Friday, February 29, 2008

MRI Results Day

My amateur reading of the MRI turned out to be correct - less enhancement than 3 months ago. Less enhancement (white stuff) is always good. Dr. Minehan said, since this report is so good, we'll wait 4 months (was scheduled for 3 months) for the next MRI.

Click on the picture to see it bigger.



The left side of the image is the MRI from November (post-radiation). The one on the right is from Wednesday. The arrows point to the where the tumor used to be.

Not much more to say. We be celebratin'!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

MRI Day

No matter how many times I do this (4 times now?), there seems to be no escaping the anxiety preceding the event. I have no reason to expect anything to change, but one never knows.

I had the MRI this morning and as usual, it was uneventful; I may have even fallen asleep at one point. I also remembered to alert the techs that I'd be asking for a copy of the imaging results. When we were done they told me to hang for a couple minutes and I could take the CD home with me. Uh oh. Then I had to decide if I wanted to look at it with neither professional supervision nor a radiology report to refer to. Of course I had to look. I'm not a professional, but it looked fine to me. Even less enhancement than before. We'll wait for the professionals to weigh in Friday. More then.

Saturday I came in 4th in a poker tournament that started with 38 people. Of course I would have liked to have come in 1st, but I'm actually tickled to have done as well as I did. My goal is always to survive long enough to get close to the money and hope to catch some luck coming down to the end. That happened but a couple other players had even better luck. Too much fun.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Working Stiff

That's me. I am now employed in the Graphics department as an assistant. The position is part-time, so I'll be working 4 hours every afternoon. I'll be making enough to make it worthwhile but not too much to effect my SSDI benefit. All things considered, it's a very happy situation. I'm sure the work will be challenging, at least at first, but that's a good thing. And I adore the people with whom I work.

No medical news to speak of. MRI next (not this coming, but next) Wednesday and will visit with one of my oncologists that Friday. Except for the remaining three months of chemo, I'm not taking any drugs. That's good.

Our 2007 income tax refund arrived in our bank account Friday. This year's was significantly meager compared to past years so we decided to blow it. To accomplish this most efficiently, we spent Friday night at Ho Chunk Hotel & Casino in the Wisconsin Dells.

I took a chunk of my loot and sat down at the poker table. I wasn't expecting to lose it all but I was prepared for it if it happened. I played for 6.5 hours and ended up earning just over $20 an hour. Good times. Very good times. It wasn't just that I came out ahead; it was just fun! I'm not ready to go pro or anything, but I didn't feel the least bit uncomfortable playing with these people. I usually play online and, as one might expect, people often behave boorishly. Not at the live tables. Everyone is quite cordial, in fact.

We've had an unusually cold and snowy winter. Thursday we had about 15 inches of light, fluffy stuff and today we're getting at least 10 more inches of heavy, wet mess. Not good times. Here are some pictures I took yesterday:

From the back of the house looking at the garage.

From the garage (corner at left side of frame in previous photo) looking at the back of the house. Shot from the corner of the garage.

Front of garage. Shot from alley.

Another angle of Garage Mountain.

You can see that I'm going to have some issues with where to put this new snow. We shall see.

And finally - here's a recent shot of the ol' bean. For those of you keeping score at home, there's new hair growing where we haven't see hair since the days of the dreads. Slow going, but good times anyway.