Thank you all for your thoughts and wishes.

When I made it down to the hospital, he was still in the emergency center, getting an ultrasound, but shortly after I arrived they moved him up to the 6th floor to a temporary room.

He was in pretty rough shape, his blood sugar was really low, around 46 when the admitted him. (My father is diabetic, and usually his sugar is between 90-120) Also, he was experiencing kidney disfunction, and was shaking pretty much all night. (more like invouluntary jerks.) Early in the afternoon, he was hunched over in pain (back-kidneys?) and not making much sense (low sugar?), and throwing up. He was not a happy camper.

I was there till 1:30, but was able to nap a bit on a cot they brought in for my mom and wedged in the corner. They were feeding him lots and lots of sugar juices like orange and cranberry and apple, trying to get his levels up, and the last time they checked it seemed like he was near 100, which is much better.

Watching him fall in and out of sleep was heart wrenching, because even when dozing, his face would reflect the pain he feels, and emote like a baby’s does in sleep, making worried eyebrows, and pursed lips. When he was awake, he was lucid enough to have short conversations before he’d doze off again. Not sure why he kept falling asleep like that.

He seemed to be sleeping well when Mom came back to the hospital to spend the rest of the night by his side.

This is hard to take, he apparently had a really great weekend painwise, and was up and around and feeling the best he has in two weeks.

Mom will likely call me sometime this morning with more info.

First, Elf Pinup!

Second! Our zines rock, we spent all last weekend working on them, and they are beautiful.

Anyway, it’s been a long 2 weeks. I’ve either been at the hospital, or working on our zine. Strange times blending into each other.

My Dad’s surgery was very successful. The pathology came back with only a handful of live cancer cells left, and none around the margins. They had expected to see hundreds! This is great news.

Also, Dad came home last night! No more hospital. It’s so nice to see him up and about, and at home.

We’re heading out to acen within the next half hour. I just wanted to update before the con, because there is always too much to update after!

Later!

My father’s surgery went very well. It was a long and difficult surgery (5 hours) according to the soft spoken surgeon who came to talk to us, but he sounded very optimistic about the outcome. The tumor was very large, and most likely took a couple years to grow to that size. The radiation seemed to do a very good job, most of what they had to work with was scarring due to the radiation, and they didn’t see any signs of metastases. (translation: It didn’t look like the cancer had spread.) He said the margins looked clear and that they sent the specimen (most of the stuff from the colon on down) to pathology where they will be testing it to learn more about the tumor and also see if any of the margins(edges) actually were infected, and if it’s likely or not if he has cancer elsewhere nearby. But from what we know, it looks like they got all of it.

We finally got to see him about 8:30 at night, and he seemed tired, but lucid, and not in pain. (epidural, morphine on demand.) The hospital rooms at the university have been revamped since the last time I was visiting someone there. The room is private, and looks more like a tiny hotel room, wood floors, actual wallpaper, his own TV. He’ll be at the hospital for about a week.

So, it was a good day yesterday. Emotionally stressful, but good. I got to spend the day with my family. Mom, Brother, Uncle Jim, Grandma, and Grandpa, and a family friend, Steve was also there to keep us company. Mom, BJ, Grandma and I played several hands of Hearts with the cards on loan from the surgery waiting area desk. (Can you believe someone had actually marked the Queen of Spades?) Somehow my brother only got about 16 points in roughly 7 hands. How did he do that? It was a good distraction though. Spending the day at a hospital is always strange, the hours run together. We were at the hospital from around 8am to 9:30pm.

I did get to call on Heather which was a nice change too. It was nice to see a friendly face in the strange maze that is the University Hospital.

Things should get better from now out. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. It was really nice to read the little notes you left me.

With the internet and cable out, we spent most of the weekend watching DVD’s from blockbuster and cleaning the house.
We watched Spirited Away, The Cuckoo (Russian Film with English subtitles), The Sea is Watching (Kurosawa’s last film, about Geisha’s), The Legend of Ron Jeremy (Which was actually kinda depressing).

