Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad awakens sweaty and in pain

Awesome car hood ornaments — Courtesy of Dark Roasted Blend.

The Sleepover Question — Teen agers and sex.

Cern scientists suspect glimpse of Higgs boson

To Have and to Hold: The First Gay Marriages In New York City Begin — Can the American Right please tell me how many heterosexual marriages were shattered that day? Or does arrant bigtory lack objective metrics?

Do Tell — Another piece of arrant conservative bigotry falls by the wayside, yet somehow the Republic has not collapsed. Amazing, that.

The Hated and the Hater, Both Touched by Crime — Victim and perpetrator of a Muslim hate crime speak out. (Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

We could have had the Moon, instead we get Afghanistan — Ah, conservative priorities. A darkly funny commentary on what Mr. Bush’s War bought us. (Thanks to danjite.)

?otD: Got opiates?

---

7/25/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (post-op recovery)
Body movement: 30 minutes stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 hours (interrupted)
Weight: 225.6
Currently reading: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

Tags: cars, Cool, Culture, gay, Links, Personal, Politics, race, Science, sex

Posted: 6:29 am Mon July 25 2011 | Comments(0) |

[cancer] Coming out of the hospital

I am out of the hospital and home as of yesterday morning. The ride home took a lot out of me, so I spent the day largely horizontal and quiescent. So far my recovery has been much ahead of the expected pace, but I’m still very weak and in a lot of pain. Eschewing the opiates has been much better for my digestion and my cognition, but I’m living a lot more closely with my post-operative distress than I have in the past.

Slept well last night, relatively speaking. I have two sleeping positions now, neither of them natural or comfortable for me. So I assume one and sleep until the pain and discomfort awaken me, then I assume the other and sleep until the pain and discomfort awaken me. Lather, rinse, repeat. Still managed a good night’s sleep for the first time since leaving Readercon.

This morning I tried to follow my routine as much as possible. That is, awaken, exercise, shower, blog. To my own amazement I managed 30 minutes on the recumbent bike. Getting into the shower, I took a look at my corpus non delecti. I am a real shipwreck.

What all those scars say to me is that I still live. But they are decidedly a map of pain and suffering as well, of hopes and fears and psychic damage. I still have a lot of fear, albeit not boiling at the surface. The one surprise in my surgery was that the liver tumor had begun to interpenetrate with the abdominal wall. They did some unplanned resecting to deal with that, and the margins were clean. But I’ve heard about clean margins before, and continue to metastasize.

I’d like to live to be old. For now, I’ll settle for living today.

Photo under cut for body and medical TMI
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags:

Posted: 8:53 am Sun July 24 2011 | Comments(3) |

[photos] Your Sunday moment of zen

Your Sunday moment of zen.

Equipment, eastern Washington state. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Photos, zen

Posted: 8:40 am Sun July 24 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad returns from the knife, sort of

Why Bad Reviews Rock — Mike Mullin on reviews. In passing, he delivers my favorite description of me ever.

The Chain is Dead — Scrivener’s Error on the Borders bankruptcy.

Pacific Crest Trail blazer savors the memories

Why America’s Young And Restless Will Abandon Cities For Suburbs

Largest water body discovered — Inconveniently located for your holidaymaking needs, sadly.

A Flight of Helios — APOD with an improbable aircraft.

Tattoo Tracks Sodium and Glucose via an iPhone — Need to track your blood oxygen levels? There may soon be an app for that.

Make American Soldiers out of Them — Slightly baffling WWI US propaganda poster featuring a steam locomotive.

Left vs. Right — An interesting political graphic I don’t entirely agree with.

The Republicans exit history — Roger Ebert says a lot of what I think, and as usual, he says it more eloquently than I could.

‘Haboobs’ Stir Critics in Arizona — Ah, linguistic nativism, arrogant ignorance is thy name.

When Extremism Learns to Blow things Up — Juan Cole on the strong parallels between Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring and the rhetoric of the American Right. It’s that whole nuance thing again. People desperate for a reductionist, dualistic world are a danger to themselves and others. Unfortunately, reductionist dualism, under the deeply misleading label of “moral clarity”, is a hallmark of both Christianism and the Republican Party.

