End of MLOKnitting

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As many of you may be aware by now, my wife Melissa lost her battle with
ovarian cancer.  She fought a hard, brave fight against cancer and its
wicked complications for many years, and she’s in a better place now.

There will be a visitation and a service on Friday 3-7pm and Saturday
10am-noon at Riverside Chapel/Modetz Funeral Home in Waterford, MI.
Here’s the specific details:

http://www.modetzfuneralhomes.com/?siteid=146&action=1&value=12&menuitem=1861&obituaries_action=2&obituaryid=143169

Please fill out the guestbook and|or photo album section if you like.

After the service on Saturday, there will be a buffet lunch at Santia
Banquet Hall, right next to Gino’s Restaurant.  If this place sounds
familiar, it’s where Melissa and I were married 9 years ago:

http://ginospizzakeego.com/

Instead of paying for flowers, I strongly urge you to send donations
to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund or St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital:

http://www.ocrf.org
http://www.stjude.org

Both causes were near and dear to her heart.  She had a big heart.

Melissa had many crafters and folks with an artistic bent among her
circles of friends.  Anything hand-made, hand-picked, hand-crafted,
made with love, etc. sent for condolences is most welcome.

Here’s the formal obituary in Tuesday’s Detroit Free Press:

http://deathnotices.michigan.com/view-single.php?id=318199&token=a631ce63bc3e13da5b7496936b407a98c38eae30ced00d3012ba7193abd025df#book

Please pass this info to others who were in Melissa’s life.
Comments in this blog would be welcome. I’m not taking it
down for the foreseeable future. But there won’t be any
new posts beyond this one.

Take care,
-Mike (The DH)

Stomach Bug from Hades

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For the past two weeks I have been laid low by a stomach bug.  It is probably the worst bug I’ve had in years.  I was either in bed or in the bathroom.  The only thing I could do is watch things like My Fair Wedding!  I didn’t have to think very hard to keep up with some of the crazy bridal ideas David had to work with.

I truly hope none of my readers have gotten this bug as it is nasty.  I know it is going around because when I went to the doctor I was the fourth patient that day who had presented with it.

Here’s hoping that my stomach has time to heal before anything else decides to hit!

Girls Weren’t Always Gaming? Says Who!

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I’m old.  I admit that.  At 40–something, I remember when there were no computers available for one’s home. I can also remember the magic that was Pong!

Yes, I remember playing all of the variants available from the console you hooked up to your TV.  Channel 3 or 4 –  depending on what market you were in –  was where the TV had to be to turn on and enjoy Pong!

My brother and I also had an original Atari.  Shamefully, I admit to having played and beaten the worst game in history, ET: The Extraterrestrial (fast forward to 2:12).  I was too young and stupid to realize how bad the game was.  Of course, I spent most of my time playing Breakout!, Pac-Man, Ms. PacMan, Asteroids, Space Invaders, etc.

About the same time I –  and many of my female friends –  were learning about this new computer thing via the Vic20.  My dad wouldn’t allow us to have a modem.  I think it had to do with the hacking ring that got arrested in our neck of the woods pretty early.  So, I got the big book of BASIC games and typed in the code for Moonlander and Worms, saved it to cassette tape, and would play those games.  I learned quickly that actual programming wasn’t going to be my career as even perfectly written code didn’t always compile for me.

Soon we graduated to the Commodore 64 in all its graphical glory.  I spent hours doing ice skating in Winter Games and diving in Summer Olympics.  My brother and I fought over this computer.  I won because I needed it to type papers for college –  as well as a gaming box.

Then we got our first laptop computer which ran DOS.  The games that captured me?  Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and SimEarth.  I don’t know how many hours I spent playing SimEarth.  It really was a better game than any SimCity has been.

