Mouse guy and more

Another interesting day here at Stanford Medical. Got a good night sleep, 6 hours, with the help of Ambien. Did the usual routine. The docs came and Paula said That was inspirational singing, I was moved, then Randy said Dog, you got some pipes, that was transcendent. I tingled awaiting Simon, and he said John, have you always known you were meant for Hollywood? Cause that’s where you’re going!

Then I realized it was Dr. Banerjee saying All your counts are up, and Dr. Majeti saying We can give you some extra WBCs, and Dr. Coutre saying You may go home as early as Tuesday! All is good. So I continue to target Wednesday, always have a cushion. And let me say right here thank you to all of you for your love and support and prayers and hopes and incantations and blessings and talks and emails and calls and letters and cards and comments and acts of generosity and general uplifting hope and compassion. This has helped me and my family immensely in staying positive, and limiting any moments of darkness to the fleeting glimpses they are worth.

Somehow they didn’t get my menu yesterday so I had to suffer through bacon and eggs and blueberry muffin, with only oatmeal saved up for 9sies. Toughed it out though and managed to make it to lunch, where they still didn’t have my menu. This time Esther the nurse took note and said They don’t have your menu, do you need more? So we sent down for another tray, supplementing the pasta, meat sauce and green beans, pears, and dinner roll, with a bowl of soup, bag of chips and some milk. And we took the opportunity to order a massive dinner too. Check out the pic of what I ordered for Monday. In spite of this I weigh 170, about what I weighed when I got here. I’ve only gained 2 pounds on this new Atkins Diet Chemo!

Menu


Friday night’s dinner

Top Secret Mouse Guy
After lunch I did the yoga, light weights, walked. This time I brought the video camera with me on a whim, I am going to have to get the vid clip on the web when I get to my broadband connection because it is slightly bizarre. I went into my usual basement super tunnel walk, which at ends in the bowels of some building where students do animal testing. I have only once seen a human down there, but this time as I come around the corner I about bump into a guy with a caged mouse. I say Hey, how are you, what do you have there? And I am videotaping, wearing a HEPA mask. The guy starts doing some kind of twisting dance to hide the mouse from me, and says Hey, who are you, what are doing with that Video down here, there have been suspicious people down here. I tell him my story, I’m just walking and taping for posterity. He chills a little, shows me the mouse, and we go our ways. Funny reaction though, like that was some top secret mouse. I probably have Smallpox now.

Life is Passionate
On the third floor a group of about six people were crowded around a woman wrapped in blankets laying on a couch in a lobby visiting area. They each had a hand on her and a hand in the air and were praying vehemently and passionately for her, and she was in tears. I wanted to go help them, but this was too intimate and I didn’t know the language so I moved on.

I forgot to mention, yesterday morning I was visited by two more members from the Spiritual Center. Swoosh goes the outer door, sploosh the alcohol washer, swoosh the inner door. I looked at them and said Did you wash your hands? They said Of course we did! I told them I had so much spiritual help coming in from family and friends I felt I was being greedy with God, was that possible? They didn’t think so. One of them lived in East Greenwich RI when his Dad was a Navy guy, small world. We spent about ten minutes talking about how they could help get the Library Laptop idea going, kick it up the ladder at the Spiritual Center, and they said they would. I copied them on an email back to the Patient Relations person, so now they are all pinned slightly.

Hair today …..
My son Mike is very interested in me losing my hair soon, so I thought I would give it a test tug today. Oops. As we all know I had a couple of bad hair decades recently, and it is not going to get better. Let’s just say those backyard haircuts I used to give myself, I won’t be saving that $15/month for a while. I may save a boatload on waxing my back, although the body hair seems a whole lot firmer than the head. I tested the sides where it is pretty solid, giving it a very slight pull, and ended up with about fifteen hairs. Hmmmm. Fine, who cares, better me than any of you. I already own some damn fine hats with wide brims. I think I will have a nut and bolt tattoo design done on the really big moles, that will be lovely.
Here is a picture of the original Smokey the Bear, who resides in the first floor lobby of Children’s Hospital. He came here with cancer of the lymph nodes in the twenties, I think, and he is going strong, although pencil-necked. All that smoking!




And this is where they used to keep people like me, until the Reagan administration had us all released to the streets.


But I feel much better now!

Have a Nice Day

Going home soon!
The Docs came in this morning, back to the original rotation of docs, and the head doc checked me out and said everything looks great, white counts are up, I could probably go home later in the week! I said you mean before Friday’s chemo? And he said yeah, we can figure out how to do that one down in SLO, assuming you continue to recover as you are, we resolve the nutropinia (low auto-immune ie low white blood cells), you could go home mid-week. Awesome. I did the jig around the room a little, they said you know we cannot commit at this time but it all looks great, and I said of course I understand. Hah!

Didn’t get enough sleep last night for no particular reason, went to bed at 12:30 and awoke at 4:30 and read for a couple of hours. I will nap later, no doubt. I am getting pumped with calcium chloride right now, and had 2 potassium pills earlier, they are huge, like swallowing a potato bug. Those chemical deficiencies are probably causing the weird hand cramping thing. I haven’t had the cramp problem today though, and after they are done pumping me I am going to do some yoga and stretching and walking and running and then some hang-gliding off the roof and take a helicopter flight around the city and then run a freaking marathon up a mountain! Then shower. Yippee eye oh tie aye, cowboy. Course, I will still have leukemia, it will just be that I am certified as kicking it’s dumb ass up and down the street. I told it I would and I am Da Man!

Vending hell
I would have liked to be kicking the vending machine up and down the street last night. I had a normal dinner last night, roast chicken, green beans and a bowl of soup and a dinner roll. By 8:00 I was hungry again, I have this huge appetite probably from the prednisone, so since my weight is back to normal (two nights of fever), I went and heated some delicious eggplant parmesan my delicious wife left me in the freezer. An hour later I was hungry again.

I had this awful craving for salt, don’t want chocolate and have tons of that laying around, but I want chips. I hardly ever eat potato chips at home and haven’t ordered them here with meals, but man, I was dying for some chips around 9:00. So I have a couple $1 bills and some change, I fold the bills across my waistband because I don’t have pockets, and I put the change in my electric razor satchel and tuck that in my waistband, and I head out in search of chips.

First I head toward the Children’s Hosp. vending as it’s a little closer, but they are stripping the floors and waxing when I get there and I can’t get in. So I head the other way, get up to a student area vending machine, see that chips are $.90 and I take out the coin pouch but I only have $.70 in coin. I am thinking I want Sun Chips anyway, and they don’t have them in this machine, so I head to the main cafeteria vending area.

