Portfolio Update
Wednesday, July 30 2008 @ 4:39am
Tonight I finally remembered to update my online portfolio by adding some essays that I wrote in high school for college and scholarship applications. Several of them are admittedly trite and riddled with clichés, and I think they make it obvious that my writing skills have come a long way since high school. Still, several of them were accepted and/or heavily praised, so I felt like they deserved inclusion.
Coming soon: the first installment of my series of essays on public speaking, and another science-driven blog post. Keep checking back!
Thoughts on Goodbyes; More Research Musings
Monday, July 28, 2008 @ 1:46pm
I spent the weekend in Jackson attending my friend Vinny's wedding and visiting most of my friends in that area one last time before I move up to Cambridge (which happens in an unbelievable 12 days). In other words, I spent a lot of time this weekend saying goodbye to people. On the ride home I started thinking about saying goodbyes and about missing people, and as usual my first thought process was to look at it logically. Why do we miss people (friends or family, specifically, not lovers) when we are physically separated from them? What exactly is it that we miss?
Is it the emotional connection, the trust, the ability to talk about and share things? That doesn't seem sufficient, since we live in a world surrounded by cell phones, emails, text messages, and all other sorts of instant electronic communication. In short, if the only reason we miss people is we miss talking/connecting/communicating with them, then modern electronics should have virtually eliminated missing people (which they haven't). Is it the good times, the fun activities, the shared memories? Again this doesn't seem sufficient, as we will always make new friends and forge new memories, so if it's only the experience of doing things with friends that we miss, the feelings should disappear as soon as we make a new friend (they don't).
In the end, the best thing I could come up with is that it boils down to security. There is a security, a familiarity, a comfort that comes from knowing you have friends and knowing that they are physically available should they be needed. New friends can eventually provide the same security, but not without going through a "waiting period" so to speak, the time when you are first getting to know a new person and you aren't yet close enough to trust them or saddle them with favors and responsibilities. True close friendships are few and far between, and the bonds that form them take time to grow and strengthen. There's always an underlying fear that the new friends you make won't be "as good as" your old friends, plus there's the nostalgic connection to the past and resistance to change that is common to all people. Humans are creatures of habit and comfort zones, and saying goodbye to friends marks both the removal of a comfort zone and the ending of a habit.
Then again, maybe I'm just rationalizing my feelings so that I don't miss my friends as much...
In my last post, I said there were multiple "big splits" with regard to choosing what area of research I want to dedicate my life to, and I want to talk about another one today. Within the field of curative therapies/research, there are basically two types of projects. There are some conditions (usually non-terminal diseases or conditions that affect only a small minority of people) that have the possibility/hope of being cured by one big breakthrough, one "magic bullet" that uses the latest science to design a targetted therapy. Examples might include diabetes, non-cancerous bowel diseases, or eye disorders. There are other conditions (usually terminal diseases that affect a large number of people) that are so varied or so quickly adaptable that there is little to no hope of ever actually curing them, only of making small, incremental advances in their treatment. The best example of this is cancer, as there are so many types with so many different signalling pathways, checkpoint failures, and unique mutations involved that it is theoretically almost impossible to cure all cancer with one treatment. The best that can be hoped for is to cure one type of cancer, by exploiting a feature unique to it, or to advance cancer treatment in general (but not to the point of cure) by developing broad new chemotherapy or non-traditional therapies.
Deciding which type of disease to research will have a major impact on the type of jobs I can find after graduation and on the content of those jobs. Working on a "curable" disease would mean the possibility of achieving fame, fortune, and rapid, widespread application of my findings all in one swoop, possibly even at an early point in my career. But, those rewards would be tempered by the knowledge that I didn't help all that many people or help people all that much, the thought that in the grand scheme of things I picked a little fish to fry. Working on a "non-curable" disease would likely mean a lifetime of research continually hampered by setbacks, new findings, failed trials, and lengthy approval processes. It would be entirely possible for me to spend my entire life researching and never produce a usable therapeutic agent, or produce one with benefits so minute that it would be considered a breakthrough only to the most analytical experts in the field. But, that frustration would be bolstered by the possibility that my research could be life saving to a small number of people. The choice basically boils down to offering a little help to a lot of people or offering a lot of help to a few people. Again, I don't yet know which one would be more rewarding.
