December 21, 2009
Ups and Downs
Things have been really strange since I last posted.
The healing continues to progress extremely well. I have only really had one set back to this point. But misdiagnosed Giardia cases aside, I don’t think I could possibly be better health wise for someone three and a half months post liver transplant. It’s actually pretty remarkable. Every so often I think about exactly what has happened to me and I find myself needing to pick my jaw up off the floor. My faulty organ was taken out of my body and placed in the garbage and a new one was placed inside of me. Everything was reconnected and I was closed up… and it just works. Not only does it work, it works great. I just can’t believe that it’s possible sometimes.
Due to the success on the healing front, I’ve restarted work. I don’t have a particularly demanding job physically. I sit at a desk for 8ish hours. Even then though, by 4-4:30 I’m starting to get tired. I don’t know what exactly is so different from what I have been doing for the last 3 months, but work kicks my butt. I suppose I have some time off next week to allow me to catch up. The bigger issue is trying to get back into work. So much seems to have changed in such a short period. The group I was working with largely dissolved. Several people got pulled into new projects, one of the interns quit and the other started up classes. So everything I was doing before has sort of changed. Then today the server died (an entirely different adventure, which thankfully I have been able to largely avoid). All in all though, it’s good being back to work.
Then there’s the reasons that brought me back to posting. The last couple weeks have been pretty lousy for some of the people around me. Layoffs and the threat of layoffs for some family members. Car troubles for others. In the last two weeks I found out that two good friends have been diagnosed with (what I am to believe) is fairly serious cancer. I suppose there isn’t really such thing as non-serious cancer, but there certainly are varying degrees of serious. I believe that both of these people are in the “extremely” category.
I try not to dwell on these sorts of things too much. There are so many good things happening, it’s just hard some times to forget about the bad.
I’ve thought about that good things/bad things deal over the years. I wonder if we just become more aware of stuff happening around us as we get older or if it’s some math problem that involves an equation like: number of years of life plus number of people you know equals quantity of stuff happening to the tenth power. Or something like that. Like how that math guy I was telling you about from Stanford (Persi Diaconis*) said that magic is really based on math. Maybe the good/bad ratio is based on a math formula.
Or maybe stuff just happens. To everybody.
*did you see how I included his name for you? Check him out. If you want.