Journal

I just came back from the hospital where they made x-rays of my foot to check to see how my heel is faring. Well, it’s broken, but it’s not a bad break, and it’s healing well. My GP suggested the x-rays this morning because I’m still dealing with some pain several weeks after breaking my heel and she was worried it wasn’t healing properly and it had to be reset again. Things are fine and it’s just going to take a little bit more time.

This weekend was pretty good. A round-up;

.: Kung Fu
On friday night I went to Hoorn to visit my mother and go to Kung Fu. Of course, with my injured foot I couldn’t actually train, but there was a vote by all the members on a new administration. Interestingly, with only thirty or so people connected to this branch of the school there’s still reason for drama, and because of that a new administration had to be formed. I was asked to put myself up for election, but I have other things on my mind, nor do I think I’m enthusiastic enough about Kung Fu right now to actually care to do a lot of the required work. Anyway, some five people put themselves up for election and had their chance to say what they think should happen to turn the school back into a healthy, productive enterprise. Only three of the five people were actually worthy of a vote in my opinion, which was awesome, since we were allowed to cast three votes. I managed to manipulate some votes, which was cool and testimony to either one of two things; a) people don’t care who they vote for or b) I’m good at vote manipulation and I should pursue a career in politics. I’m guessing a.

.: Mother
So my mother’s hair has finally started to fall out. I say finally, but not because I couldn’t wait for it to happen, but rather that under normal circumstances it should’ve happened a long time ago. My mother bought a wig for herself about a year ago, fully expecting that her hair would start falling out when treatment first began, but she was luckier than most and her hair survived until it had to endure two sessions of radiology directly on her head. That turned out to be too much even for her hair, and so it started falling out with bunches at a time. Rather than letting the treatment do it for her, she decided she was going to get rid of her hair herself and she shaved whatever was left. When I saw her on friday, it felt a little awkward because of two reasons.

1. Last year my mother had brain surgery to remove the fist-sized tumor in her head. The opened up her scalp and cut it out, and as a result she has a massive semi-circular scar on the side of her head. She shaved her head and has a Sinead O’Connor look, but because patches had already fallen out, it still looks rather patchy and weird, and she reminded me of Kevin Bacon in Death Sentence.
2. My mother, apparently, has ears. I never knew this. Or rather, because my mother has always had a head full of thick, lucious hair, I never really saw her ears, or focused on them. Now that she was hairless, it’s suddently abundantly clear that she has ears. They’re not strange ears, not floppy or big, but, you know, they’re just there. Anyway…

So she has a wig and showed me what it looks like when she puts it on, and I must say it looks pretty good. Her hair had become dry and brittle due to all the medication she had been taking, and to be honest it wasn’t looking as healthy as it once had. The wig looked pretty good on her and it made me realise how much of a person’s appearance is dependent on how your hair looks. If your hair looks like a bunch of straw, then that’s a big deal. No wonder that most women desperately try to revitalise their hair and are willing to get ripped off by Proctor in the vain hope of success.

.: Struik
Mike celebrated his birthday on saturday at Struik on the Rozengracht and even though I had a headache beforehand, I found myself there enjoying a few tequila-tonics. The place was packed and I was wondering how many people would die in a blaze or being trampled if a fire were to break out in that place. Mike was funny, and his girlfriend Karina was lovely.

.: Dune
On sunday I went over to Eva in order to finalise preparations for playing Dune under Frank’s expert leadership. Last week I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to play and how I should approach things, but I came up a blank. It’s a complex universe and I’m nowhere near Dune-literate, which made things hard. I ended up waiting until character creation to see if inspiration would strike me, and it didn’t. I decided to play a swordsmaster, just because it sounds pretty simple, and I think given the current circumstances, simplicity is going to be my saviour. My brother seemed pretty sure of his choice to play a Suk, and Richard quite quickly decided upon playing a Spymaster. Eva seemed the only one who was a bit doubtful, but eventually decided to play a House Assassin. I felt a bit like I was the only one who didn’t have a good feeling about it. I hope that once the game kicks off I’ll feel a little better about it. I’m going to develop a rudimentary history and personality, not going into too much detail like I normally do and hope that simplicity will remain my saviour. :)

The other day my mother had an appointment with a surgeon to install a small subdermal device that’s going to make it easier to repeatedly hook her up to an IV and as they were discussing things, the surgeon remarked that people with her condition hardly ever survive for longer than a year after diagnosis. Lung cancer that has spread to her head and liver, and she’s still around a doing relatively well. It was quite a shock to her, and it appears that reality has started to penetrate her optimism more and more.

She’s had the two radiation sessions on her head and they’re going to start with the experimental chemo-treatment soon. The radiation has made her hair soft and brittle and it’s finally starting to fall out. Soon she’ll be bald, but still beautiful. That was a big shock to her, too, especially since she’s managed to retain her hair throughout all the treatments, against all odds. It’s almost symbolic to her slowly dawning realisation that’s losing this struggle. Like Samson.

I’m afraid we don’t have much longer to go. If the cancer spreads to her lymphatic system she’s no longer elligible for the experimental treatment, and she’s still dealing with a lot of pain. Regarding that pain, her GP wants her to cut down on the use of morphine, because it causes her to lose weight, and she’s on the light side as it is, and he wants her to make use of other medicine, and the research doctor, the one leading the experimental treatment, wants her to cut down on other medicine (for an as of yet unknown reason). Her GP desperately wants to talk to the researcher to find out the reasoning, because he feels that the research doesn’t really care about the state in which my mother is, but rather her research, and my GP, who doesn’t think it likely the research will amount to anything positive for my mother, wants to put his efforts into making my mother’s last days as painfree as possible.

I need to start coming to terms with the fact that this is really happening, that’s she’s really ill, and that she’s really dying. By all accounts it’s a miracle that she’s still alive, but I can’t keep counting on miracles, and have to prepare for reality.

Get Gears of War for the PC.

Some time ago, I came across a modified version of the following photo on Shadowness.com:

I couldn’t quite make out which city it was, but did get several questions about that from friends. One “friend” even went so far as telling me I sucked for not knowing and still putting up the image on my desktop. I really dig the image, and I also was quite curious about it, so I traced the image to the author; Daniel Verson of Verson Photography. I wrote him and told him how much I liked the photo, how I came about it, and asked him where it was taken. He responded. The mail-conversation is below: