Week Minus Eleven

This is no longer Week 37. I'm now counting backwards. Ten weeks and five days, to be more precise. As I've received the boxes of Interferon I have marked them with the shot numbers. I opened the box marked 37-40 on Friday. It's winding down!

The last couple of weeks the sides have been hitting pretty hard. My hemoglobin count is low and slowly trending downward -- 9.5 month before last, 9.4 this past month. I'm thankful for the fact that I have access to Procrit. I don't think I'd have made it this far through treatment otherwise.

Work has been tough. I've billed between fifty and sixty hours the past couple of weeks. The solution that was sold was not workable. Although some of us raised that flag, no one acknowledged it until the reality was undeniable. I was asked to go to an on-site client meeting. I begged off. I certainly didn't want to be in person trying to make complex decisions after traveling and while fighting the usual Monday brain fog. I dialed into the teleconference. Fortunately, I have the backing of my management.

It's been a strange couple week in terms of rare or odd natural phenomena. I was walking the dog last Sunday night when I saw this fireball.[posted updated to provide a good link]. It was bright despite city lights and high clouds. Others reported that it changed colors. I couldn't see that, but what struck me was that it seemed to slow as it descended. I never saw it burn out -- it went below the level of the trees and houses. I've seen lots of meteors, but this was the brightest and longest I've ever seen. I later learned that it was going away from me, which would account for the slowing.

Then on Friday morning we had a little morning rain with some pretty heavy lightning. I was in that pleasant morning state about 90% asleep vaguely aware of the radio and the thunder outside. My morning doze came to an abrupt halt when it sounded like a grenade had gone off outside my window.

I've heard grenades. I know what they sound like. This sounded exactly like a grenade or something larger. Lightning had struck a tree in the back yard of neighbor just behind and diagonal from my house. The tree was completely destroyed. The neighbor who owned the tree had a section of trunk stuck through a second storey wall. It came through the wall a few inches from their baby's cradle. The neighbor behind me had another five foot section break through a sliding glass door. I had a five foot section of the eight-inch tree trunk in my pool. In the front there were substantial pieces of wood -- a couple of feet or better -- two hundred feet away from the strike. Thankfully, no one was hurt. The only damage at my house was some electrical strangeness. My load controller is apparently fried and one port on my network switch is dead. The load controller is covered by an appliance service contract and the switch is worth about $20. No worries here.

I spoke with a neighbor who was turned away from a blood collection center due to Hep C antibodies. He followed up with his doctor and the virus was undetectable. I told him he needs to buy a lottery ticket. Patients clear the virus on their own in only about fifteen percent of cases.

It's interesting seeing the variety of responses and reactions among the little sample I know personally. There's Bob, Type 2 who cleared it on a 48-week program some five years ago. There's Larry, who relapsed but was apparently not treated aggressively enough. Joe cleared the virus himself. And Ken, Type 1, who relapsed six months after completing treatment.

What that tells me is that nothing is typical about this disease. The only guarantee is the lack of guarantees. As I approach the end of treatment, I have to keep a hard fact in mind: This can come back. But I'm glad to have fought. At least I've pushed the bug back.

Be well.