Archive for 2007
September 11th, 2007 1,139 views
i have been on the edge of panic for nearly 2 weeks now. ever since i noticed the first lump. there are things that help. sometimes ativan, but I like to leave that as a last resort because so many thing are going on in my body, it is already hard to keep them straight.
distractions help. warcrack has been great when i can play it. writing is helping right now. people have been staying with me every day. i am lucky to have people that care about me like that. I don’t always completely understand why they do, considering that i am antisocial and often suck at returning emails. phone calls are even worse. my parents are coming on sunday. k is there for me always. i don’t know why i get to be this lucky, but i have never been more thankful for it than i am now.
i called the clinic the night i found the lump. Or maybe K did. The triage nurse decided I was worthy to see a doctor and said to come in the next day. The appt. was at 10am. They told me to come at 9:45.
While I was walking over there, I was thinking about what i would want to do if i found out something really bad. i believe that no matter how hard you try to think positively, it is impossible to keep your mind from going to the worst places. First i thought amsterdam w/k, but then got suddenly panicked. no. it is too far away. i want to be with the rest of my family too.
I got there at 9:45 and waited until 10:45 to see a doctor for 5 minutes. He sent me to get some chest x-rays and said to come right back and he would see me again. I got back with my x-rays and waited another half hour. The doc says, “I don’t read these very often, but it looks normal to me.” Thanks doc. He comes back with a nurse to give me a breast exam. He thinks he feels another lump there but is not sure so schedules blood tests and a mammogram and tells me to come back in 2 weeks.
I was too freaked out to wait at the clinic for the appointments and told the receptionist to call me.
i leave. cry. call k. k cries. k comes home.
we are both very very scared. sorry k. always something isn’t it?
had a fever for a while and had to go to the ER and get IV and more blood tests. all blood tests have been normal so far. mammogram was good too. Apparently normal blood tests are a bad thing because they are ruling out other possible causes.
K came with me to the doc to get test results and that is when he told us that he thinks I most likely have lymphoma as mentioned in the previous post. I started writing this post on the day I first went to the clinic, but then was not able to look at it again until now. There is still a chance it is not something terrible. We are all hoping for cat scratch fever which has amazingly similar symptoms to lymphoma.
The doc told us that the first lump would be removed at the biopsy, which was supposed to be tomorrow. It now appears that tomorrow’s appointment is only a consultation with the doc who will be doing the biopsy. Today, I was supposed to get a blood smear, but they had to call the doc with questions about the test and it was over half an hour and they still hadn’t heard back and they kept saying it would be soon or that i was next, but kept calling other names. I wasn’t feeling very well. Completely exhausted and starting to panic. Finally I couldn’t handle being there any more and left with my friend Nancy who had kindly taken me to the appointment and is now in the other room while I am trying to sleep which is proving to be impossible.
This is crazy. Too crazy. I can manage not to completely panic most of the time, to have a very positive attitude some of the time, to get distracted a bunch of the time, but i don’t really know how to stop this edge of panic thing. last time it happened, i took ativan and it worked. i will probably end up taking one soon if writing doesn’t work. it has helped to not be alone. susan came over all day yesterday. tc came at night and susan decided to stay too. k took tomorrow and friday off. nancy is here now. tc is coming back on thursday and maybe tess too. d is coming over on sunday. my folks are coming on sunday night. lorena is helping us to decode medical speak and giving us good questions to ask at the consultation tomorrow. thanks everybody.
Whatever this turns out to be, I will fight it. It is what I do and what I have always done. It is my way.
Thanks to everyone who has left such nice comments and sent emails and have been coming over to babysit me while all this is going on. i appreciate it more than i can say even if i don’t respond individually. i am kind of low on energy at the moment.
I will still have hope that it is a really bad virus or cat scratch fever. Just because the doc was so glum doesn’t necessarily mean he is right. His face and his attitude made me way more scared than I think I otherwise would have been, but after reading around on the internet (not my best idea), I may have ended up just as freaked out anyway. I am thankful for his honesty even if it is making it harder to think positively. I suppose that will make my cat scratch fever diagnosis all the more sweet.
Filed under: Random
Tags: life, ramble
September 7th, 2007 1,414 views
I am terrified. There is a big lump in my neck above my collarbone and another in my armpit. Will get a biopsy on wednesday. doc thinks it is most likely lymphoma. i don’t know what to do.
Filed under: Random
Tags: life
August 21st, 2007 2,164 views
I am starting to wonder if it is possible for me to really have a “normal” life. Things are so much better than before and my meds are finally working again, but even though I can do so many more things now, I am realizing that my limits and tolerance are still pretty low.
Things that have been very hard or impossible to do for the past year:
- Reading
- Working
- Doing martial arts
- Leaving the house
- Playing warcrack
- Being around people
- Traveling
Almost all of those things are easier now, but I still can’t do that many of them without getting overwhelmed. When I get overwhelmed, I can’t think and when I can’t think, I am back to not being able to do anything anymore. It is occurring to me that this will not change. I am not sure why I keep thinking that it will. Things have always been this way as long as I can remember, no matter what meds I am taking and how well they are working.