Around the same time I bought myself a Nintendo Entertainment System.  It was the first luxury item I bought myself after graduating high school.  I, of course, bought Tetris with it.  Tetris, was, however, my downfall as a gamer for quite some time.  After I burned out my Nintendo, I stopped playing games for a very long time.  Why?  Because I couldn’t find my beloved Tetris!  I was also a poor editor in her first job out of graduate school.

Yep, I stopped gaming because I was without money.  I think this happens to a lot of women in gaming.  Women do, overall, earn less than men and due to biology have higher expenses.  (Why are women’s necessities so darn expensive?)  Now, I don’t think this is true only for women, but, curiously, my brother never had to give up gaming.  Of course, he did have to move in with me for a short time…

I can’t imagine I’m the only woman in her mid-forties or older who has been playing video games since the 1970s, at least off and on.  Readers, please tell me of the games you played, miss, or are playing now.

Home From Hospital!

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I came home from the hospital last night and was tired and hungry which meant I was also very, very cranky. This was not helped by the fact that I still had my dishes stacked in the sink from when I left.  It is kind of hard to do dishes when you are unable to stand.  This is not to say that I blamed my husband who managed to do a lot of laundry between taking care of SMR and shuttling between home and the hospital. When I flipped out at the thought of cleaning the kitchen before being able to make something to eat, the poor guy thought I was mad at him.

I was very tired when I got home due to two main reasons:

  • A severe allergic reaction Saturday night after attempting to eat a side salad from the hospital.  Corn allergic folks beware, citric acid rinses are everywhere. 
  • I was up until 3:30 Sunday night reading a book I couldn’t put down. 

The allergic reaction was handled very well by my nurse and PCA.  I did have to remind them a couple of times that, no, I did not need a Xanax as the anxiety is part and parcel of an allergic reaction.  That sense of impending doom is how most folks recognize that it is an allergic reaction rather than food poisoning or some form of gastritis.  I won’t go into anymore details other than to say that A, my PCA, really did know what to do to help me get through it more comfortably.  He is going to make a great nurse.

As to the book?  It is called Blood Secrets and is about JuJu in Nigeria.  It was written in the late 1980s and I had just reached the interesting part.  I might even review it.  Between visitors and doctors, I hadn’t really had much of a chance to read.  Make no mistake, I was really glad of the visitors!

Now?  I’m just grateful to be home with my husband and little dog even if my leg is still a bit on the sore side.  I don’t have to baby it, but I do have to be careful not to overdo it.

Puppy ICU to Human Hospital Admission

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On Friday, February 8, 2013, SMR was taken to the vet for a bruise on his eye.  Little did we know that this was a saga in the making. Our beloved pekingese is 14 years old, but generally in great shape.  As a preventative measure, we get his blood cultures done to warn us of any problems.  Weirdly, his came back “borderline” at 4.9 for his red blood cell count.  The veterinarian wanted us to bring him back on Monday for a check up.

During this time I, MLO, was suffering side effects from the liver biopsy and increasing pain in my left leg.  I had had pain since before the biopsy, so thought it was the normal aches and pains of a person who had had taxane treatments in chemotherapy.

We spent the weekend enjoying our pekingese and his non-antics such as stealing someone’s seat.

On Monday, I had a Liver Function Test blood draw in the morning.  At around 5 PM, DH and I had to take SMR to the veterinarian for his follow-up.  His numbers had dropped from 4.9 to 1.9 and he was bruising!

We love our dog and the folks at the veterinarian know this.  Immediately, they were taking the appropriate x-rays and ultrasounds while setting us up to the Veterinary Referral Hospital.  (It is an excellent veterinary hospital.)  While our veterinarian was working overtime to get SMR’s charts together and information off to the Referral Hospital, the Referral Hospital was setting up for his arrival.

At about 7:30 PM we were able to take SMR directly to the Referral Hospital where he was checked into the ICU unit.  DH wanted to figure out a way to spend the night next to SMR’s cage.  The staff had to throw him out.  I had been delivered home by my brother-in-law since my leg was starting to act up even more and I needed to get off of it – not to mention that it was time for a number of medications to be taken.

