Busy

No posts for a few days boys and girls.

Busy.

UPDATE:
Close of day two. I've had one batch of cytotoxins, with two more to go. The really nasty one, Taxol or Paclitaxel, is for tomorrow morning, but there has been a complication and things have not gone as easily as hoped.

On the first cycle, it was determined that I have "difficult" veins. They poked around in the back of my hand and arm five times to try to get an IV in there but failed (with lots of lovely bruises to show for it) so it was decided that I would have a PICC line. At first, I think they expected not to do a third cycle of chemo, so it was assumed that the PICC would only have to be in place for a month, which is the normal limit. But it has been there now for over two months, and this extension has probably added to the problem.

The first day is always a whole load of saline solution mixed with anti-histamines, vitamins, minerals and various drugs to protect my insides while the vicious cytotoxins go in later and start destroying every fast-growing cell in my body. If I just had the chemo drugs alone, I would be having liver and kidney failure and might have a violent reaction to the drugs, which can result in seizures or coma. So they are very careful, filling you up with anti-emetics and other protective things.

But the inflammation, with some pain, started about half way through the prophylactic stage. I had an ultrasound to rule out veinous thrombosis, but by the time I'd finished it the first cytotoxin, Cisplatin, was causing a lot of pain and some of it refusing to go in but dripping out, soaking the bandage and running down my arm...and these are some pretty expensive drugs!

They're worried about having the same problem with the Taxol, which is extremely toxic, so much that you are not supposed to get any of it on your skin. So they're getting a PICC specialist to see me tomorrow. It seems that my veins are just tired of having all that tubing stuck up them and then having all these toxic chemicals poured in on top. Understandable, I think. I feel the same way.

So there we are. That was the first two days. If all goes well, I'll be here for another day and a half, more if there are more problems. Keep your fingers crossed (if you're a pagan. If you're a Christian, I suppose you could pray.)

Feeling OK in general though, in my head at least, but somewhat delicate. I explained that I didn't want any dinner by roughly saying, "eating is vomiting," "mangiare e vomitare," which is terrible Italian but seemed to get the message across. They have me on a drug that is meant to protect my brain from the chemo so it's kind of important. It was being given in the form of a big tablet that dissolved in water which you drink, (a big fave of Italians with all sorts of drugs) but after two today, I had to tell them that if I had one more, it was going to bounce out of my stomach like it was hitting a trampoline. We've switched to shots instead and I've discovered that pain is greatly to be preferred to nausea. Pain is small, localised and short-lived. Nausea takes over your whole world.

Played cards all afternoon, re-learning after about 30 years how to play Gin Rummy. Got pants whipped by a slip of a girl.

More later.

UPDATE 2:

Well, they came in this morning and said the PICC just isn't working any more and gave me a new IV in my left arm, which is now more or less immobilised. Can't bend the elbow more than an inch or two (so am typing with one hand). That will keep things going for the morning, but before they start the next batch of cytotoxins, I have to have a new PICC line installed surgically, a rather unpleasant but short procedure that will make the rest of thing go much more smoothly.


UPDATE 3:

Home. All tubes removed.

V. v. sick, but home.

Home is best.



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No one is paying any attention to anything I'm saying

I thought I made it clear.

I don't want to go to the hospital.

I don't want to go to the hospital.

I. Don't. Want. To. Go. To. The. HOSPITAL!

...

Why isn't anyone listening?


UPDATE:

Aaaaaand right on cue...my fridge died last night.



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Artist against The Real

You know how I'm always saying that you can tell modern art (sic) is crap because everyone hates it?

Well, one can take that too far the other way.

It is never to be forgotten that this ... err... person... is the most popular artist in the world.

Particularly with Evangelical Christians.