I cleaned the upstairs bathroom, even the tub, did a bit of laundry, and unloaded the dishwasher twice. My husband, brave soul, cleaned the refrigerator out and washed all the dishes that didn’t fit in the last load of the dishwasher.

I crock-potted twice on Sunday, a chicken dish that was pretty bland, and a dessert that kicked butt. I plan on making the hot fudge crock pot cake again. mmm.

Friday night I spent several hours working on the process of getting my mom set up with a new webhost. We have to take into account all sorts of things like add on domains, and making sure the biz email doesn’t get too lost in the process. I’ll have to finish that up this week.

Mom cooked dinner on Friday, yummy shrimp and pasta. In a strange unhappy dissonance, my father read his dire medical records while we ate.

Mom is worried that I am depressed. I am worried that I can’t emphatically deny that allegation. I’ve felt sad all last week, and this morning, (like close to tears sad), and I am often irritable. It’s possible I need more sleep/exercise, ect, but not fun, either which way.

I’ve really been digging into Joan Druett’s novel She Captains, and it’s really really fascinating. Lots of historical cited info on all sorts of hellions and heroines, and great inspirational fodder on life at sea for women. Very very cool. (No, not all of them are valorous, some are downright evil, but it’s still really intriguing, plus… educational)

Direct deposit has lost my paycheck.

Dad is going to see a panel of doctors and surgeons next week, apparently his case is unusual, and they want to know why.

My father’s enemy is signet ring cancer.

I had sushi last night, and it was yummy. believe it or not, sushi is a comfort food to me. I might have more comfort food tonight, either qdoba’s or noodles mac and cheese with tofu.

I am very happy that Please Save My Earth is out in translated manga. I had thought I might never seen the actual manga pages, and PSME has long been one of my favorite series.

Tonight, I believe, my husband is taking me to a movie. I’m aiming for Big Fish, or Something’s gotta give.

Most of Studio Antithesis is away, and I miss them. It will be nice to see them next week.

I finally beat the hard battle near the start of the Prince of Persia game, last night. Which made me feel good. I beat Syberia shortly after Christmas, with enough interest to play the sequel I guess. The Longest Journey was so much better though.

Frank was in town around New Years. We went to Monty’s Blue plate, and bowling with Adam. Felt like old times. We all used to work together at Sonic Foundry.

Sorry for the odd, unconnected ramblings, been missing recording all sorts of things due to these emergencies.

Went over to Mom and Dad’s the day he was discharged, to eat dinner some friends had brought by, and watch ‘Senseless’, which made my father laugh so much it hurt. He’s feeling so much better than he has these last few weeks. That’s a good thing.

The stress of this is not doing good things to my body. I need to exercise more and release those endorphins.

I spent most of the weekend in the hospital. My uncles were around, and my mom, and my husband even came to the hospital to see how my father was doing. I finished two books this weekend, and did some sketching in thevisiting room, and all the hours seemed to run together.

Dad was up a good deal of the time, joking with his nurses and doctors, and us. His color is much much better than it was Christmas day, when he could hardly sit and open gifts with us.

I did get to do a bit of gaming, finally reached Vole’s shadow dancer prestige class. It was nice to escape for a while

The doctors pushed the test on my dad.s cancer through, and they just got the results. Looks like it’s in stage 3. There are only 4 stages. Stage four is the really bad one, but stage 3 is not good at all. They are finding that the cancer came from the muscle or something. I really don’t understand the details.

But the good news is that he is getting discharged today, and will be able to meet with the new surgeon and an oncologist this week. He’s up andwalking around, and feeling loads better than he has in weeks.

He meets with a surgeon and an oncologist this week. Treatments to start soon.

I don’t have a lot of time, I’m on one of the computers in the hospital caffeteria.

