10 Years

My badge pic from 10 years ago.  Spooky, no?

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It has been a common theme in my blogs to comment about the apparent rapid passage of time.  Whether talking about the time from one Christmas to the next or even from one blog entry to the next, time really appears to slip through our fingers faster with each passing day.  The particular manifestation of this phenomenon observed by this entry is the passage of the past 10 years with my company.  It's hard to believe that I've been with the same company for that long, but it's official: I received the congratulatory email on January 28 from the Michael C Fina Corporation awards department -- I just love using the full name like Rod Roddy did on The Price is Right for all those years: "The next item up for bids on The Price is Right from the Michael C Fina Corporation is........<dramatic pause>.........LOVELY FLATWARE!!" followed by a flourish from one of Barker's Beauties. 

The next item up for bids: Lovely Nambé!

I respond in my head "I'll bid 39.99, Bob."  Amusingly, that's exactly what you get for your 10th anniversary: a $40ish gift from the Michael C Fina Corporation.  You get to choose from a catalog that includes lovely cutlery emblazoned with the company logo (not sure about the implications of that, but....).  Or the finest Sony DVD player that $40 can buy (I'll pass, thanks).  So after sorting through a variety of fine future garage sale material, I decided that something classic like a small piece of Nambé would bespeak the honor and longevity better than a crappy DVD player, so that's what I got.  It's pretty, and holds cough drops beautifully on my chair side table.

One of the more important things I took away from that 10 years, however, is the friendship that I maintain with a couple of guys who adopted me on the first day -- well, before the first day, actually.  I was an intern during the Summer of 2001, and lucky enough to get and accept a great offer for employment before the awful fall of that year.  During my internship, I met a scary, ominous guy named Doug, and a brilliant, but odd, fellow named Ron.  I look back on my bright-eyed, bushy tailed self, fresh from graduation and think "oh you poor thing.  Where would you be without these guys to beat some of that out of you?"   Hehe, I say that in jest of course -- both of them had been with the company for quite a few years in different roles, and knew the ropes.  They taught me which corporate stuff was important to pay attention to, and which stuff was just a ticky box that you to get on through the best way you can.  In addition, they taught me a ton technically.  Ron is one of the smartest people I've ever met, and one of the best at dissecting software problems, while Doug is the Uber-team lead.  I've worked with several good project leads through my career, and even been one in my later years, but I've encountered few who do as good a job managing the project and genuinely taking care of his people from a common sense/work-life balance perspective.  Thank you both from the bottom of my heart!  Having watched other new hires come in (both at my company and even watching Marcus struggle when he started at his job).  I can plainly see that my road was far easier because of the guidance they provided me.

Not that it was all peaches along the way, you see -- I wasn't exactly being suckled at the mother's teat, so to speak, by these guys.  In fact, they threw untold amounts of grief my way, and enjoyed doing it, too. 

So much so, that I nicknamed them Statler & Waldorf -- the two old codgers that sat in the balcony critiquing every performance on The Muppet Show.  It fit their personalities, their evil laughs, and they even looked a tiny bit like them.  I remember in one of my favorite bits of banter back and forth -- Doug had a habit of monitoring the contents of Ron's trash can with his penuroious eye to see if Ron was spending the kid's inheritance on Grandma's brand cookies for his morning snack.  After a few days of commentation, Ron got tired of it and attached a note to the wrapper that said "Dear Doug: mind your own f&(^*&ing business!"  That's the kind of love we shared on the D aisle ;-}

Touche guys!  I didn't want you to think this post was totally about getting into Doug and Ron's wills -- I gotta give them back a little crap for all those years.

Health Update

Enough nostalgia -- you guys want to know what's going on with me.  In short, "not much."  My last doctor visit was on January 31, and we're pretty much staying the course for the time being.  The CT scan from early January, just after we changed the chemo regimen, showed minor shrinkage in some of the offending lymph nodes, but in truth, that was taken only a week after the new chemo began, so we really didn't expect any change at all -- minor shrinkage is about the best we could hope for at that time.  As for the outlook, the doctor says things are much less certain than they were last fall.  At that time we had a plan with specific chemo that was working reliably, and a target to get me on to radiation, shrinkage, and surgery.  Since the rescans in December showed that the cancer had rebounded in distant regions, that has basically taken surgery off the table as a future option, and left us with simply managing the progression and symptoms -- and hopefully achieving some level of remission.  The expectation is that we'll treat in 2 month blocks, then rescan at the end of each and re-evaluate.  In all likelihood, I'll be on chemo from here on, although when I reach a point they call "maximum treatment" (I could have that term wrong, but it's close and means that the nodes shrink all they appear likely to), I'll probably get a 2 month break, before going back on it. 

So, how do I feel? In a word, crappy and crabby, most of the time.  The new chemo (specifically the Irinotecan -- i.e. the brown bag) is a miserable drug.  It brings with it not only the stomach/bowel distress I've previously described, but its own particular brand of nausea that lasts over a week and a half after the treatment is administered.  Since the treatments are every 2 weeks, I'm getting about 4 days at the end of the cycle where the reduced fatigue and nausea allow the cabin fever to propel me out of the house to go do a few things.  I'm trying to take advantage of those days as much as possible.  Last weekend, we used those days for a low key weekend in Galveston.  It was, admittedly, not our usual, and Marcus didn't get to take me on the Ho Chi Minh vacation death march walking tour, as he historically has ;-}  But we had a great room with a fantastic 10th floor view of the Gulf and a lovely massage. 

View from our hotel room in Galveston.

To bring it back full circle, I'm not working right now -- I'm on short term disability.  I was trying to work out a partial schedule, but in the end, my energy and feeling bad was just too unreliable. 

So there you have it -- my last 10 years in a nutshell, with emphasis on the past 10 weeks.  I've not given up hope, but I am trying to temper things with a bit of realism these days.  It's mighty tough (and getting tougher) to keep the chipper "can-do" attitude, especially when you don't feel good, are tired, and constantly flooded with "less than optimistic news."  Nonetheless, thank you all for your continued support -- I couldn't do it without you, and I will work on soaking up all the good energy you send my way and putting it to good use.

Love to you all,
J