Sorry for the ugly look. I got an email from Bridget today saying that she couldn't access the site. Apparently my K2 install got corrupted. Candidly, I love Wordpress, but I'm about done with futzing with it and the slow performance that I get from hosting on my own server. It is sort of a pain in the ass. This is probably the proverbial straw.

To all readers, If you read this site via an RSS reader, you may have noticed a bunch of links in the middle of the last post that didn't really seem a.) relevant and b.) appropriate. I'm not really sure what happened. Malicious links seem to only have been put in that one post, but I apologize if you received it and found these links. I generally keep pretty secure passwords, so I don't think that it was some sort of breach via that route. I don't know enough about what is under the covers of Wordpress or Feedburner that would have generated this to know how to fix it. I've since tightened up my passwords and hope that this is a fluke one time occourance.

Holly is much better now. Thank you very much for the kind thoughts and messages that everyone sent. Unfortunately, our daughter has a cold and I do to. This seems to be the cold that everyone in North America has. It isn't fun. In the meantime, Happy whatever it is that you celebrate (Christmas, Kwanzaa, End of a Calendar Year (sales people), etc.) I'll be in and out over the next few days. Enjoy the holidays.

A lot of people have asked me about the music that I used for Holly's video. When I was thinking about making the video, I was looking for a song that was slightly upbeat. I also wanted something that I was pretty sure that no one had ever heard before. I spent a couple of days on Last.fm scouring the free downloads section of indie pop. In my browsing, I came across Billie the Vision & the Dancers, who did the awesome song 'Man From Argentina' that I used in the video. They are Swedish and very fun. Their entire album, The World According to Pablo, is excellent, full of all sorts catchy pop tunes. I can't recommend them enough.

Holly and I were just talking about where the word 'cancer' comes from. Of course, rather than pondering it, I hit the Wiktionary.

From Latin cancer ‘crab’. Applied to cancerous tumors because the enlarged veins resembled the legs of a crab.

So don't get crabs.

One of the things that we've noticed since Holly has shaved her head is that baldness + Livestrong bracelet = Cancer Expert. Like all of the sudden, with the quick buzz of a razor, she is an oncologist. She has literally had people stop her in line at Safeway to ask about symptoms and then, of course, explain whatever malady that they might be having that day. "Well, my coffee burnt my tongue and the cat got out and I had such a pain chasing her around the back yard only to get this awful head ache halfway though the day and a ringing in my ears. Does that sound like cancer to you Deary?" Of course, I find it hysterical and only encourage it. Thankfully, no one has asked us to examine any lumps or spots. Yet.

On the way home from the last infusion we get killed in a horrible bus accident. We'd be pretty pissed.

Okay, it's a bit dorky, but I wanted to play with a new toy.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR. Any slide show that starts with surgery and ends in Hawaii can't be too bad.

Late at night, when I'm having trouble sleeping, I try to do big math problems in my head. It helps me clear my mind of the dilemmas of the day and I usually fall asleep before I can figure them out. Examples of big math problems include things like how many compressed DVD's can I fit on a terabit NAS server (833 assuming a 1:3 compression ratio going to Divx for all you geeks, but what if I use 500GB for fail over backup?) or how many sugar cubes could fit in our house (the hard part is figuring out the cubic area of the house) and so on. I know, it is nerdy, but I don't usually figure out the answers before I fall asleep. The one that I've been wrestling with the last week or so is what are really the odds of all of this happening? So, for your amusement and enjoyment, I've figured it out. Since I'll be using NIH numbers and the numbers that our doctors have given us, I'll use a US population basis. For international readers, I trust you can figure out it some late night when you can't sleep. Here is what I've got so far:

- US Population: 300 million - Number of new cases of colo-rectal cancer per year: 153,000 - Only 10% of all cases are in people under 50: 15,300 - No documentation on the % of patients diagnosed at stage III or higher (major surgery required) - Since people under 50 are probably less inclined to get checked out early on, let's call this 50%. It is probably higher, but it is a good even number: 7,650 per year - % whose body will reject the ostomy / surgery: 3% / 229 people - % whose incision gets infected: 30% / 68 people

Yes, you read that right. Holly's incision became infected a week ago. No problem says our doctor, just clean it out every night, stick some gauze in there and let it heal. Let me just say that this isn't a superficial wound that I'm cleaning out. I'm cool with scraped knees and ostomy bags, but when you're talking about a 3/4" deep hole in someones stomach, I get a bit squeamish. Holly pulled the gauze out of her incision, I about chucked. She was pulling it out like a magician pulls scarves out of his sleeve. It just kept coming out. No problem, just keep folding the gauze and jam it in there with a Q-tip. Double gross. So that's what I've been up to. Math problems and filling incisions with gauze. The good news is that the incision is getting shallower and shallower. Holly is slowly but steadily getting her strength back. We walked around the block last night. We went for sushi tonight. She is slowly gaining weight and the plumbing is going in the right direction, albeit slowly. We were anticipating that for about 6 - 8 weeks, though. Finally, for those who are curious, the odds of what Holly has going on are a lot better than I thought. Only 1 in 4,411,764. Seems fairly common now. In doing the quick math, there should be 68 other people in the US that are probably going through the exact same thing. I wonder if there is a Facebook group for Stage III / IV, under 50, colo-rectal cancer patients who have had complications with surgery and incisions? Probably hard to get funding for a company using that business plan. For those keeping score, the chances and odds of weird things happening are as follows:

- Chance of winning California's Mega Million Lottery: 1 in 175,711,156 (save your money and put it towards retirement) - Chance of dying in a vehicle accident: 1 in 78 - Chance of dying from falling off of a bed / chair: 1 in 4,473 - Chance of death by poisonous snake: 1 in 1,874,034 - Odds of getting a hole in one: 5,000 to 1 (still hasn't happened to me yet) - Odds of being considered possessed by satan: 7,000 to 1 - Odds of being audited by the IRS: 175 to 1 - Chance of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000 - Chance you will get Mad Cow Disease: 1 in 40,000,000 - Chance you'll get colo-rectal cancer in your lifetime: 1 in 26

So get checked out. That is enough math for me tonight. I'm going to bed. Odds numbers from Funny2.

Houston, we have some output. It looks like the second surgery was successful. I've never had so many people ask me about my wifes bathroom habits. It's kind of weird in that way you talk about your kids learning to use the toilet. Keep in mind that it has been 30+ days since she last used her large intestine & gone to the bathroom. It takes a while for those muscles to get in order and it causes a lot of pain. Thankfully, she is running to the bathroom a lot. Holly is up and walking around, doing laps around the floor. She still gets tired very quickly. One thing that her PT pointed out the other day was that prior to the first surgery, she was running and doing yoga daily. For the past 30 days, the most exercise she has gotten has been pushing the PCA. She has lost a lot of weight and has had a lot of atrophy. She is slowly, but steadily getting back in the swing of things. We went for a nice walk around the 3rd floor tonight. We went for a really long, double lapper, last night. I love my dates with her. It is like being 15 again and only getting to spend 30 or 40 minutes a day with your true love. They are giggly and intimate and terribly depressing when visiting hours are up.