Correction -- This Is Week 11!

Mid-week check-in.

Replying to Carol's note to my previous post, yes, I'm definitely hitting something. I'm really foggy. Example: this is Week 11, not Week 10. I was really surprised to see only two syringes in the box on Friday.

My motivation is somewhere around zero, yet I have this weird inertia. Once I start doing something I just continue doing it. But it's really hard to get started. Emotionally, I'm kind of crabby, but no more anger like I experienced a couple of weeks ago.

The physical aspects are really improving. I was up all day Saturday and was really active all day. Shot a good round of skeet (22 of 25). That's good for me; I haven't shot in six months or more. Quality time with the kid was an important bonus.

Sunday I crashed and slept close to four hours in the afternoon.

Monday and Tuesday at work have been challenging to say the least. I work with lots of complex things and inter-relationships, not to mention lots of people. There are a lot of plates in the air and I have to have an idea where they all are.

A friend of mine is a Genotype 1 relapser. We were planning on going to a support group meeting, but it was cancelled. I detect a change in that relationship. It seems he's starting to lean on me more where at the start of this I was really leaning on him. That's fair - I've got a good chance of seeing this thing go into remission and being done with it. He could be facing a transplant in the next few years. Little dose of reality there. My friend does a good job of keeping my perspective straight.

Week 10 -- Double Digits!

For the past couple of weeks I've been doing pretty well. "Pretty well" is relative, of course. It means I haven't had to punch out and lay down on the couch in the middle of most days. I am blessed to work from home and can do that now and then. Nobody on a conference call knows whether I'm laying down or not.

I have noticed that I'm pretty foggy. That's a fact that was not lost on a project manager at work when I asked him a couple of questions I already knew the answer to. Yesterday I'd have sworn that my wife came in and talked with me.

"Where'd your mother go?" I asked my daughter.

"She's working late today."

Sheesh! I was recalling a conversation from the previous day. It's all running together.

Emontionally, this is a strange time. I caught myself getting really angry over something trivial last week. I realized I was being stupid in time to stop being too much of an idiot. It seems like my emotions are right on the surface. I wonder how much of this is chemical and how much is circumstantial. I'm also cursed to work at home. This is like house arrest. All I need is an ankle bracelet.

My son and I are going to the range tomorrow to shoot a round or two of skeet. Saturdays I'm usually pretty good until mid- to late afternoon. I need the outing.

It's shot time. In Frank Herbert's epic Dune the main character is tested with something called a gom jabbar. "It only kills animals," says the tester. The gom jabbar is a poison needle that the tester holds to the lead character's neck. As long as he keeps his hand in a box, the tester doesn't stick him. "What's in the box?" he asks? "Pain." He puts his hand in and thinks his hand is being burned away, yet he has to endure. To do the instinctive -- the animal -- thing and avoid the short-term pain is death.

There's a parallel here. As long as I keep sticking myself -- and taking the little blue pills (shudder) -- I have a pretty good chance at a normal life. Skipping meds proves that I'm not smart enough to be a human.

So with that thought, I'm off to endure another round with my gom jabbar.

Week Eight

Saturday Afternoon. Took my shot last night. This is usually the time I start fading. I've been up since around 9:30 doing chores -- light stuff, mostly directing my son and a buddy of his. It's now almost 4:30 PM and I'm still somewhat functional, although tired. Way better than last week. I finished off my second box of IFX (or whatever the Hep C cognoscenti abbreviate it to). I'm one-sixth of the way there. The shot was almost routine. My head was clearer as I went through the process and my hands weren't shaking. I'm almost used to it. Maybe that's over-stating it. But at least it doesn't freak me out like it did the first few times.

Ran into a neighbor at a school function on Friday. We had told her about my problem. She and her husband went to give blood last week. She got a nice thank-you card, but he got this manila envelope. Yup. He has Hep C. I need to buy stock in Roche (company that makes Pegasys). By the end of this decade there will be few people who don't know at least one or two people with this disease. Got to call him. I won't sugar-coat it -- this is no fun. But there's worse things to face.