This week

We celebrated my daughter's birthday this weekend with some friends in the hills north of us. This friend is an ovarian cancer survivor. It's been pretty scary for her. She went through a round of chemo last year. A marker came back elevated, but a CAT scan was normal. That ovarian test is notorious for false positives. Anyway, seeing her keeps things in perspective. Things could be much worse.

I had another "refocusing" experience today at church. There's a guy there who has been fighting this monster for the past several years (he has Genotype 1 and responded beautifully to a round of Interferon, but had it come back on him. Anyway he's telling me what a bad time he'd had with the infergen(?) on the second go-round and is now a candidate for a liver transplant.

It was apparent that my friend was kind of down as he was telling me about it when this guy came up pushing a walker. I'd never met him before -- he was kind of young, maybe 40. I introduced myself and soon learned that he was fighting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and dumped a bunch of news about living in his car and having it broken into and so on. He asked where he could find something to drink and I directed him to the table where drinks were being served. Ken and I kind of looked at each other.

"Wow," he said. "I was starting to feel sorry for myself!"

Maybe things aren't so bad after all.

Other stuff

I'm scheduled for a liver biopsy next week. I can hardly wait. I think I was put on earth just so I could get all numb and have somebody stick a needle into my internal organs. Yeh, this is positive. I've been told that I had a sarcastic streak.

This doc continues to surprise me. He called me last Saturday with test results. He called me this afternoon (Sunday!) with an answer to a passing question I'd had about whether I should get a flu shot and that he'd mail me copies of my test results. I don't get this kind of service from a plumber! I've heard good independent reports of him. I think I'm beginning to see why.

More questions

First of all, thanks for the supportive comments. For what it's worth, I've changed my "nom de blog du jour" to LiverLogger. The Bledsoe bit is an inside joke that I won't go into here. Anyway, I'm Chris.

Moving on to my latest questions:

• Sex? My wife is kind of freaked out.
  I've read on the NIH site and elsewhere that there's nothing to worry about as long as you aren't drawing blood. Our tastes don't run in the direction of machines, whips, or biting. Personally, I think there's enough pain in life without developing fetishes around it, but other consenting adults are free to float their boats as they see fit.




• Do people treat you differently if they know about your condition?
  
  Anybody not let their kids come over to your house? Get suddenly distant? Morbid curiosity? Any awkward moments? Witty rejoinders? Good anecdotes are always welcome. I'm keeping this fairly private, as you can see, if only to avoid social awkwardness.