A few tidbits...

Hi all. A few minor changes you may have noticed...on the right side there's now an option to follow this blog by email, which I'm assuming means you'll get an email whenever I post something new. Also, I have a couple of links to some other blogs from cool people I've met online because of this cancer. Their blogs have tons of good information and resources for eye cancer patients, as well as just some interesting reading about people and the way they think about and deal with crappy things that sometimes happen to us. If you have some down time, I recommend taking a look at their blogs.

In my previous post I included an image that shows approximately what I see out of my left eye, compared to what my normal eye sees. After uploading the animated gif, however, I realized that for some reason, Google's blogspot doesn't support animated gifs. I ended up putting the image up here, in case you wanted to see the animated version. The flickering spot in the left side of my vision seems to be represented pretty accurately. I also tried to include one of the flashes of light that I get to see all the time. I'm going to have to admit that I'm not going to be winning any awards for computer animation in the near future (the animation of the flash of light is really hokey). These light flashes are sort of like snowflakes...no two are alike. The example I included will give you a general idea of how they appear to me. Sometimes they are different colors, sometimes they move faster or slower, and there are anywhere between 1 and 4 flashes I see simultaneously. I'm pretty sure that they only appear and travel throughout the dead part of my vision, which I find to be pretty interesting.

I've mentioned several times that if this type of cancer metastasizes, which it does about 50% of the time, it is universally fatal. No one has beat it yet. One of my online cancer friends, Sarah Elizabeth (the one who has the [Love x Infinity]^2 blog that I've linked to), is dealing with that realization right now. She gave an excellent interview to her local NPR station in Virginia (link here) that I recommend listening to if you have some time. The recording starts with some station announcements, so if you jump ahead a little bit, her interview starts at 2:10. Her interview is about 15 minutes long.

I hope everyone is doing well. More to come later...