The things that are hardest sometimes change from one med to the next, but there is never a time when I can really do things like other people can. It can be argued that there are things that I can do better than a lot of people can and I am very lucky for that, but no matter how much I have learned to appreciate my ‘different’ brain, there is still a part of me that is very jealous of how easy it is for most people to do things that completely wear me out or that I can not do at all. I wish I didn’t feel like that, but it is hard not to.
I wish I could be around people without getting confused and exhausted trying to figure out what to do, what to say, when to say it, all while paying attention to and remembering what is going on around me and what everyone else is saying, and how everything everyone is saying relates to the things that other people are saying. People do this every minute of every day as though it was not complicated at all. I don’t understand. I can’t understand. I hate not understanding.
I want to work. I have to work because we need money. We have a house and 4 cats and I have an expensive computer habit to pay for. I love what I do, but don’t even have any idea if I am making money, losing money, or breaking even. I want to do martial arts, but am still finding it too hard to be around people doing something so intense. I keep trying to think of other ways and places to do it, but I can’t think of a way to do it without other people. I wish it was like in the old days where some kind Sensei would take me under their wing and I would wash their car for them. Mr. Miyagi, where are you?
If I work all day, or even worse, try to work all day and don’t get anything done, then I can’t even get out of the house. If I don’t get out of the house, I can’t think. If I can’t think, I can’t do anything. It is a vicious cycle that repeats forever in some form or other.
Lately, there are so many things going on and it is getting harder and harder to do any of them. It is not the meds this time. It is just my brain being itself. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to have less things. There are work things and house things and cat things and travel things and people things and non-work website things and computer things and all of the other random things that seem to pop up every day.
I can work, but it is very hard to concentrate. I have been able to read a little. I have been able to get out of the house much better, but it has been getting harder and harder as there are more and more things. I get too confused. I can’t do anything in the house and can’t leave it. Sucks.
It is not all bad. One very fun thing has been teaching Karen to play warcrack. She is on a 10 day trial account and we have been wandering Azeroth together as a gnome mage (K) and a dwarf rogue (me). I think we are level 7. It is fun to play with K. Today she sent me a funny description of how she described what playing is like to a friend of hers:
“I draw the enemies out by frostballing them, then I fireball them while Lori is stabbing them and then she beats them to death.”
Good clean fun 
Filed under: Autism / Asperger's
Tags: house, life, ramble, warcraft, work
August 7th, 2007 2,135 views
Before I start, I have to say that I hate the ad slogan for the new iMacs, which is “You can’t be too thin. Or too powerful.” I felt like puking the moment I saw it.
At Apple headquarters in Cupertino today, Steve Jobs announced a new line of iMacs, or at least differently designed imacs of the same line. They are made of aluminum and glass. Interesting looking. I am generally a fan of shiny things, but I really love the look of the white imacs. Why did they have to put that huge black border around the new displays? I’m not too fond of the big black apple logo either.
There does not appear to be a 17″ offering this time around. There are two 20-inch configurations and one 24-inch configuration. The new iMacs will still run on Intel Core 2 Duo processors and will now hold up to 4GB of RAM. There are still only two RAM slots, so prior planning of RAM needs should done if you don’t want to end up with an unused 1GB SO-DIMM or two.
Prices run from $1,199 to $1,799 for the 2GHz and 2.4GHz models. There is a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme processor available on configure-to-order imacs. Hard drives sizes are 250GB for the 2.0GHz imac and 320GB for the 2.4GHz 20 and 24-inch models. 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB drives are available on configure-to-order models.
The new displays are glossy widescreen TFT active-matrix LCDs. The keyboard has been redesigned to match the new look and has a few special function keys added for convenience. The new version of iLife (iLife ‘08) was also announced today and a copy is included with all new imacs.
Filed under: Mac Stuff
Tags: imac, mac
July 27th, 2007 1,993 views
I have been so busy this week that I haven’t had time to write about wordcamp. Lots of work these days and then on Wednesday, I got my 2 top wisdom teeth pulled. K came with me (thank you K!) and we had to wait for an hour in the waiting room, and then what seemed like forever in the dentist room. I cried. I have a hard time going to the dentist. After almost two hours of waiting, the dentist pulled my teeth in about 5 minutes. I didn’t feel a thing, but the noise was pretty sick. It doesn’t hurt too bad as long as I take tylenol and don’t eat food that requires chewing.
This weekend, I went to Wordcamp 2007 in San Francisco. It was even better than last year. Surrounded by wordpress geeks. In some ways, I like it better than macworld. There are not too many things that I like better than macworld. Wordcamp is smaller and more focused. Lucky for me, it is focused on some of my favorite things.
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Filed under: Geekery
Tags: wordcamp, wordpress
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