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Showing posts from May, 2011

Top Ten: The Cool Side of Cancer (for me)

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I'm not sure why but I just got the inspiration to do this. Just call me David Eric Letterman. #1 I got "The Cancer Card" Having lost my man card on weekly basis, never having been given a race card, and having found normal decks of cards largely useless to me, the cancer card was a wonderful gift to keep in my pocket for emergency situations.  #2 Chicks dig scars Yup, thanks to cancer, I got a pretty wicked one right on my hand. I'm pretty sure my wife now loves me at least 238% more than she did before I got it so I count that as a win. A good portion of cancers seem to require some sort of surgery which means, to some extent, you're getting a sweet fleshy souvenir for your troubles. #3 Association with fighting Who doesn't like sounding tough? Cancer is a cruel mistress and you do have to fight it and makes you, yup, a fighter! How cool is that? Very. #4 Association with surviving Surviving is equally as cool because you freakin' survived

Cancer gave me a metronome.

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...or at least heavily subsidized it. Don't get me wrong, I still think cancer is still a heck of a jerk, but at least it seems to be trying to make amends. A week or so ago, my friend/neighbor/fellow cancer survivor and thrive-er Roger and I went to a Live Strong focus group that was aimed at finding out what the needs of the young adult cancer community are. As a thank-you for our time, we got a gift card. Now, thanks to that thank-you, I'm the proud owner of a combination tuner/metronome which will help out especially with all the non-free-jazz I'm playing these days. Upon second thought, it wasn't actually cancer that gave me that tool it was the nice folks at the University of Texas and LiveStrong . Stupid cancer... I suppose if I wanted to get philosophical about this it would be possible... Getting cancer acted as a sort of indicator of mortality and set an updated rhythm for my life. It hurried up the pace of things in it's own way. I now have sche

Operative Report

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This is definitely coming a bit late in the game but I just found and read my operative report. Basically it is what it sounds like. It describes the patient, the reason for the operation, how they did the surgery, and what the results of it were. I have Roger to thank (yet again) for letting me know about that reports probable existence and I just found and read it. It's pretty cool to get the details of my procedure, even though my understanding of the terminology is not quite there. It really does get quite dense, and I'm not implying stupidity. Here's an excerpt... Dissection now revealed the remaining attachments between the volar plate, the deep intervolar plate, the transverse metacarpal ligament and perosseous bands of the palmar fascia and proximal portion of the flexor tendon sheath. These attachments were then divided sharply and the amputated specimen was removed. Ok, maybe it's just the terminology that make's it fly a little over my head but