Thoughts are, as always, welcome.
Research Project/Area Selection
Friday, July 25, 2008 @ 1:36am
Sort of carrying over the theme from yesterday's post, another issue that's been on my mind recently is my research area during grad school and in my work afterward. I realize it's ludicrously early in the process to start thinking about projects in any concrete manner (especially considering I haven't even worked in any labs yet!), but there are some more fundamental questions that I feel need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Many of these come in the form of big splits where I have to choose one "side" or the other.
The first and most basic of these is the split between research in curative areas (aimed at preventing or treating disease) and in what I vaguely call enhancement or elective areas (aimed at improving an otherwise healthy function to beyond "normal" function). I'm sure there are areas that bridge these two, and there are probably other fundamental areas that I'm ignoring, but these two seem to be the most obvious and most mutually exclusive. There are so many questions that go into deciding an area of research that I'm not even sure where to start. Which one has a better future market? People will always get sick and will always want to be better/smarter/prettier. That's a wash. Which one has better earning potential? Compare the incomes of top pharmaceutical execs and Beverly Hills plastic surgeons. Again it's a wash. Which one will allow me to do more good? Now we get a little more sticky. The curative area will allow me to heal people, possibly to save people who otherwise would have died. At the same time, the enhancement area could allow me to "amp up" the mind of an already brilliant researcher to the point that he solves som fundamental problem. The curative area seems on the surface to do more "good", but from a societal or even a social Darwinistic view, the enhancement area could be seen as providing for thr greater good by helping push humanity forward in its growth and development.
One could almost look at is as the conflict between individual (curative) and society (enhacement). I'm not sure if that actually helps me decide or just complicates things further. Under most circumstances, I'm staunchly in the corner of the individual (being the devout Libertarian that I am!), but in this debate the societal side seems to have science (in a sort of abstract, bigger picture sense) on its side. I know that I want to do good things and help people with my research. I just don't know the best way to do that. One thing I know for certain is that I want to (and honestly believe I will) see the average human life span greatly enhanced, to well into the 100s and possibly even breaking the 200 mark. What I don't know is what part of the expanded life puzzle I want to/need to contribute to.
In more mundane news, I continued the process of getting ready for the move to Boston (holy crap it's only two weeks away!) by getting some new glasses that I love and might actually wear (as opposed to the last 3 years where I've worn nothing but contacts). Tomorrow I'm headed up to Jackson to visit my friends Winston, Vinny, and Jim, and we'll be throwing Vinny a mini bachelor party before he ties the knot on Saturday. I'm really excited about the wedding and the reception/dancing afterward.
What else? Mom's completely finished with head radiation, having received a total dose of 4600 centigrays for any fellow geeks out there. She's scheduled for a chest CT next week to map the lungs for radiation, and she has her first chemotherapy appointment next Thursday. Based on most reports that I've read on when side-effects from chemo start to present, it looks like I'll be gone before any terrible problems set in, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Part of me is relieved that I won't have to see my mom in such a painful state, but another part of me feels like I'm running away from her when she needs me the most, that I'm copping out because I can't handle it and leaving my family to shoulder the burden. I'm not sure if I'll ever get those feelings sorted out for certain. As always, insights (or just comments) are welcome and even encouraged. Thanks for reading, friends.
Science, Technology, Research, etc. Ramblings
Thursday, July 24, 2008 @ 3:12am
I've been thinking a lot lately about science and current research/breakthroughs in my field and closely related ones. For one thing, my friend Eddie has forwarded me a couple of articles about current research projects that he wants a second opinion on. For another, I've been scoping out science blogs/tickers/RSS feeds. I want to start reading more about cutting edge developments in my field, sort of like training myself for when I'll have to stay current in order to succeed (that is, in graduate school and beyond). Along with that, I want to start writing about interesting research projects, basically just throwing ideas and questions out here to see what anyone thinks or has to say. Sort of like brainstorming but on paper. These won't be well thought out experimental designs, just flashes of ideas that pop into my head. I think it'll be a useful exercise to develop my creative skills.