I notice here they have the Barbecue Potato Chips, man they look good. I take out a dollar and notice there is only 1, I must have dropped the other bill down my pants. I iron that sad looking dollar for a minute on the side of the machine and slip it in the slot, and it takes. The machine reads out $1.00 credit, I press A9 for Barbecue Potato Chips, and the machine does nothing and reads out ‘Have A Nice Day’.

The Terminator



Now here I am in my HEPA mask, cursing an unintelligible blue streak at this damn fool machine, and the only good thing is even though I am in this highly public area there are only workers around because it is after visiting hours end. Of course my first inclination is to slam the sucker, but one little cut could be bad, so next thing I am doing the hully gully dance - I know that other dollar is in my pants, probably at my ankles, and I am reaching all the way down my pants searching everywhere for that other dollar, but I can’t find it. All around my underwear I search, and I am just about to yank my pants down right in the lobby when I realize there are about 5 people all watching me do this shimmy. I go find a men’s room and strip search myself, no dollar.

So now I am really determined to get my chips, and I figure I must’ve dropped my other dollar when I pulled out the coin pouch, and I start backtracking. Sure enough, there is my dollar, right in one of the hallways. I snag it and head back to the student vending area because I am not trying my luck with the Have A Nice Day Terminator Vendor Machine again. Lo and behold the student machine has the Barbecue Potato Chips, takes my dollar, gives me the chips and $.10 change, mission accomplished. Those were some of the best potato chips ever, I ate them ¼ at a time to avoid mouth cuts and savored every bite. I ordered some with lunch and dinner for tomorrow.

Meditative Walkers
I went to take some photos of my personal art gallery this afternoon, and as I approached the main entrance there was this group of about 25 people, all spread out through the entire hallway and all walking at about 1 mph, very slow. I walk at a fast pace, so I started winding through them, when I realized they were like a funeral march or something. I stopped at information and asked, and they said they were the meditative slow walkers. !!??

Here are some pics of the gardens, fountains and art of the hosp. I have tried to think of this place as an Art Gallery during a lot of my walking around time here, and there is tons of art, even if a lot of it is just posters of art.


ART

Garden on Roof of Children's Hospital

There are 8 halls like this, 1000' at least, all with art. From Children's looking into Stanford.

One of the inner garden areas, this one in Children's Hospital

Email quote of the day, from a Brit no doubt:

Blog (n) from the word Block (n) meaning 1. a large solid piece of wood, stone or other material, having at least one fairly flat face. 2. such a piece on which particular tasks may be done such as chopping or beheading. 3. (inf) to do one's block (blog) (Austral. sl.) to become peeved.
Blogified (ad) the act of blogging, leading to the condition known as bloghead or blockhead.
Overuse of blogging may cause male gonads to shrivel. Blogificated (v) when blogging has had such effect, usually signalled by complaints from spouse. De-Blogorification (adj) the intake of testosterone to counteract such effect, often accompanied by spouse-smiles and many helpings of steak pie.

Answers to comment questions

KJ, send us your email address

Will my hair fall out? Yes it will, supposedly. I just gave a tug to a little spot, and got a lot of hair! It has maybe 2 weeks. I was looking at back waxing and electrolysis ads to see what I am saving, though, and this is BIG!



Why no manly muscle - didn't want to stress the PICC line!






Can you self-hypnotize, fire up the process? I was trying to talk to the bone marrow when I was on the bike, and I wonder if all the walking didn't create some demand, and the hypnosis certainly made some conditions that my body/psyche 'believed' already to be heightened, I think. So, I think so, if all goes right.






If you were doing Republican golf you wouldn't lose $20, you would take a write-off. You must be a Progressive at heart, probably grew up in mining country.






No poor nurses, the nurses love me because I do not use them as maids. I am going to have to write a piece on how to be a good patient.






Nausea - I think this had more to do with the fever/seats/chills of that night than the chemo. I may still hit some nausea, but the process is a lot more accurate than in the past.







Why do ya gotta clean your mouth so much? The mucous membranes are very susceptible to cutting so you can't use a toothbrush or floss, and instead you brush with this soft sponge, rinse with saline and then with peridex and then nystatin, 5 times a day. And now my teeth are turning brownish/green.


What's a sun salute? A yoga exercise (Surya Namaskar) that stretches arms, legs, abdomen and back. See http://yogaram.com/suryanamaskar.htm

Guided Imagery = I am a board

Funny that a lot of people say to me, you have the nicest room in the hospital!

I feel much better today. I ran a slight fever last night, maybe hit 100, but really no problem. Got back into the old routine today in spite of a slight head cold. I am feeling quite kinked up from laying in bed for 2 days straight, my back is in knots, and I am getting these strange hand cramps. I asked the docs about the hand crfamps this morning and they don’t think it is chemo related, but maybe some other reaction like protein or magnesium. They did say that my white blood cell count is on the rise, a little earlier than expected, and that is good news. I had a healthy breakfast, eggs and oatmeal, did some yoga to battle the back thing, and went to a Zen room meditation class, more on that.

Technical Blood Stuff
I just got copies of the last 8 days of blood counts, and you can certainly track the effects of chemo slamming the blood functions, white blood cells bottoming out at .3 instead of a healthy 4-11, hemoglobin at 7.6 instead of 14-18, hematocrit at 22.1 instead of 40-52, platelets at 8 instead of 150-400(!). WBC is now at .6, hemoglobin at 10.6, hematocrit at 31.1 and platelets at 20. Check this picture of a bruise, I got this bruise the first day here, I think from resting my arm on the chair armrest or maybe from the gurney in the ambulance.

No platelets, the bruise stays. Doesn’t hurt, just won’t go away. And I normally never bruise unless hit with a 2x4. You can obviously see the Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter (PICC) also. The blue line runs intravenously up my arm, across the shoulder and clavicle down to open directly at the heart, where the chemo can be diluted by the heart before spreading.

Guided Imagery class
I went to this class at the Stanford Cancer Center in Guided Imagery and healing, not really knowing what to expect. Remember in the movie Poltergeist when the psychic lady ‘clears’ the house? The woman running the class reminded me of her, probably mostly because she was petite with a lot of presence. Anyway, I was the only one there for the first ten minutes and we talked about the class, which sounded like the relaxation techniques they use in yoga (when you hear the really relaxed guys snoring). Eventually two women join us, one that has fully recovered from ovarian cancer and one that has just been biopsied, I mean like an hour ago, with breast cancer. So the leader starts talking us through relaxation, let the muscles relax, very yoga-like. Only thing is I have on this HEPA filter thing and it seems like I am having to fight past that, I am very aware of the pressure on my face.