The next day we spent fretting about our pekingese in ICU.  We got to visit him in the morning at 10 AM while we awaited the specialist veterinarians diagnostic plan.  SMR was going to need more ultrasounds and a bone marrow biopsy.  The veterinarians were afraid it was a blood cancer – an answer to which we are still waiting upon.  After his biopsy, we were able to see him again at 10 PM where we saw a funnily shaved dog who was very, very groggy from painkillers.  We got to spend about an hour with him.

On Wednesday, I broke down and called my GP as my leg was getting worse, not better.  I went in and the doctor – like other doctors in the past week – became obsessed with my infected big toe and seemed to not quite hear that my left leg was where the pain was.  I think the giant mass of redness that was my big toe would distract most folks.

We got to see SMR for two hours that evening.  This included dinner time.  We watched in amazement as SMR willingly ate dog food until you could see the thought:

Wait a minute!  Mom and Dad can’t learn I’ll eat dog food without people food or it being hand fed me!

Now, at this point, several of the folks who worked at the Referral Hospital were commenting on how SMR had gotten his technicians to hand feed him.  Did I mention he is good at being spoiled?  Not only that, but many of them were complimenting us on what a good patient and a snuggle-bunny SMR is.  Someone actually called him a “model patient.”

From visiting his majesty, SMR, I went to get x-rays of my feet since the pain seemed to be increasing dramatically.  My doctor hadn’t ordered them “stat” for some reason, so I still don’t know what they say.

So, on Thursday, February 14th, Valentine’s Day, we got to bring SMR home from puppy ICU.  He still needs to be watched closely and be given medication since we are still waiting on results from his bone marrow biopsy.

I got to scratch his SMR’s head and rub his belly as I went off to get ultrasound to check for a DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) in my left leg.  Since the title of this post includes a human hospital admission, you can guess that I’m writing this blog post from a hospital bed where they are treating my DVT.

This has been a bad week in the mloknitting household.  SMR is sick and had to go to puppy ICU. He did get to come home as long as he is under constant observation.  MLO ended up in the hospital for a DVT on Valentine’s Day.

Ovarian Cancer in Liver but Nowhere Else

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The biopsy confirms that my wife’s ovarian cancer, which had been present in her abdominal area, is no longer present there but is now in her liver.  This manifestation is strange in a couple ways:

  • Ovarian cancer tends to spread moreso than relocate.  In my wife’s case, it’s essentially left the abdomen and reappeared in her liver within 3 months, without spending obvious time between the two.
  • It doesn’t usually progress deeper inside multiple lobes of the liver.  In my wife’s case, it’s within 3 lobes.  As a consequence, it’s not a candidate for many traditional liver surgeries.

At the moment, my wife feels ok but not great.  She’s still not 100% from nearly a year of chemo.  But mostly she’s suffering from pain from the liver biopsy.  It took the doctor several attempts to obtain the liver biopsy.  I was in earshot for the whole experience.  Trust me when I tell you it’s something you never want to be in earshot of.

So, we’ve hit an ugly fork in the road.  The action plan over the next couple weeks is to investigate one of three possibilities.  There’s some potential mutual exclusivity involved — pick one option and the other two *might* not ever be available.

  1. Conventional chemotherapy: That’s the path we’ve been on for the past year.  My wife hasn’t had obvious external symptoms of cancer, and there’s nothing in the abdomen where there was before, so we may just need more.  She’s had Taxol-carboplatin, Gemzar-taxotere, and Avastin in twisty combinations.  The next drug to try would be Topotecan.
  2. Clinical trials:  The doctor is researching a number of domestic Phase II clinical trials that she might be eligible for.  Most of them involve my wife (and perhaps me) temporarily relocating to somewhere else in the country — Maryland, Illinois, Texas, etc. My wife’s relative health works in her favor as far as eligiblity, overall, but the devil is in the details.
  3. Less-conventional surgery:  We’re getting a second opinion on edgier procedures like gamma knifes, radio and other forms of ablation, etc. and just generally getting a second opinion on my wife’s liver from gastroenterologists who specialize in that kind of thing.  It turns out that one of the best programs for this in the country happens to be local.

