Month 3 was lackluster… onto Month 4

I just finally went back to teaching. Taught my first class last week. I realized I was really worked up about it. I had been 20 months since I had taught. Long time! i totally procrastinated my lesson plan, and improvised it all day. It was a full day of classes. When I came home I went and rode four laps around the park. I had all this energy. It was like I was waiting for that moment to come and pass, and until then I was stuck.

I’m three months out of the Interferon treatment. I had a bad third month, largely b/c I got the dreaded H1N1, but having cleared that, I’m doing pretty damn well. Today I rode to the studio and back. And I am *seriously* considering riding in on weds for a department meeting. I was having bad heat related dysesthesia, but it seems to be easing. Though i am out in fall weather riding with a t-shirt and the lightest shorts i have, and everyone else is all bundled up in pre-winter gear.

O wanted to give me a surprise gift for my first day back at school. She went through the usual choices (flowers, chocolates, cards, etc) and decided none of them were… well… enough of a… splash! So she came up with this idea for a surprise. She had worked it all out with my department secretary, my office mate who knew my schedule, etc. Then she ran it by PD and GY and a couple of other people, and they started to give her silent responses, or hesitation, and or flat out “um, no that is not a good idea” responses. So she got cold feet, and canceled.

I found this out the night before I went to teach. She decided to tell me what was *not* going to happen. She kind of figured that I would like the story of what *would* have happened as much as like the experience itself. I think she was right.

What would have happened is that sometime after the second break in my 9am class a singing telegram man dressed in a pink gorilla costume would come give me a box of chocolates and sing me a song about… how I like chocolate, and dogs, and riding my bike, and stuff. O had to fill out a form with things I liked, from which they created a song. The pink gorilla would sing his song, bestow the chocolates, and then leave me and my students probably a little befuddled, possible overwhelmed and in a state of panic, and most likely laughing at the gorilla, and not with the gorilla, (and hopefully, yet probably, laughing at *me*). LOL.

Marisa was quite worried it would overwhelm me, which would lead to a freak out dysesthesia attack. Or that it would completely freak my students out, on what was effectively my first day with them, though it is halfway through the semester. I think she was right on both counts.

So instead, at about the same time the pink gorilla was to show up, I told my students the whole story. As a story they found it absolutely hilarious. They were pretty blank faced the whole day, not laughing at any of my jokes. Not really even reacting to anything I said to try to get a reaction out of them. Pretty blank. But this got a rousing laugh. So in the end, it was a major success, as a story, and not a real event.

Swine Flu. Seriously.

It has been confirmed. We have the swine flu. And O has pneumonia on top of it.

It is not as bad as it is made out to be. It is like an average flu, just way longer, and much easier to catch. Though I think my tolerances are off, having over a year in a state of “feeling like I have the flu.”

That said, I can’t even imagine what this would have done to me if I was on IFN, and with the immune system I had at the time. I would be totally wrecked.

The good news is that I am *not* contagious.

Swine Flu? Seriously?

O thinks we have the swine flu. H1N1. She got sick a couple of weeks ago and hasn’t really gotten better. I got whatever she got but not quite as bad. We both got better then got worse. Apparently this is normal.

I rode to Eyebeam and back by bicycle for the first time in 20 months, then had a full on dysesthesia attack on the subway and bus the next morning. Night and day. And I have basically been in bed since. I barely survived a trip to the grocery this evening. Came home and stripped down and iced. Doesn’t help that the seasons are changing. The apartment heat just turned on today.

O is going to the Dr tmrw because her flu has turned pnumonia like. I guess we will find out tmrw.

Is the swine flu kosher?

Noun troubles easing?

I think I am having less trouble with the Chemo Brain side effects: slow speech, forgetfulness, and trouble remembering people places and things. I still blank on names of historical people, artists, etc but not as much as I did before.

I spend less time starting a sentence with “hey have you seen the…” and then pause for ten seconds while my brain tries to connect the cerebral placeholder for the metal thing you hit nails with with the word… “hammer.”

And I forget peoples’ names less frequently. Towards the very end of my IFN I transposed one friend’s name and another friend of his I was just meeting, calling the new friend the old friend’s name. It was awkward and I immediately went into full explanation mode, but he was quite offended and would not let it rest. It hurt and I felt like a failure.

That was.a semi regular experience for a while. But it has only happened once recently. I mispronounced someone’s name, confusing two vowel sounds. I immediately corrected myself and then explained why that had happened, and everyone was very understanding. So much for the assumption that everyone in Portland is nicer than everyone in NYC. There are always exceptions.

On the other hand I have had increased dysesthesia in this last week. I think it is due to a slight increase in temperature, and a general tiredness. I am really tired. I have been pushing myself too hard, which will ease off at the end of this week. I get a week of breathing room, then go back to teaching.

Lost Post — Four Weeks Out

Somehow this post was scheduled, but never actually went live

Still only 40 or 50 percent, and my physical recovery lags behind my mental recovery. My dad said it was like a fog lifted and all of a sudden i could see and speak clearly. I mostly am happy that I can wake up without having to take tylenol + advil and return to bed for 30 minutes until it kicks in. I haven’t taken tylenol for two weeks now. I actually don’t even *have any* in the house! kind of amazing, considering I was taking it around the clock for 12+ months.