caveat: positrons have been emitted

i didnt look this up recently, so im going on what i recall about it. 

they added some radioactive stuff to my blood. then i waited an hour while it got evenly distributed through my body. then they put me in a big detector machine.

a positron was emitted. the machine recorded on a three dimensional map where that happened. this is repeated maybe a billion times (am i even close on order of magnitude? i have no idea). because the blood is where the radioactivity is, they can create a kind of three dimensional movie of where my blood is going. blood goes places where things are happening. its fuel. so cancer is a thing that is happening. they can kind of find it this way.

now ive been fasting almost 24 hours. i hope they bring some food.

caveat: different window, different view

i got moved to a new room. this was expected (its saving me money). now instead of the strictly urban eastward view from last night, i have a verdant south facing view of jeongbal hill. its easy to remember that on my first day in ilsan, on sept 3, 2007, i hiked to the top of this small hill.
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i actually prefer having roommates. i love solitude but its not a good thing for the moment. i can listen to the ajeossis gossiping and further i can learn from them. i already learned how to operate my bed, for example. . . that was a procedure that had stumped me in my previous room.

Caveat: Still Leaping, Hoping for More Net

Leap, and the net will appear.
I wrote about this little allegedly zen aphorism before. I remember now that it was, indeed, given to me by my father. I bought a card with this saying on it one time I was in the US, and it’s been attached to my refrigerator again since I moved back to Ilsan in 2011.
I think I need the peace of mind offered by a sincere contemplation of this maxim at this point in time. I need more net. I feel frightened.
Here is a picture of the card with the saying, accompanied by my leaping minneapolitan rainbow monkey, attached to my refrigerator.
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Nearby on my refrigerator are also found these words: “They say we can feel real joy when a large toad is the goal.”
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It was really the only vaguely coherent compound sentence I could come up with using my refrigerator poetry kit. I’ll have to see if that works out.
I wrote part of this yesterday but decided go ahead and post it now. I am unable to control the date this post appears on my smartphone. Actual publish date is 2013-07-03 12:30 pm kst

caveat: the view from my hospital window

i dont know if this will work. the attached picture taken from my phone may or may not show when i post this way.
tribute to andrew sullivan’s “view from your window” series which once featured a photo of mine. and because my friend mary asked.
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update: haha that worked. . but sideways. everybody tilt your heads.

caveat: hungry

i deliberately ate a lot, the last few days. partly it was an obstinate desire to enjoy the act of eating (despite some pain involved) in the time remaining before my surgery, which will deny me the use of my mouth for some period of time, perhaps several weeks. also, i was "cleaning out" my fridge. 

so i think i stretched my stomach and now, on starvation prior to the pet scan, my stomach is annoyed. i will be ok – this is the beginning of my super amazing cancer diet plan whereby i will finally lose those impossible-to-lose last 10 kg. i was telling about this plan to one of my coworkers the other day and i think it took him a while to realize it was (partly) a joke.

dawn comes early in summer in korea. . . because they dont do daylight savings time. around 445 the brightening window of my stark 10th floor room woke me. i trundled my iv stand over to the window to look out on a misty, overcast ilsan.

caveat: dusk

the sun has set and i am checked in. curt was much more necessary during that process than i might have wished. a lot of consents to be signed, medical histories to be compiled. . . all far beyond my rudimentary korean ability. even curt had no idea some of the medical terminology they were using.

i have no wifi so i will post via emails for now. 

i got an iv in my arm. . this hospital room is much quieter than my apartment . . . no street noise much less neighbor noise. i hadnt thought about how accustomed to ambient noise ive become. 
pet scan tomorrow, surgery on thursday.

Caveat: Mexica Tiahui, Defrosted

This will possibly be my last post “by computer” (as opposed to using my smartphone) for quite some time.
I intended to take a walk, and somehow found myself cleaning my fridge instead. A certain compulsity is as work, right now, and I’m giving some free rein, but it’s strange to watch. The thing that’s odd is that normally cleaning a fridge is one of the most distasteful chores imaginable, for me, but I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I think I’m craving banality. Listening to music and scraping the layers of accumulated frost out of my freezer – an apt metaphor for my moment in life.