My dad’s surgery last night went successful, they did a colostomy, and it took about 4 hours. He didn’t go in til about 3:30 and didn’t get out of recovery until about 10.

I stayed the night with my mom in the visitor’s lounge on the ninth floor of the tower.

My father has cancer, and they still don’t know what kind. It may be aggressive. Results may be back next week. either way, treatments, while not yet scheduled are likely to occur in the next couple weeks.

Two of my dad’s brothers flew in this morning, and just arrived.

talk later.

thanks for your love and your prayers.

Listen, I promise to update you about all my holiday adventures, but I really really need you to pray for my father.

He’s been sick since October, really sick, and has lost lots and lots of weight, which is good, but not a good way to do it. He really can’t eat anything solid, and is generally miserable, and the worst thing is, the doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. He hasn’t worked for the last 6 or 7 weeks, and one can only survive on yogurt and sherbet for so long.

Last week he went in for x-rays, and while nothing seemed to stand out, even to him(he used to be an x-ray tech), he’s still been sick. Yesterday or today he went in and they took a biopsy.

They are throwing around scary words like lymphoma. If the test comes back that is it, he starts treatment on Friday, if it’s negative, then they still don’t know what’s wrong and he goes into the hospital on Monday. We hope to get the test back tommorrow. sigh.

This is my Daddy, and he’s wasting away, and I’m worried and scared.

Please, please pray for him and my mother.

I was going to edit this into a nice big entry, but lost the energy. Still, wanted to note these things

• Page 5 of Tabloid roulette is up
• Did christmas crafty things with mom.(candles!)
• Opened new checking account at uwcu, yah!
• awesome role playing on sunday, we faced down an evil drow sorceror who
  had unnatrual command over an army of 50thousand orcs.(Vole and Co.)
• decorated tree
• Christmas concert at a local church. (w/Mom/Grandma)
• American forces finally caught Sadamn hussein

Friday: Book reading over at Andy’s, we polished off a whole Kage Baker Company Short story. It was a really good one, and I finished the pencils for the final two panels I needed for page five of Tabloid Roulette.

Saturday: Up early, cookie faire with my Mom, and then we hit the Michael’s craft store on the east side, getting crafty stuff for gifts, but we ran out of time to make the crafts, after realizing we were missing some things.
Then we had the Nanowrimo wrap-up party, where we saw many nano winners! (and some who will finish their ass-kickery soon!) It was so cool to talk with each other about the things we worked on and it was nice to touch base with people that I miss seeing every Wednesday night for writing. I still have lots to put into my novel, but I’ve made a good start, and have lots of framework to start with.
After that I joined Kim to scan and spend some time chatting about comics and cleaning up the page to get it ready for shading. I gave Kim her Christmas Gift, a cute mason jar of friendship tea, with a cute little spoon with a teapot on the end, and some lotion.

Sunday: Up early again, Manga Girls morning out! Joined Kim and Elly at Sofia’s mmmm, I had eggnog cherry crepes! So yummy! Then after a bit of window shopping (too early for the shops to open) we went back to talk about manga, how thoughts vs spoken word bubbles should be shaped and more cleaning and some toning tests. Then we left so Kim could fetch her hubby from the airport.

Woo!

Tuesday: Art night last night was awesome! Maciek is back from Hong Kong and showed us lots of pictures! And I finished all the toning/shading for page 5, and Kim had it all lettered. It’ll go live this Saturday! yah! Feels so nice to get back to the manga now. It just took me one night to do the shading! I feel really good about page 5, the panels do some storytelling, you can tell what’s going on with the action. feels very nice.

We had some rousing choruses of Bob! Bob!, and then K&M gave me my Christmas gift! OH MY!!! So Cool! They gave me the Mattel Barbie Catwoman! And it’s such a nice toy, very cool details, a whip, pretty costume, and just awesome! I can’t help that I’m a Catwoman nut, but I’m glad my friends remember and indulge me. Thanks!