There were about 193 pictures on it, which I’ve uploaded to Google+ in the hope that the owner of the memory stick, or someone who knows them, will find the pictures.  That way the pictures might find their way back to the person who took them.

If Picasa is right, they were taken in March 2006 on a Sony DSC-T5 camera, which looks like this:

It’s difficult to say who actually owned the camera.  This woman appears most often in the photos:

This man also appears several times in the photos:

This woman also appears in a few of the photos:

If you know anyone pictured here, please send them the link to the Google+ album above so that they can retrieve their photos.

He then asks the question “Has the world changed or have I changed?”  As many times as I’ve listened to that song over the years, I never really pondered the lyrics until very recently.  I’ve realized that the answer is “Neither.  What has changed is your perspective of the world and your role within it.”  Morrissey’s world is certainly no different for the discovery that he is related to royalty, nor has that discovery (at least at the moment of realization) changed him.  But learning that he is a descendent of royalty has changed how he views himself and his role in the world.  The question of course becomes what he does with that knowledge.

I think the reason this lyric has finally started to resonate with me is a similar kind of realization in my own life. When I was a teenager, I found that I really enjoyed writing.  Not only did I enjoy it, but I had teachers who seemed to think I was doing quite well at it and rewarded my hard work with high grades.  I thought I’d be a professional writer.  Well-meaning friends, acquaintances, and relatives told me that few people make a living as writers.  I’d better find something more practical to do than writing.  I listened to them, and focused on my second love, computers.  Since it was the beginning of the personal computer revolution (late 1980s), it seemed like a good choice.  The decision has served me well.

I’ve been in the high-technology world since 1987.  I’ve worked for a mainframe software company, a consulting outfit, and now a company that makes information available to scientists around the world.  Even doing this work, I never really abandoned writing.  My day job from 1987 to 1996 involved writing software documentation. Since then, it’s included writing reports, presentations, and procedure documentation.  Creative, artistic writing barely found a place in my life apart from a few poems and an aborted attempt at a novel.

Then, a few short years ago, I was at a game convention (a place where people play traditional board games).  I wasn’t finding any games I wanted to play on day, but did see a writing seminar on “The Rules of Writing”.  It woke up that part of me that wanted to be a writer back in high school, so I plopped down my $8 and sat down for the seminar.  As New York Times bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole shared his experience and advice, I began to realize that my teenage dream of writing novels and poetry didn’t have to be just a dream.  There was no reason I couldn’t at least try it.  The bills were paid.  The kids were about to go off to college.  The cats didn’t need a lot maintenance.  Why not?

In the months after that, I learned of the National Novel Writing Month project (NaNoWriMo).  In that effort, ordinary folks like me were committing to create 50,000 words or more of original fiction in the month of November.  Many of them were successful.  In 2009, I took a stab at it and was successful.  I’d written over 50,000 words in a month.  Were they publishable?  No.  Were they good?  In places, yes.  Overall, they were at best mediocre.  But I’d done it.  For one month, I was a writer!  I was a novelist, even.

I kept reading and learning in 2010, and managed to complete NaNoWriMo a second time.  This time, I went into the effort with a more coherent plan.  The result was something better than I’d managed in 2009.  This was a complete novel, with a consistent story.  It was nothing I could (or would try to) publish, but I’d written a novel.  I was still the same guy I had been a few weeks or years earlier.  But something had changed. 

What changed?  I still looked and acted like I had before, so I hadn’t changed in any visible way.  And certainly the world was the same old place it had been.  My perception of myself had changed, and my perception of the world as a place where I couldn’t write had changed.  I realized that I’m not just “a guy who works in IT” but “a writer” and even… a novelist.  It couldn’t have been any less surprising than Morrissey’s discovery of a royal bloodline.

It’s now 2011.  Earlier this year, I had the good fortune to take part in several hours worth of seminars given by some of the best writers working today.  Michael Stackpole, mentioned earlier, has taught me a lot.  Aaron Allston has shared much as well.  Timothy Zahn helped explain why stories should be internally consistent and based (to the extent possible) on fact, even though they’re fictional.  I’m confident my next novel will be better than the last three attempts thanks to their advice.  Will the next one be publishable?  I don’t know.  But I know there will be a next one, and that’s a very liberating thought for someone who told himself for 20 years or more that he shouldn’t or couldn’t do it.

So perhaps the world hasn’t changed.  And you could certainly argue that I haven’t either.  I still look the same.  I still have the same job, the same friends, the same clothes, and habits.  I still drive the same car I did in 2002.  If anything has changed, it’s my perception of myself.  I may be “a guy who works in IT” but I know that I’m also a novelist… and I won’t let that change again.  I can do this.  I’ve seen me do it.  And I know me well enough to know I’ll keep getting better at it.

