Knitting and Hacking
On day 2 of not doing growth hormone shots, my counts for white cells and neutrophils did the predicted drop, down to WCC at 1.5 and neutrophils at 1.0. The doctors had warned not to react to this, since it’s a normal side-effect of the stop of the shots. Now we just wait and see how the platelets do; they were at 20, which is higher than recently but undoubtedly because of the three bags I got over the previous three days. We’ll be watching those over the next couple of days too.
Changing your surroundings
The context switch between being in the hospital and getting to be at home is really strange sometimes. It almost makes you feel like you’ve hallucinated something, but know you haven’t.
It’s the same subconscious shift as doing travel between to distant locations. You wake up in the morning in The Netherlands, and go to sleep in your own bed in Ireland. You’re walking down a sidewalk in Silicon Valley, and hours later you’re waking up on a plane landing in England, almost home.
So my head started to get used to being in my house again, and quickly had to adjust to being again in the hospital. But I’ve also now got lots of happy memories of very recent activities with the boys, and a nice longer length of time Elana and I got to spend together. It really helps to have these thoughts to steer my focus. Sure, part of it makes me miss them more, but that feeling is something of a constant. Instead of thinking so much about being apart, I’m also able to have clearer images of us being together.
Which really makes a difference.
Knitting…
Coming back into the hospital is made easier (a bit) by the passage of time. And for this, knitting really does work. I spent some time on the last third of my scarf project. E was able to visit for a bit after work today, so we started looking at what sort of project I might do next, after the scarf is done. Some sort of a hat, maybe? Still looking on Ravelry, with one candidate so far. (Pattern in my queue and PDF in my library—new Ravelry experiences abound.)
…and Hacking
I also spent a good hunk of the day hacking away on GNU development software (all free and high quality). Most people reading this will wonder if I’m nuts, but it’s actually a wonderful exercise of my mind.
Besides, I burned out doing Sudoku puzzles a bit ago. I got to put the Sudoku book back in our cabinet at home myself, which was an interesting thing to find I enjoyed getting to do. Access to home has a whole variety of perks I’d never have predicted. Just being back around what’s most familiar to you has an incredible effect.
