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[events] My Friday at Paradise Lost

The best way to characterize my day yesterday at Paradise Lost here in San Antonio is to reproduce my Twitter stream:

#wip Innocent of clothing, the angel’s manhood was frighteningly large even though it was not at all turgid.

Remember!

Said at Paradise Lost: “It’s not the Nebula for Best Tumor.” #nocontextforyou

“Hot, wet fat men. The two of us were floating around in the hot tub like a couple of potatoes in the toilet.”

“That’s not a point. You’d better eat it.” #nocontextforyou

Important Safety Tip: Never walk into public men’s restroom bare footed. Just sayin’, no particular reason.

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

Tags: Conventions, events, Funny, Photos, Texas, Writing

Posted: 7:51 am Sat April 13 2013 | Comments(5) |

[culture] The found poetry of spam

From last week’s email:

Russian Emperor Alexander I, kept the water in army in buckets silver buckets,
so that his soldiers do not suffer from river or lake water.
After a little while, a nurse came in and asked Linda what she wanted.
Digestion is when a mineral with a stronger charge breaks up the current bond of the other mineral.

Tags: Language

Posted: 4:50 am Thu April 11 2013 | Comments(8) |

[cancer] Things I want to do before I die

Things I want to do before I die, time, health and funds permitting:

Take a long road trip through the American west with the_child
Take the_child to New Zealand to visit danjite and khaybee.
Take the_child to Antarctica.
Visit the railroad graveyard in Uyuni, Bolivia with a really good camera in hand.
Visit the city of Petra in Jordan.
Go back to Taiwan (where I was born and spent my grade school years) one more time.
Write (well, finish) Original Destiny, Manifest Sin.
Write (well, finish) Jay Lake’s Book of the Dead.
See the_child graduate from high school.

With the exception of writing one or both books, none of these are likely to happen for a bunch of very good reasons, money and time especially, but they’re what’s on my mind. Funny how they’re almost all travel-oriented.

Tags: Antarctica, Book of the Dead, Books, Cancer, Child, death, health, New Zealand, Original Destiny, Personal, trains, Travel

Posted: 6:03 am Thu February 07 2013 | Comments(13) |

[cancer] Surgery outcomes, the simple (and lucid) version

This is a slightly more lucid (I hope) recap of my last blog post, with a few more thoughts added.

Surgery went well from a procedural perspective. There have been no complications, post-operative healing has gone well, the incision is looking good without inflammation, bleeding and drainage. As my surgical oncologist has said, I tolerate surgery well.

The bad surprise was the discovery of unexpected tumors outside the liver. My surgical oncologist’s initial comment to me on that was, “What we’re supposed to do when we open you up and find unexpected tumors is just close you back up. I knew that wasn’t the right answer for you.”

I still have not seen either the surgical report or the pathology report, so this is not full and final data, but my current understanding is that there were four small tumors in my lesser omentum and one in my thoracic diaphragm, which was more or less interpenetrated with my liver via a bridge of adhered scar tissue.

All tumors were resected or ablated, and I am currently in No Evidence of Disease status. This is not a remission or cure, this just means there are no detectable tumors at this time. Considering the fact that the omentum tumors were not detected prior to surgery, this is not exactly confidence inspiring.

I’ll be making a longer, more complex blog post about what this all means for my health, my likely paths forward, and what happens next. Essentially, things have gotten more urgent and dire than they were looking pre-operatively with the Ashcroft tumor question. Also, the overage on the fundraiser is going straight to the additional testing and consultations which are being sparked by these new findings.

So, yeah, not so good. The good news is they got everything they found. The bad news is there were tumors to be found outside my liver. I have now experienced metastases in four locations outside my original colon presentation. I have now experienced multiple metastases in various sites. I have now experienced metastases that apparently presented while I was under chemotherapy. Like I said, not so good.

I won’t be seeing my medical oncologist until probably next week, as they are awaiting the surgical report and the pathology reports, as well as the meeting of the Tumor Board, which happens on Thursdays. Plus we’re waiting for the tumor gene sequencing results, which even on a rush basis will be another two weeks or so.

More to come, once I have a bit more mental clarity to discuss. Meanwhile, I am expecting to be discharged from the hospital today. Pain is controlled and my body is functioning reasonably well.

Tags: Cancer, health, Personal

Posted: 9:34 am Sun January 27 2013 | Comments(23) |

[photos] Your Friday moment of zen

Your Friday moment of zen.

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: 5:59 am Fri January 11 2013 | Comments(0) |

[photos] Your Wednesday moment of zen

Your Wednesday moment of zen.

The current photo series is from my ‘favorites’ file, hence the dates jumping about

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: 6:29 am Wed November 28 2012 | Comments(0) |

[writing|memes] Tell me about a story I haven’t written

I offer a meme, taken from suricattus, who got it from kate_elliot.

Tell me about a story I haven’t written, and I’ll give you one sentence from that story.

Tags: Funny, Memes, Writing

Posted: 6:24 am Tue November 27 2012 | Comments(17) |

[conventions] Worldcon, day zero

So far, so good. Yesterday’s travel was punctuated by various grades of frustration, though ultimately successful. My flight from PDX to LAX was 25 minutes late into the gate, which made my connection from Terminal 6 to Terminal 4 remarkably problematic, especially as I missed the transfer bus by one minute. Luckily for me, my flight from LAX to ORD was late in boarding. On the plus side, one of my fellow passengers clocked me upside the head with his rollerbag, as my skull was apparently getting between him and the overhead bin space he desired access to. Silly skull.

I did get almost two hours of revisions in on Other Me in flight, which was nice, and read more Mark Teppo. On arrival at ORD, I ran into Rochelle U. and Ken B. in the luggage claim, so we shared a cab to the hotel, which spared me dealing with the train.

We were quite amused to note the vomit clean-up fee on the rate card.

At the hotel, I ran into the usual forest of friends and acquaintances before final finding my room and my roomie, Sally McLennan. She and I eventually toddled off to Three Aces for a truly fantastic meal. Highly recommended!

This morning I went for a walk along the riverfront, then the lakeshore. Some odd sites, including a Chicago police car graveyard and some curious public art.

Not to mention me discovering that it’s a bad idea for me to forget to pack my hairbrush.

Wound up breakfasting with Scott Edelman and Bob Silverberg, which was pleasant and funny. Now sorting out my day, which will be low key. After today I’m stuck on fast forward, so I’ll be enjoying the relatively mellow proceedings for now.

See some, all or none of you around the joint here.

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

Tags: Art, Chicago, Conventions, friends, Funny, Photos, Travel

Posted: 6:59 am Thu August 30 2012 | Comments(0) |