The first installment of this new feature comes from one of the articles Eddie forwarded me, which tells of a small drug company trying to develop pharmaceuticals that will increase human longevity. While it could be argued that most pharmaceuticals seek to increase longevity in some way, the unique thing about this group is they're doing it almost in the abstract. They're not targeting one disease or one system, they're targetting the whole organism. The logic/science seems solid at first glance, as it's long been known that restricted caloric intake is the only clinically proven way to increase lifespan in mammals. As with any environmental stress, reduced caloric intake sets off a chain reaction of events (in biochemical terms, a signal transduction cascade) that result in a state that is less prepared to reproduce (evolutionarily unwise in a time of famine) and more prepared to survive hardship. It's like a very large and very complex lac operon.
The interesting part of this system for me and people in my field is that signal transduction cascade. From the organism perspective, we know that restricted caloric intake increases life span. Up until now, the only way to take advantage of that knowledge was to restrict your caloric intake. But now there's the possibility of understanding the pathways involved in that action to such an extent as to allow artificial induction of that cascade without restricted caloric intake. To me, this is the central dogma, the fundamental effort of biological engineering: to reduce unfathomably complicated, organism-level systems into logical structures, pathways, and paradigms that can be artificially manipulated and controlled. In other words, to engineer on-demand nature.
Of course, the problem with such an approach is that one need only flip to the middle of any biochemistry textbook to realize that the signalling pathways contained within the human body are so numerous, intertwined, and full of gaps in our understanding that a complete control over them is unfeasable. At times it seems as if biochemistry is becoming like high-energy particle physics (go with me on this one for a second...). Every time scientists build a new, more powerful particle accelerator, they discover a plethora of new "fundamental particles", to the point that such discoveries barely gather attention anymore. It seems ludicrous that something as elegant as the universe could be composed of a ridiculous mish-mash of hundreds of painfully similar "fundamental" particles held together by a stitched-together hodgepodge of symmetry elements. Einstein realized this early in his career, and he referred to it as the conflict between wood and marble. Wood is irregular, misshapen, rough, and ugly. Wood represents the world of hundreds of subatomic "fundamental" particles. Marble is smooth, glossy, perfect. Marbles represents some underlying mathematical truth that gives rise to the seemingly endless array of particles but is beyond out current grasp (that is, a grand unified theory). I believe biochemistry is encountering the same problem.
The difference, however, is that I don't know what our "marble" is. Particle physics has string theory (and all its updates, from string field to M theory) and a slew of other potential (if unlikely) GUTs. At least people are trying. That seems to be absent from biochemistry, and understandably so. What kind of biochemical GUT could there possibly be? Am I suggesting that there is some "magic bullet" theory that will somehow unite all the kinases, G-protein coupled recepters, cytochrome P450s, etc? I don't know. I don't think I am, but I'm not sure. Part of me worries that if we continue on the current research path, we'll reach a point where "graduate school" (at least in biochemistry) is nothing more than a fancy word for picking which single protein you will study for the rest of your life. Specialization is a remarkably powerful concept, but driven to extremes it leads only to self-sustaining pedantics.
See the forest for the trees. See the big picture. Use whatever cliché you prefer, because I honestly don't know what point (if any) I'm trying to make here. I just know that it's something about my field that's been getting hold of my interest/concern more seriously recently.
Better Day Than Expected; Update On Mom
Friday, July 18, 2008 @ 1:12am
For all my ranting and raving yesterday, today actually went very well. We saw a new doctor (a resident), which is usually a bad start because it puts my mom off to see a different doctor every time she goes (I understand both sides of this argument, the clinic's side that all the doctors are equally well trained to handle her disease, and my mom's side that it makes treatment seem impersonal and uncaring). Surprisingly though, we both really liked this doctor. He was young, optimistic, incredibly knowledgeable about chemotherapy options, and aggressive in his approach. One thing that never even crossed my mind while I was writing last night was that just because a drug is only indicated to treat a certain stage/type of cancer, nothing prevents an oncologist from prescribing that drug at his discretion. This became immediately obvious as Dr. Persing discussed options like Tarceva (see below) and Avastin with us. The other thing I liked is that he came right out and said that if the decision were his carboplatin + Taxol would not be his first choice because it isn't the most potent combination. That frightening moniker belongs to the cisplatin + etopaside combination, which has such severe side effects that a large number of patients are unable to tolerate it. In my mom's case, however, given her relatively young age for lung cancer (46 versus the average age in the 70s) and otherwise good health, he saw no reason she wouldn't be able (and wise!) to tolerate it. In the end, however, he was only a resident, and the final treatment decision rested with her staff oncologist Dr. Hamilton. Thankfully, Dr. Hamilton appeared to agree (at least partially) with Dr. Persing, and he decided to put my mom on cisplatin + Taxol. The current treatment plan is:
- Take a CT scan Monday, July 21 to define the starting size of the lung mass
- Finish head radiation on Thursday, July 24
- Begin lung radiation on Monday, July 28
- Begin chemotherapy on Thursday, July 31
- Administer lung radiation 5 days a week for 6-7 weeks
- Concurrently administer low-dose chemotherapy (cisplatin + Taxol) once a week for 6-7 weeks
- Take a ~2 week break from treatment, evaluate performance
- Begin a course of full-strength chemotherapy (to be determined) once every 3 weeks for several months
- Re-evaluate
The quasi downside of knowing her treatment plans in such detail is that I can do research on her drugs and protocols, and much of what I read is discouraging in that it all comes with a palliative rather than curative aim. Taxol, for example, is indicated for patients with "incurable advanced non-small cell lung cancer". That's hard to hear. But, at the same time, part of me has known that for a while and has (largely, I believe/hope) accepted it. I try to keep up the optimism and the hopeful expectations for the rest of my family and friends, but at the end of the day I'm a scientist and in many ways a realist. That part of me knows that this disease is incredibly aggressive and was already highly advanced when it was found, and that in all likelihood it will kill my mom within a short period of time. One of the issues I struggle with is that I am a Christian and I do believe in God, and that leads many of my family members and friends to tell me that I should always keep my hopes up because God could work a miracle and cure her tomorrow. I have a few problems with that logic. Just to be clear about it, I fully believe that God could remove my mom's cancer and make her 100% healthy with a thought if He chose to. But I'm not at all convinced He would choose to. For one thing, I don't really believe God works that type of flashy, supernatural miracle anymore. I believe that during the life of Jesus, that sort of miracle was witnessed often because Jesus was on Earth (think of it as a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit that went alongside the physical manifestation of God known as Jesus). In the New Testament, miracles are fundamentally a form of evangelism. Jesus and His disciples performed miracles in front of crowds as a way of demonstrating Jesus' divinity and goodness and gathering followers to Him. I believe miracles serve that same purpose today, but in a different way. Since Jesus is no longer physically present on Earth, the "rules" for evangelism are different. I believe that God works "everyday" miracles in the time after Jesus, through the good and selfless works of people who sacrifice to help others simply because they loves their neighbors as they love themselves. So while I believe God could "miraculously" cure my mom, I don't really think He would (though I do have to concede that I don't actually know, since no man can know the mind of God).
Even more fundamentally, I'm not convinced that my faith in God should lead to hope that my mom will be cured. My hope that my mom will be cured is a personal, ultimately selfish desire. It's something that I personally want for myself. If you pay careful attention to the prayers that are offered as models in the New Testament, no one actually asks for what they want. The most they ever do (as with Jesus praying in the Garden) is ask for what they want if it is the will of God. The Lord's Prayer takes it even a step further and asks only that God's will be done (excluding the daily bread, which I think falls under a separate category of things one needs rather than simply desires). The Bible command us to "trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not into your own understanding." I don't see that as a dictum of hope. I see it as a dictum of acceptance. If I fully trust in God, then I wouldn't be asking Him to cure my mom, and in all honesty I wouldn't even be personally or subconsciously hoping that she would be cured. I would be happily accepting whatever came my way as the chosen plan of God and as the best thing for me. So in other words, at least through my reading, my faith in God should actually decrease my hope for my mom's cure and increase my non-optimistic, scientific, realist approach. This line of reasoning smacks in the face of the teaching from 1 Corinthians that hope is a good thing, and I'm not sure how to reconcile that yet. Like I said, this is an ongoing issue. Thoughts anyone?
