3 Weeks After Treatment

I have been back to work for three weeks now, and my first follow up MRI is a week from Tuesday. I am sorry that I have not updated this blog in a while. Getting back into the swing of things has been very exhausting.

Life at work has been interesting. From a performance perspective, I think I have been doing great. I have not had any lapses of reason. I have been able to study and understand complicated issues. I still get very tired toward the end of the day, but have getting in about 8 hours a day. We had some shocking news at work. It was announced that the division I have worked for (almost 8 years now) is being sold to another, much larger, company. Interestingly, I was excluded from the deal - I am going to stay with my parent company, but be assigned to another division. So most of my coworkers will go to this new company, and I will have to learn a new job. The VP of engineering explained to me that I was specifically excluded from the deal because of my health issues. They did not want to add the additional stress on me. I know this sounds outrageous for a company to say they care about me in this day of age, but I feel it was sincere. It is still weird that I will be separated from all my coworkers and not be working on the product for which I helped architect. The whole situation is very complicated, and I try to not get stressed out about it.

Now onto my health.
I continue to go through cycles of feeling pretty good to lousy every couple of days. Last Saturday we had my family over for dinner, and after that I was able to go to a neighbors St. Patrick's day O'party. No green beer for me, just talking with O'friends till 11 O'clock at night. O'MG, I have not stayed up that late in weeks.  Then this weekend, I can barley move. I went for a walk around the block last night, and was afraid I was not going to be able to make it home. I could barley lift my legs to take steps and started dragging my feet.

A couple more strange things. I seem to have developed a roaming body itch. About every 10 waking minutes, a new area of my body itches. I scratch it, it goes away and shows up somewhere else 10 minutes later. My head itches a lot (I think my scalp misses my hair), and I can understand that. But this happens on my legs, sides, chest, arms, etc. A different place every time. I need to ask the doctor if this might be a side effect of any of the meds I am taking. I think this started shortly after my dose of Keppra was increased to 3000mg/day. This doesn't bother me much, but is embarrassing. It makes me feel like a dog....oooh ooh, wait a minute I need to scratch my belly with my back leg....ahh that feels better.

Next strange thing I have noticed is body twitches. I may have talked about this in previous posts. This is very similar to how one twitches right before they fall asleep.  The person falling asleep does not realize this, the their still-awake partner does. But with me, it happens when I start resting. As soon as I clear my mind and start relaxing my body my legs and arms will experience twitching every couple minutes while I am still awake. When I release control of my body its starts twitching. I know this sounds psychedelic, but I think that my body and mind are no longer on the same sleep cycle. It sometimes seems like my body falls asleep while my mind is still awake. The seizures I had back in October / September were like my mind quickly fell asleep and went into a dream-like state, but my body was still awake. Now these twitches are like my body is falling asleep, but my mind is still fully awake. I recently have had dreams (or one might call them nightmares) that I was paralyzed. In this 'dream' I was fully awake, but could not move....even open my eyes. I kind of wonder if this was not a dream at all, but a case where my mind work up when my body was fully asleep. In the absence of the tumor I would laugh this premise off, but who knows. OK, back on planet earth this is not a huge issue for me. I am just tracking my thoughts here.

The biggest issue bothering me now is the upcoming MRI to check my progress. A wide range of outcomes exist here. Its like standing on the side of an expressway with a huge cement truck barreling toward me. There is a good chance it will fly right by, or just run over my toe...but it could also hit me strait on. All I can do is stand here, waiting, watching it approach me.
 
By request, here are a couple pictures with my new commando look. The one on the left was taken on a good hair day, the one on the right not so good. Can you tell which hair is out of place on the bad day?

Bad Hair Day

Good Hair Day