clean scan (that occurred two weeks ago). And it feels good to say that,even for what’s usually the worst infusion in the series was easily treated by some aspirin, and my new bionic joints (although I still seem to get a nasty wonky leg after infusions). The bad news is that, even with my bionic joints, a simple high-speed walk around the neighborhood left me wobbly. So much for prosthetic devices (although it’s worth noting that gait issues are very common symptoms of  progressing brain cancer; which pretty much also means they’re a side-effect of chemo)..

Also, even though I’m still not looking at 401K options, I am getting a little better at reading between the lines about cancer statistics, and figuring that our society is completely riddled with bad health practices that will automatically make every health issue worse, including brain cancer (Dad recommended looking into going back to grad school for biomedical informatics, since that’s now one of my hobbies). Case in point, the average American turbo-loading on unhealthy diets. This wouldn’t normally be worth commentary, but when you spend most of your waking hours obsessing over your own health, you can get tunnel-vision and forget most of us aren’t leading terribly healthy lives, anyway; as I kind of realized yesterday taking my grandmother shopping. There’s endless fats, sugars, and all kinds of insanely unhealthy junk (so says the man on a potentially-fatal course of drugs). Before we continue, I’ve been asked if I’m on a ketogenic diet. No, I am not. I am on the Jack Lalanne diet (that was intended to be a joke, until I did a little research and found out that I am). I’d normally not go over that, except this is intended for the next set of folks in line, and ketogenic diet is en vogue with cancer patients. To dip into my biochem background, the ketogenic diet basically swaps sugars for fats, and it is a fad diet. Even though there’s more research being done on it as an interventional therapy (that’s “we’re doing something medically to treat an illness”), I only saw one study for GBM, and it only increased life expectancy two months, AND, to be effective, he patients had to be kept in a state of near-ketogenic shock and in the hospital constantly. We’ll call that “Plan B.”

In the meantime, because chemo and/or zofran tend to stop you up; I thought it’d be easier to just eat loads of fruits of and vegetables to keep everything sluicing through me (that’s not true, I’m just terrified of laxtives; you can peruse the archives for that particular incident). I think I’m up to seven or eight a day, because it’s easier to maintain healthy habits than start and stop them (Jack had at least 10 raw vegetable/fruit servings a day). People often talk/ask about changes in taste because of chemo. I usually shrug because my own tastes are largely unaltered; however, upon reflection, pineapples got amazing in the last year or so. Add onto that at least 15-20 grams of protein before starting dinner or snacking, and, my rule is, you can eat as much as you want of whatever you want. I don’t think you’ll want much, though. If you’ve never heard of Jack, it’s a shame, because he pretty much invented modern fitness.movement. He’s credited with starting the first public gyms in America that featured things like barbells (he’s not so much “Old School” as much the guy who pours the cement foundations). And he lived to be 96, so, clearly, the man was doing something right. His dietary rule was - and this is a direct quote - “If it tastes good, spit it out,” So far, it’s worked fantastically for me (and that’s a pretty easy diet rule to remember), in the sense that I’m still alive and mostly-intact, and haven’t lost much weight (but my belt size has dropped by two inches)(to be honest, I have cheat days, and I do have the odd beer or Manhattan). That sounds all pretty narcissistic, but here’s the pay-off if you’re ever in the hot seat. If you are diagnosed with a terminal illness (another thing that skews GBM stats; if I get side-swiped tomorrow and die in a freak accident; that’ll get calculated into life expectancy stats, even if the cause of death is clearly a drunk semi driver), get into a level crazy health and/or physical activity. Cancer survivors have a severely reduced life expectancy, because of  all the side-effects and long-term damage associated with treatment. That’s not just brain cancer, it’s all of them.

And there are many, many cancers that were previously considered “acute” and have been reclassified as “chronic.”  My plan here is stolen from Ben Williams - stay healthy and alive long enough and well enough that the Warlocks will keep hexing me until I die, or the cancer (which is me, remember) does. I realize that seems grim and unpleasant as a philosophy, but that is the definition of a terminal situation. Someone will die. I’m damned if that someone is going to be me.