In completely unrelated news that is a major gear shift in terms of depth of content, I hit a weight loss milestone today. I haven't talked much about my weight loss, just because I think it's a little vain to point it out. But I'm a fan of round numbers and being close to my goals, so I thought it was worthy of pointing out that I've lost 50 pounds! I now weight 175lbs (down from 225lbs), which is the least I've weighed since I was 11, and leaves me only 15lbs from my final goal of 160lbs. Just thought I'd end this deep and somewhat depressing post on an upbeat note.
Long Day Tomorrow; Trying Something New
Thursday, July 17, 2008 @ 12:50am
Mom's head radiation is just about wrapped up, and tomorrow she has her appointment with the chemotherapy doctors to (I assume) discuss her options and make a treatment plan. I'm simultaneously excited and nervous about this. I'm excited because moving on means we've successfully dealt with the brain tumors and only have the lung tumor to worry about now, and it means that another hurdle of her treatment has been passed. I'm nervous because of what might be decided. As a graduate student, I understand the immense amount of training and knowledge that goes into making an oncologist, and I would never dare to question a many with decades of education and experience under his belt with nothing more than a bachelor's degree and an acceptance letter form a fancy school. At the same time, I know that I'm not Joe Schmoe average cancer patient, and I know that I'm better educated about a lot of the chemotherapy drugs and options than a majority of patients. It isn't that I want to question the doctors' decisions, I just want to make sure they're the best decisions (read: those most likely to produce a curative response) for my mom, and not for some other reason (cheaper, easier, more readily available, etc.). The thing that keeps playing in the back of my mind is an episode that occurred several weeks ago, when my mom and I got to watch two of her doctors (chemotherapy and radiation) argue (in a good way) about her treatment. I have a feeling the chemotherapy doctor forgot we were in the room and let a few things slip that he probably shouldn't have, most noticeably saying that (paraphrased) "carboplatin and Taxol is the standard first-line treatment because it's cheap, easily available, and can make the clinic a buck, not because it produces the best results in patients." That's a disgustingly frightening thing to hear considering he originally told us that my mom's treatment of choice would be, you guessed it, carboplatin and Taxol. Later he talked about other possibilities that I've discussed before, like doing neoadjuvant chemotherapy first, but if we go tomorrow and he tells us that we're going to do carboplatin and Taxol, I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that. Obviously I'm going to say something, but I'm afraid of coming off too accusatory and having the doctor shut me out and not pay significant attention to my concerns.
It also bothers me that there are treatments and drugs out there that have shown promising results and that have passed phase 3 trials, but are only approved for patients where alternative chemotherapies have failed. It seems absolutely ridiculous to me to restrict possibly promising drugs until a point when (more than likely) any treatment administered will have palliative rather than curative aim. I understand there are myriad concerns that go into deciding the indications for a drug, and if this were any other patient with any other disease my logical side would kick in and I would side with the FDA. But when it's my mom and my mom's disease, I can't help but be ridiculously frustrated that Tarceva and Iressa have shown immense promise in treating advanced non-small cell lung cancer but can't even be considered for my mom until she's gone through an entire round of chemotherapy AND had it fail. I think the part that make it the worse is that I understand the way these drugs work because we studied them and the pathways they target for weeks in my molecular biochemistry course. I understand that my point of view is skewed, but I simply can't understand the logic that says take a drug with proven biological activity that logically and selectively targets tumor cells and save it only for those patients with the least hope of going into remission. Why not use it at the beginning, when curative therapies are more likely? I don't understand, and I doubt I ever fully will. I just know that I'm going to be mentally exhausted after tomorrow.
