After 48 hours I am supposed to get my chemo bottle disconnected. The bottle it supposed to be drained in approximately 46 hours but it might drain faster because of different factors. I get the bottle somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30 generally so it should be disconnected around 8:30 to 9:30. I think that it was drained and started to be empty around 7:30 but I did not go in to get drained until much after because I wanted to miss the morning rush. When I went in for registration it was not too busy, but as soon as I showed up there were quite a lot of people that showed up afterwards and it got packed fairly quickly. When I know the people doing registration I do not need to pull out my health card, but today I did. You are supposed to have it out and ready for when you register but I never do. It slows it down a bit. I know most of the people in the Cancer Center though so I can get in and out of there fairly quickly. Today the nurse asked me why the needle was different and I explained that it was because I had to go get my CT scan on the same day. Citrix was down and they were having some issues with their computer systems. Talking to the nurse she mentioned that I was some sort of IT genius which amuses me because I am not sure where that started. We had a discussion about EMR’s and I had mentioned that I was developing my own and told her about some of the functionality of it. She agreed with my design philosophy which was good to hear. I managed to get back in time and joined some meetings and worked until 1pm where I was so tired that I needed a nap.
Eating today worked out well. I focused more on soft food this morning and started with tofu with ginger syrup before I went into the hospital and then I had a bowl of congee as soon as I got back, a bowl of mango between meetings, followed by one of m favorite cereals. I had brought back some Honey Nut Corn Flakes from Spain and Olivier was told that he could not open it yet as I was unable to taste things. I told him this morning that he could, so he did and then I had some afterwards. Having the 4 meals prior to noon worked out well and I ate quite a bit. After my nap I had some rice and tomato and beef. It was delicious. I had some coffee in the afternoon as well. Dinner time I had a chicken sandwich but I seem to never finish the last bite of bread. I am not sure if it is a psychological thing or not, but I can not seem to finish it. The neuropathy is also getting much better. I have the tingling, but it is not as painful. All of the drugs that I am taking seem to be working out rather well and the tingling is there on occasion when my hands are cold and the pain is manageable. This weekend I an going to be making some ribs on the smoker in preparation for next week when I will be smoking a brisket. We have not used the smoker for years and I think that I should practice a bit and make sure that we have no dead animals in the smoker as it has not been opened in years. I should give it a quick clean as well. I am sure that it is fine as we have had a cover on it and it is sealed.
I have a lot of fond memories of my time in elementary school and talking with a friend today he said the same thing. All of the time at the elementary school were filled with wonderful memories. We use to bike or walk to school every day. When it rained and the water was flowing we would have races in the stream that ran alongside the yard. We would create boats from whatever we had. Small pieces of wood that we found, the plastic sticks that use to come with the cheese and crackers. We would spend the time watching and racing these small things down the stream until the bell rang and we went inside. When we started school there was no gym but I remember riding the big wheels in the small classroom that substituted as a gym and eventually we got a proper gym and I remember how excited everyone was as now we could do more sports and things within that gym. The teachers at that school were some of my favorites and they all played quite the role in my development. The principal at that school was fantastic and was always so warm and friendly. I remember going into his office several times and it was never for anything bad. He called us into his office once to tell us how proud he was of our school newspaper and how good of a job we had done on it. I am not sure if I ever got into trouble for anything but that is something that I recall, sitting in the visitor chair in his office and him sharing how well we executed this paper. Now I do not actually know if it was good or not seeing as we were so young when we created it. I do know that for computer use we were ahead of our time. My early grade teachers instilled a love of reading into me, praising my reading out loud in class and encouraging me to read more and challenging us. We use to read Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys and one of my favorite authors Gordan Korman and his books about MacDonald High. I love those books and my best friend located and bought me a bunch of those when I went through cancer the first time. I enjoy reading them still as it reminds me of my childhood. Mel does not understand how I can re-read books. I tend to read Ender’s game probably once every couple of years as it is a favorite of mine. I also tend to be critical, so I will not say a book is not good unless I have read it. There are some very popular authors where I think that their writing is atrocious, I make sure that I read them so I can give my opinion. But really at the end of the day it does not matter as it is an escape from reality, and if someone enjoys it then who I am I to judge. I just do not like some of the underlying messages that the books have. I think early exposure to comptuers in school and having parents who supported it gave me an advantage when it came to electronics and technology. It is something that I have always enjoyed but I have always preferred sports to it. Within this same school we had teachers that really pushed active participation in sports and made it fun and accessible to everyone. I think that going to a small school allowed me to excel across a lot of different things and really helped shaped me to who I am today. I have deep appreciation to everyone there and the church that helped support us during that time.
Quoc Hao