She has us go to a safe peaceful place, and I choose St. Anne’s in Shell Beach. Usually I pick the Sierras, but my breathing is labored on the uphill so I stay at sea level. I tried out a meadow in King’s Canyon too, and may have stayed there awhile, but I was thinking about the hotel that used to be there. How relaxed can I be, I wonder, I am jumping all around trying to find this damn serenity? So anyway, I am listening to the waves, she is talking away but I don’t really hear her until she says ‘And now you are in a very powerful healing place’, and BAM, like they flipped on a hundred white lights and surged juice through me, I feel like I am healing, like my bone marrow has leapt to life and is pumping mature cells out! Hard to describe, but if she had said ‘You are a whale and you are breaching’ I would have leapt through the window and slapped my tail on the roof. It was very strange.

She then brings us out of it, and I say that because she must have had me hypnotized. She asks what village we went to, she brought us to some village, and I never went anywhere near a village, never saw another human. I told her what had happened, and she suggests that I may have gone under deeply because I was fighting the HEPA mask, not in spite of it. Gotta try that again, way better than compazine.

When I got back here I scarfed a nice big lunch, sucked down some chemo, and then tried to do some beading that Melanie had sent me. Well, the stupid crab hand cramp thing does not lend itself to beading, so that is going to have to wait for the right chemistry. Now I get to watch rich Republicans play golf way better than I ever will, or you either, and all for huge sums of money. So, sniff someone’s head for me, snuggle the spouse, pet the dog. Bubble Boy signing off.

White blood cell demo

Wednesday
I decided to take a day off from leukemia yesterday, and instead just have a head cold. They had to give me 2 units of blood, so I was stuck on the IV pole for 6 hours anyway, and so I didn’t go for any walks until the end of the day. A lazy day. I watched Republicans play golf for huge sums of money, which was boring. I find myself rooting for the foreigners.

I did meet with the nutritionist, who confirmed that I was turning into a fat pig and needed to cut back on starches and cholesterol. I ordered oatmeal for breakfast, with scrambled eggs.

Thursday
I woke up at midnight with chills, and by 3 am was running a 102 fever. I had to take the big black bathrobe and make it into a blanket. So this morning they ran a lot of cultures and did some x-rays, but this is the effect of the common cold on someone with no defense. A couple of Tylenol and I am back to normal temp., and they have me hooked up to a couple of doses of antibiotics to fight the cold.

I have hit the wall, so to speak, of chemo, just as I eat my scrambled eggs and oatmeal. This sudden wave of nausea just washes over me. I knew I didn‘t feel right because of the cold, but I couldn’t drink the coffee this am, and that’s a sign that things are wrong. The nurse Michelle from Kittery Maine is watching over me pretty closely this morning, and when I tell her I feel nauseous she says Well, this is when most patients feel their absolute worst, they hit bottom, do I want something for nausea? So she brings this shot of compazine, starts injecting it into the IV, and it’s like I am the dog at the pound getting put down, the world just starts to spin ever so slowly, the curtain is being dropped! She only gives me half the shot because she can see the reaction, and says First time with compazine can be pretty strong, huh?

Right now it is 12:30, I just had a cheeseburger and some chicken soup, I am running a mild fever and typing this while I lie in bed. I slept from 9-12, solid. It seems they ought to be able to just warehouse people when they get cancer and want to chemo them, just knock them out for as long as it takes, wake them when they’re cured, it is not like you’re missing some fun thing.

The docs don’t want the wife coming and hanging out with me for more than a half hour this weekend, so that is brutal. If this is going to be my rock bottom then I got real lucky compared to most. The docs said they can’t believe I hung in as long as I did without nausea or catching a cold. I am just going to have to stay positive that any time I spend crawling the floor, calling the dinosaurs, is part of the process I have to go through. Reminds me of college.

One kinda funny thing happened today. A knock comes on the door (most people knock, kinda odd in a hosp it seems to me) and in comes this pretty student. She says there is a group of students that is coming by this afternoon and they examine patients as part of their training, would it be alright if they examine me? I was a little floored, because a stupid cold germ has me fully laid out, and now they want to have 5 students poking at me. I told her no, probably not a good idea, I am too susceptible right now.

I need a shower badly, and that's where I am heading.

7:30 at night, just came from a short walk. I feel OK, had a decent dinner. I had to tell Nick and Patrick L they probably shouldn't come by this afternoon, too bad, but I just feel so susceptible to every little thing right now. I spent the whole afternoon just nodding in and out of a slightly fevered sleep, watching golf for 2 minutes at a time. I am getting these odd cramps in my hands and the numbness is settling into my fingertips, from the Vincristine. They kept asking if I was feeling it and it started yesterday. If they hadn't ever mentioned it .....? I started getting weird hand cramps reading the paper tonight, too, like I had crab hand, had to shake it out, gotta ask about that. Just too much laying about for two days has me feeling all thight, need to stretch.

I am really missing the human touch of my family, too, the time you just spend snuggled into a kid and smelling his head, feeling the soft comfort of the wife, even the cool fur of the dog. Nurses can't really provide that, they have to remain clinical, not enough time and I don't think they could mentally take it anyway. I am anxious to get past this induction phase of chemo, get the blood counts back up and just be normally sick, not isolation sick. Watched a good movie last night BTW, The Station Agent, which was about other ways that people can be isolated.

Tuesday

Well I woke up at 5:30 this am for the blood draw with the dang head cold. I have 3 white blood cells left, Patton, Joshua Chamberlain (fix bayonets-right wheel-charge) and Ghost 4-6 (Ia Drang), and they will kill 100s before they are overwhelmed, but in the end it is futile and I will have a cold.

Yesterday was another busy day. Made some changes to this Blog thing -

• Made comments open, no account necessary, easy to make comments now so don't be shy but be anonymous if you must
• Got photos to work. Yippee

Nutrition

I had my usual large breakfast and was pondering the emails of the few women that wrote, maybe you shouldn't be eating all that cholesterol, eat healthy. This is tricky right now because I cannot eat a lot of healthy food because of the microbial thing - no salad, no fresh fruit or vegs uncooked, no broccoli too gassy. And I am planning on this fight getting worse, maybe with some weight loss. I left a voicemail for the dietitian to get me an appointment and I will come up with a game plan with her. I am considering the rope-adope strategy used by Ali before Foreman in Zaire, or maybe the Russian prolonged winter that stopped Napoleon and Hitler.