In unrelated, happier news, I'm considering adding something new. One of my good friends semi-jokingly told me that he didn't have time to read my blog, he just wanted my opinion on things "like Adrafinil, public speaking, and learning your way to the top". That got me thinking that maybe there was a way I could coax him into reading my blog by providing some or all of those things on here. At the same time, it would allow me to share my thoughts / opinions / ramblings with all my readers. That's good. I've long been looking for a way to share my rantings with a wide audience, and in undergrad I had a ton of fun doing something I called "The Brandon Forum", where once a week (Thursdays) I would stand in the Circle (a free speech zone roughly in the center of our campus) and just start talking to whoever was walking by or gathered around on whatever subject was on my mind. It was incredible, and it was great practice to keep my speaking skills in shape. Around the same time I thought about starting a podcast of the same thing. I always liked the podcast idea a lot more than the blog idea because I speak much more fluently and easily than I write (I don't have to worry about spelling and I don't have my words in front of me begging to be self-edited). But the podcast thing would require some behind-the-scenes addition to the website, not to mention a broadband connection to upload the image files, neither of which I have access to at the moment. So maybe a podcast is coming in the future, but for now, I've got another idea.
I love to speak in public, and I've been doing it for a very long time and have gotten very good at it. This truly isn't mean to come off as arrogance. I know I'm not the greatest speaker in the world, and I know that there are many things I don't know, and I know that I'm still learning. At the same time, I can recognize that there are some things that I've studied and practiced to the point that I know them well enough to teach a large portion of them. The two biggest examples are physical organic chemistry and public speaking. Last time I checked, no one was knocking down my door dying to learn how a Hammett Plot analysis works, so I figure the speaking skills are a more marketable and audience-enticing set. So the new plan is to add a series of writings (columns, articles, whatever you want to call them) explaining what I know about public speaking that other people can learn and benefit from. I'm not sure how long this will last or how much information I'll end up with, but I do know that I'm excited about it and I plan to start on it this weekend. If I can find a big enough chunk of downtime, I may leave my dialup connection running in the background long enough at some point to upload some audio or video of myself speaking, just so anyone reading can judge for himself/herself whether they want to take my advice.
So seriously folks, stay tuned.
Portfolio Online!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 @ 4:24am CT
Tonight I finally got around to putting up my online portfolio! It's a little bare right now, containing only two research posters and three research papers, but it will continue to grow over the next few days or weeks as I add various essays from my english and political science classes, as well as from my undergraduate applications. So stay tuned!
Ramblings
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 @ 3:32pm CT
Yesterday ended up being more exhausting than expected. My mom's treatment ran long, and they sent her to an eye doctor afterward (she's fine now), so I ended up having to watch my little brother for about 6 hours (most of which was spent in a car). I love him and I don't at all mind helping in any way I can, but I can't deny that it's physically and mentally draining.
I need to start working on a budget for my life at MIT soon, which means I get to experience the joy of US tax law. The school doesn't take taxes out of the stipend before paying it to me, so I need to figure out a rough estimate of how much I'll owe and find out how to setup quarterly payments so that it doesn't hit me all at once.
I also need to write several update/thank you emails to people that I haven't spoken to in a while or that I want to stay on good/current terms with (former teachers and professors, mostly).
Of course, instead of doing all that (or updating this site with some of my writings), I've been spending most of my time the last couple of nights creating my profile on a new social networking site called Epernicus, which is designed for researchers in the life sciences. I'm often suspicious of these spin-off types SNS's, but this one seems to be well populated and useful, so I decided it was worth some time.
The hunt for ways to get involved at MIT is going very well. The biological engineering Student Board has open meetings once a month that I plan on attending, and the Graduate Student Council's website is very helpful with information on how to be a part of student government. There are also some extracurricular activities that look up my alley, including an MIT chapter of Toastmasters International (a public speaking organization that I've wanted to join for a long time) and a volunteer first responders team. Ole Miss had a first responder team, but the EMT training class always conflicted with my schedule. The class at MIT is offered during independent activities period (IAP), which is basically "free time" during January where students participate in non-academic classes or activities. I'm especially excited about the Toastmasters chapter because it'll give me a chance to get involved in the individually competitive public speaking that I've missed since high school.