Because that’s not exactly an upbeat way of ending this post, I will point out that there are all sorts of nutritionists at the cancer center, who all have the secret to staying healthy during and after treatment, and, even though it’s a little mean, I do remember one of them mentioning, in a support group, something like, “It pains me to hear people say they want to eat healthy, but don’t enjoy the things that are healthy for them.” Which is an interesting statement to make to a bunch of people in chemo, because it’s not like anyone enjoys or feels great on a non-stop diet of mustard gas. I am now so deep in the Abyss that “unenjoyable” is almost a vacation. Still, I’m ready to endure more punishment, because my sense of humor is still there, and able to appreciate the delicious irony of an authority figure talking about the concept of “fun meals” with people who are now far beyond conventional fun. That seems horrible unless you consider the possibilities of unconvenional fun. Or getting funny, which was my coping method.

Also, because I’m getting restless with just the basic stress of undergoing chemo, micro-managing my health and keeping current with all my drugs, writing the tale/blog, and/or my ongoing attempt at a novel, I figured I’d start The Terminal Artists list. This will be an ongoing project, both as a form of therapy for myself, and because everyone who suddenly comes face to face with a life-altering and/or limiting illness could use it, and because it was a theme at the cancer writing group on Monday. So, the rules: 1. This is a list of people whose greatest - or best-known works (in a few lonely cases, the only books or poems some ever wrote were started when they began dying) were done in the final year of their life. I realize that “best” is highly subjective, and the idiom “best-known” would require a poll to establish. 2. Even though I use the word “artist,” I’ll happily use that as a catch-all for scientists, engineers, playwrights, dancers, athletes - anyone who produces/designs/discovers/creates anything that would positively impact those left behind is a contender. I just don’t want some estate attorney who cleverly scams their clients using loopholes in probate law; or a smuggler who figures a new way to smuggle and sell arms to UN embargo countries. Use your judgment, folks. 3. Ideally, you’d pair a specific person with their song/album/film/discover etc., but if it’s an extremely well-known (or prolific) artist/whatsit, I’ll bend the rules and do some research 4. people who are so prolific that they have works published after they die will be on the list, because the only thing cooler than giving the Reaper the finger and leaping on the keyboard (or easel, or guitar, or wet bench) is leaving such a vast, consistent body of work, it’s still considered awesome when you aren’t around to advocate for it

THE LIST SO FAR.... -Vincent van Gogh - “Starry Night” -Jimi Hendrix - “Angel” -Howard Ashman (Playwright/lyricist/) - “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin” - Paul Kalanithi (surgeon/writer) - “When Breath Becomes Air” -Nina Riggs (writer) - “The Bright Hour” -Warren Zevon - “The Wind” -Freddie Mercury - “The Show Must Go On” -Johnny Cash -Michael Crichton (writer, minor demi-god to all sci-fi fans) - Pirate Latitudes -Samuel Clemens (writer) - Autobiography -Roy Orbison (minor private music teacher - “You Got It”

[braindamageforbeginners]

Half superhero. Half Kenny Chesney. Half Vietnam War correspondent. 100% ‘Merican

Week 9, Day 63, Experimental Infusion #6

So, in a case of being careful what you wish for; the MRI came back clean (Research Coordinator further ingratiated himself to me during the Warlock consult by leaning over and whispering, “You’re looking for the red contrast on the third screen - I don’t see any”), and with relatively little quantifiable radiation damage. Which is fantastic, believe me, no one is happier about that than me. However, as Senior Warlock pointed out, that just means I have to keep up the pressure (which. Which means more dreaded Temodar, at over twice the previous dosage; and more Captain America serum. As you’ll note from the photographic evidence, I came dressed for the job I want (my male vanity feels inclined to point out that even though I’m not exactly svelte these days, those chemo barcaloungers don’t really put you at the most flattering angle)(also, I’d just received a massive IV dose of zofran, which tends to make me feel a little fuzzy around the edges)(oddly enough, the pills I take daily don’t seem to have that same softening effect; although that’s probably because you lose a large chunk of any orally-taken drug to the GI system). The pockets are there to keep my other pockets in (we’ll get to that shortly).

