response 142 of 475:

Jan 29 20:06 UTC 2004

I clean out /tmp when I think it needs cleaning and I try out programs there
before moving the working ones somewhere else.  I put realplayer8 in its own
directory and it still gives segmentation faults.  

I need to add another \ to my lynx compilation script so it will compile
statically and then compress the output.

response 144 of 475:

Jan 30 11:37 UTC 2004

This week I am now consistently waking at 5 am or before (plus a few other
times during the very short night) after getting to sleep somewhere around
1 am.  I got up and managed to break open my own capsule and mix it with
applesauce.

I am having the usual temporary shaky hands, which are a little more numb.
This will not last long.  The 2-day slight incontinences is over - the poisons
must cause bladder irritation.  I have pains in my upper arms, which should
be gone in a day or so, and sore leg muscles, ditto.  Tongue is getting a bit
sore and that will last around a week.  Eyes are runny but that gradually gets
somewhat better during the cycle.  
Things that I expect to get worse - immunity and fatigue (will start to
improve around Tuesday), sense of taste, sore tongue, mouth, and lips.

Will get slowly better - laryngitis and hopefully some day the hot flashes.

This is really minor compared to what many other people go through and I am
even cheerier about it than the last 7 cycles since I expect it to be the last
time on all of this.  And if not, people have survived worse.  

Maybe I will have more hair by the time it gets warm enough to go out without
a hat.  I may celebrate somehow around May 20 if the first checkup goes well.
Two people I talked to did not make it that far but they had different types
of lymphoma.  

It will be nice to be able to bike again and spend time at my own apartment,
which I have not been able to do since July.  Things are a mess there but at
least I don't have the pile of computers any more, it is here as are the hard
drives, sound cards......  Most of the food, many of my dictionaries, some
clothing.  I wear the same few articles of clothing all the time so as to save
space here (and nobody sees them but me and Jim anyway).  I still need to drag
myself up by the banister to climb stairs and my apartment has stairs to the
basement bathroom so it is easier here.  But my piano is there.  

The two people who did not 'make it' to the first checkup are not dead, one
of them did just fine with his second round of therapy and the other is not
looking forward to it (two 3-day treatments in hospital, bone marrow
transplant of her own marrow) but is feeling a lot better about it now that
I told her that the other guy has been okay for 5 years and was in bad shape
to start with.  So far at least 4 of the 5 people I talked to with recurrences
had lymphoma of some sort.  My mother had a recurrence (and two radiation
treatments) but hers was not treatable with chemotherapy and it was 20 years
ago.  I will try to enjoy the next two weeks, hope for the best on Feb 17 PET
scan, and assume that the next CAT scan 3 months after that will go well.

The doctor expected me to come in to see him a few days after the scan so he
could explain it to me, but agreed to let me skip that appointment unless
there was something wrong after I told him I translate this sort of thing for
a living and my doctor friend was sending me copies of my scan results.  I
still have to have blood draws and checkups every 3 months as well as CT
scans.

The hospital has started charging for 6 instead of 5 units of Rituxan now that
I have gained back 15 pounds, meaning an extra $1000 each infusion for just
that one drug.  It would have been a lot cheaper to stay skinny.  And they
charged me for 3 hours infusion of it most times but 2 hours once.  It took
an extra hour to get the IV in last time - will they charge $500 extra for
that?  They were busy with other patients while I just waited around in the
room.  They charged for 3 kytril antinausea pills one time and I only get two,
so I might ask them to fix that and the insurance company gives a commission
on overcharges that I report.  

I should get some more interesting reading matter.  Yesterday I sorted out
all the pieces of paper that I keep getting from the insurance company and
the hospital - bills, receipts, etc.  They are in sort of random order as they
get billed at various times after things happen depending on the category,
so that some later events went towards my deductible while earlier ones got
paid by insurance.

I paid them $8000 last time to cover both infusions and the PET scanin advance
and I hope they don't apply it to last year as it is this year's deductible.
The woman there made various notes about this, and a phone call.  I cannot
phone in my debit card number, only use it in person, and only up to $1000,
so I wrote a check.