Now that I've been riding a wave of excitement and anticipation for about 2 months, another emotion about starting school in the fall is starting to set in: fear. Kinetics and mathematical modelling were always my least favorite and hardest parts of biochemistry, and one of my first semester classes is devoted entirely to those two topics. I'm also starting to regret never taking differential equations in undergrad, since I know they're going to crop up in some of my classes. I bought a couple of books on them from Amazon, and I'm going to try to force myself to work through them the next couple of weeks. We'll see how well that one goes.
New Stuff Before A Long Week
Monday, July 14, 2008 @ 3:26am CT
Weekends are an especially welcome time now that I spend every weekday taking my mom to treatment and watching my little brother. I did a good bit of loafing about (my usual summer activity), had dinner with a friend, and did some yard work (even that was a welcome change of pace). Somewhere in between that I squeezed in time to update the site and add my curriculum vitae, and to start the sometimes tedious process of translating some of my works (papers, posters, etc.) into web-safe formats. I'm hoping to have my portfolio up (if not full) in the next couple of days.
Mom's treatment is still going well, with no noticeable changes in her condition. She's only got 8 days left, which is sort of bittersweet news, since it means she'll be starting chemotherapy soon.
I saw Drillbit Taylor this weekend, and was less than impressed. I had pretty high hopes judging from the previews and my usual fondness for Owen Wilson and stupid comedies, but it just didn't deliver the humor. Accepted was so much better and was even less believable.
I have to get up early tomorrow to hit the usual routine again, so I'm going to let you guys go now. Keep checking in.
Who's Reading This?
Friday, July 11, 2008 @ 2:45am CT
Despite getting off to a pretty vibrant start, I'm starting to remember why my blogs in the past failed. Every time I start to post an update, part of me starts to wonder what the point is. I mean, who's going to read it? Who really cares that I just beat my high score in Tetris (69996) while lying in bed? I guess I'm just going to have to suck it up and keep posting updates and hope that someone will read them. Eventually (as in once all the pages are online) I do plan on advertising this site to my friends and family, so I have hopes for a steady readership.
The impending move to Boston is starting to feel much more concrete. I got my first HepB vaccine dose a few days ago, and tonight I bought my one-way ticket to Boston. I've started reading more online about the MIT grad student community and the BE student community, looking for ways to get involved. I really want to be a part of student government and the BE Student Board, and I'm hoping I can win the First-Year Representative spot. One of my few and biggest regrets from undergrad is not getting involved in student government.
The 3G iPhone launches today at 8am, and I won't be getting one. However, I am pretty sure that once September rolls around and I start receiving my stipend from MIT, I'm going to splurge for one. It's not that I really want one (I love my PocketPC too much to be a fanboy or anything), it's more that I desperately need a new iPod and it seems more economical to just get the 16GB iPhone instead of an 80GB iPod that I'll never fill up.
My friend Vinny's wedding is coming up in a few weeks, and I'm really starting to look forward to that. I love any excuse to dress up, but I'm especially excited about this one because it'll be my first opportunity to wear the new suit I had to buy after dropping 45 pounds since last August.
Mom's treatment is going well so far. She had surgery over a month ago to remove the two large tumors in her brain, and that went perfectly. Now she's on her fourth and final week of whole-brain radiation that's designed to prevent regrowth of the resected tumors. Next week she'll start one week of concentrated radiation to the back of her head, which was where the third smaller tumor that couldn't be surgically removed was located. After that, we're not sure what's going to happen. Her radiation oncologists seem to think that CRT (concurrent radiotherapy, simultaneous lung radiation and chemotherapy) is the best choice, but her hematologist/oncologist off-handedly threw out a comment about trying neoadjuvant chemotherapy (chemotherapy given to shrink a tumor in preparation for surgery) followed by surgery before trying CRT. It seems to be standard practice in cancer treatment for several conflicting ideas to get hashed out before deciding on a treatment plan.
