Musings of a Software Development Manager

Anesthesia Lightweight I’m feeling much better now. My biopsy and portocath operation was actually two days ago, but as I remembered from last time I have a hard time recovering from the anesthesia. It was better than the last biopsy/removal of 4.5 years ago, but it still really knocks me out for 24 hours. I [...]

Small Things Tomorrow is the biopsy, so no more food tonight. I have that drilled in, no food past midnight. Anyway I finally spent spent some time researching the part that worries me the most about my upcoming treatment, unless of course I get really lucky and the biopsy shows something besides cancer–bone marrow transplant. [...]

Don’t give up. During my first battle with cancer, I remember visiting the XUMA offices in San Francisco when one of the project managers David something pulled me aside. He told me an emotional story of his father who had also fought and lost a battle with cancer. His overridding concern was that I fight [...]

Forgetting the patient is a person. A lot has taken place over the last two days. I got back the CAT scan results over the phone from my oncologist and it showed likely NHL in my neck, though localized to just the area of the node and perhaps the right tonsil. I talked to my [...]

Clunky but useful I spent a good portion of the last two hours working with Eclipse to setup a tutorial project I’m building. As usual I had to brush up on my command line CVS including how to login remotely via SSH. Then it was numerous attempts to create a clean directory structure in Eclipse. [...]

Gutsy Fight I just finished reading the cancer blog of Emma Candy, a 35 year old woman in England battling cancer. I recognize the sarcastic humor in her posts and her focus on the future, from my first bout with the disease. It helps to remind me how I’m facing the current possible relapse. If [...]

Only 31 hours for a single bug. Bug fixing on any project can be a very welcome experience, or on a project that generally isn’t going well it can be really rough. Unfortunately I’m on one of those spinning out of control projects with a failed history going back more than 2 years, so it’s [...]

Well, I went through a PET scan today. It’s apparently a little more advanced version of a Galium scan I got 4 years ago. Basically you get injected with some radioactive material and then sit in a scanner for quite a few minutes. It really wasn’t too bad as these things go. After fasting all [...]

Nothing a little escapism can’t cure. My wife questioned me a few times today about how I was feeling. I answered, “I’m fine.” Truth is as she recognizes well I had the blahs. Waiting for a diagnosis is in some ways harder than having it. I’m ready to fight, itching to organize and strategize the [...]

Just a little swelling It’s been a long few days. While on a trip to my friend Joe and Ghen’s wedding in Toronto I realized I had a lump on the right side of my throat. The last time I found a lump on the other side was in March of 2000 while working all [...]