WE ARE DONE (for now)!
NO MORE CHEMO! Yesterday was officially my last dose. While I still have a table full of other meds I’ll still have to take, the daily poisoning that I’ve endured for the past two-plus years is over! I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to Kat and everyone else who has endured and put up with me over this less-than-fun journey. This is a trip that I do not care to repeat, ever, though that is, in reality, highly unlikely. Still, my oncology team is convinced that my numbers have been good enough for long enough that we can consider my leukemia to be in remission! PARTY TIME!
Well, okay, maybe hold up on that party thing a little bit. The doctor was careful to explain that being in remission doesn’t mean I immediately stop showing symptoms. Doing daily chemo for over two years means I have a lot of the drug in my body. The poison isn’t going to suddenly go away just because I stop adding to it. Recovery from the drug could take just as long as the chemo did, and there are some symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, that may never go completely away.
One of the things the doctor warned about was symptoms seeming to disappear for a while and then suddenly returning without any warning. While nausea and night sweats are the symptoms most likely to reappear, he warned that I should always keep my cane handy because there’s no way of knowing when my muscles might decide to shut down and stop working. He said the symptoms can also mimic a cold or the flu. Should such symptoms reappear, he requested that I call the cancer center before calling my GP to consider whether what I’m experiencing might be a leftover from the chemo.
What does ‘being in remission’ mean if I’m still going to be just as sick? Let’s start here:
The doctor emphasized that there is no way to be absolutely sure that CLL is in complete remission. There is a test that can be done with a bone marrow sample, but it is still considered highly experimental as no one is quite sure what to do with the results. As a result, he recommended against the rather painful procedure. Instead, I’ll do quarterly check-ins with the nurse practitioner, and as long as those pesky numbers don’t start to climb again, we’ll assume that the remission is holding.
There’s also no way to accurately predict how long the remission might hold. Five years is pretty much the max for most people, but there’s always the chance it could be as little as six months. His recommendation was pretty standard: get plenty of rest, eat well, exercise when I can, and avoid any serious stress. Apparently, the doctor hasn’t been reading a lot of news lately.
In the meantime, I have a fine needle biopsy of a nodule on my left thyroid this morning. My anxiety wishes that Kat could be there with me, but she has other things to do and, by any means of accounting, this is a rather low-risk procedure. I just have to stay completely still.
HAVE YOU MET ME?
I don’t think I’ve ever stayed completely still for anything! A local anesthetic will be used, and then they carefully poke a needle into my neck. I can’t imagine anything going wrong there, can you? I’m told the whole thing shouldn’t take more than two hours, and then I can come back home and sleep off the anesthetic.
Having a nodule is not necessarily indicative of yet more cancer. Should the biopsy come back positive, thyroid cancer is typically handled by an endocrinologist, not an oncologist. Same building, different floor, different doctor. The nodule has sat there untreated for the past two years, though, so chances lean more toward it being benign.
Where do I go from here? Assuming the whole thyroid thing is a nonissue, I have an appointment with the neurologist that may be rather involved. There could be a surgery or two involved there. I’ll need to see a urologist again, and there could be a surgery involved there as well. I still need to be in an assisted living facility, but as Medicare/Medicaid budgets get tossed around, who knows when that might happen?
A part of me wants to get back to work taking pictures again. I would have to make a lot of adjustments, though. I need to be able to sit down more often than standing. Indoors is better than outdoors. No extreme weather in any direction. No chasing breaking news stories. For that matter, probably no chasing static news stories. Still, I feel like the photo ideas have just been piling up for the past three years. I want a camera in my hand again.
For now, we’ll just worry about this whole FNA thing, get through it, then chill for the weekend. I’m sure next week will bring a whole new set of problems. There’s never any shortage.
So, who’s down to party?
![One With The Night [original 2008 modified with neural filters]](https://i0.wp.com/www.charlesiletbetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/JackieFigure20-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C2560&ssl=1)
Friday, February 7, 2025
More Bark, Toothless Bites.
A chill was back in the air this morning as I took the dogs out for their morning poop. A stiff wind out of the North hints at chances of freezing rain over the weekend. Our dogs can be aggressive and of late, that aggressiveness has increased some, mostly from Belvedere, the English Hound. He doesn’t like cars—any of them. He’ll stand in the yard when we’re out in the afternoon and voice his displeasure. He’s quiet when we’re out in the morning, though. He seems to understand that no one wants to hear his voice when it’s still dark. The dog understands more about getting along with neighbors than some people do.