?otD: Can you tell me where it hurts?

---

7/24/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (post-op recovery)
Body movement: 30 minutes stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 9.5 hours (interrupted)
Weight: 228.4
Currently reading: Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière

Tags: Cool, Culture, healthcare, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, reviews, Science

Posted: 8:38 am Sun July 24 2011 | Comments(1) |

[cancer] Post-op day 3

Feeling a lot better today. Pain levels are about the same, but I woke up with a lot more energy and focus.

Yesterday was tough because I woke up behind the curve and never really caught up. They did get me out of the ICU finally, which was nice. My care quality down there was very good, but the ward itself was kind of a dungeon. It didn’t help that the floor above was undergoing construction of the banging on heavy metal and running loud drills sort. And my room was broken — the bed had at least two different problems, the tray didn’t elevate or extend correctly, the visitor recliner was possessed by demons, and the phone was damaged. I did recommend to the charge nurse that they write up a maintenance ticket on the room, but I suspect most ICU patients don’t have a lot to say.

Now I’m up on KPV13 with a million dollar view of the Willamette Valley and Mount Hood. The tram station is just below my window. Much bigger, nicer room without any booby traps.

This being a hospital, funny stuff has happened. They decatheterized me two days ago, blessed be, but my bladder and urethra were being sullen and refused to engage in the more usual way. My nurse finally came in and said, “You haven’t urinated in nine hours. If you don’t do something soon, we’re going to recatheterize you.” She succeeded in scaring the piss right out of me. All 800 ml of it. (You really don’t want to have 800 ml of urine on board, which was pretty much her point.)

My surgical post op team has been funny. They come around twice a day in a gaggle of staff physicians, residents and med students, and are all nice as hell. They’ve also figured out that I have a blog, because one of the students asked me this morning if I was going to mention them on the blog. I mentioned that I only said nice things on the blog, but then, they were being pretty nice. So here’s a big shout out for the Gold surgery team and all the nice folks who’ve been working on my liver and taking such excellent care of me.

The surgical wound healing is if anything ahead of schedule. Likewise my general recovery of well-being and mental acuity. What we’re waiting on is my lower GI restart. Right now I am host to a veritable symphony of gastric voices. Entertaining but somewhat painful.

Still, we wait. And I do feel pretty good.

Tags: Cancer, health

Posted: 6:43 am Fri July 22 2011 | Comments(1) |

[cancer|photos] The new incision

Photo under cut for medical TMI Read the rest of this entry »

Tags:

Posted: 6:40 am Thu July 21 2011 | Comments(7) |

[cancer] Alive, well and living in the hospital

Much to everyone’s amazement, I am recovering from anaesthesia and surgery quite quickly. I’m on almost no pain meds, and have been walking the circuit of the ICU ward, and it’s only just about 24 hours since they closed me up on the table.

Still a bit mentally thin and fuddled, but I have been reading comments and emails. Thank you every one. More from me as my brain unwraps further.

Tags: Cancer, health, Personal

Posted: 11:48 am Wed July 20 2011 | Comments(11) |

[cancer] From the ICU

Lillypond, posting for Jay, “I am alive and well and befuddled”

Tags:

Posted: 6:33 pm Tue July 19 2011 | Comments(3) |

[cancer] Post-Op Update

Lillypond posting for Jay, update courtesy of Glass Wing “The surgeon was pleased with how it went and was very optimistic about the out come. I’m sure Jay will deliver all the gory details as soon as he can. Apparently they kept a piece of liver for him.”

Tags:

Posted: 4:13 pm Tue July 19 2011 | Comments(2) |

[cancer] Surgery Update

Lillypond (a/k/a/ Jay’s sister) posting for Jay. Surgery went well, no unexpected surprises. He is currently in recovery and expected to move to ICU in the next 2-3 hours.

Tags:

Posted: 2:07 pm Tue July 19 2011 | Comments(3) |