Simcha Fisher gives a hint to why the latter might be. Prots have no concept of sacramentality and, having abandoned the reasoning behind their beliefs, are left, for the most part, with nothing but the ersatz spirituality of their deeply felt feelings:

Kinkade isn’t content with shying away from ugliness: He sees nothing beautiful in the world the way it is. He thinks it needs polishing. He loves the world in the same way that a pageant mom thinks her child is just adorable—or will be, after she loses ten pounds, dyes and curls her hair, gets implants, and makes herself almost unrecognizable with a thick layer of make-up. Normal people recoil from such extreme artifice—not because they hate beauty, but because they love it.

Kinkade-style light doesn’t show an affection for natural beauty—it shows his disdain for it. His light doesn’t reveal, it distorts. His paintings aren’t merely trivial, they’re a statement of contempt for the world.

His vision of the world isn’t just tacky, it’s anti-Incarnational.

I thought, simply, that if one is interested in presenting an idealised view of the real world, one must at least make one's starting point the actual real world.

Which is why I love the idealised realism of, say, a Maxfield Parrish or a William Bouguereau, and despise the gloppy sentimentalism of Thomas Kinkade.



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Irene

Dreamed I was holed up in a big house in North Carolina with a bunch of friends.

In waking life, they're keeping us updated on FB. So far so good. House still attached to the ground, roof still on top and even electricity still running.

Andrew in New York reports that he made it safely down to the pub.

So far, no reports of anyone standing on top of their houses yelling for help, beating each other up in the local stadium, looting flat screen tvs or shooting at rescue workers.

Update:
Latest news from Jacksonville NC. Gusts down to 70 mph and dropping. All friends + dogs accounted for.



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Weather's changing

It's supposed to drop down about ten degrees tomorrow...

which means its only going to be 90 F.



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Bloody hell

Four more days.

No wonder I can't sleep.



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Tuns on Jack

Paul Tuns was the guy who first told me what a blog was and suggested I start one.

He's been watching the Canadian political scene all his life.

Read him.

Here he is on St. Jack:

I was at Our Toronto Free Press in the late 1990s and I interviewed him about some youth who were squatting on private property and whose actions he was defending. I asked him about the condoms that were strewn on the floor of their trailers and tents and which some of the youth were sleeping on. He said it was very important for young people to have access to condoms, just as important as food. I sarcastically asked if the poor, dirty, malnourished teens who were illegally on other people's property could eat condoms or clean up with condoms and he huffed that "condoms are a human right." Such were Layton's priorities just 13 or 14 years ago. It takes a certain worldview to believe that condoms are as important to street youth as food and that they are, in fact, a human right.

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A Mole

You be the judge: Kate and Leopold, was it written by someone who is working on the inside to undermine the feminist stranglehold on the entertainment industry?

Just re-watched it tonight and it's suspiciously anti-agenda.

Only drawback? Good grief! What is with Meg Ryan's haystack-meets-machete hair?



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'Nother contest

Don't usually link to Huffpo, but this is too good to miss: a brief history of Canada's language law.

And the contest is for our American and European readers (so Canuckstanis, shush.)

In the early days of this country most people spoke French; then after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, most people in Canada spoke English.

And that's the way things stayed until the late 1960s when former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau enacted the "Official Languages Act."

This was an historic law which gave Canadians the legal right to get all huffy and indignant and threaten lawsuits, whenever a federal civil servant in places like Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan or Kippers Flippers, Newfoundland didn't start a conversation with the word: "Bonjour."

Which town name is made up and which one is real?

Canada: used to be good, now just funny.



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New Rule

Gah!! A thousand hits a day?!

What the heck?

I've been toodling along for years with my nice friendly little 350-odd daily tea party, just me and a few friends goofing off and futzing about. But then I tweaked the Vatican's tail a little and now all these people are crowding in, dropping crumbs on the carpet, using cups that don't match the saucers and dipping their wet spoons into the sugar basin.

Where have you all come from? Who invited you? Don't y'all have jobs or something?

I realise that I've had a Kathy link and that always means that I have to start saying things like women shouldn't be allowed to vote or wear trousers to make all her little minions go away. But really it's been growing like crazy since May. And I can't spend all my time insulting people.

So, new rule: If you'd never read me before, say, March this year,

go away. You're not allowed to read this blog.

I hate new people.



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