Done! with stage 1...

So, it has taken me two weeks of hard work, but I finished (stage 1) of my prints today. Just felt a need to say, "Arghh! Yeah! Relief!." For Christmas my mother bought me the electrical connection from my home made exposure machine to the circuit box and it works so well. I'm pretty pumped.

Adventures

When our son was small, about 5 years old, in an effort to help him cope with life's vicissitudes, I used to tell him that we weren't having difficulties we were having adventures. Stupid me. When he was seven whenever we left the house, he would ask in a despairing and anxious voice, "Mom are we going to have adventures today?"

Well, the spouse and I are having adventures that are common to a great many people right now, but it does not make them any easier. Our adventures involve joblessness and loss of John's retirement fund. So we're wracking our brains trying to find solutions. Meanwhile...

On the flip side I realized the other day that I have passed my first prognostic mark. The first life expectancy deadline was 18 months! Well, I have survived longer than that - so far so good! The next deadline I was given was 3 years, then 4 1/2 years. Things are looking up because the new research (2008) done on Zap 70 anomalies is a 5 1/2 year life expectancy. You probably do not remember (because I barely remember) that I have a 58% Zap 70 expression which is a bad bad thing. What is strange is that it is usually accompanied by one other bad thing - Immunoglobulin Heavy Chain (IgVH) unmutated genes. And that I do NOT have; my IgVH mutate properly as they should. It's like one shoe dropping and the other not. It puts me in this little 2% group that the medical folk just don't know much about, but they are learning. And I am happy to get another statistical year added to my life expectancy. Reality is, of course, that only God knows how long I will toddle along the surface of this earth, but I am cheered up nevertheless when I contemplate my statistical bonus year.

On the strange side when I was reading about Zap 70 proteins, I discovered that it is a factor in sarcoidosis which is one of the diseases that my brother died of in 1988. The Zap 70 issue made us both "lymphoproliferative." How's that for a mouthful? It means - produces too many lymphocytes. So he ended up with sarcoidosis and I ended up with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. It makes you wonder...

Flipping back to the happy side, my younger sister had 1/2 her thyroid removed recently because it had a large node on it. The doctor was very concerned that it would be cancerous. It was not! So we are relieved and happy about this and she was able to keep the other half.

It was so cold for so long here that no one had the flu. So I cheerfully regressed and took off that annoying winter face mask. Rewarding me generously for my perfidy, is the number one sinus infection of 2009! Pay attention, Kathleen, you are immune compromised.

I went to a party recently and forgot to put it on (honestly). Every other person said, "Kathleen, where is your face mask?" One person even offered to go to my house and get it. Good friends are also accountability partners. Back on with the face mask. In the balance of life it's weight is a mere annoyance.