ABC News seems to be the only major news outlet addressing a memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) yesterday warning that cameras made in China could be ‘spying’ on the US. I laughed. From the moment they were invented, cameras have been used by almost every nation to spy on others, including their own people. We didn’t need digital cameras for that, nor did we need internet-connected cameras. As far back as WWII, miniaturized cameras were used to convey troop movements and other aspects of war. Nothing is going on that hasn’t been happening for decades.
What the memo specifically warns about are cameras that are ‘internet-connected.’ Again, I laughed. Cameras don’t just connect to the nearest Internet signal on their own. They have to be manually connected to a specific and the camera has to be turned on. This has been a feature on digital cameras for a couple of decades now. I never use it because it’s a pain in the ass to set up and the benefits are negligible if one isn’t close to a connected laptop or other computer. No photographer just walks around with the camera turned on, either, because a) it kills battery life, and b) most cameras automatically turn off if they’ve not been used for more than a minute or two.
There’s also the fact that few legitimate US photographers use Chinese gear. Canon, Sony, and Nikon still dominate the US market. I couldn’t even think of a Chinese brand. When I dug around a bit, I found this list of the ten most popular cameras made in China. I’ve not heard of nor encountered any of them. These are the brands I might expect to find on the bottom shelf of a ‘discount’ electronics store. They’re made largely of plastic and the quality of the glass is questionable at best. It would be a really lousy spy or a really shitty photographer who would use one of these brands.
This begs the question: why release such a useless memo? Only ABC News took the bait. Everyone else ignored it because it was meaningless. Granted, over the past three weeks, we’ve seen dozens of meaningless memos from various government agencies. Most are performative, at best, and some read as though they were written by children, which, in this administration, is quite possible. Many have been rescinded within twenty-four hours of being released.
What this memo has the potential to do, however, is make life difficult for legitimate photographers, especially photojournalists. I remember how it felt in the days immediately following 9/11, especially in New York. Simply taking my camera out of its bag on a street corner was enough to cause people to not only stare but contact the nearest beat cop. I frequently had to explain myself, though only once did it ever cause any problem (another story for another time). Now, everyone’s cell phone has a camera stronger than I had back then, and cell phones are connected to networks by default but no one bats an eye. Photojournalists, however, rarely rely on their cell phones to get the best shots. A good camera with a 200mm to 500mm zoom stands out and tends to indicate that the person holding the device knows what they’re doing (not always the case). From my perspective, the only purpose I can see in this memo is to make photojournalists targets. Yes, it’s insane, but then, so are most of the memos and edicts we’ve seen handed down the past three weeks. Sanity is not this administration’s strong suit.
There are also signs of a pushback against the illegal aspects of the administration’s overreach. A Judge temporarily blocked the Punk’s plan offering incentives for federal workers to resign. 13 states sued over DOGE access to government payment systems containing personal data. The US border czar blames leaks for hindering immigration raids in Colorado suburbs. Egypt lobbies against Punk’s plan to empty Gaza of Palestinians. Iran’s supreme leader says US talks ‘not intelligent, wise or honorable,’ Members of the U.S. House Progressive Caucus held a news conference on Thursday vowing to fire Elon Musk. There is finally some action from Democrats, but there’s still plenty of room for them to step up and do something. Anything. Just don’t expect it to happen this weekend.
Yeah, I’m aware of the hilarious (sort of) order to fight ‘anti-Christian bias.’ I’m fairly sure the only thing that order will achieve is increasing the anti-Christian bias that the church itself has created through its neverending hypocrisy. This is the Punk’s attempt to keep a dwindling evangelical movement at his side. There will ultimately be a First Amendment clash over this.
We’re going into a weekend where more people would rather complain about the dominance of the Eagles and Chiefs rather than the government. There will be tons of expensive chicken wings devoured and more than a little beer spilled. Ads will most likely be disappointing (from what I’ve seen so far). Monday could be designated as ‘National Hangover Day.’
This is a good time to be kind to yourself. Go ahead and take that nap. Indulge in your favorite comfort foods if you can. Read a good book. For all the danger we’re in, even the nut jobs in DC have trouble competing with the Super Bowl. Relax for a minute. We’ll have plenty to address next week.
Enjoy the coffee.
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