twists and crashes

Been a hectic and challenging several days out this direction. To begin with, on Friday evening my laptop crashed, and I was unable to reboot. After several sessions with Dell tech support over the next 24 hours, it became clear that my hard drive needed either repair or replacement. Until now, I've been one of those PC users who think to back their files onto a CD every year or so, if at all, so by bedtime Friday I found myself wondering what I might do with the rest of my life now that my dissertation was gone forever. In addition, I assumed that a new hard drive, if it came to that, would cost several hundred dollars, so whatever my future looked like, it may not include having access to my own computer for a while.

Tony Nguyen, in northern Pasadena, runs Connectionz PC Repair out of his home. On a number of online ratings pages, normally dominated by computer-savvy consumers eager to complain about the repair (dis)services they've endured, Tony has consistently received high makrs from throngs of satisfied clients throwing palm leaves in his path. I gave him a call. He was friendly, professional, and able to explain things clearly with none of the annoyed techie condecension I've encountered so many times in the past. Less than 24 hours later, he has already retrieved all my files, and is now working to see what kind of repairs need to be done to get my laptop up and running again. Very worst case scenario, the whole operation should cost less than a fourth of what I had feared.

It would be unprofessional for me to throw my arms around him and sob, "love you, man!" So I'm letting it go with a check and a handshake. But he relies entirely on word-of-mouth for business, so there. He's getting mine.

Meanwhile, rising summer temperatures have created new problems balancing out fluid retension and blood pressure. The heat causes my body to retain more fluids than usual (not to mention that it just makes me thirstier), and exacerbates the drop in blood pressure when I use diuretics to flush the excess fluids out. The problem has not reached anything like those that drove me into the hospital 3 months ago, but I have to stay on closer watch than usual to make sure it doesn't. Most days, I do alright until about 6pm, and then I tank. I suppose fixing supper has something to do with it.

The real news, however, is that on Monday my oncologist went over the results of my latest CT-scan with me. It turns out that in the last 2-3 months, all of the tumors have grown slightly. This is not as alarming as sudden massive growth, but significant enough to raise the question whether I need to change treatment plans. Within less than a year, aggressive cancers typically learn how to resist the drugs sent out to fight them, so we've known all along that I would eventually have to switch to an alternative to the gemzar-xeloda treatment I've been receiving. The next option woud entail wearing a pump for a couple of days every two weeks, going in for slightly longer injections, and receiving a medication that would cause me to react to cold drinks. (The last part actually troubles me more than the other two.) The plan for now is to keep me on Gemzar & Xeloda for a couple more rounds, then then take another scan to see whether I've reached my turning point.

The news has served as another reminder how little I can predict my future. What began as "I'll be okay as long as I have another 3 or 4 years left," and slowly evolved into "just let me make it for a while beyond graduation," and into "let me see another Christmas, another Easter, another jacaronda season," is now best expressed, "Give us this day..." In light of my propensity to obsess over things I don't know, this is not an entirely bad place to be.