mdlbear: (river)

So this morning as part of transitioning to non-binary, I got my first-ever body piercings. Three pretty little platinum helices. I am amused.

Of course, nobody but my radiology team will ever see them -- they're in my prostate. But that counts, right?

It was a lot less painful than the biopsy, which was kind of surprising. Well, except for the part where I was supposed to have a full bladder going in -- they use it as a landmark. Ouch!

I had a nice conversation with Dr. H, starting with the observation that my birthday is Wednesday. I will quote directly from her visit notes:

[mdlbear] is a very pleasant 76 year old male who presents for fiducial marker placement.

[...]

He plans to celebrate his upcoming birthday with family over Chinese food and chocolate cake.

I mentioned that I was probably going to have ma po tofu.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

Not a bad week, as weeks go these days, but not all that good either. There is reason for optimism, but also a lot of things to be pessimistic about, which are making it hard to get to sleep.

My sphincter control seems to be almost back to normal, as of Wednesday or so. I was feeling normal enough to start taking walks again, including almost a mile and a half with m and j. I read somewhere that every mammal from the mouse to the elephant can empty its bladder in 20 seconds except for elderly male humans with enlarged prostates. A category which included me for the past several years, but apparently no longer does.

And I attended E's Yule celebration Thursday. (The Yule ritual on Whidbey was last night, organized by G and with me, g" and k attending. We had cookies and a bottle of 10-year-old mead. I don't remember who gave us that, or whether we perhaps acquired it at an Interfilk auction.)

On the other hand, the place we had (Subaru)Stacey towed to does not do body work, despite what it says on their website. We were unable to find a body shop willing to accept it on short notice, so it's going to sit in front of our house until we do. Then it will almost certainly be totalled. That plus the fact that I should have started on selling Colleen's medical equipment two years ago mean that emptying the house out by the end of January is going to be a stretch.

On the gripping hand, I also had my first (of eight) accupuncture treatments (which was fascinating), and made an appointment with one of Fred Hutch's "spiritual health" providers (there must be a better word -- chaplains?), after a delightful conversation Monday. (See also, Wednesday's " State of the Bear" post.)

Good links for the week include The Future of Web Styling: Classless and Class-Light CSS | by Shalitha Suranga, and What Makes LISP Unique? | by Erik Engheim. Most of the others are discouraging.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: a rather old-looking spectacled bear (spectacled-bear)

Fred Hutch takes a "whole person" kind of approach to patient care, which isn't something I've experienced before. My "care team" currently includes three oncologists, a social worker, a "patient navigator", an "integrative medicine" specialist, and (added only this week) an accupuncturist and a chaplain. I would never have thought of looking for help with "Spiritual Health -- they came looking for me based on some of my answers on the mental health section of one of their many questionaires, but from the brief conversation I had on Monday it sounds as though it will probably be better for me than most of the previous counseling I've had. It's a strange feeling, and a strange position for an atheistic Reformed Druid to be in, but there you have it.

Physically I seem to be doing better this week, as my shrinking prostate releases its grip on my urethra, and my current mix of laxatives deals with my arse. It's all still annoying -- I'm nowhere near being back to the way I was, say, a year ago, but I'll take whatever slight improvement I can get. And today I got a referral to a physiatrist specializing in pelvic floor rehab. (I only encountered the term "physiatrist" a few months ago, but apparently the term dates back to 1938. TIL!)

This is turning out to be a long, strange trip indeed.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

It's been a week. It's been a long month this week. And I haven't been getting much sleep. I'll probably put the health details in a later post, although if you're curious you can probably find quite a few in the notes even with the bathroom log redacted. Blarg.

I did, very belatedly, realize that the spasms I'd been attributing to my bladder were from a different thing altogether, and caused by constipation. As are a lot of my urinary difficulties. (But if it hadn't been for that I might not have gotten into treatment when I did, so I'm not complaining. About that part of it.)

I still am not pleased with my body. Parts of it are still working, at least.