I spent a solid chunk of last night in the bathroom and/or sucking on my antianxiety meds (they’re dissolvable and - I assume - absorbed sublingually), It seems another needless cruelty that I have to face this disease with a weak stomach, but we all have our cross to bear. So, by the time I finally made it to the Warlock consult - which happened after an MRI and a blood test, so there was a certain sense of dramatic build-up to the event - It was taking all of my willpower not to vomit and pass out (again, I will happily admit to being a coward). I don’t really recall too much except that everyone in lab coats seemed very happy about the results, and cleared me to enter Phase 2. Which involves three serum infusions a month combined with a week of Temodar at higher doses (I’ll admit that I got a bit weak in the knees when Senior Warlock mentioned that I’m only on a “mid-grade” dosage - but, one week out of every four seems a relatively minor price to pay to remain this side of the dirt and mostly-intact)(I’m still not sure about the Captain America Serum; that’s fairly rough stuff, even with the cool psychadelic dreams)(good news on that one; Senior Warlock says my weird, post-injection dreams do sound like there is some blood-brain barrier penetration of the serum, which is correlated with better patient outcomes with the combination of this drug and standard chemo)(hooray).

To explain my rather unique nerd vest; I should point out that it’s technically a jacket with removable sleeves (I’m still single, ladies); I removed them after I realized that I’d be getting jabbed a lot that day, and I didn’t want to pull the jacket off and on every ten minutes. And every pocket in that vest had something useful in it. Yes, I might’ve looked like a nerd (WYSIWYG)(the hilariously cruel comment of the day goes to Dad, who said, on my ability to recall random Star Trek trivia, “After that shirt and jacket, you’re just earning a geek oak cluster”), but I was a nerd fully-prepared for any contingency. Which was helpful, because after I got cleared to receive infusion #6. I had to wait quite a while - apparently, chemo wards tend to get crowded after three day weekends, because most patients prefer to spend their remaining time visiting loved ones instead of being injected with poison. Those weak-ass pansies. On the other hand, I did get a good look at the chemo ward, and realized I’ve gotten pretty lightly, so far. Your medical vocabulary word of the day, reader, is “cachexia,” though I’d advise not looking at the images if you’ve eaten recently. Anyway, the stack-up of patients meant I had a lot of time with my gadgets and chargers (I’m making a chemo playlist - if I’m spending six hours a month in there, I might as well be creative about it)(song #1 is Alice Cooper’s “Poison”), so, the nerdy pocket vest payed off there. It really payed off when I finally made it to the chemo chair, and the nurse had to find a new vein (I’d had blood drawn and received an MRI contrast injection, so my go-to vein was showing some wear and tear). Pro-tip; if you have hard-to find veins, wear the dorky vest and make sure you keep a squeezy stress-ball thing in a pocket (I use a basic rubber tennis ball, but that’s just me), because you can take it out and start pumping it (this actually impressed the chemo nurse and Research Coordinator), and it’ll help a competent nurse find a vein.

The bad news is, that took up an entire, 9-5 day. Just being a sick person. At a hospital. Getting treatment. Which just gives credence to my ongoing gripe that being a sick person is (or should be) a profession unto itself. On the other hand, things are looking up at the moment (which makes me feel like I’ll die in my sleep or something tonight), even though my left shoulder and side are in extraordinary pain (my lasting contribution to science might be the establishment of that side-effect for this drug). And better news, I did find an alternative to Gatorade - one of those mix-it-yourself rock climber electrolyte concoctions (I double-checked with the Warlocks, they said it sounded fine and they usually recommend Pedialyte and Gatorade because that’s readily available and immediately recognizable). The downside is that this stuff tastes like urinal cleanser - I almost kind of miss the cough syrup sweetness of Arctic Blast Gatorade. The good news is, it seems far more effective than Gatorade, so I don’t have to drink as much (I’m almost impressed at those hard-core alcoholics who wake up early to drink more; I barely have the stamina to keep hydrated throughout the night - and that’s on doctors’ orders). And it’s much, much cheaper, and has a mere fraction of the calories (I’ve literally lost ten pounds after stopping my all-Gatorade, all-the-time lifestyle after Infusion #5). So, like everything else in my life, it’s unpleasant, but doable. And I’m still coherent enough to complain about it, so things haven’t gone dreadfully wrong.