Another really big event of the day - went and got a Starbucks. There are 2 Starbucks in the hospital, and since nobody ever gave me the definitive No, I went and got a mocha, it was fantastic after a week of nurse station coffee. I watched their method to see I wasn't getting microbed to death, and nuked it when I got it back here, and it was great.

The Secret Snack List

So I go for my after-breakfast walk and I come back to sanctuary (no pink hepa msk), and I am trying to get Charter to stop locking me out of my webspace so I can post pics there for the blog, and I am stretching and hand-pumping these 8 lb weights while I chart with the tech, got my shirt off, gut hanging out like 8 pounds more than it did 2 weeks ago. A knock comes at the door, and thinking it is vital sign time I say come in. This cute young lady comes in, big smiles, I am the nutritionist and I hear you would like some between meal snacks! I had to laugh. Here I am trying to work off some of the meals, and she is offering me between meal snacks! Oh No. Run Away. This stems from some off the cuff comment I made to a nurse like 7 days ago.

So I tell her well, I have kinda got it wired, I order extra stuff with each meal and I have stashes of gelatin, crackers, chips, cookies. She tells me as a chemo patient, I can order even multiple trays and they will send it! She hands me this list and says this is the Write-In List! Ice cream. candy. grilled cheese sandwiches. popsicles. Oreos, lorna doones, and fig newtons. Cheeses and meats! I have found the mother lode! Write anything in on a menu and we will send it right up. Gotta talk to the dietitian!

Another one of the art therapy volunteers came by yesterday, these people are great, they will hang with you and paint and make any kind of mess you want just about. When you get weird diseases you pull out all the guns and delve into the eastern things as well, I learned that from Steven Seagal, so we had a nice visit. She connected me with Guest Services (Concierge?) and we pressured them to get some movies going in the empty-nightly Freidenrich Auditorium. Jim S may bring a surf movie and we'll sneak in there and try it anyway.

On my afternoon walk I found this private dining room on the third floor, the Bing Dining Room, that takes reservations for lunch and has a nice rooftop garden dining area. I think it is reserved for Staff for breakfast and dinner, but would be nice for lunch.

It was finally nice out yesterday, and my dirty windows were bugging me, so I snuck into the garden outside my room and gave them a quick wash, much better. Hope that's not how I got this cold, don't think so. I scrubbed after.

Had a great visit from Nick B, he watched me eat my roast beef and baked potato and corn etc, telling me how Dyan has him on this Oprah diet where he had to cut back from 3 pieces of fruit for breakfast to 2! Honey, don't eat that apple, that's bad for you, you don't want to get like Fiore!

Here is a picture of the jade thingy we made for the window. It represents the flow of light in and out of the psyche, the Tao of rock. Looks nice too, and creates a little tension as a rock will fall off every now and then and crash to the floor, so it has dynamism.

Platelet demonstration

Had a good night sleep and woke up about 6:00, through the daily routine we go. I rearranged the room, putting the table in front of the window since Dana is home with a cold. I put up the cool eagle soaring poster that Barry and Stacy got me over the headboard area. Looks more like a single dorm room than a hospital room. Tomorrow I have to fix the blog photo issue somehow.

When the docs come the head guy has changed, and that's OK, I feel like I have a lot of expert people watching over me. So the docs say you are getting Elspar and platelets today, and I say oh, the platelets are that low? Yep, but we'll fix you right up. Within minutes I start to get a slight nosebleed, thought my nose was running for a second. Right on cue. That is what I love about this place, they have seen it all before, no surprises, big upside. No big deal, lie down, have my platelets, nosebleed gone.

I had another elevator ride with the green kid the other day, meant to write about it but felt I was violating some ethic maybe. Guess not. So I asked him, Can I ask you what you have? He tells me he cannot absorb any nutrition from what he eats or drinks, he has to get it all intravenously. I said Do you eat, and he says Yeah, I just don't get anything from it. I'm here getting a new IV tube. Wow.

My pal AL the RN just came in, took my temp, he didn't need any other vitals. Good-natured friendly guy. He goes in the bathroom and notes the measure on my pee jar, then empties and cleans it. I had to ask him, because I have been thinking of it on my evening walk, do we really need to keep measuring the pee, why don't I just count how many times I pee and figure 350ml a shot, gotta have an average by now. Isn't it better to handle the pee less, and I have been using a toilet fairly accurately for a good 45+ years? Al says you have to be accurate. I argue for materiality, but no, you gotta measure, he says, you're on chemo. Later he suggests I do a spreadsheet and get the average, so I' think I'll do the next 20 and check the standard deviation of my pee volume.

One of the questions I have been tossing around in the early hours of the morning is, I wonder if there is some specific incident that set up the trigger for leukemia in me. I remember when I was about 10 or 11, I think, and one of the older guys in the neighborhood, Gary, he was about 14 I think, had us all in the Gaynor's backyard fort snorting gasoline fumes from a can. I remember you got very dizzy and sorta passed out. Hmmmm. I think Gary became a junkie. He shot me once from his garage with a CO2 pellet, had the garage door pulled to like 2 feet from the ground and had created a bunker in there, and shot me as I walked home from school. Got me in the forearm, I remember looking at this sudden sting on my arm and seeing this little pellet hanging on, not breaking skin but pressed in there. I looked around and when I saw Gary in his bunker I got the hell out of there.

I wonder about those malathion spills back in the days of groundskeeping, I was pretty careful but there were those couple of spills? Then there were all those ingestibles, don't even want to think about that stuff. Was it that chemical plant in Peacedale that smelled so sickeningly sweet you knew it was toxic every time you drove by? Was it the time Darren Kiley and I broke up Mark Crook's styrofoam sailboat in the Bay, first the rudder breaking and me acting as rudder, then the boom braking and we both had to paddle that sucker in? You could just about walk on parts of that bay; good quahogging though. Or was it the time I was crispy-fried in the boat fire and jumped in the Bay to simmer while waiting for the ambulance?

This kind of thinking cannot get you anywhere, of course, but it is part of the process you have to go through before you agree it is circular, spherical even, cannot be answered and leads to webs of other questions, then you drop it.

