What a day

I felt pretty good this morning. The deck guys came out and starting building our deck too, which was super exciting! It's basically done except for the railings and the final footing inspection. They think they'll have it finished by tomorrow. It looks very nice thus far.

I went to get my port disconnected and return my portable pump at about 11:40. I was very much looking forward to a good turkey sub from Harris Teeter after this when I realized I left my wallet at home. Luckily I easily found $10 in quarters in my change bin in the car, so I paid in quarters.

While I was on my way to get the sub I noticed a little abdominal pain on my right side, right under the ribcage. I was hoping it was because I was hungry. I eventually got my sandwich and ate half of it, but the pain was worse.

By the time I made it home it was pretty excruciating. I decided that I had to go to the ER because I was afraid that I had appendicitis. I just barely made it, I should have called an ambulance. It was the most indescribable pain I've ever had. I called Emily and she met me at the ER. It took about 1.5 hours I think to get me into the back, get an IV started (for some reason they don't have the junk in the ER to use my port) and get me some pain killers (Delotid!). I just can't emphasize enough how painful this was.

Well eventually they got around to doing a CT with contrast to see if my appendix had exploded, which it hadn't. In fact, they have absolutely no explanation as to what the pain was. They said all looked well. Indeed, the pain has since passed. They basically just said go home, here's some painkillers, and here's some pepcid. Go see Dr. Somerville, too (with no explanation as to why). Annoyingly because Dr. Kasamon is not affiliated with St. Agnes they basically can't/won't talk to him.

I did get to not have surgery, which is great news. I wasn't looking forward to having a surgery, on top of the possible complications of it from being on Avastin (it affects the healing process of blood vessels).

I think next time something like this happens I'm going to go to Sinnai (which Dr. Kasamon is also not affiliated with, unfortunately) because it's closer and maybe slightly more competent than St. Agnes. Or if it's not too bad I can make it to Howard County or BWMC where Kasamon is in the loop.

Anyway, things seem to be okay now but good god if that's what a burst appendix feels like I hope I never have one.

And we'll have a deck tomorrow.

It's been a mixed day. Hah.

7/8 down, maybe?

Dr. Kasamon forwarded me an email from Dr. Diaz where Dr. Diaz recommends 4 total cycles (which is 8 treatments) followed by maintenance of 5-FU and Avastin. I have no idea how long that lasts. Maybe forever. In my initial contact with Dr. Diaz I got the impression he prefers a whole year worth of treatment (including maintenance) before you can go on "holidays" of an indeterminate period of time. There's still a good bit of details to be worked out, it seems.

I'm in bed recovering from the chemo yesterday. It's not too bad this time, though I have a good headache, my stomach hurts, and I'm decently tired.

I just ordered a miter saw and circular saw from Amazon. There's a $20 rebate on each of them until the end of the month, sweet! That means I picked them both up for about $160 I think. I also ordered oil and air filters for Emily and my cars. What does Amazon not sell nowadays?

Emily and I had a very good spontaneous weekend. We made it out for the train ride, which was pretty entertaining. I have never been out that far west before. We got off in Frostburg and had a 1.5 hour layover where we walked up and down the rather short main street, then we ate/drank at a place called Mountain City Coffee House. The coffee was very good. I also had a hot panini consisting of tomato, cheese, and pesto I think. It was also good. Back on the train we went back to Cumberland.

It was supposed to be rainy all weekend but the weather held out miraculously for us. After we got back to Cumberland it was just starting to rain/sprinkle. We randomly called a bed and breakfast in Cumberland, the Bruce House Inn, and asked if they happened to have a room that night. Miraculously they did. They were booked up solid, but an old couple had to bail out a day early and they had a room (in fact, the room we would have wanted looking online) available. Very nice place. Though for some strange reason they had hardwood in the bathroom with a claw-foot tub that spewed water everywhere when you showered. Anyway, we then took a nap for a couple of hours.

