Category: Uncategorized
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I ❤ Pig Thyroid
Things are much better than last time I wrote. Much, much better. There have been ups and downs, and I don’t feel very confident that they will stay better, but for the last couple of weeks my ability to function has felt within the ballpark, at least, of normal. What has changed? My best guess…
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My Year in Review
So it’s been a fucking rough couple of months. I limped my way to the end of the semester, sick and foggy. After a couple of not-terrible weeks in December, my symptoms spiked again, and I spent our short break just trying to make it through each day. As the year came to a close,…
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Digging Out
Since the last things I posted were sort of depressing, I feel like I should counterbalance that with something more positive. The last two weeks were extremely rough – lots of 7s and no 3s. But for whatever reason – I have my guesses but really who knows – yesterday and today have been a…
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Writing My Way Through
I’m still uncomfortable being so public about this stuff, even with a nameless blog and a locked Twitter account. I certainly am not this open in everyday life. But it’s helpful for me, and I know is useful to at least some people. And I guess I’m still in the IDGAF phase: I’m doing the…
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Just Raging at the Universe
Usually when I post here it’s when things are on an upswing. Some kind of rough episode has happened, but is starting to pass, and I need to digest it and look forward. Today I’m posting from the bottom, though. I feel like shit and just need to scream into the void. I still have…
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Moving Forward
This has been a very strange couple of months. On the one hand, my book has been more successful than I ever imagined, I was promoted to full professor, and exciting opportunities keep landing in my in-box. Basically, all my professional dreams have come true. On the other, my capacities are clearly nowhere near where…
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The New Normal?
It’s probably good news that I have not been writing here consistently. I’ve been fairly functional since the beginning of April—which is not to say anywhere near “normal,” meaning my pre-cancer state, but able to work and do many cognitively complex tasks. Although it is still unpredictable when the dreaded brain fog is going to…
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An Update, and a Book Recommendation
Last time I wrote, about a month ago, things were bottoming out with the brain fog. My notes say things like “consuming, awful…sense-dominating” and “want to tear [my brain] out of my skull.” Good times. Then came a week or so of intense fatigue, where even lifting my arm from my position in bed took…
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Where Things Are
It’s been a while since I’ve written. Unfortunately, that’s because things have been worse, not better. After six weeks of being pretty functional, I am now up to five weeks of bad and worsening brain fog. For the last two it’s been pretty incapacitating. I am on sabbatical, so for a while this was easier…
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Pills, Power, Policy Part III
I started reading about the last seventy years of pharmaceutical regulation because I wanted to understand something about how the current system of drug pricing—oriented toward a value-based model in which price is (theoretically) based on the value of the additional (quality of) life the drug provides—came to be. That led me into what the…
One Year Later 