Gloria Z came to visit today, and we had a great time ranting and raving about all kinds of things, I love that about Gloria, she is well-informed and can rant with the best of us. By the time we were done we had solved all the world's really important problems. Here are my rules to solve the world in 4 generations:

• Really really promote interbreeding among race, religion and country. I had to change this from forced inter-marriage between races, religions and countries, too radical and I couldn't have married Dana if that were true.
• Freedom of religious choice, but a worldwide ban on proselytizing.
• Pick a world standard of living and control population to get to it.
• Spend 50% of all non-renewable resources creating renewable resources; end dependence on oil before WW-OIL. It will run out.
• World government, i.e. people are governed at a world level. We don't put up with shit like Somalia or the non-signing of the Kyoto accord, not for a minute. As we grow we are able to make all these leaps in the area of our thinking, from our house to our street to our class to our school to our city to our state to our country, but then we stop right there. We need to make that one more leap, to our world, because it is the fixed ecosystem.
  
  I should add Nick's rule - all Americans have to travel somewhere globally, outside North America, for a couple of years, to gather a sense of worldliness over xenophobia.

I measured the evening walk with the pedometer, it was 3000 steps or a little over a mile. I had a total of 5788 steps, maybe 2000 of those just moving around in here. The full length of a corridor is about 1000'.

Quote of the day from email:

"And Holy Fucking Shnaynkie on the regimen of chemo they got in store for you but my (limited) understanding is that you hit hard and furious right up front with this stuff. Anything less, and your talkin' cack". A doc pal. Shnaynkie?

Germ warfare, part 2

I knew the Mikester couldn't resist the masks and gloves, and he didn't. Dana and I had a great visit with the boys and their aunts, strolled the halls and looked at the art, got some food, marveled at my general vigor and smiled and hugged a lot. Check out the photos that I emailed, having trouble getting them here due to AOL dial-up limitations. Unfortunately Dana needed a mask too, it turns out, she started sneezing just a tiny bit, but then feeling achey. When it came time to think about leaving, Dana had to take the opportunity to have Stacy drive with her and leave. End of visit. Finito. Terminado. Too much risk to me. Dana would've needed to get a hotel and then have the flu there, and what's the point in that. So oh well.

Things have certainly gone awry here; my dinner came without my cheese-stuffed pasta dish, just a baked potato with sour cream, corn, bowl of vegetable soup, dinner roll and Sara Lee Carrot Cake with the big sugary frosting, which I have just finished at 9:00 pm. Check out the breakfast photo, though I don't often add waffles or pancakes.

I am at 174 pounds, 6 pounds more than when I left SLO. Maybe I don't need the 2 starches! I am freaking getting fat on chemo! I had the boys bring me the pedometer, we'll see the reality tomorrow.

Germ warfare

At Pat's request, let's try large size font. I think I like it better.

Woke up at 4 am, anticipating blood sampling at 4:30, and couldn't get back to sleep. I am just not burning through enough energy here and only seem to need 5 hours. Our friend Evelyn came up with the craziest idea, it is brilliant. Call Hollywood and have them come film my treatment and how I deal with it as a reality show, the real Survivor, Swap Your Wife For a Horde of Nurses, Fear Nothing It's Gonna Happen Anyway, Bad Blood Makeover. The logistics are difficult, not sure how to get the camera guy in this room with me, but man, just think of the final episode, all of America on edge! And, I could make millions. Stanford might love it too. On a serious note, since I am having such a positive ride on the chemo train it would alleviate a lot of fears that people have about this kind of stuff, to know that it can and does go smoothly. And I have some great tips for adapting in the joint. That's not nausea, that's hunger! Love that one, eating some Sara Lee Carrot Cake right now!

My beautiful wife showed up yesterday evening with all the things I ever wanted in my hospital room and more. She brought this giant get well poster her second grade class made, and some classic hand made Get Well cards from the kids. I will post some of those later, it's dark in here now and Dana is trying to sleep some more. I thought she should take the hospital bed last night, she looked a lot more tired and stressed than I. She is on a cot, pretty awesome that they let family stay in the room with you. It would have been bad if they tried to take a blood sample from her, as she doesn't have a PICC line, and the next thing she would have been getting one.

I had to have her put on one of those ineffective looking paper masks they have people wear if they may be getting a cold, because she may be getting a cold. I fear the germ, there are no shells in the tank, no bullets in the gun, I am France and germs are Hitler Germany, blitzkrieging me. So far so good, no germ has been able to make it over my Atlantic Ocean, yet they lurk. And they lurk in the second grade classroom my wife teaches in more than just about anywhere in the world. I probably wash my hands 30-40 times a day in here. Every time you reenter the room. Every time you hit the bathroom. I am one clean dude. One of the Docs was wearing the paper mask for the first week of daily inspection, so they must work.

I got in the elevator yesterday during one of my jaunts, and these 2 kids, maybe 16-20 years old or so, got in with me, guy with the IV pole and the gal with the paper mask. Together they weighed about 180 pounds, and the guy was varying shades of khaki green. I thought he was coming from a costume party at first, but it must have been dialysis or something. He says to me, Hey If you don't mind, why do you have to wear that pink mask, and I told them I was immune suppressed, and he said Oh yeah, so is she, she just had a lung transplant. If you ever want to stop feeling sorry for yourself because you didn't get the corner office, go to a Children's hospital and watch those kids cope.

All around this place are the survivors, working here. People say Oh, what do you have, then you tell them and they say Oh, I had this and that when I was 5 years old, or I went through 5 years of chemo and I feel great. A guy came up to me on his bike while I was watching Mike and Jack leave the other day, and super cheery says Hey are you a BMT? My instant reaction was No, but I'd love to have a BLT, then I realized he meant Bone Marrow Transplant, so I said No, not yet and probably not I hope, and he says Had mine fifteen years ago and I feel great, so I said Get some oil on that chain or you won't feel great for too long, har har.

The boys and aunts are coming up today for a visit, looking forward to that, we're gonna have a party in FG44, paper hats and paper masks.

Fear the white hat and the soul quota

Friends and family,

Well, I knew the day was coming as much as I dreaded it. They finally made me put the ‘white hat’ on. That is the contraption they put on the toilet to catch your poop for further inspection. Remember Sally Fields in the Flying Nun, remember that hat? Looks kinda like that, no front brim so your parts have room. Is this a deep-seated fear that they will limit my coffee intake? Yes. Was I worried about making a big mess? Yes. Would all the ‘pooping enhancement products’ create such a monster that I needed the ten-gallon hat and not this measly derby? Yes. Anyway, I knew it was coming, hospitals are always interested in basic In/Out systems. We are just big dysfunctional alimentary canals in this place. So I put on the hat this morning at the request of Aracely, a 4’10’’ nurse from El Salvador.