It's getting late, and I could probably add to this, but I want to get to bed. TTYL.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

So this has been my first week as a medical TMI squick warning )

. See this tag for details.. Up until this morning it seemed to be going as well as could be expected; now I'm not so sure. Details later at the tag. Maybe.

See current earworm; first verse.

Notes & links, as usual )

medical TMI squick warning, but not as bad as I expected. )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)

Today I am grateful for...

  • Getting rid of that damned Foley catheter that's been plaguing me for the last two months. Not being in (nearly as much) pain is a win. I will note that the alternative ) has a great many problems of its own, but on the whole it's a win, and this is a gratitude post, not a rant. I'll save that for later.
  • Beginning treatment! I started Monday expecting to be scheduled for surgery sometime in the not-too-distant future, but went home having actually started chemotherapy. (It feels odd to me that testostrone blockers are considered chemo -- they're not what the word normally calls to mind.)
  • My quirky and occasionally bizarre sense of humor, when I can find it. Being able to partially offset scary and unpleasant things by seeing humor in them helps a lot. Wry and/or dark humor in most cases, but whatever works...
  • My care team. Which has many new members as of Monday.
  • Telemedicine. I have three appointments next week; two are on Zoom and one is on phone.

mdlbear: the constellation Cancer,  original 1730 (cancer)

Content warning: unpleasant medical details. See icon. )

TL;DR, now I'm taking testosterone blockers. That's the other transition. If I were transitioning all the way to a trans woman I'd also have to be taking estrogen, but I'm not. So I guess I'm transitioning to a trans enby. I find this amusing.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

Thanks to Thanksgiving, I think it worked out to being a pretty good week, modulo health problems and $A's customer service. (As for the latter, apparently "invalid address" means "the manufacturer won't allow $A to sell that product in your state". That's three hours I won't get back.)

The feast on Turkey Day was excellent. The niblings' other parents M and J) were here, along with N's foster-kids K, s" and g". J brought the bird, gravy, and roasted potatoes; I made my usual cranberry relish; and G made the rest. s" and g", who have been up on Whidbey, brought down apple and cherry Whidbey Pies, plus a (non-WP) pecan pie. Good food, good conversation, and Alice's Restaurant for after-dinner entertainment.

I stayed down in Seattle this weekend, rather than going up to Whidbey the way I usually do. It felt like slacking off, except that it wasn't really because most of my time and attention went into preparing for tomorrow's initial appointments with urological, radiation, and medical oncologists. And I spent some time on Wednesday making an icon out of an old illustration of the appropriate constellation.

In the links, Looking for the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms (the original paper is also linked from Friday's notes). Also, Metal clouds and liquid gems spotted in the atmosphere of hot Jupiter WASP-121 b may be of interest to fans of Cordwainer Smith (see also, story linked from last week), and Kim Kardashian’s Ultimate Nipple Bra is likely to be of interest to trans women and breast cancer survivors.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)

I like to let the Thanksgiving gratitude post cover not only the previous week but the year since last Thanksgiving. Which is why I'm starting this on Tuesday. I am grateful for...

  • having been diagnosed -- hopefully soon enough -- with one of the most treatable forms of cancer. NO thanks for my prostate gland and its immediate surroundings.
  • (mostly) online support groups, particularly The Healing Center. Also other support websites, like Whats your Grief. (I'm not going to list them all, partly because I don't appear to have made a canonical list. Yet.) NO thanks for recently having to broaden this category beyond grief support. I'm glad those sites are there, it's just...
  • rabbit holes, which appear to be my main coping mechanism right now. Particular thanks for the axiom of choice, group theory, Evolution, Wikipedia in general, Bandcamp, YouTube, ...
  • my family. Or is that families? Kids R and E, sister N and brother-in-law G, niblings m, j, and c; and nearly-niblings(?) foster-niblings k, s", and g". (It's complicated.) (What's the opposite of family of choice, anyway? None of the alternatives I've seen, like "of origin" are anything more than adequate, and some are awful.) Additional thanks to Colleen for introducing me to the concept, and welcoming me into hers.
  • Mom's cranberry relish.
  • being financially able to afford health care and to help other family members. And pets -- vet bills have been astronomical recently.
  • our cats. Cricket, Bronx, and Brooklyn in the house; Ticia in my Lair. Thanks too for Desti, who left us far too soon, earlier this year. Special thanks to Ticia, who has been my sleeping companion since Colleen died.
  • the filk community.
  • electric washing machines, dishwashers, and vehicles. Particular thanks for Molly.
  • lithium-ion storage bateries and USB-C.
  • Dreamwidth Studios (dreamwidth.org), my blog host, and dreamhost.com, my web host. (Not related, despite the similarly of names.)
  • free-to-use artwork (both public domain and CC-licensed). Particular thanks to Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons, and pexels.com.
  • open-source software, including Linux, Git, Make, Bash, Emacs, Audacity, WordPress, and Xmonad; also the computers I run it on, mainly my laptop, a Lenovo X230 called Sable. Additional thanks for the "spare" laptops, and Git's ability to synchronize them.

mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)

So... as of Wednesday, when the sale closed, I am no longer a homeowner, for the first time in almost half a century. So here I am, sitting in a house that is no longer mine, wondering what the hell I am now. ("Cancer patient" comes to mind -- I spent a large fraction of my time this week reading various relevant websites, not to mention other rabbit-holes.)

Now I have to change a lot of mailing addresses. (Already in progress, but more keep coming out of the woodwork.)

And now I have other things to worry about. Like whether R will ever get himself a job, and to what extent my (so-far undetermined) treatments will interfere with our moving plans.

Most of the best links are on Thursday. Crabs keep evolving to go from the sea to the land — and back again. Astronomers have found a planet with clouds made of sand, which isn't as intriguing as WASP-121 b, which appears to have clouds made of liquid metal and rain made of liquid rubies and sapphires. See also, On the Gem Planet by Cordwainer Smith.

Notes & links, as usual )

mdlbear: the constellation Cancer,  original 1730 (cancer)

I'm starting this at a quarter after ten pm on Friday the 13th of October. It will either wait for a week before completing it, or push it out sooner and add a Part II next week. Content warning: Medical bad news, serious and maybe triggery, but not hopeless. )

New tag pc.

See CW above; enter at your own risk )

mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)

Today I am grateful for...

  • PET/CAT scan results being (as far as i can tell without an official diagnosis) much better than the worst case.
  • New patient appointment scheduled with oncology. (See last week's mention of referrals.)
  • Better leg bands. (But not on my thigh where I'd been expecting to use them.)
  • My bin full of meds. (Too many to thank individually, and NO thanks to the conditions they're treating, with mixed success.)
  • Dresses with pockets, and warm things to wear over them (also with pockets).

mdlbear: (technonerdmonster)

I've been using the same software for doing my taxes for somewhere around 30 years. It was called TaxCut back then; the company that made it was bought by H&R Block in 1993, though they didn't rename the software until 2008. For much, if not all, of that time I've been doing it on a Mac of some sort.

Last year I looked at the system requirements and discovered that it would no longer run on my ageing Mac Mini. It also wouldn't run on Windows 7. It needed either NacOS High Sierra or Windows 8.1. So I used their web version, which I remember as rather slow, and enough different from the offline version of previous years to be annoying.

So for this year (which is to say tax year 2021), my options would appear to be:

  1. Use the web version again. Ugh, but at least it would import 2020 without trouble. Maybe. It didn't let me upload a 2019 data file; I had to feed it a PDF and do a lot of fixing up.
  2. Run it on the laptop that has Win 8.1, or put the Win 10 disk that came with (new) Sable back in and use that. Ugh.
  3. Buy a newer Mac Mini. I could get a minimal one for about $100-150, or a more recent one (running Mojave) for around $200-250. (Those are eBay prices, of course.)

(Note that cost of the software is the same for all three options.)

I'm really leaning toward #3. But really that would just be an excuse to buy another computer, and would leave me with two Mac Minis that I'd hardly ever use. More likely I'll dither about it until the end of March and then break down and go use the web version again.

Another fine post from The Computer Curmudgeon (also at computer-curmudgeon.com).
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