I also have a sore spot again where the spleen biopsy was - that seems to get
worse after each infusion for no reason I can think of.  And sore spots in
both hands where I was jabbed, with blue blotches around two of them.  The
first needle may have missed the vein and hit a nerve as no blood came out.
The nurse said no blood was coming into the needle of the second one so she
removed it - I wonder if she went all the way through as lots of blood came
out when she removed it, and lots went into my hand.  The third one worked
but is also blue blotchy.  None of this is terribly painful, just annoying
but I assume it will eventually all stop hurting and if not, who cares, it
is nice to be alive and feel things.

I may wake Jim (it is already 6:30) to cook breakfast, or have a peanut butter
sandwich with my last mashed 7 10 mg prednisones.  This time they gave me a
special non-child-proof bottle which I can actually open myself.  My hands
are still not as strong as before.

response 146 of 475:

Jan 30 15:33 UTC 2004

The illegality of the segmentation fault and the not-a-good-idea-ness of
putting a program in /tmp are two separate issues. A segmentgation fault means
the program is somehow broken.

response 148 of 475:

Jan 31 14:19 UTC 2004

No more prednisone!  It has been over 24 hours.  Now I can spend a few days
being sleepy instead of nervous.

Today I got my first hate mail from someone at grex that I never heard of.
I forwarded it to uce (spam) before bothering to read it.  Strange.  I presume
the sender is rather young and does not know how to do 'forget'.  

libncurses.a is only half-size.  I wonder how long it will take to compile
ncurses in order to get that one file the right size.  THere must be an easier
way to get the file.  What is an .a file?

response 150 of 475:

Feb 2 17:51 UTC 2004

For two days I have felt like I am catching the flu - cold, achey, etc.  But
I recall this happening in mid-cycle before.  I thought yesterday everything
that was going to hurt had started hurting, until I woke up with a sore
windpipe.  The entire lining of my respiratory and digestive tracts has
probably been killed (or cells in all of it anyway) and my body is now
cleaning up and I have to blow my nose a lot, and also wipe my eyes a lot.

I discovered that not only do I pull muscles at this time of cycle but I also
get muscle cramps when I sit on my feet.  I have stopped sitting on my feet.
(The chair is too low for the table on which one of our computers sits).
Muscles also replicate frequently and muscles cells must have been killed.

Tomorrow I should start to feel better.  Today I will go back to bed.
The hand with the 2 failed IVs is still hurting.  The one with the successful
IV is fine.  

response 152 of 475:

Feb 2 20:34 UTC 2004

i'm ejaculating on your tits.

response 154 of 475:

Feb 3 14:03 UTC 2004

Which file is it that I can edit to add someone to the ignore filter rather
than running the ignore command, which requires typing in all the old names?

Today my immune system must be recovering because I have stopped blowing my
nose continually and I am no longer freezing.  Yesterday I had the heat turned
up (to at least 60), I was in bed under a pile of bedding, and wearing lots
of clothing (6 layers on top including three of wool) and I still needed to
run a heating pad.  I have also stopped coughing.  I think I can stop worrying
about getting deathly ill during this (last) cycle now that I have an immune
system again.  

Jim's neighbor, who asked him to help with her plumbing, sent over a half
gallon can of chicken bouillon.  The label shows carrots, tomatos, garlic,
onions, peppers and celery.  The ingredients list shows water, salt, chicken
fat, onion juice, carrot juice, sugar, natural flavors, and some other
chemicals.  One cup gives me 50% of my daily sodium requirement.  I am
supposed to be gargling salt water this week as a disinfectant and this should
do it.  I alternated sips of this with large swallows of water.  

The nurse said to let her know if I had chills or fever over 101 F so I took
my temperature last night and it was 100.4F.  I did not know you could be
chilled and have a fever at the same time.  I feel much better today.

My mother, who was not doing chemotherapy but rather radiation for her
cerebral lymphoma, twice ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.  One time
the neighbor found her on the kitchen floor.  I really should not have gone
to the library Saturday but I figured if I got sick it would not interfere
with the next treatment as there is no next treatment (for a while, anyway).

It should be all uphill starting today!