New Design Complete (Again...)!
Thursday, July 10, 2008 @ 4:00am CT
I know this is a little sudden, but the post-it note design I was using kept looking more and more uprofessional every time I updated it or loaded it in my browser. So after another sleepless night, I've come up with another design that I really do think I'll stick with. Hope you guys like this one better; I know I do!
The title is also a little misleading, as the design is only complete for viewing on regular computer screens. I haven't finished the stylesheets to make it display properly in print or on handheld devices, so if you're using one of those media in the next few days, I do apologize. Compatibility stylesheets are coming soon though! I promise.
My Mom Has Cancer (Facebook Repost)
Monday, July 7, 2008 @ 10:40am CT
At 8:55pm on Friday, May 16, 2008, I was told that my mother had lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain.
I cried.
Of course I cried.
I curled up into a fetal position on a rigid and unpadded waiting room chair in the emergency room of the UMC hospital, and I cried.
Someone needed to go see her, we were told. Someone had to put on a clean face and go tell her it would be all right. They said I should do it.
I wiped my eyes, sniffled a few times, straightened my shirt. I quickly sank into my ritual-filled pre-speaking routine. Or so I thought.
I made it about a step, if I'm being generous. In reality I probably only made it halfway through the transition from sitting to standing before I collapsed again, back onto the hard chair, back into the fetal position, back into my crying.
I stayed like that for I don't know how long. Until I stopped crying, that's how long. Then I went to see her.
She looked fine. She had come to the hospital because she couldn't stop throwing up, and they'd given her nausea medication. All her symptoms disappeared. She was fine.
Except for the cancer.
I reached for her hand and she told me she loved me, and I said I loved her. I felt the familiar and oddly comforting warmth of tears begin to push my eyelids forward, but I fought them back and convinced myself that she didn't notice (not true).
That was all either of us could muster. I stood there in silence, holding her hand as she laid on the hospital bed.
Silence.
That was the best I could do. With ten years of learning to be eloquent under my belt, silence was the best I could do. After about five minutes I finally mustered up the equally vacuous "I don't have a damn clue what to say."
My mom half-smiled and said she didn't either. Then she looked at the wall, and with a flatness and certainty that's still chilling to recall, she said, "I have lung cancer that's spread to my brain. Damn."
And then she laughed.
I still think that's the best response; better than anything I could come up with.
I still have no idea what to say.
Or do.
Motivations & Predictions
Monday, July 7, 2008 @ 2:49am CT
I've had a couple of blogs before (Xanga, LiveJournal, and maybe even a BlogSpot...), but they've all been short lived and infrequently updated. I think this one may actually be different.
For one thing, technology is on my side, as I've found freeware PocketPC programs for HTML editing (Isquared Software PocketHTML.Net) and FTP (SoftX FTP Client). This means I'll be able to update this website any time I have my phone with me, which is all the time.
Also, my motivations for making this blog are more serious and long-term than simple relief of boredom. I created this blog for two reasons. The first (the happy one) was to share my progress toward my Ph.D. for the benefit of my interested friends and family. The second (the not happy one) was to provide a forum for me to write down my thoughts and emotions on my journey through my mom's battle with stage IV lung cancer.
Toward that end, I'll soon be posting a piece that I wrote (originally for Facebook) telling my friends about my mom's diagnosis, and I'll also begin posting more regularly to get everyone up to date on her condition and treatment. This means that it'll take a little while longer to get the other pages of this website online, but it will get done!
And just to give you proof that I mean what I say, the biography page is complete and online!
New Design Complete!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008 @ 4:49am CT
After a couple of sleepless nights, I now have a new layout that I'm quite happy with. I wanted something simple yet fun, and I thought the idea of a piece of graph paper covered in post-it notes was very graduate school-appropriate as well as festive. Hope you guys like it!
As of now, all I have online is this main page (the links at the top don't actually go anywhere yet!), but in the next week or so I plan to finish migrating all the pages from my old website(s) over to this layout. After that, with any luck, I'll begin regularly updating this blog. So check back for more!