We’re all over thhe map in terms of how we’re feeling about all this — anger, numbness, depression, utter exhaustion, etc.  The only real constant is stress.  I’m writing this out so I can attempt to focus on other things that I have a bit more control over.  Also, because I’m having a hard time staying asleep at the moment…

Shrinking Cysts with CA125 of 846?

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So, ovarian cancer is funny.  My cysts have shrunk according to the MRI.  One has even disappeared.  At the same time, my CA125 jumps to 846?!?  I did have a dream that it would reach 800 and then go down.  Hopefully it was prescient.

Dr. Sunshine said that CA125 alone just won’t work as a main indicator with this recurrence.  I will need to do two rounds of chemo and then another MRI.  Just had the first dose of round 1 on Tuesday.

I actually got the news of the shrinkage last week, but have had trouble getting my head around it, I guess.  Thus the delay in posting the news.

I would prefer straight NED.  But, one takes what one can get.

Ovarian Cancer Update: Plateau?

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It seems I am at a “plateau.”  This means my numbers are staying around 600 to 700.  This puts me into the chronic disease classification.  I want to be dancing with N.E.D. (No Existing Disease), but that might not be in the cards.

The doctor has ordered imaging to make sure that there isn’t anything wonky going on – and to determine if surgery might be an option.  This would be major recovery time surgery, too.

The weather around here is being psychotic so I have been exhausted.  At least that is what I am claiming!  I’ve been sleeping a lot of the time.  We have had major storms going through and my sinuses do not like them.  Lots of headaches and just being tired on top of the chemo tired.

During my appointment I found out my doctor’s wife is very ill and needs prayers.  For those who do pray, please keep them both in your prayers.  He is a good man with a calling that is hard enough without his wife and family being brought down by cancer as well.

October Ovarian Cancer Update

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The numbers went up, not down. CA125 went from about 646 to 717. Now, I had a root canal where my temporary filling came out – OUCH! This irritation might, just might, influence the CA125 so, the oncology office decided for me to complete the current chemotherapy protocol out:

  • Week 1: Avastin/Gemzar/Taxol (CA125 test at this time);
  • Week 2: Gemzar/Taxol
  • Week 3: Rest from Chemotherapy

So, this week was Week 2. Next week, Week 3, I wait, and hopefully will feel better than I do currently – this chemo regimen is really taking it out of me! The following week I get a CA125 which will determine whether we need to change my protocol.

Now, could I possibly make it more complicated? Yep. I fell last week Thursday and smashed my face into the bathroom floor where my upper gums and nose got bashed. My teeth are still rattled. Soft foods are good foods as far as my front teeth are concerned!

The Secret World : Hidden Horror MMORPG Gem

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I play three games consistently:

All three are excellent.  The first two have large, ever-growing fan bases.  The third, The Secret World, is having a bit of trouble finding its footing.

That is a damn shame.  The Secret World may be the most innovative MMORPG to come out in recent times.  Why?

  • It isn’t set in space.
  • It isn’t a medieval fantasy setting or some variant there of.
  • It doesn’t make you choose a role (tank, dps, healer) that you have to stay with – it lets you create all of those roles through the skill wheel that is not unlike the one in Skyrim.
  • Raiding isn’t their main focus. (Yes there is a raid coming.)
The Secret World Launch Trailer

 

The Secret World is set in a modern day world where every conspiracy theory, myth, and urban legend is true.  It has three secret societies: Illuminati (banksters!), Templars (Crusaders), and Dragon (Forces for Chaos).  There are zombies, mythical creatures from all over the world, but no aliens!  There are also investigation quests that will challenge your existing knowledge or Google-Fu.