I’ve been on synthroid (replacement thyroid hormone) since December 22 and most of the symptoms I experienced are now gone. I still get an occasional muscle cramp or ache, but nothing like I had been seeing.

My doctor noticed that I was taking a diuretic and said that this could be the cause for the muscle cramps I had been experiencing. I’ve been off the drug for several days and the cramps have almost vanished, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

My next scheduled doctor visit is at the end of February, when I presume we’ll look at thyroid hormone levels and thyroglobulin levels to establish a baseline for the next treatment steps.

Based on the result of those scans, the doctor set my “big” dose of radioactive iodine to 75 millicuries.  In terms of the range of potential doses used to treat thyroid cancer, it’s in the lowest range of doses.

On Friday morning, I took a 76 millicurie dose of radioactive iodine.  Apparently, I also contracted a cold and cough.  Since the radiation, lack of thyroid hormone (part of the treatment), and restrictive diet most likely reduced the overall effectiveness of my immune system, I now have a sinus and chest cold on top of the symptoms of hypothyroidism and radiation treatment.  I’m sneezing and coughing on a pretty regular basis, and feeling exhausted and tired much of the rest of the time.

I know this is nothing compared to what other cancer patients like my mother (who died earlier this year from melanoma) have gone through, and I am both respectful of that and grateful that my situation isn’t worse than it is.  Still, it’s not an exaggeration to say that I feel worse than I can remember feeling in a long, long time… if not the worst ever.  While I will probably never understand what my mother went through in her final days, I think I have a greater appreciation of it than I ever did before.

Tomorrow morning, I look forward to being off the low-iodine diet.  That means I can have things with dairy (like my morning coffee with milk), sandwiches with cheese, and pizza again.  I can have sushi, Chinese food, Indian food, and more.  Perhaps even better than that, I’ll once again be back on the synthetic thyroid hormone. That should be the end of the severely dry skin, muscle weakness, unexplained muscle cramps, shortness of breath, and other symptoms I’ve had to endure since before Thanksgiving.

This coming Friday (12/26) is another set of scans for radiation, to determine where the last “big” dose went. Friday’s scan is supposed to be “more revealing” in some way than the one I had last Thursday.

After that, I’ll be working with the endocrinologist to regulate the dose of synthroid I’ll be taking from now on to give me a “normal” level of thyroid hormone in my blood.  I guess you could say that the end is in sight, at least as much as there is an end to this.  I’ll be having tests each year from now to confirm that the cancer hasn’t returned, so in a sense it will never be truly “behind me” and will always be somewhere out there in the distance.

Pretty much, my diet this week has consisted of: unsalted walnuts, unsalted sunflower seeds, oranges, apples, bananas, celery, home-cooked chicken, home-cooked pot roast, veggies, a special bread from a bakery that doesn’t use iodized salt, homemade popcorn with unsalted margarine and non-iodized salt, rice, and pasta.

Unfortunately, since I’m off the thyroid medication, too, I don’t think I’ve actually lost any weight on this diet.  Being off the thyroid medication is the worst part of this by far.  I get horrendous muscle cramps for virtually no reason. For example, one day this week at work I moved my arm slightly (not rapidly, not holding anything, etc.) and suddenly the muscles under my arm and on my rib cage under my armpit absolutely throbbed in pain.  I don’t think I’ve had that much pain in years, and it took the better part of an hour to go away.

Another added “benefit” to being off the synthetic hormone is that I’m really sensitive to cold temperatures, which is just great in December in Ohio.  What makes it more fun is that I’m in a recently-renovated area of our office complex at work.  This new area has a heating system that the engineers are still working the bugs out of.  This afternoon, a co-worker measured the temperature and humidity in our area, which was 70 degrees with 24% humidity.  He said the calculations say that feels like 64-65 degrees.  Everyone in the area, none of whom are hypothyroid, is complaining about the cold.  My hands and toes have been so cold the last couple of weeks that at times I can’t even feel them.

When I got in the car, I was so cold I started shivering.  That shivering activity set the muscles in my chest off with yet-another cramping spasm.  The pain continued at a decreasing level until we got home.

While making dinner, one of our cats was lying on the floor nearby, hoping for a handout. I stepped on his tail and he let out a screech. I reacted instantly to lift my foot and get off him.  That caused my leg muscles to spasm, which made me double over in pain.  Doubling over caused my shoulder, the muscles under my arm, and muscles under my armpit to all cramp in extreme pain.  By the time the pain subsided, my dinner had pretty much gone cold.

