January 19 Updates

I've been avoiding putting anything here, or anywhere for that matter. I just wanted to concentrate on doing my own thing and maybe healing up. My lower digestive system hasn't been the same since my first treatment, and my heart rate still goes up any time something moves on from my stomach. Around my second cycle, there was a small but persistent pain beneath my lower ribs on both sides that never really went away and only got stronger. Nothing showed on the scans, mind.

In December, my heart rate shot up again and has only gotten worse. My resting heart rate, when healthy, used to be pretty low; it could be used to rather dependably measure the passage of seconds, though not exactly. It never really went back to normal after those chemo cycles, but it did slow some. It is now between 2-3 times faster than my original base rate before this farce of a drama. It's beating hard enough to rock my body if I attempt to sit very still. This is not a good sign as, if it's the cancer again, it means my organ systems are being taxed once more.

 My petechiae are back; they'd contented themselves with appearing only sparsely and rarely on an arm or thereabouts, but there's a consistent outbreak in that same spot on my left jaw as before the chemo. My chest also mildly aches from time to time, and my sternum is sensitive and slightly sore to the touch. Some of my hair has grown back, but not a lot and not quite as before. I regularly get small pimples now, which were a rarity before all of this. My insides feel and my face looks as though I've suddenly aged 20 years within a span of only one.

All of my joints are crackling and some of them are painful. The pain in my jaw is back, as are my shoulders, neck, and knees. The topmost digit of my left index finger seems slightly swollen on one side, though solid to the touch; it may be some sort of arthritis brought on by the chemo. That's not uncommon, sadly. Around the hip joints, pain continues on and off depending on its whims, though I know that if I could crack them as I do with my shoulders the pressure would ease. Eating anything results in some rather dour discomfort once it begins digestion in earnest. The pain in my sides is noticeable, though much more pronounced on my right side, particularly when I twist in such a way as to compress the ribs.

I'm concerned this may have spread to my liver, which would be Stage IV cancer, the pain on my left possibly a swollen spleen. I can't feel anything when examining myself, and neither hurt when I push on them. The stabbing pain I get only when contorting myself seems isolated to around the mid-back, connected with the ribs and hip, too odd of a location to be liver infection. Much of the pain seems to radiate from around the hips upward, so I'm hoping it's just that combined with my stubbornly-concrete tendons, which seem to dislike stretching lately.

Currently, I am in the middle of a fast, my first in earnest since treatments were active and I know very well I should have started again sooner. I'm hoping it alleviates some of the problems and, if we may hope, help my immune system to notice something is awry now that it doesn't have bags upon bags of painful poison being pumped through it and killing off all of my useful cells. So far, though my heart rate is variable, it is not as fast nor as strong as it was a few days ago, and most of the discomfort around my intestinal area has quietened down. Despite this, I'm still having to use my experience with older experiments with my heart rate and breathing that originate from a more light-hearted era of health, back when I was delighted to find how easy it was to make yourself overheat and merely used it to keep myself warm when dozing off in a draughty room in winter.

With all of this on the table, I would like anyone interested to come forward in the chat to inherit the channel, if they so wish. They can use it for whatever they like, or just keep the login info in a forgotten file somewhere, a digital relic gathering dust from an earlier time when all we had to worry about was whether moot pissed off /b/ enough to make them rampage across the site, and if we could manage to stay awake for a 24-hour new year's marathon of Muppets and cartoons. Given that our current hub on cytube seems to be the target of not a few DDoS attacks and its various clones are unstable, it may be a limited-time trophy.

Regardless, I don't at all regret deciding to start streaming that one November 5 in 2010, lining up a bunch of treasure-themed movies and getting to know other people on the board. It's resulted in a nice group of friends that all seem to have tied together nicely, even if they don't always see eye-to-eye in less important matters. I'm happy to see how the stream has brought you all together for over a decade now. Even the ones that don't drop by anymore made some friends out of this, and all of you got to see films you likely never would have otherwise. Given my nature as well as my part in this, it seems natural that I never thought of myself as part of the group I'd inadvertently created. I was just happy to see you enjoying things and each other's company. When you came together to help me, it was the first time I felt like I had actual friends outside my limited personal contact list. Perhaps it seems strange to another, but it is simply how I am and what I am used to. Forgive a battered, broken paranoid.

Even if this stream goes away and I'm not around anymore, please keep being good to one another and yourselves. This world is full of terrible bullshit and adding more by choice isn't something any of you fine people would or should do. Time may be limited, so if you could like to be added to a will, please say so. You can PM me your details in the chat and I'll see what I can do about adding you to it. I don't have much of monetary value, but I've no one to leave most of it to and I'd rather see it go to a place where it will be loved/put to good use than someone from the government trying to impersonally claw what little I have away for whatever paltry sum they wish to pocket that day.

Please take good care of them. Each one is a memory and was part of me at some point. Friends, forever available and undying, there for me for most of my life when I had no others. For once, I may be the one leaving someone instead of the usual opposite, so I can only hope my new friends will look after them in my absence as they in turn experience the loss that has become so familiar to me. Thank you.