After waking up we went to Rocky Gap State Park in search of some supposed bluegrass music being played out there. We never did find it. It was sprinkling a little bit at first, but we never saw any hint of people coming out. Oh well. Instead I just kept driving on a road and we found ourselves in PA and eventually in Buchannon State Forest, which was gorgeous. Then we went offroading down some forest fireroads that seemed okay to drive on. Coming up in this beautiful mountain gap before the forest I wanted a picture of it. But there wasn't anywhere good to get a picture. I jokingly commented that I wanted to go to this antenna field at the top of the mountain I could see. Well, after a couple of long fireroads low and behold I dead-ended at the antenna field. There was no good access to an edge to take a picture though.

Then we drove back into MD and went back out to Frostburg and ate at Guiseppe's Italian restaurant. Emily and I split an apettizer that was basically a caprese salad (mozzarella, tomato slices, olive oil, basil, oregano, etc.) and very good. We also split a pasta primavera with chicken, which was also very good (fresh veggies). Emily had eaten there a couple of times when she worked for DNR and drove all over the state. It was a good pick. Back to the BnB for some much needed rest. One thing I will say about Cumberland, it's clearly an old town that didn't plan for traffic. They have closed off a few blocks of the main thoroughfare and paved it over in European style as a pedestrian plaza with shops and stuff. That's fine and dandy except every road is one-way. It took about 30 minutes once we were back into Cumberland to finally correctly navigate the 5 blocks to the BnB. Luckily tensions didn't flare too badly ;)

The next day we were again spontaneous and decided to continue west basically to the edge of the state and go to Swallow Falls State Park. There's a 53 foot waterfall in this park, bigger than I have ever seen. Emily is not impressed by it though. It's also in the last remaining stead of Hemlock trees in the state of Maryland, 40-ish acres worth. We walked basically the whole trail. It was very nice and refreshing. Most of the trail is against these strange rocky outcrops on one side (it looks like it was blasted, but it could have been natural) and the other side is a river and falls. Being in a forest with water makes the air so nice.

After that we began the 3.5 hour journey home. (Maryland's not a very big state!). We stopped at the at the Lakeside Creamery right on Deep Creek (the largest body of water in Maryland, and like all bodies of water in Maryland man-made by a dam). I had a disgusting amount of "cinnamon bun" ice cream in a waffle cone, which was great. Then we continued our journey home.

Right near the intersection of I-68 and I-70 is a place called Sideling Hill, which is this huge gap in a mountain range with I-68 running through it. You can walk up the side to an observation deck and see all the layers of rock and the evidence of primordial streams and stuff. Pretty neat. Though I never did figure out if it was man made or not. Onward home...

About 10 miles into I-70 we hit traffic. I think we averaged about 15MPH for the next 50 or 60 miles, but eventually made it out barreled home. It seemed to clear up at about Hagerstown for some reason.

Once we finally got close to back, we took another detour and went to Columbia to eat some Chipotle fajita burritos. Mmmm, so worth it.

Now for some pictures Emily took and prepared for me (in mostly chronological order):

You can see I'm totally excited about our train ride!

These adorable kitty cats were in the window of a liquor store in Frostburg.

This is me being a typical American, sipping my mocha and playing on my new fancy-pants cell phone.

This was taken somewhere on our meandering drive into PA. I think it's on the MD side though. The haziness was the neatest part I thought.

This "stair case" was in Swallow Falls. It looks man-made, but maybe not!

This is a little falls (I think maybe called Livingston Falls) in Swallow Falls State Park. You could get right up to it and it was nicely sized so Emily got some good pictures.

This is a big old, dead, hollowed out tree. I'm stuck in it! Eek!

Excellent news

I had my mid-term PET/CT results on Friday. It showed a complete response to chemotherapy, meaning that they see no traces at all of disease on the scan. There is no noticeable lymph adenopathy or anything else. This is, literally, the best news I could have possibly received. It doesn't mean that I don't still have cancer. But it is still the best news one can get.

There is talk of stopping chemotherapy early and moving me to "maintenance". What this really means is just stopping Irinotecan and only doing 5-FU and possibly Avastin. 5-FU is available orally in a brand-name drug called Xeloda. That is nice because 5-FU is the injection that requires the 48 hour pump. I might stay on Avastin as well which will require infusions still, but that's okay. Supposedly Irinotecan is the big side effect producer (except Avastin causes me nose bleeds and a bit of GI bleeding too). So overall quality of life should improve.

