50 day anniversary of my first treatment

I made it to day 50 of treatment! This is a time for celebration. I have been informed that my blog have been shared with some friends of friends and family. I am perfectly fine with that, but they have not asked me what can they do to help me out. I want to give them the opportunity to donate money to my private jet fund. You see, as a cancer patient I am immunocompromised and should stay away from the public. So the private jet is now my preferred method of travel. People have been donating to the fund and I am happy to say 50 days into this crowd funded endeavor we are approaching hitting 0.00005% of the $3,000,000 goal. Make sure your donation is recurring weekly because the cost of fuel for jets is high. I recommend tithing 10% of your annual salary. As you can see most people are providing love and prayers instead of financial assistance.

After my bloodwork today, I did not receive a phone call telling me that my blood count is all over the place. I am sure that it is not normal, but why do the same thing every week and call and tell me my blood work is all over the board. We all know it. It is part of my super powers. The last couple of days my nose has had some blood in it. Just enough so I know it is bleeding, but not full on bloody nose. I still do not have a sense of taste but it is not bad for that right now. I just now have 7 days of chemo treatment where I may or may not be fatigued. I am going to take the steroids for 4 days. I finished the rest of the flan today. I had flan every day. I am pretty sure flan is a fuel for super powers. If not, it should be. I do not think it is a coincidence that Brazil has some of the best football (soccer) players in the world and they have a dessert called pudim de leite condensado. I am pretty sure that if I had the flan when I was playing that I would be a world class soccer player. No doubt about it in my mind. That was the missing ingredient in my training.

1.) After seeing what is happening at Laurentian University, I am grateful that people told me repeatedly not to apply to work there because it was dysfunctional. I was told that if I could work somewhere else, stay far away. After seeing so many tenured professors that I know dropped. Mostly the controversial ones, I am quite glad that I am in a work place that is not as crazy. There are some politics at my current company, but not to the extent that people back stab each other and look out for themselves first. If that is happening then I am happily oblivious to it, because I want to believe that people have positive intentions. I love work and love the people I work with. I know that at LU I would not have loved the politics.

2.) Growing up I met my best friend in grade 2. We were inseparable for most of my lives until we went to University. During elementary school it was odd to see us apart. Growing up with him and his family helped shape my life. He was always there for me at all times, regardless of what stupid things we did. I recall one time we were at a bar and for some reason we were each talking to a different set of girls. Me being me, I was telling the girls ridiculous stories and kept on making it more and more ridiculous to see what they believed. It got to the point that I told them that I grew up in France but got kicked out because I did not speak French. I was nowhere near my best friend at this point. We eventually came together into a big group and the girls were not sure if I was telling the truth or not, so one of them goes up to my best friend and says, “Crack” (that was my nickname my friends called me way back.) says he was kicked out of France. Without missing a beat, my best friend said, yeah he got kicked out for not knowing French. They were shocked and did not believe me, but he continued to know me well enough that he basically confirmed all of my ridiculous stories. It was awesome. We were like brothers and understood how we each thought.

3.) The only reason why I excelled at school was because my friends asked me for help. My highest grades in High School and University were because I had friends that asked me for help. I had a soft spot for people asking for help and would always help them out. It forced me to do my work and understand it well enough for me to teach it to others. Incidentally the one that gave me the nickname “Crack” was the one that asked me for help the most during high school and he pretty much carried me through by forcing me to do my homework and study the material. I preferred to find “alternative” ways to answer the question instead of the ones that were taught. During class we tried to catch the teacher making mistakes and we would pounce on them if they made a mistake. One of my favorite high school teacher was a math teacher that allowed us to use alternative methods to answer questions as long as we did a proof showing why it worked. So instead of paying attention to learn during class we tried to catch mistakes. Talking to this professor after they had retired, they had told me that they enjoyed teaching our class because we challenged them to keep them on their toes. It was a fun experience. I want to iterate. I sucked really bad as a student in high school and undergrad. My friends deserve credit for any success I had.

My last treatment tomorrow before I have a 4 week break before surgery. Hopefully I am surrounded by happy people and we can play cards or something. We will most likely talk about the weather because it is such a safe topic. It is hard to be controversial about it. Maybe I will try and start a controversial discussion about the weather tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Crack.

The nickname that people call me is a great indicator if I knew them in high school and early University or after I graduated with my Neuroscience degree. A lot of people post undergrad degree call me Q. Most of my close friends from when I was younger address me as Crack or my name.