There’s nothing like some hardcore Chicano rap music to spice up a rainy afternoon and distract a troubled soul.
What I’m listening to right now.



 
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El Vuh, “Mexica Tiahui.”
I couldn’t find the lyrics to this track published online anywhere.


I’m off. I’m going to walk there.
 

Caveat: Check-in 6:30 PM

I got the call. The poor man. I answer my phone in English, nowadays, to establish at the outset that I’m a foreigner, because if I answer in Korean people just plow into mile-a-minute Korean that is beyond my comprehension. So, I answered in English.
Long silence. “Uh. Cancer Center. Me.”
“Yes,” I said.
Long silence. “Korean do you know?”
“조금 밖에 몰라요.” This is my standard answer to that question – it means “I only know a little bit.”
Sigh of relief. Then launching into rapid Korean. I asked him to slow down. Finally I heard the time, and recognized “check-in.” I confirmed it back to him, first in English then Korean. He said “Yes, 6 30.”
So now the waiting shifts to being ready. I’m already packed – not much to pack, a change of clothes, laptop computer, 2 books plus notebook, some toiletries. I guess if I need something else I can have a friend fetch it from my apartment later.
I think I’ll make a few blog posts and surf the internet and meditate and walk in the rain.
I found a comic circulating online that I really liked. It made me laugh.
 
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It’s attributed to an artist named *Inkless-Pencil. I looked at her other stuff and found this, too, that was very funny.
 
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Caveat: Waiting For When, And Knowing Where

I am in waiting mode. At some point today, I will get a phone call telling me to go to the hospital to check in.
I made a map of points of interest in Ilsan. I won’t give a specific address – the National Cancer Center (국립암센터) is a major landmark in Ilsan and the city’s largest employer as far as I know. If you’re coming from out of town to see me, just walk from either Jeongbalsan subway station (Line 3 = Orange Line) or Pungsan subway station (Gyeongui Line = Aqua Line), or hop in a taxi and say “National Cancer Center” – the place is about 1 km from each station.
On my map (made from googlemaps), the green star in the southeast is the National Cancer Center. The purple star is Jeongbalsan subway station (which is basically “downtown” Ilsan) and the blue star is Pungsan subway station. The red star at the top is KarmaPlus Academy, where I work, and the brown star on the west is my apartment. The large green area in the center is Jeongbalsan Park and the green area with blue is the famous Ilsan Lake Park.
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Caveat: The Forecast

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No, this is not about prognosis. It’s just the weather forecast.
I awoke to the sound of thunder, and checking the weather, I see that the monsoon appears to have arrived.
The phone rang.
I talked on the phone with my sister. My sister has been sitting vigil with her best friend, who has cancer, of all things. Yes, cancer. Her friend had exhausted all treatment options and has been in what they call end-of-life palliative care. And I swear what follows is true, because it sounds like a scene in a novel.
I was talking to my sister, about this and that, serious things – what I would do if scenario x, scenario y – the complicated aspects of undergoing major surgery as a foreigner in Korea, how would power-of-attorney work, who advocates for me, etc. These are difficult things.
And then my sister said, “OK. Jared. I love you, but I have to go. My friend just died.”

Caveat: Growing Up Making Speeches

Today turned out to be a much busier day than I had intended. I went to work and spent much of the day providing training and orientation to my replacement. This is a good thing, as I want my replacement to do a good job, but I feel stressed and overwhelmed now by some evening projects I had intended to get done on this last night of being a "civilian."

Over the weekend, while sorting through my harddrive, I found some old videos of student speeches – I mean really old – they're from 2009, when I first started making videos of student work, at LBridge.

Lo and behold, in that collection I actually ran across three students that are still, today, my students! That means I can see them changed over a period of more than four years. I couldn't resist spending one free hour at work today (waiting while my replacement was in class so I couldn't spend it harassing him with my ideas about pedagogy) making a set of three "before and after" videos. It's so amazing seeing these kids growing up, to me.

I feel an almost parental pride to have been their teacher, on and off, over such a long time.

 

 

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