As if the muscle cramps weren’t enough, I get short of breath often, my leg muscles feel really weak, I’ve had memory lapses, headaches, dry skin, and have to be careful not to be “short” (mean/rude/impolite) to others.

The diet will continue until 12/22, when I’ll revert to a normal diet again and start taking the replacement thyroid hormone again.  I’m looking forward to that.

On Tuesday and Wednesday next week, I’ll be taking small doses of radioactive iodine.  Thursday I’ll undergo a radiation scan to see where the iodine went.  Friday (12/19), I’ll take the “full-size” dose of radioactive iodine.  That will begin a six-day period of keeping at least 6 feet from other people and pets.  Fortunately, that period will end on 12/25, so I’ll be able to spend time with the family then, be back to a normal diet, and taking replacement thyroid hormone once again. I ought to feel a lot better then than I do right now.

• Fatigue
  Boy, have I noticed this one. Yesterday I walked a distance I used to walk every day without breathing hard, and wasn’t sure I would make it to the end between feeling worn out and in pain.
• Weakness
  I’ve experienced this one as well.  I don’t have the strength or endurance I had just a few weeks ago.
• Weight gain or increased difficulty losing weight
  This started even before the surgeon removed my thyroid, and I’ve been keeping a close eye on it. I don’t think I’ve gained anything in the last couple of weeks, and may have even lost a pound or two.
• Coarse, dry hair
  So far, I haven’t noticed this problem.
• Dry, rough pale skin
  The skin on my hands definitely mirrors this.  It’s much drier than it’s ever been, even to the point of almost cracking in places.
• Hair loss
  Fortunately, I haven’t see any of this yet.
• Cold intolerance (can’t tolerate the cold like those around you)
  Got this one in spades.  Doesn’t help that my office is in a renovated part of the building where the techs haven’t got the heating working just right yet, and that it’s now December. There was a long part of today where I couldn’t feel my feet and my hands were almost numb with the cold.  I’m the guy who could go outside in short sleeves for 10-15 minutes in the dead of winter, and now I can barely stand my indoor, heated office.
• Muscle cramps and frequent muscle aches
  This was the first thing I noticed, and it’s been getting worse.  Tuesday, I gently set my laptop bag on the floor in the den and really irritated the muscles and joint in my shoulder.  It caused intense pain for several minutes.  Other muscles and joints got in on the act later, to the point that I took two prescription pain killers and a muscle relaxer to try to counteract it.  It helped some.  Wednesday, my back decided to flare up and cause trouble.  Most every morning I’ve woken up with cramps in my hands that are so severe I can’t hold much of anything in them.  Even sitting here typing, my shoulders and arms are hurting.  I’m looking forward to the weekend when I can relax and move a minimal amount.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that stretching, twisting, or exerting any muscle scares me.  Most of the time, those actions cause pain comparable to a “charley horse” that lingers around for a while afterward.
• Constipation
  So far, so good on this one.
• Depression
  How anyone could have any of the above symptoms, combined with the knowledge that they have cancer, combined with the recent death of a parent, and not have some level of depression is beyond me.
• Irritability
  I hadn’t noticed, but apparently I do have this.  I said something I thought was slightly humorous but supportive, but dropped the jaws of everyone in the room because it was apparently “out of character” and mean.  I accidentally said something rude to a co-worker, too, in response to a comment she made… and I didn’t mean to be rude then, either. So while I may not be FEELING irritable, I must be based on the way others are reacting to me.
• Memory loss
  Yesterday, I would have said “no” to this one.  It started to be a problem today.  I’ve forgotten several things, sometimes very basic things like words I use often, and just couldn’t recall them.  I’m starting to understand what Denny Crane (William Shatner) on Boston Legal experiences with his Alzheimer’s.
• Abnormal menstrual cycles
  If this starts being a problem for me, it’ll be time to call the Guinness Book of World Records and maybe The National Enquirer…
  
  
• Decreased libido
  My wife probably wishes this was true.  I don’t think my libido has changed, but my desire to act on it has certainly diminished based on the cramps, aches, pains, and weakness I feel.

In addition to the above, I’ve noticed my voice having trouble today.  It sounds very weak and crackly to me. I can only imagine what it sounds like to others.  According to Wikipedia, that’s a symptom, too.  In fact, their list is a bit longer and indicates that I’m probably in the “late symptoms” category now. Oh, goody.