[braindamageforbeginners]

Hangover Cures

Week 2, Day 11

In a conversation with a friend last night, I discovered that I might come off as somewhat negative (or, excessively negative, to be more precise). Also, in her defense, this wasn’t anything she accused me of, it was just something that struck me after the conversation. Anyway, even though I’ve been somewhat gloomy as of late, and even though no one would ever accuse me of being a cheerful, happy individual - at any point in my life - I’m not wallowing in self-pity to the extent that these little records might indicate. I’m not happy or well-adjusted, but I’m not walking around spreading gloom. It’s possible I’ve unintentionally endorsed that idea by focusing on what I’ve lost, or what’s on the way out the door, rather than what I’ve gained.

First of all, this whole Morrie Shwartz, “I lost a normal, independent existence, but I gained friendship” BS isn’t really me, and, in cancer, you don’t want to gain stuff - that’s the entire point of cutting, burning, and poisoning yourself (or bits of yourself). BUT - and, future generations hoping to triumph over brain diseases, this bit’s absolutely critical - brain damage (and its effects) is usually way too subtle for someone to notice on their own. I’ve done this two times before; I will absolutely stand by this. The first time I got neurosurgery, it took me almost ten years just to figure out what was missing from me, cognitively speaking. The second time, it took less than a month, because I went in before the surgery for a complete series of various tests and scans to record a base-line. This time, because the disease has moved far faster than I can, I didn’t have that luxury, but, because the worstest damage is predicted to occur slowly over weeks and months, I have to be hyper-vigilant, and get some documentation on each deficit as it occurs, while it’s occurring. Think of it like tax returns, or any other legal document (which is also important in dealing with insurance companies) - you want to be able to tell your doctor exactly what you’re having trouble with, how frequently, and with as much detail as you can. That’s important for any medical ailment - if you go in and complain that your leg hurts, they can’t really do much until they get more details. Same goes with brain damage - the better, and more-accurate documentation you have of various problems, the better the chance you have of making it back from the edge. Like I wrote previously, this is just as much a tool to help me save myself as it is a reference for everyone else in a similar situation. Who’s the pessimist now?

Speaking of providing guidance to future generations, I will be exploring various hangover cures at various points in these dispatches, since I’m waking with a four-star hangover pretty much every day, as you would expect when a body is exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation and toxins on a regular basis. A brief word; although I am open to most suggestions in this area, I will absolutely not be trying the “Hair of the Dog” cure; I’m already at full-capacity with regard to my toxin/radiation intake, and I’m absolutely not going to increase that unless my life depends on it (even then, there’s a solid chance I’d refuse and just die instead of reenact Benjamin Button). The good news is, with a significant amount of water and coffee (more water than coffee, but I’m not going to judge anyone’s preferences), I can (you, too, probably) live a somewhat-normal existence.

