After this morning’s chemo infusion, I have only three more to go before my Monday follow-up with the doctor and my potential full remission. Exciting. All the same, I am trying not to get my hopes up too high as I recall the disappointment I felt last time around.
Meanwhile, my secondary symptoms continue to bother. My skin’s new sensitivity to adhesives persists even though we have found a type of dressing that seems to work fine. The issue now is the thing we put back onto the hole after pulling out the needle. Normally it would be a piece of gauze fastened with standard medical paper tape. Because that tape also causes an itchy, red reaction for me now, we’ve been using a bandage instead. Alas, yesterday I forgot to remove it for several hours after getting home from the hospital. By the time I did take it off it was stuck fast to some of the red and irritated parts of my skin—and it took some of that skin off with it. Ouch! Aurora heard me scream from the shower when the hot water first hit it, and came running to see if I was okay. What a sweet girl.
I am also feeling quite clumsy of late. Last night I took one of the Airwheels out for the first time since diagnosis, to attend a Jam Session over at DevJam HQ (which is half a mile from our house). Riding from Point A to Point B was fine. Then, while in the basement I made the questionable choice to show some people how I can ride it one-footed for a short distance at low speed. Just a quick little demo. What could go wrong?
While I am happy to say that I did not actually fall down, I am sad to say that I did lose balance, jump off, and try to grab the Airwheel before it crashed into a wall. Instead of catching it in time, I allowed it to smash and grind two of my fingers against that concrete, basement wall. This made for yet another medium-term placement of a bandage on my person—specifically on my left index finger. Nearly a day later, that spot still looks raw and has not scabbed over yet. Ugh. No one else to call out for that mistake. In fact, when I got home Tricia asked, “did I not tell you to be careful!?” In total honesty I replied with, “I don’t remember, but I strongly suspect that you did.” Did I tell you that I love you, Tricia? 🙂
Extra thanks to David Hussman and the whole DevJam crew for putting on the Jam Session and for letting me sneak into it. That was the first time since diagnosis that I got out into the software community, and it felt really, really good to reconnect with folks. Some were already following these posts and were happy to see me in person; others were shocked to hear my cancer news for the first time. I found particularly touching when one even went out of his way to thank me for providing all these detailed updates online. Doing this gives me a lot of benefit for myself. Hearing that others get value of their own, out of the same effort, serves to thicken that particular silver lining on my bad-old cancer cloud. To quote Maui from Moana: “You’re welcome—and thank you!”
I am typing this up while pedaling on my new bike-desk, and that feels really good. Somehow I had fallen out of my regular-exercise habit since last week. Today (I hope) is the day I break that bad, lazy streak.
And this concludes my best effort at writing a short update. How did I do?
Hugs all ‘round.
-Markus
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Cross-posted to FB:
https://www.facebook.com/markus.silpala/posts/10212715373705944