Just a side note, this is how my days have been going lately.
4:30 Nurse comes and gets blood samples so Drs have results at 6:30
4:45 Try to go back to sleep, not successful, toss around all the questions, look at fears for no more than one minute. Fear is simple, doesn’t need too much time, very primal.
Up by 6:30, go get a coffee at the nurse’s station, pretty good coffee.
Read in bed until 7:30, get up and bed is closed for the day until 11:00 pm, except for vital signs.
Get the paper
Breakfast comes around 7:30, eat and read paper and watch news
Vital signs and mouth care - this means a brushing with a sponge on a stick, then saline rinse, then Listerine rinse, then peridex. They are concerned with any break in the skin in the mouth
Emails until 9:00
Morning constitutional, i.e. poop
Yoga, pretty basic, until 10:00 or so. 4-6 Sun salutes, other stretching.
Hit the exerbike. It struck me today, after my legs were dead in one minute with no resistance, that I was not telling the bone marrow to SNAP OUT OF IT. So I kept pedaling and gently urged my bone marrow to just make me some red blood cells, and that was my mantra, hey wake up, we need some red blood cells. I seemed to get some second wind in three minutes or so, and pedaled for twenty. Maybe I have just not been demanding enough? Not sure how I will ask for platelets or white cells when the time comes, don’t want to have to stab myself or get sick just to get the bone marrow to listen up.
11:00 or so, hit the shower
11:30 lunch
12:00 mouth cleaning
12:30 take a walk, get lost, roam around, scare little kids (not really). When you wear a HEPA mask, you can group people. Those that won’t look because they figure you are really sick and it makes them think of mortality. Those that smile and say hello or nod because they figure you need a smile. Those that think you have something really infectious and move way out of the way.
1:30 emails, read the paper some more, call my Ma, assorted chores (unbelievable, chores)
Every 2 hours get vitals taken, always the same, BP 130/80, pulse 72, temp 97.7, oxygenation 97% - I am healthy
3:00 mouth cleaning
4:30 dinner
5:30 evening constitutional
6:00 mouth cleaning
6:30 visitors (Nick Blozan and Rebecca Glenn stopped in Thursday, awesome, and Jim Schweickhard has come by a bunch, he works here)
8:00 call home, act like a Dad
9:00 emails and goof off
10:00 watch some TV
11:00 in bed and read or TV

So anyway, the white hat is on the toilet, I am ready for my morning constitutional, and the old pucker just clutches right up in fear, says no way, not now. I figure well, I’ll do the yoga and bike and then I’ll be ready. Aracely comes in, does vitals, and asks. Nope, no poop. Understand I am taking stool softener, 3 Metamucil a day, things should be pretty ready. Shower and eat lunch. Aracely asks again. Nope. I go for a walk. The poop is now three hours at least behind schedule, the hat is waiting.

Now, of course, when I get up to the rooftop garden of the Children’s hospital, I lose all fear of the hat. I am aching for the damn white hat now, so I hustle back to the room and bingo, perfecto, ba da boom, nothing like a 5 year old can do but OK for a 49 year old. Only problem is it has very high odor qualities, good coverage, high volatility, and I need this sucker inspected and disposed of NOW. I am in an enclosed room, and the filters are straining.

So I put on the mask and go searching for Aracely, out to the nurse’s station. I tell the nurses there, Hey, I just pooped and Aracely wants to inspect. Of course by now they know me, and ask, is it a work of art? Should we frame it? Why don’t you just beep your nurse? (Pride, that’s why). Maybe you should just come out in the corridor and yell, Hey, Aracely, I had a Bowel Movement, come inspect. At this moment Aracely comes around the corner, and the last option seems valid now, so I yell, Hey, Aracely, I had a poop, come inspect! Needless to say the inspection went fine, the poop was put in it’s place, and I will fear the white hat again next week. And I will page my nurse next time.

Soul Quota
There is a lot of spirituality that goes on in this place, so there are services set up to meet the needs of those that are religious. Those of you that know me well know I am not religious, but maybe spiritual in some unusual way, meaning I believe you can combine Big Bang theory, evolution, creation, and the relentless energy of God everywhere into some smorgasbord. When they asked religious affiliation on the admitting forms, I told them free agent but the Buddhists had the current high bid.

Now I am in a room that has an anteroom, this little room between my room and the hall with a sink and soap. There is a sign on the first door that says ‘Wash hands for ten seconds before entering room’. This is so visitors don’t infect me, and the air from the hall doesn‘t come in. The third day here I am eating lunch and I hear the outer door then the inner door open, no wash time, and here is this fine Irish looking gent before me, introduces himself as so-and-so with Catholic Charities, sticks out his hand and I instinctively shake it. He asks if I am Catholic (Italian name I figure let him on), and I say raised but not practicing. Would I like anything, no thanks, everything is fine. Fine son, we will pray for you, thank you, have a nice day. I then go wash my hands and finish eating lunch.

Next day I hear the outer door open, then the inner door, no delay, and here is a fine young Asian man who says he is with Spiritual Services, introduces himself, I shake his hand, is there anything I need, no thanks, OK we will pray for you, thanks, have a nice day. I wash my hands.
Yesterday I am sitting here, I hear the outer door open, then the inner door, no delay, and in comes an Indian looking woman, hello do you want me to pray with you, thankfully does not introduce herself or stick out her hand, no thanks I say because by now I am starting to think, it’s a freaking quota system they get paid on, and they have to get me infected and dead to collect my soul! The only three people not to follow the double door rule! And to top it all off, as she leaves she washes her hands in the anteroom, in case I infected her somehow! You can’t make this stuff up. I will grant the other possibility is that there are so many sick people they are overwhelmed and they are providing a difficult service, but then again, I have been around quotas before and they create strange behavior.

Notes:
There are 22 patients in this wing, F unit ground floor, with a variety of cancers, tumors and blood problems. The place is full. The last couple of nights a lot of the people have been on chemo, and are very sick, it really seems like a cancer ward. Meanwhile I go roaming around, getting coffee, going for walks, making jokes. My nurse will come in every few hours looking frazzled as all hell, and I have to implore them not to waste their time just checking up on me, I can empty my own pee bottle and note the output on the board. Thanks to God and whatever other luck that somehow made me the healthiest guy in the chemo ward right now, I’m happy to be ignored for being OK and save up some brownie points in case I need them later. Maybe tonight, 2 treatments of chemo coming.