This morning, however, I woke up and immediately regretted it. I’m pretty sure that’s the experimental chemo drug I’m taking; it makes life extra-unpleasant for two or three days after each dose. However, I do know that, sometimes, it takes a little extra something to go from whimpering in a supine position to upright and functioning. Fortunately, lots of zofran and Tylenol do wonders, especially with some grease and protein. Just as fortunately, my younger brother was only too happy to indulge this request, and took me to a local, German-owned (and German-themed) butcher’s shop/restaurant. A brief aside; this development may come as a bit of a surprise to anyone who knows me personally, as I’ve been a vegetarian for the last eleven years. I, uh, “converted” back in 2006 after deciding that heart disease was no way to die; I fell off the wagon shortly after surgery #3, after realizing that diet doesn’t do anything, you don’t get any bonus points for maintaining a healthy diet if you die of cancer before forty, and, perhaps most importantly, if I’m going to meet the reaper, I want to do it with a Porterhouse in one hand an a beer in the other (since that realization, I’ve been trying to atone for eleven misspent years), and a trip to a European butcher’s shop seemed like both a good place for breakfast, and a way to make a solid dent in that pile of bacon I was owed for good behavior. You might want to know the difference between a “European-style” butcher’s, and... well, we don’t have much in the way of specialty stores in today’s box-store-obsessed world, but you can find Norman Rockwell paintings of what American butchers’ stores were like (there was also a lot of sexism, racism, classism, and xenophobia that’s not accurately portrayed in those paintings, but, thankfully, those are no longer issues we have to deal with). Folks, I want you to imagine a place where every imaginable cut of meat - and several unimaginable ones - is on display, alongside Swiss chocolate, and British beer. It was like that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where Gene Wilder lets everyone into that room where everything is made of sugar; I was frolicking. Until my brother pointed out that the other customers were going to have us arrested for inappropriate behavior, so we made our way to the restaurant section. I do not know how I reached 33 years without any solid memories of eating steak and eggs for breakfast, but I would heartily recommend it for any and all occasions (especially if you’ve recently crunched the numbers and realized you’re going to have to fit 30-40 years’ of vices into a 10-year life-expectancy), but it does do wonders for a chemo hangover. Unfortunately, the coffee was not up to my high standards, and that’s an important aspect in one’s quality of life. Fortunately, I’m in a large metropolis, and finding good coffee is but the work of a Google search on the smart phone, so I was more or less my usual misanthropic-but-witty self in short order. By that point, I had to return home to lie on a hot rock and digest for a few hours (also, my father and step-mother ditched us and went to the gym without giving anyone time to grab their gym shorts and shoes, which, now that I think on it, is a brilliant way to get some time away from your spawn). Fortunately, they threw a few steaks into my pit for dinner, so all is well. And, thanks to the new year’s holidays, I don’t have any more treatments until Wednesday (I got the radioactive spa treatment today, however).

Anyway... WEIGHT: No idea; I haven’t been weighed in a few days. However, based on today’s shenanigans, I’ve probably gained five or six pounds (about two or three kilos). CONCENTRATION: Pretty good.. MEMORY: Not bad, although I have misplaced a few items in the past 24 hours, which I tend to do a fair amount of the time. APPETITE: Excellent. Although I might be eating to shift my focus away from other discomforts. But I think that just makes me American. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Not great, but not bad. I mean, I did spend a fair chunk of the day racing around and eating stuff, which puts me on the same level as the Tasmanian Devil. SLEEP QUALITY: Extremely poor. The experimental serum tends to amplify the side-effects of all my other treatments, and, in the case of temodar, that means I spent an hour last night holding my sides and feeling like John Hurt’s character in the noted rom-com, Alien. I didn’t puke though, so, go zofran. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Pretty good, but my left hand has definitely been underperforming all day. PHYSICAL: Nothing’s falling off, but I am now very photophobic, and I have a nasty splitting headache along the suture lines of surgery #3 - it’s almost as bad as immediately after the surgery. Fortunately, double-doses of Tylenol makes it bearable, but I am acutely aware the minute that wears off. SIDE EFFECTS: Apart from the hangover-symptoms, insomnia, headache, general mental sluggishness (which might be due to insomnia and hangovers), and the growing body of seemingly-innocent mental errors and incidents that are insidiously growing, I’m in top form.

Also, on a personal note, best of luck to my brother, who came down from the Pacific Northwest to hold my hand for a week. And thanks to a friend from my undergrad days who made a donation in my name to a cancer center. Thank you, ma’am.