Monday I start the low-iodine diet.  This will probably take care of any potential weight gain because it eliminates nearly everything I can and do eat.  Fortunately, it does allow for an occasional beer and (homemade) popcorn.  On the serious side, it eliminates dairy products, seafood and sea-based foods, anything with iodized salt, anything with red dye #3, virtually all baked goods (due to iodine based dough conditioners in use), certain beans, more than 6 ounces of meat a day, and lots of other stuff.  What’s left is mostly raw fruits and vegetables, small amounts of home cooked meats without salt, popcorn, unsalted nuts, and homemade foods that you’re positive don’t include iodized salt or red dye #3.

Later in the week, I go in for blood work.

The week after that, I go in for a small dose of radioactive iodine. The next day, a scan. The next day, more tests (I think). That Friday, the “big dose” of radioactive iodine intended to kill any remaining thyroid cells or cancer cells.  For 6 days after that, I’m supposed to keep at least a 5-6 foot distance from others to avoid exposing them to radiation.  Thanks to the two surgeries and my mother’s illness earlier this year, I have no sick time left and barely any vacation days, so I’ll have to work at least one day while I’m in this “radioactive” state.  I’ll try to find a place away from my colleagues and as far as possible from others.  In a company of 1200 people that may not be easy.

On the 22nd, the worst of it should be over, as I’ll start taking the permanent thyroid hormone replacement and eating my normal diet again.  By Christmas, I’ll no longer be (dangerously) radioactive so I won’t be excluded from the festivities.

That’s all for this round. I’ll share more once the diet starts.

The next step will be for me to meet with the nuclear medicine specialist who will eventually administer radioactive iodine to me.  That appointment has not yet been scheduled, but is expected to take place in the next couple of weeks.  After that meeting, I’ll most likely be placed on an iodine-restricted diet, designed to make any thyroid or cancer cells remaining after surgery starved for iodine.  Then, when the radioactive iodine is administered, they’ll grab up all they can get and die out.

As I understand it, for 5 days after taking the iodine, I’m to minimize my exposure to other people to prevent the radiation from affecting them.  If you’re curious as to what those restrictions might be, there are other web sites that can tell you.

Once we’ve done that treatment, I’ll start taking synthetic thyroid hormone.  The challenge will be to determine the correct dosage for me, as each person is a little different.  Once that’s settled, I’ll have annual checks to see if the cancer has returned.

The pathology report showed that the cancer didn’t appear to extend beyond my thyroid, which means that the radioactive iodine should get any remaining cancer or thyroid cells.

The steri-strips over my incision are starting to come loose and are expected to fall off of their own accord in the next day or two.  The little bit of the incision that’s already visible doesn’t look too bad.

I’m not feeling too bad. I got a little tired late in the day at work, but walk and some decaf coffee perked me up enough to get through the rest of it.  There is a small amount of pain left in my throat, and the incision area itself occasionally burns a little, but I haven’t had to touch the prescription painkillers for days.

There are lots of doctor visits in my immediate future… follow-up about the surgery, planning for the radioactive iodine treatment, working out a dose of synthetic thyroid hormone, and whatever else might arise in the meantime.  Still, I’m happy to have the cancer out of my system and to continue on.

I spent Tuesday night in the hospital, where they monitored my calcium levels and other vital signs to ensure that the surgery went well.  Although the hospital staff was very attentive and treated me very well, it was still a fairly unpleasant night.  Every time I tried to fall asleep, my mouth and throat would dry out and wake me up.  I’m pretty sure I saw every hour pass from 3pm when they put me in the hospital room until about noon Wednesday when they released me.  When I got home yesterday, I took a couple of pain medication pills and a nap on the couch.

In terms of recuperation, I’ve been asked to sleep with my head raised up so that any swelling caused by the surgery will be carried down to my chest rather than remaining in my neck.  That makes sleeping comfortably a little difficult, but not impossible.

Today, I was allowed to shower as long as I didn’t get the surgery area on my neck too wet and didn’t attempt to scrub or dry it.  That probably did as much to help me feel better as the pain medication.

All things considered, I actually don’t feel too bad.  The surgery site looks like something from one of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments.  It’s stitched up and covered with “steri strips” (tape-like stuff).  The steri strips are a bit bloody-looking, which contributes to the Frankenstein look.

My throat is still a bit raw and sore from having a tube stuck down it during the surgery.  That’s probably the majority of the pain I’m feeling right now.  The surgery site doesn’t hurt much, unless I put stress on it by moving my neck too much in any one direction.

All that prevents me from returning to work at this point is all the paperwork.  Unfortunately, it looks like I may have left that on my desk Monday.  Hopefully, my wife will be able to get that sorted out for me tomorrow.