(old) Update April 3: I can't get through to the psycho-social office that was trying to get me drug/longterm rent coverage, so dunno what's going on with that. I have Stage IIA Hodgkin's Lymphoma, though it seems kind of aggressive since it's spreading around and flaring up awfully fast. My window is pretty small, I think. Not really sure what to do. Hopefully they get back to me very, very soon. My neck one is huge now, and I can feel the one in my chest. It hurts and affects my sleep. The other side of my neck is flaring up now, and my left shoulder is sore and swelled up, so I think it's trying to take over the node in my armpit there. It's like something is trying to tap its way out through my ribs when I'm trying to fall asleep, and like when you need to crack your neck/shoulder perpetually to release the pressure but can't. I'm so tired.
Update Apr 10: I'm removing the donate button for now. I was just hoping you guys could collectively spot me $50-$200 and I could pay it back later, but you unexpectedly gave a ton more than that. I know how generous you fuckers are and I don't want to hurt anyone's finances, so this is a measure for both of us. Thank you very much. I don't expect stuff in return for being there for people, and it's never really happened before, especially on this scale. This is me keeping my word and giving updates. With the combination of support from you all, along with getting my taxes filed and all that, I've effectively made myself debt-free within a week; I have never been affluent, far from it, but I've always been careful and never really owed much. The cumulative rent issues were very recent and due to some bad luck, but they're pretty much fixed now. I was waiting for my RoE from work for like 2 weeks, turns out they were mailing it to the EI people for us, so I got some insurance too for a while. I can live off that.
As for the shit inside me, well... Hodgkin's is known for growing fast. I just have to wait from a call from the clinic to see when I can get in next week to start. They haven't grown as much this week because I'm way less stressed (it always grows/spreads faster when I'm fucked up with stress), but it's still just big enough from what size it was when I first went in to hurt a lot and put pressure on all the shit in my neck/chest. Most of my time has been spent resting, doubling my pain killers, spending all of my waking time making lists for myself and the household, getting supplies (can't use the same soap and stuff), and a fuckton of shit for experimentation. The only way I'm making it through this is by treating it like an experiment.
So much of the damage done to your body/brain is through things like oxidative stress, and making your microglia go into an inflammatory loop. If I can keep those at bay, side effects will be minimized and I can make it less likely I'll suffer from longterm effects as well. Never thought all my free study would be put to an actual test in this way, guess it's a good thing I studied so much shit before this. If you guys are curious about the stuff I'm going to try, you can ask because I've been writing a lot of info down over the past few weeks. May put some here. I'm a bit tired from reading that many long and dense papers non-stop and trying to distill its basics down in a form roomie1 can actually use since he doesn't know, or need to know, about gene expression but what sets certain things off is useful. At least the quarantine lets me read for 6-10 hours without interruption.
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