Dr. Kasamon is going to consult with Dr. Diaz and Johns Hopkins (whom I saw at the beginning of this ) and Dr. Van Echo at his practice (another well regarding colorectal cancer guy). They will hatch some plan as to what they think the best course of action is. There isn't a whole lot of clinical evidence that clearly shows what one should do in a situation like this. It's not often to find someone have a complete response half way through, apparently. I like that Dr. Kasamon is going to do that of his own accord and I think that with the experience between the three of them they will make the right decision, whatever that may be.

I also talked to Dr. Fenig, my urologist, on Thursday. He thinks that I should have my stent removed in the near future (like whenever we can get the appointment scheduled). He saw the PET/CT as well and thinks the best thing is to take it out and see if anything bad happens with my kidney (which hopefully there won't be). So that's more good news.

Overall this was a good week for me.

Also Emily and I are being spontaneous today. Last night at 11:00PM we decided we were going to go out to Cumberland (2.5 hours west in very Western Maryland) and take a historic stream train to Frostburg and back. Then we'll probably spend the night in Cumberland or the surrounding area. The train leaves at 11:30AM today, which means we need to be out of here by 8:30AM. So I'm going to stop typing and get a move on.

Error Correcting Codes

First, I have six treatments to go; 12 in total.

Since I'm just laying in bed right now with nothing else to do I will do my best to explain what an error correcting code is. There is a decent Wikipedia article on Forward Error Correction, which is a place where ECC find their application. You would be amazed how many things in your life utilize ECC (hard drives in computers, portable flash/thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, everything you do on the Internet, etc.). It is an aspect of communications systems. Basically, in a communication system, you can never really be sure that the person you're talking to heard you right... and if you're listening, you can't be sure that what you heard was right.

Human speech is a sort of example of a communication system but it's hard to use as a good example because it is highly redundant to begin with (you don't really need to hear all of what someone says to know what they're talking about). And our brains are exceptional computers and we have a hard time abstracting the process of discerning what it is that someone said. So to use speech in my next example, I will contrive an example that doesn't use English words.

Imagine that there are two people in a crowded food court at a mall and they are separated by some distance. One of them knows the winning lottery numbers and needs to tell the other so he can buy a ticket. You really want to be pretty certain you heard the numbers right. One option is to have the sender scream loudly (which in actual terms means increasing the power of the transmission). Say he's got a sore throat though so he can only get so loud (which is analagous to the very real scenario of something like a cell phone, where it can only be so powerful given that it's a handheld device running on a small battery). You can hear him but not great. Another option is to have him repeat each number twice. If you hear two different numbers, you know there's been a mistake. You don't which number is correct though. You can yell back and ask him to repeat it (which is a form of communications protocol, known as a negative acknowledgement or NACK). But that takes time to do, and maybe you've lost your voice or something so you can't do it to begin with (a simplex or one-way communications channel). The sender could say each number three times, and you could take a majority vote of the three copies you received. This way you can detect and correct one error. (actually the "detection" part might be more, but it's complicated because my example isn't bits, it's words).

The fact that you send the "data" three times and take a majority vote at the receiver is a rudimentary and highly suboptimal example of an error correcting code. There are many thousands of pages that have been written about the various clever ways one can mathematically encode data such that errors can be detected and in some cases corrected in a communication system. Pretty much all modern forms of communication would fall apart without error correcting codes. So they're pretty interesting and useful.

Forward error correction is a way of preemptively putting information in that will enable the receiver to detect and possibly correct errors. If you can't detect that an error has likely occurred, you wouldn't know to ask for that piece of information again. And if you can correct it without any intervention from the sender, you don't have to go through the process of asking for the piece again and verifying it was correct. There are many applications where the penalty for asking for information again is great and you would really prefer that it all just get there right the first time.