The investigation quests are what really set this gem of a game apart from others in the genre.  Investigations have multiple steps, each with their own puzzles to decipher.  There is a need to know about Morse Code, obscure nursery rhymes, and a host of other bits of information.  There is a nice line between holding your hand through these quests and letting you suffer through confusion.  There is even a channel called Mission Hints in the game’s chat channels where other players can see where you are stuck and provide help – or tell you if something is bugged. The community has a number of wikis for the quests if you get really desperate.  But, to get the most out of the game, try doing some research without going to the spoiler sites.

Ragnar Tornquist is the genius behind this gem.  You can tell he and his team did the research to create an amazing experience.  Rumor has it that he is responsible for the lack of falling damage in-game due to some sort of PvP alpha test where he died before getting off one shot by falling from a roof.  I can respect that.  He has committed to monthly or bi-monthly updates.  These won’t just be bug fixes.  The first “issue” – The Secret World  is using comic book style cover art to represent the updates – included a new investigation quest and many more general quests as well as tweaks to existing dungeons. Issue #2 from The Secret World is going to bring 2 new dungeons, a new investigation chain, and a myriad of fixes.  For only being 2 months old, the game is surprisingly stable.

I like this game enough that I started a livestream of my gameplay at http://twitch.tv/mloknitting/ .  You can check out the gameplay and whether, as my husband put it, Supernatural meets WoW is for you.

Casual Gamer Score: 4 out of 5 Stars. The casual gamer will have more than enough to occupy themselves.  I’m an uber-casual, super-slow leveler who has only gotten to the second major area of the game after a month and a half of play.  For those like me, I give this game a solid 4 out of 5 stars.  There were a enough bugs at release and missing features (dungeon / party finder for instance) that I had to ding The Secret World for them.  I believe those issues will be being fixed in the near future despite the Funcom layoffs.  As a matter of fact, for the type of gamer I am, I bought my first ever Lifetime Membership for The Secret World.

Uber (Non-Locust) Gamer Score 3 out of 5 Stars.  Why so low for this group?  Not quite enough content for them.  The Uber Gamer expects a lot because they have forgotten that no game had everything at launch.  These folks need to play multiple games to keep from getting bored.   They also seem to think everyone plays like they do. There are a significant number of these folks who seem to think a monthly subscription fee is an affront to all that is good in gaming.  Monthly subscriptions pay for server and development costs.  They are also the ones who complain about there being a cosmetic items only cash shop.  I can see their point, but just don’t agree with it.  This is, after all, a niche game targeted at horror and conspiracy fans who also like games which means they are going to need multiple revenue sources.

Locust Gamer . . . I’m not even going to bother.  NO ONE can satisfy them.

Now, Funcom is not exactly the healthiest of companies.  Their senior management is under investigation for insider trading in Norway.  More banking scandal in all likelihood.  This should not reflect on what are some very nice gaming assets.  If the worst were to happen – like the pieces of Funcom are to be sold off, I can hope that someone ::: cough :::Trion Worlds :::cough ::: would buy the IP and bring the dev team on board for this game.  It just needs slow nurturing for its followers to find it.

Some of the things Funcom – not The Secret World – did wrong include:

  • Summer release date when gamers tend to do other things than game.  All games, even the steady ones see major downs in active populations during the summer months.
  • Not targeting the horror and suspense fan bases who may have avoided other MMOs because they think they are all like WoW.
  • Not highlighting the investigations and storylines in their advertising.  Well, for that matter not, having good advertising!

I can only hope Funcom is planning on some sort of advertising push around Halloween.  It would be the perfect time for them to catch the disillusioned Panda Bears playing Pokewow.

This game, The Secret World, deserves a loyal and growing population and I hope that this review will and my new streaming of games at http://twitch.tv/mloknitting/ .  If you like horror, zombies, and having fun, check this game out.  If you do, look for “MissMissy” a Dragon on Leviathon Dimension.