Tuesday, October 03, 2006

10.03.06, Into October and the Terminal Window

OK, today is the fourth day since my celiac process block, which is technically one day before the official "day of noticing anything." I notice things with my body all the time, as a result I think I might be oversensitive to changes and am going to withhold my thoughts on it for another day or two. In terms of side-effects or complications, I think I did experience some low blood pressure, some light headedness when getting up, etc.; and in the department of possibly diarrhea I was simply not worried. That kind of thing is usually my last concern, given that my near constant companion is constipation. Our theory, or hoped-for result, is this: the NCPB procedure is successful to some degree, that allows me to decrease how much pain medication I take, the decreased pain medication will allow my GI functions to function nicely and stop giving me such a hard time.

Today's Franky Scale, hm, to say 7 seems high, but I do feel better than yesterday or the day before, which were some kind of 6's. I'm taking life a little easier today; yesterday was one of those "let's got to campus and pretend that I still have a job and I still work on a regular basis and that I'm still productive..." — one of those kind of days. Funny thing is, I think several of us have days like that even without terminal illness! Ha. What a funny lot, humans.

As part of my mellow plan for today I have some more packing and cleaning up to do. The move to a new apartment has yet to take place — so no, friends, none of you local people I want to rope into this are off the hook, not by a long shot! — there are some strange issues of slowness the apt. manager needs to work out before we can do anything. (He has some efficiency deficiencies, & moving into an apartment two weeks later than scheduled is the price to pay.)

There are stories piling up, ALREADY, that have to do with the ridiculous and insensitive types who people the Multi-Level Marketing world. God damn, there is a real nut job who has been calling me and trying to impress me with how hard he's going to work at showing me "this is not about making a sale, man." And yes, he added the "man" on the end of that.

Ah. I almost forgot the title. The "Terminal Window" refers to the fact that now I'm at the six-month mark since my diagnosis not just of having pancreatic cancer but of its metastasizing and starting to eat the rest of my body. That was when I was told "On average, most patients with this die in 6 to 8 months." So here I am, standing on the 6-month precipice. Watching, waiting. Thinking some existentially centered blogs might be in the works somewhere in my brain.

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