A good real life example of this is geosynchronous satellites. That is, satellites whose orbit matches that of the earth (they are always appear to be over the same spot on the earth, not orbiting around it since they have an orbit that matches that of the earth). The physics of it means that all such satellites are about 22,200 miles above the earth. If you are trying to communicate over a satellite channel, the speed of light becomes annoying. The fastest you can possibly hope to get data to the satellite is about 0.12 seconds (thanks to the speed of light). Now the satellite has to beam it back down to earth as presumably you are not talking to an astronaut on said satellite. That takes another 0.12 seconds. So to send anything, it takes 0.24 seconds for the receiver to receive it. So you say "Hi", it takes him 0.3 seconds to receive it. He says "Hey there to you too", and it takes another 0.24 seconds for the "Hey" to make it back to you. You can imagine it is very annoying to have a 0.5 second delay in your conversation. It will be very awkward and you'll be asking each other to repeat things and stopping in the middle because you realize you're both talking at the same time. It's even worse when you're dealing with digital data. If you send one letter at a time, and the receiver can't correct an error, he has to ask for a retransmit, meaning it will take 0.72 seconds just to get the second copy (0.24 to send/receive the letter, 0.24 for the receiver to transmit a NACK and for the transmitter to receive said NACK, 0.24 for the sender to send the letter again). You can see that the penalty for failure adds up quick. You want it right the first time.

Another weekend gone by

So another weekend has come and gone. I just finished mowing the lawn, and hand clipping all the tall blades of grass since our old-fashioned push mower can't mow things that are too tall.

Instead of getting constipated from the chemo like normal, this time I had diarrhea. That wasn't any fun. Immodium seems to be taking care of it decently well though. I also have all sorts of weird bleeding problems, presumably from the Avastin. The doctors are aware of it though and well, it's just too bad because that's a side effect of treatment. It's not bad enough to alter it yet.

This week I'm going to a course taught by Todd Moon, author of an excellent book on Error Correcting Codes. This means I won't be going into the office at all, and it also means I have to get up early (at least earlier than normal for me). I think the class will be excellent and it's been a while since I've got my learn on, so I think it will be worth it. It's on an inconvenient off week for me though, since I have three doctors appointments this week. So I'll be happy if I can make 30/40 hours of the class.

It's been a pretty lazy weekend. Emily and I went and test drove the Nissan Cube (again, for me at least), then we went to the Stone Store and looked at fancy rocks, then we met Trevor in old-town Savage to eat at Ma's Kettle. Ma's Kettle was a cute quaint homecookin' BBQ place. We were going to go test drive a Honda Fit, but I felt tired so we didn't do that. Didn't feel good today, so we didn't do it again. Some day though.

Ready for the disconnect

My pump should start to yell at me in about an hour and then at about 1:15 or so I imagine it will be empty. So I'm going to head out later and get disconnected! I'm going to treat myself to a turkey sandwich. I can't decide whether I want Quizno's or Harris Teeter. Quizno's is good because it's hot and I like the sauce they use on the Paremesan Turkey or whatever it is that I always order. But Harris Teeter has better bread and meat, I think. I wonder if they can shove the sub in a sandwhich press or something? Hah.

Anyway, regarding ODB-II readers: if you take your car to Auto-Zone I've heard that they will read the code from your car for free and provide you a printout of what it means and what you might need to fix it. The ODB-II readers are really only useful for a select number of things. Emily's car was having all sorts of poor performance issues, and it even totally stalled out once or twice. Finally, whatever it was caused the ECM to record a fault that I could read. It was an Idle Air Control Valve failure. A new IACV was like $160, but I researched some and figured out I could just remove it and clean it out with some throttle body cleaner and it would probably be fine, which it was. So that right there paid for the reader in and of itself. If I can fix this O2 thing, even better. But I guess you have to want to fiddle with repairs yourself. If I had a new car I wouldn't bother, but anything more than 5 years old, I bet it's probably worth it (like your Nissan SUV, John!).

