[cancer] Day three, post-chemo session one
Slept okay. Weird dreams of being locked in a resort in Buenos Aires with my father, as part of a parapsychology experiment. Woke up feeling mentally and physically more-or-less normal, but the nausea started again about 35-40 minutes later, so I’ve taken a compazine. My head remains clear.
I’m not sure about this recurrent nausea. That’s not even supposed to be on the list of major side effects for FOLFIRI, as I understand it. On the other hand, I know I’m in a vicious circle of nausea->loss of appetite->undereating->nausea. Look at my weight over the past five days.
So where possible I’ve allowed myself off my prescribed diet in favor of foods that attract me, but I think I’m still getting less than a 1,000 calories a day right now. I really need to get back on to something more like a normal eating habit.
It’s just so hard to make myself want to eat.
Tags: Cancer, chemo, family, Food, health
Posted: 5:50 am Wed May 18 2011 | Comments(1) |
[cancer] Chemotherapy, day three of session nine
Now I am three quarters finished with chemotherapy. See the bottles?
Three more to go.
The weekend was rough on several levels, especially yesterday. The fatigue deepened another layer, to the point where when I came off the needle and we walked, oh, 200 yards, and nearly had to carry me home.
On the other hand, the bottle ritual went well.
Downsides other than fatigue… hit her head while loading her car to depart, so badly she had to spend another, unplanned night here. This after a somewhat challenging weekend including a very near-miss incident with a careless motorist that put her bike in the shop and came within millimeters of putting her under the tires of a pair of buffoons who waved at her and sped away. This while she was in a clearly-marked bike lane they apparently felt was intended for their use.
For my part, I had no lower GI activity between Thursday morning and Sunday evening. A suppository got a bit of movement Sunday, but less than a third of my daily norms. This morning shows no evidence so far of renewed movement. This is an issue both for the obvious reasons (constipation is No Fun) and because my need to eat almost continuously is being severely challenged with my upper GI being essentially shut down by the back up. If I don’t eat every ninety minutes to two hours these next few days, the chemo side effects blossom into some pretty horrible stuff. If I don’t have a bowel movement, I can’t eat, because the pipe is full.
Grr. And I’d been doing relatively well with GI lately.
Meanwhile, another photo from yesterday.
Life on chemo. It’s still life.
© 2010, Shelly Rae Clift and Jak Koke
This work by Shelly Rae Clift and Jak Koke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: Calendula, chemo, health, Personal, Photos, shellyrae
Posted: 5:15 am Mon May 10 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad wakes up without a needle in its chest
In case you missed it yesterday, my post on Chemo, sex, Viagra and me [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]
Culture of Corpulence — American innovations in food, transportation, and technology are threatening to supersize us all.
Giant meat-eating plants prefer to eat tree shrew poo — The largest meat-eating plant in the world is designed not to eat small animals, but small animal poo. You couldn’t make this shit up.
Bryan Clift sees a 10 foot penis — Probably it was only six feet.
We Wouldn’t Want To Be Simplistic And Naive, Now, Would We? — Daniel Larison on nuance in politics and media, specifically with respect to the Iraq War.
“Jesus was a Nazi. So’s your preacher” — Roger Ebert on Glenn Beck. I’ve always assumed Rush Limbaugh was a rank opportunist who didn’t care what damage he did to politics and society so long as he mae his bucks. I am starting to think Beck believes his own crazy, and wants to poison the well of American culture.
?otD: How green is your valley?
3/15/2010
Writing time yesterday: 0 minutes (infusion day)
Body movement: 45 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.0 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (forgot)
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 5/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Cancer, chemo, Culture, Funny, health, Links, Personal, Politics, Science, sex
Posted: 4:14 am Mon March 15 2010 | Comments(3) |
[cancer] Chemo infusion session 5, day 2
Yesterday wasn’t as vegetative as normal for infusion day 2, as reported here by . Still, by the time we returned from lunch I was blown out. Did manage to Tweetsnark 2012, which was every bit as wretched and cliched as expected. Have been watching Clone Wars episodes to while away the empty hours.
Be off the pump sometime this afternoon. The bottle ritual will follow. Planning to do a little head/hair maintenance. Would like to shoot photos of the new Genre car, but that may be too ambitious for the day’s energy budget. Mostly, as always with chemo, I veg.
Be well, or at least better than me.
Tags: cars, chemo, health, Movies, Personal, shellyrae
Posted: 8:27 am Sun March 14 2010 | Comments(1) |
[cancer] Chemotherapy, day one of session four
Yesterday was a low key day of movies and hanging out with . Right brain shutdown as normal, so no writing and little email. Side effects were pretty nominal, in terms of anything beyond the obvious chemo-stoned behaviors, and total lower GI shutdown. kept me fed and watered, and DVDs kept me occupied. So, oddly, very little to account for.
Today somewhat engaged mentally and physically. I believe I’m having a better infusion weekend than the past few, probably because I did well in my general well-being on the days before the infusion.
Bottle ritual in a few hours.
Tags: chemo, health, Personal
Posted: 11:44 am Sun February 21 2010 | Comments(0) |
[publishing] Amazon vs Macmillan, the $9.99 price point, and market forces
The chemo fog is mostly clearing from my brain. Some things happened in Amazon vs Macmillan while I was checked out, most notably that the buy buttons were restored on Amazon’s site for Macmillan print and Kindle titles.
I’m not convinced this is over. Amazon has still not made any sort of public statement other than the original, laughably incompetent unsigned “capitulation” note on the Kindle boards over a week ago. This compared to two formal public statements from Macmillan USA CEO John Sargent. I am very disappointed that the popular and business news cycle has focused almost exclusively on this as a “price increase” narrative, apparently single-sourcing from the Amazon note. I guess that makes better copy, but it ignores the much larger underlying story about a potentially seismic shift in the business models of publishing forced by the growth in ebooks. A shift which has benefits to consumers, as well as the exciting narrative of overturning Amazon’s $9.99 pricing model.
As for my own part, I’m finally coming around to thinking Macmillan has the right of this. ‘s explanation of the “agency model”, combined with earlier squibs from Charlie Stross, have largely convinced me. I will lay out my own thoughts on this in the next day or two as the chemo fog continues to clear my brain, but I want to make one point here.
The $9.99 ebook price point was not set by market forces. It was a fiat promise from Amazon to Kindle buyers as a driver to promote the Kindle platform. There’s nothing magical about the number (beyond the obvious buying psychology of $9.99), and it had nothing to do with either publisher costs or publisher business models. For the media to be treating this as all about a price increase from $9.99 ignores both the history of the price point and the current business reality of publishing. It may well be that $9.99 is an eventual ‘market making’ price point, but that’s not yet been proven. And for all that Amazon lost the boardroom PR war by not even showing up to the fight they picked, they’ve sure won the popular PR war so far, given the prevalence of the “price increase” narrative.
That’s probably enough out of me this morning, but I’m curious. What’s your take on the “agency model”? Am I right about the $9.99 price point? Am I right about the strong pro-Amazon bias in media coverage?
Tags: amazonfail, chemo, health, Personal, Publishing
Posted: 5:49 am Mon February 08 2010 | Comments(41) |
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