Jim is going to take some chicken broth to my neighbor, who is expecting only
a USB keyboard.  Sunday he helped us over the phone to get a Win98 computer
to dial and connect to UMich.  We built it for my cancer center nurse to
replace her 486.  I know you are not supposed to just move over working
installations on hard drive, but we did that and the only conflict was between
'two' sound cards so I removed both and reinstalled one and that worked. 
Turns out this was set up for a network and had 3 or 4 extra 'adaptors' - VPN
stuff, whatever that is.  The error message said something about network
protocols not being negotiated.  I deleted ALL the adaptors and then added
dialup adaptor and TCP/IP.  It worked.  It crashes once in a while when doing
Opera preferences but that is probably normal.  Just don't change more than
one preference at a time if you want to use Windows.  Ctl-Alt-Del when it
crashes.  What is 'Microsoft family logon'?  It kept adding that when I added
dial-up adaptor.  No families will be using this computer.  

We moved over this hard drive because it had a bunch of sports games on there
and she likes basketball.  I hope she likes these games.  It would have been
quicker just to start from Win98 CD.  

I put on IE 5.5 from an Earthlink CD and it added what it said was 70MB for
the 'minimal installation' including a bunch of things I had gone to some
trouble to remove (Outlook) and now if you use IE you get popup ads from
Earthlink.  Then I used IE 5.5 to download Opera which can block popup ads.
The Netscape 4.04 on there kept going offline after accessing one website and
the home page could only be set to flashnet.  

response 156 of 475:

Feb 4 03:35 UTC 2004

Since I don't have diverticulitis, I don't have any of the normal food
restrictions (mainly anything that remains recognizable in the stool: corn,
nuts, seeds, fruit peels, etc.)  I had a perferated diverticulum, you don't
have to have diverticulitis for that to occur.

I do, however, now have food restrictions because of the blood thinners I am
currently taking for the blood clots.  I have to watch the amount of vitamin
K I eat.  This means not increasing or decreasing the amount I get.  Vitamin
K is found in high concentrations in apple peels and green leafy veggies. 
There are a few other things (they gave me a 10 or so page list of foods and
their vitamin K values, I haven't had time too really look at it yet).  I have
to notify the anticoagulant clinic of any change in diet, exercise,
medications, bleeding, etc.  I have to go in for blood draws every Mon, Wed,
and Fri until the blood levels stablize, then probably once every week or so
for the duration.  Since I have been steadily loosing weight since the surgery
and that affects blood levels, I will probably have to have them more often
than what they would normally do.

response 158 of 475:

Feb 4 09:46 UTC 2004

I was not shivering when I was chilled, just achey on any uncovered part.
Temperature back to normal yesterday.

The anticoagulant diet sounds pretty complicated.  What does vitamin K do,
prevent clotting?  Are they checking for blood levels of vitamin K?
Three blood draws a week sounds pretty time consuming but you are probably
not a coward about them like I am.  I hope they cut back soon to once a week.
It is the little improvements that seem to make a difference.  Is there no
home test you can do on your own blood?  

I am almost certain that it is starches and sugars that taste funny to me.
Yesterday for the first time even milk (with lactose) tasted funny.  Today
it was okay.  Cheese was okay yesterday and that has the lactose (sugar)
converted mostly to lactic acid (which is also why lactose intolerant people
like my brother can eat cheese). Eggs have been okay.  Grains and starchy
vegetables, many other vegetables (anything with sugar such as cabbage), and
fruits (bananas, strangely, have been okay) taste funny.  I should get some
bananas if I feel well enough today.  (I will need to get more than 4 hours
sleep first - woke up too hungry to get back to sleep at 3 am).  Pineapple
has tasted okay before but yesterday was bad.  Pickled peppers tasted so
strongly of vinegar that they did not taste otherwise odd so I made myself
eat one for supper with half a can of (very salty) mackerel (I know it is not
vegetarian, it is medicine at the moment).  Lunch was one preserved egg and
a raw carrot.  Not the way to gain weight but it is temporary.

Glenda, are you attempting to lose weight, or you don't feel like eating, or
you eat but don't digest it all?  I hope you reach some acceptable weight and
can stick with it so you don't need all these blood tests for 6 months.  

Most restricted diets seem to require you to eliminate certain foods.  That
sounds simple compared to having to eat the same amounts of things every day,
such as what Glenda needs to do, and what diabetics needs to do.  I cannot
imagine even having to eat at the same times every day, let alone the same
foods.  

