Monday, February 07, 2011

The PET Scan test results

The PET scan test results
I got an email from City of Hope and Dr. Kim this past week.

The test turned out very well for me. The official radiology report or comment was “there were no abnormal conditions noted.” Obviously, I was very pleased with those results and so was Doug.

Dr. Kim wants to schedule a meeting for late March. He saw something that he didn’t like; probably one of my lesions. I think he’ll want me to go ahead with the surgery he proposed, to remove the lesions.

Right now, I am leaning towards going along with his surgery suggestion. I think Doug does as well.

Teaching
I have what I call a tentative teaching schedule for next quarter. It is tentative until probably the first day of class and that won’t be until March 14th. I am scheduled to teach two Business courses that I have taught before and two Economics course, only one which I have taught before.

My fifth class is a Writing course. I could have that changed to another course in Project Management or Criminal Justice. I have taught the Project Management course before so that would be no preparation for that course.

One of the Economics courses and a possible Criminal Justice course would be new to me. The Criminal Justice course would either be in Criminal Law or Constitutional Law. I ought to have no difficulty with the preparations for the Criminal Justice class.

I’ll just sit and wait and see what develops for my courses.

I discovered the battery on one of my watches died during the night. This happens; I just wish I had discovered the dead battery before I left for school this morning.

eHarmony and Me
I’ve cut my second group of eHarmony matches plus holdovers from the first set down to seven as of now. The list will shrink by one or two more tonight. I plan to start more extended emails with some of the more promising ones this week.


Be well and stay happy.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

The Monthe by the Numbers

The Month by the Numbers
It was a good month for me by most any measure.

I managed to drive for 19.25 hours with the top down which says a great deal about living in Southern California. The odometer rolled over to 10,957 miles.

The blog had 372 visitors who viewed 531 pages. The most popular page is still January 1, 2007, primarily for the images contained in it and not for the prose. Since I created the blog six years ago, it has received over 58,500 visitors. I am assuming that some of these were repeat visitors.

City of Hope
I was at the City of Hope on Tuesday for a CT/PET scan. I had the scan to determine if I am a good candidate for the liver procedure [see below in the Cure posting]. The test is designed to find traces of cancer cells in my body. You get injected with a radioactive marker agent that attaches to cancer cells. When my body is subjected to the proton emissions, the marker agents glow and is easily identified.

I think it will be a week before I hear from the doctors at the City of Hope about the test results.

It would have been a perfect day if the temperature had been a bit warmer. I could have pulled in a two or three hours top down driving session.

Teaching
I am now teaching six courses at school. I picked up my sixth with the Tuesday night Criminal Justice course. This will mark my sixth course that I have taken over in the middle of the class.

The students seemed happy to have me as their teacher for the remainder of the term. Some of my former student who knew what I am like as a teacher were particularly happy because they knew I wasn’t going to treat them badly because of the lack of a steady instructor prior to my taking over the class.

The Criminal Justice chair on Tuesday asked if I would be interested in teaching other courses in the program. Naturally, I said yes and we talked about me teaching Criminal Law and possibly Constitutional Law; both subjects that I would enjoy and ones that do not require any knowledge of policing.

Perfectomundo.

eHarmony Backup Plan
I decided to create an eHarmony backup plan on Sunday. It always helps to have a backup plan.

My high school class will have its fiftieth reunion in two years. The one of the reunion committee co-chairs asked me to serve on the calling committee. I have known Wendy since fifth grade so it was hard to say no.

I sent her an email saying I would serve and make some calls for the committee.

I also asked if she knew of any single women from the class who were in our area since I was at a stage in my cancer treatment where I could actively date. My thinking was that Wendy knew lots of the class members and the probability favored me. There was the high likelihood that I would have been in classes with any of the potential names she might find. Since both of us would have shared a common childhood and possibly been in school together for all thirteen years, the basis for a connection would be good.

Wendy replied and said she, Pam, and Caren, the two other committee co-chairs would be meeting this month and they would put the brain trust together and see what developed.

My immediately reaction to her reply was to think of the opening scene from Macbeth. You have to read the play to understand my thought.


Be well and stay happy.