Ambulance ride from SLO to here was a mere $5100. Fully covered. Beauchemin and Leary are coming to visit today, be good to see them. Can we golf where Tiger played in college? I will ask, and the docs will look at me in strange ways. The docs said I could absolutely not go see Kronos Quartet at the University Friday night, that would get me off insurance and I would be billed for everything to this date. I bet that bill is close to a good SLO 3 BR house, if a 205 mile ambulance ride was that much. Stay healthy and insured.

Hospital sex and nurses, and this is not what it sounds like

Seems I caused some confusion about what leukemia is with my comment about leaks, so let me clarify, I hope. Docs say I am doing great, no reactions, we'll get the word on the scary-ass Phliadelphia chromosome thing by the end of the week.

The bone marrow has immature cells called blasts, which then differentiate in the marrow into red blood cells (carry oxygen), white blood cells (fight infections) and platelets (clot). Healthy bone marrow has about 5% or less blasts, all other cells having differentiated. In leukemia, the instructions go awry and blasts don’t differentiate enough, so there are not enough mature cells - reds, whites, and platelets. Different %s for different types of leukemia, but that is the basics. I am not really leaking from anywhere except the normal spots. I am just not getting enough red blood cells, white cells or platelets from my bone marrow.

A funny story I left out before but what the heck, we are all adults. On day three here, last Saturday, I was feeling alright and Dana and I were feeling pretty overwhelmed by everything. Maybe it was the prednisone steroid, but I was also feeling pretty frisky. We thought we’d best ask the docs before we engaged in any marital bliss, so when they came in and asked ‘Any questions?‘, I asked ‘Yeah, we want to know if we can be intimate, so to speak.‘ It was two of the young docs, without the bosses, and one of them says ‘What, here in the hospital?’ I said ‘Well, we’d do it in the garden but the Children’s Hospital is 50 feet away and we don’t want to upset the kids.’ They said nobody on chemo had asked that in their experience, they would have to check with the nurses. I said ‘You guys are both single, maybe virgins from all that studying.’ We could just picture this round table conference on the pros and cons of the Fiores being intimate.

Six hours or so later one of the young docs comes back in and says, No, you can’t have sex, boss Doc says it’s too dangerous. Of course we already knew I was toxic, but he said Dana could infect me during such an intimate act. I asked if they had the big cellophane rolls, and we all chuckled, heh heh fer crying out loud.

I still feel fine. Last night I made the mistake of drinking a diet coke at about 9-10. I was watching some stupid movie and must’ve fallen asleep around 11:30. I woke up at midnight with this angel of mercy standing over me, who said her name was Rebekah, and she looked like she was right off Sunnybrook Farm, but she was a traveling nurse from Kansas. Very sweet, chatted with me a while, great smile, very pretty, patients always fall for the nurses (only a little, honey, relax).

All day I’d been thinking about this idea for helping isolated patients connect to the internet and to email using old laptops, and when she finished taking my vitals as they do every 2 hours or so (BP 135/80, temp 97.7, oxygen 97%, pulse 80, same every time), I couldn’t get back to sleep, churning through the pitfalls of this idea. Tossed and turned, first fitful night I had. Around 4:00 am in comes Rebekah, takes my vitals and can see I am not sleeping well, so we start chatting, and I tell her about this idea for a laptop library for patients. She says she has just what I need to help me sleep.

Ten minutes later, at 4:30 in the morning, I hear some machine getting dragged through the hall to my room. Rebekah has dug out some ancient exercise bicycle, with the friction bar on the front wheel, cleaned it up and stuck it in my anteroom. She says ‘Here’s what you need, you have to burn off some energy.’ Crikey. No more diet cokes after 5 pm.

I did get up later and, after breakfast I did a little yoga and bicycle. I did 4 Sun salutes, and that was alright, except my feet had lost all their veins, and my ankles are starting to look like my grandma’s. She lived off cream pastry the last 20 years of her life, and her ankles spilled over her shoes. That always amazed me when I was a kid. She got cream pastry, I got prednisone. After two minutes pedaling the bike I was gassed, and that was with no friction. That is the weird thing about this disease, I feel fine until I try to do anything, and then I am reminded that my blood isn’t right. I thought about Lance Armstrong, pressed on for maybe a total of 20 minutes, not counting breaks, then agreed I am not Lance Armstrong and took a shower. Hooah!

Speaking of nurses, those jobs that George Bush says we are adding are nursing jobs, and they aren’t going to Americans. My guess is that 80% of the nurses are foreign, with 20% here from the Philippines. I have also had nurses from Bosnia, Korea, Denmark, Vietnam, England and Canada, and those are just the ones I figured out. All ranks of nurses, from the bosses to the beginners. And these nurses here are top of the line oncology nurses or will be.

OK, that’s all for now, thanks for all the emails, I am keeping busy thanks to DIAL-UP in the room. Man, back to 1990 and 56K, yippee.

First update, I am a balloon

OK, here is the first of my updates and random thoughts.

When they get you in the hosp, they are looking for leaks basically, so they treat you like a flat tire. First they fill you way up with blood and saline, then find the leaky spots, let some fluid out, plug the big leaks, then they do it again until you are fixed. Right now, I am way over-inflated. My fluids in are way up, and fluids out are not, netting me a whopping gain of 20 pounds! 190! Holy smoly! So for now I am off the saline until we get the bloat down.

I decided to take advantage of this major bloating for Valentine's Day. Dana was out shopping for a laptop today, so I went hunting for some cash I had in the room, found only $15, and went to the gift shop. I could either get her a nice Get Well card or some bad earrings. I did see some mylar ballooons, but they were all Get Well also. That is when it struck me, I could turn myself into a mylar balloon! With the bloating factor and a few more pitchers of water I had the right proportions. I shaved my stomach, tapped out the words 'I Love You Dana' on my stomach, and in 2 hours had a red balloon with purple letters (bruises) that said 'I Love You Dana'. Brilliant. Lasts longer than mylar too.

I actually stuffed all the pajamas and sheets and towels I could find in the room in my shirt and pants today, put on my mask, and walked the halls of the nearby nurses station. I was going to say 'Well, I feel a little bloated today' if I could get any attention, but nothing! Not a glance, all too busy. I actually sat at the internet terminal doing email until I was too hot, and had to go shed the cloth bloat. Apparently this is serious stuff here.