I have mostly stopped coughing (except for just now) and the platelet count
seems to be up again (no more blood when I blow my nose - that hit a low the
day after the neutrophil count's low).  Since yesterday my head hurts but that
will probably end today.  I felt queasy a bit over the weekend, only time
since I started treatment other than that I feel like gagging when I eat pills
in applesauce (benadryl/tylenol, prednisone, vitamins), so I am really
hesitant about forcing myself to eat things that taste bad right now.  It is
nice I can handle milk again.  I will attempt oatmeal in a few hours.  Someone
is coming at 9 for computer lessons and maybe I can get a bit more sleep
first.  Nice to have someone to 'talk' to at 4 am.  

It is so nice I don't need to be fed with tubes down my throat, and that
eating does not make me throw up, and that I have no medical restrictions on
what I can eat, and my tongue does not hurt, and I do not have thrush, and
this may be the last time I have to deal with this all.  

response 160 of 475:

Feb 4 18:29 UTC 2004

I won't know for 20 years or so, but it would be nice if the test in two weeks
had good results so I can live a normal life for 3 months.

This morning the nurse showed up for her computer and I taught her how to use
bookmarks and download files and got her an unzip program for a volleyball
game that we downloaded and it needed some other program so we deleted it.
She will learn to play pinball instead.  She likes volleyball in real life.

She says her mother has been treated several times for oral cancer over the
last 25 years or so, most recently with chemotherapy this year, and first with
just surgery.  Chemotherapy seems to have the best cure rate.  

We are planning to celebrate by going, with the nurse and her mother, to visit
a friend's winery where he is making pawpaw wine.  The nurse took some pawpaw
seeds to plant and is interested in making wine and beer, also in the local
stone-fly count done on the Huron River by 50 local people this January.

There are all sorts of ways to meet new friends.  I have met two friends in
the post office, one who worked at a school library and noticed I read
Russian.  This is the first time I have met one by getting sick.  The winery
owner was at a rock club meeting.  One of the people in the post office liked
my stamps and I had bought the last of them so we traded and he invited me
to visit.  He was a retired piano teacher and notary public.  

What unusual places have other people met new friends?

response 162 of 475:

Feb 5 01:23 UTC 2004

I still get calls once in a while that want me to tell them the winning
lottery number.  One of the local wine stores tried to buy out my number
because it ended in -WINE.  Have not made friends with any of these gamblers.

Today I put a gallon jug under the kitchen faucet after I finally succeeded
in reducing it from a steady stream to a steady drip.  After a couple of hours
I showed Jim that the jug had overflowed and since it was warmish and sunny
we hiked to Stadium Hardware bringing along a square o-ring that there were
two of in the bottom of a rigid plastic cartridge ('washerless system' - means
no rubber washers, just rubber rings to wear out).  The plumbing expert said
we needed to bring the cartridge to identify it so Jim asked for the book and
they discovered you cannot buy the ring, just the whole replacement cartridge,
probably for more than the faucet cost new 20 years ago.  So jim spent 60
cents on two rubber o-rings (rounded not squared) and if they don't work he
will replace the faucet.  We bought a duplicate since they were on sale.

I am astonished that they are selling faucets for which you can no longer buy
the 'correct' 30 cent repair part, only an expensive 'component'.  Next faucet
will be one that is reparable instead of replaceable.  

I made it back despite really wobbly legs and a lot of sneezing and coughing,
and managed to get down potatoes and lettuce for supper.  Things don't taste
as bad as two days ago.  I am past the 2-day headache stage into the 2-day
diarrhea stage (somehow I recall the order being reversed last time).  My
laryngitis and coughing are worse but I am feeling okay and am glad I don't
have Glenda's problems, or a broken wrist, or anything that really hurts.

I have discovered that RealPlayer8 will install on one Slackware computer but
not on a another, and that many other people have written the Real-Unix forum
to state that it won't work on their Sparc or SunOS or Slackware computers
either - segmentation fault.  It appears to be more hardware than software
dependent.  Now I get to test 15 or so computers to find out which one it
works on and hope it is a Pentium I because the P II's don't have a free slot
for a sound card (only a PCI card and I don't think you can use those with
linux, at least I don't know how, same problem as PCI modems).  

Realplayer 7 worked for people, 8 does not.  They don't offer 7 for download
now.