I've been spending the weekend so far engaged in a combination of surfing deviantart and relentless self-improvement, falling under the titles of LVS and Project FG. Luckily or unluckily I don't know, but I went into the office today (to print out a picture off google so I could use it as a reference for my planned drawing of St. Sebastian being tended by the widow) and I ran into Jim and Lionel and Anne as they were leaving. I always have mixed feelings about running into the boss at work on the weekend. 1. He knows you're putting in the extra effort 2. he probably thinks you have no life. And when your grad school advisor gets worried about you because he thinks you have no life... that's just really depressing. I mean, what's worse- having no life, or being caught at having no life? But you can't really assure him that you're not coming into work to actually do work, but to actually use the printing facilities for your own personal diversion, either. So you let the moment awkwardly pass, which it did.

So anyway, I printed the picture and spent the rest of the day in the library, working on LVS and Project FG... never got around to drawing St. Sebastian, I'll have to do that tomorrow or something. As part of the regimen for strict self-improvement I decided that since I was working on the 11th floor and the whole library is empty because of Spring Break and the elevator ride was really long, that I should dance like a crazy person during the whole duration of every elevator ride that I had to take. So I did. It's been working out really well for me.

I've been googling all of the symptoms I had during my recent illness, and it kept coming up over and over again: leukemia leukemia leukemia. Ok, ok, leukemia, blah blah blah, what do I really have?
So I was reading about the signs they look for and the tests they do to see whether or not you actually have leukemia. I realized that all the tests that they made me do last week were all to figure out if I had leukemia. The conversations they'd been having about the pinprick spots on my legs and my fever and my weight loss and everything (using really technical words so the conversation would take place above my head)... all of the terminology showed up here!

So THAT's why it was so important that they found my platelet levels to be so incredibly high and healthy! So THAT's why they had three doctors come in and look at me. And THAT's why they were so concerned about the reason for my weight loss. And I thought they were just worried that I had an eating disorder or something. Luckily I passed all of their important tests, and whatever I had last week will hopefully fade forever into the past.

Though, that's certainly enough to
FREAK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU, DON'T YOU THINK?

I wish doctors would be more transparent with you, ya know? But you kind of see why they aren't sometimes.

Yeah.
Sudden and prolonged weight loss is one of the major warning flags for any sort of cancer.

(I've been reading oncology text books recently. They're more medical than scientific in scope and I'm hoping that I can come away with a better understanding of what's killing my grandmother.)
» ranor on 2007-03-24 11:14:39

Yay! Definitely understandable why they're not transparent... it's like the scientists not telling about the end of the world.
» ikimashokie on 2007-03-24 11:22:59

Sometimes it is dangerous when we try to seek answers or diagnose ourselves. We find all kinds of things that could be wrong with us and cause us to worry. Have you ever read the DSM book. Something like that.... the one about the mental disorders that psychologists use. Well, if you read it, you would think you have at LEAST 10 mental disorders.
» KkaMA67 on 2007-03-25 11:12:32

Seriously, I'm waiting for her to completely snap on him...
» ikimashokie on 2007-03-25 04:51:23

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