The docs will figure the bloating out. They sent me for x-rays this am. 2 guys show up with a wheelchair and take me to x-ray, they take the x-ray, then the tech says he'll send for someone to bring me back. I told him I will just take myself back, so I start wheeling out of there, and I'm 100' down this main corridor, people everywhere, when I remember I have no problem with walking, and in fact need the exercise. You know what happens next - I leap out of the chair, yell through my HEPA mask 'I'm cured!', and push the wheelchair down the corridor. All those people and only the security guard reacted. Sheesh.

Had the third round of chemo last night, no problems. That is the end of the heavy duty stuff this week. The current state of anti-nausea meds is so good, and they are giving me double, that I may not have any problems, I may have the pukes in 2-3-4 weeks, I may not puke at all. I may puke at your house in 4 months and blame the meds.

A lot of people have asked if I am really in good spirits, or am I hiding the true dark feelings. The dark feelings are there, but they are like the dog poop in the back yard. When they build up, the smell starts to invade the house, and you have to go out and bag them up and throw them in the garbage. Which reminds me, I asked the boys to clean the yard, I hope that got done.

Keep the thoughts and support coming, shoot me an email, send me embarrassing photos of your co-workers and the Survivor tapes and American Idol tryouts you didn't send in. I am staying surprisingly busy, but I will find time to check out your stuff. I am sure this will get better, so look out.

I find out and tell my friends and family

2/19 - I was shooting emails to all my friends and family, but it has been suggested that I BLOG this, and I have time so I am experimenting. I am just going to copy the beginning emails for continuity and because I am lazy, and start blogging from this point. Just some FYI, I am a 49 year old white guy, happily married for almost 20 years with 2 teenage boys, living on the central coast of CA. Life was chugging along when all of a sudden I had leukemia!

2/10 Hey all youse guys,

I have some news, whole bunches of it. I got tired of being retired, and in January found a job that suited me perfectly. A very small company (4 people) here in Pismo Beach (15 miles) is the producer for the Peking Acrobats, the Moscow Boys Choir and some smaller acts, and the man that started the company 47 years ago was looking for an operations manager with the goal of retiring and that Ops Mgr taking over the biz. Low pay to start with an equity payoff, perfect, and I took it, starting March 1.

Naturally, I have been having a great time being retired for the last 3 1/2+ years, and being the conniving bastard I am, started plotting ways, unbeknownst to myself, to stay retired. Psychosomatics work, and because they do, here I am at the Stanford University Medical Center, being treated for leukemia! I agree this was a radical solution to not working, and kind of pisses me off, but it is what it is.

I will try to answer your questions in no particular order.

I have pre B Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. Usually in kids (no comments), ~90% will go into remission with chemo, 65% chance of long-term remission depending on other factors. I think my chances go up because I am under 60 and in decent health, and have one of the best treatment centers. Cigarettes have nothing to do with it, depending on who you believe, and I haven't had one since Wed. The only thing that could screw this is if I test positive for the Phila. chromosome, pretty rare, but in which case chemo is useless and you go straight to bone marrow transplant. I will know about that next week.

I started chemo yesterday, 4 drugs with a fifth coming in a week. I sucked it all in with no effects like puking, asked for more with a shot of steroids, then went dancing, got in a fight and woke up in jail. Not really, but I had none of the ill effects of chemo yet.

This all started about a month ago when I noticed shortness of breath, weak legs, head rushes (no comments), and tinnitus (pulse in my ears). I was on some meds for other things (alright Donald and Randy, wellbutrin to quit smoking and strattera for ADD, ha ha ha fuck you, you were right). So, I attributed these symptoms to those meds, started to taper off them, but didn't get better. 10 days ago I went surfing with Beauch, and could barely get back in. The next day we went golfing, first time for me since last April due to tennis elbow, and I could barely walk the course. So, Tuesday I went to see my doc and he ordered blood tests, which I went and had on Wed. am.

An hour later the doc calls back and tells me I am anemic, I should go to the ER right away. I said geez, how about some geritol, but he insisted since I had no red blood cells, no white blood cells, no platelets, no nada. So I went. The docs at ER redid the blood tests and said 'Holy shit, looks like leukemia, let's get you checked in and get your counts back up before you croak'. I was all for that, so away we went. Now when they said leukemia, I thought hey, that's some kids' cancer thing, but was wrong again.

That afternoon, Wed, they did a bone marrow biopsy, sounds painful but isn't, and the hematopathologist (blood dude) said sure enough, leukemia, you should go to Stanford right away. He had interned at Stanford and knew this was the place to be, so we hooked it all up and the next day, the ambulance drove me up here, Dana followed in her car, and I am sitting at a terminal with a HEPA filter mask on typing this.

I am going to be here 4 weeks in intensive chemo, all my hair is going to fall out (oh my beautiful hair!), the prednisone is making my penis grow to enormous lengths, 1/2 of Earl size or more, but my sperm, pee and poop are toxic as all hell. I feel better now than a month ago, since I have blood, but I expect to feel lousy soon. The chemo is somewhat cumulative, but I am reacting to it fine so far, as I said. Assuming I go into remission in the 4 week period, I get to go home and go through an 8 month treatment through the local hospital that is strong enough that you can't really work, and then a 2 year treatment that allows you to work but what is the point by then.

I am in a cancer ward that is very isolationist; double doors into my room, HEPA filters on the air system, wash your hands for 10 seconds before entering my room, no flowers, no fruits (meaning edible, it is the bay area), or germs of any type, and I have to wear a HEPA mask out of my room, for my good Pat, not the other people. Dana is staying with me in a cot whenever she wants, I guess she is germ free! She is at the local mall right now looking for an electric razor cause I can't use a blade. She will leave Monday. Her sisters are taking turns staying with the kids, and we have tons of offers for whatever help we need.

I have a nice private room, but it needs internet access. My cell phone doesn't work well at all, we are below street level and Stanford is a huge campus with large bldgs.

You can't send me flowers, I hate balloons, I have 4 books, there is no DVD or VCR, this place has a library, Zen room, music concerts, massages, internet cafes, and probably hookers and a green room if I look hard enough. In other words, I don't really need for anything cept to hear from you and email is fine. I expect Dana and the boys will be up on weekends at least, and the head of Safety and Health here is a friend of mine who will visit on weeknights, so I won't be too lonely.

OK, that is the scoop, I can't write much more now because this mask is killing me and I have to go shoot toxic pee into a jug to be measured. I plan to journalize a lot and send out lots of emails, so I'll be in touch.