Also, on Sunday we finally put together and stained this thing we bought from Ikea to use as a shoe chest. We had (have) this cheap metal thing that we had a million shoes piled on, and they were always falling off and stuff. We bought this thing from Ikea like 3 months ago and it's just been sitting there. So I said I was going to put it together and use it unstained if we didn't stain it this weekend, which we did. Turns out putting it together was far worse than I thought. We've bought lots of Ikea furniture, but this one was the worst. The instructions were absolutely awful, and the provided hardware for keeping it together wasn't cutting it. I ended up using about 8 wood screws to keep it together. I almost destroyed it, I got so angry trying to get it and keep it together. Finally I did though and the staining began. I have never stained anything before. It was pretty fun, though I didn't realize I should use a rag to clean up the excess stain, so it doesn't look as good as it might otherwise. But not too bad. The stain we picked fit in very well with the other stuff in our living room.



Also, Square D QO series breakers are really expensive. They have that market cornered. A 15A combination AFCI is like $40. I saw a 20A GFCI breaker that was like $55. I can buy an outlet for $15. Why is the breaker so much more? Either way I'm going to be getting some because it's more convenient.

Sitting in bed after 6/12

Yesterday was treatment 6/12. That's the halfway point. I'm looking forward to the end. I slept more much of the day yesterday, but had an awful night's sleep. I'm not sure I ever really went to sleep. No specific complaints though, I just feel like shit. Hopefully I rebound a little faster this time than last.

We had an eventful weekend of working in the yard. Emily was very productive, as you can see at her blog. I mowed the yard finally and sowed some grass seed in a bare spot. I also put some retaining wall bricks in as a "temporary" measure since Emily thought they would look dumb. Now that they're in there I think her mind is changing somewhat, but I said we'd go check out the Stone Store one of these days and make sure that there isn't something she would more prefer to have there. We definitely need some nice thick brick edging around the garden though, because the reclaimed rocks from the ground don't do much of a job keeping out all this crazy creeping grass.

This morning I made a spreadsheet of Google docs of all the cars I would consider purchasing. It's basically every foreign-made hatchback there is, as far as I can tell. There aren't very many US made hatchbacks and the ones that do exist I'm not interested in. You can view the spreadsheet (read only) here. I'm pretty sure that after I finish all this chemo in late August I'm going to go buy a new car in September or October (assuming I get at least a temporary clean bill of health). My car's "Check Engine" light came on Sunday night on the way to get some Thai Food from Little Spice, which I would like to add is a very cozy place with excellent food (also as a side note, Google Map's directions were completely wrong). Anyway, I happen to have an ODB-II scanner so I could read why it came on. P0133 = Slow Response from Front Oxygen Sensor. Some research shows me that this is either a failing oxygen sensor or an exhaust leak somewhere. The recommend change interval on O2 sensors is 100,000 miles and I've got about 125,000. It's only $70 to buy a drop in replacement O2 sensor, so if the light comes back I'll do that first (I can clear the light too with the reader). I didn't realize at the time that I bought the reader that it wouldn't do real-time data acqisition (like this one), which would be nice because I could tell right away if the O2 sensor was in fact bad. Maybe I'll craigslist the one I have and upgrade. Though it seems a little silly given that I've used it about 4 times in 2 years now.

Weekend over

Emily's mom and sister went home today. It was fun seeing them. Emily's mom has an amazing amount of energy. I have no idea where it comes from. She must have some small scale fusion reactor or something inside of her.

I have been really really tired after this treatment. I mentioned this in the last post, but it has persisted up to today. I did go out most days with Emily and family, but it's not like I was doing all that much. I've taken a multi-hour nap I think every day so far.

I'm going to work tomorrow, we'll see how long I stay. I'll be happy with half a day at this point I think. Maybe I'll bring a pillow and blanket and go find a spot behind some computer racks to take a nap or something. I'm usually feeling pretty chipper after I get some more rest.

I never did call that guy about a miter saw, but I do need to get one because I can't put up that fluorescent light until I cut from 2x4s to mount it to the ceiling joists. I also want to trace some electrical circuits, but I'm not clear on how to do it without leaving the breakers on. I'm not all about electrocuting myself, but I can't see how you can trace the way a circuit is wired if there isn't any voltage on it. I suppose I could disconnect the breaker, sever the circuits and connect 9V batteries or something to them. But that's a lot of work! I'd rather just be "careful" and try not to electrocute myself. I need to make another trip to Lowe's to spend more money on random electrical doodads too. You can never have too many doodads.