I have so much to say, yet I don't really say it. I wonder why that is. Laziness, perhaps? I have a lot to say about diversity and depiction in video games, social structures, assumptions, hegemony and power groups, representation in writing, voice acting, and so on. But it's not getting said. I have to change this.
In fact, I bet that most of us feel that way quite a bit, even though we blog. What are you sitting on that should be shared with the world?
Bad news: In order to have chemotherapy, you need to take a blood test two days prior to treatment to test for various things, not least of which is your white blood cell count. When I had my TCF treatment, they knew that I would possibly become neutropenic, and accordingly put me on 10 days of Neupogen to boost my counts. It works extremely well. However, on FOLFIRI, I was never put on Neupogen after treatment. What they expected was that since the treatment is much less adverse and that I am still relatively young (I think I have white hairs because of chemo, and not age) that I would not need any Neupogen. It's a pretty expensive drug, after all. I was originally supposed to have my second treatment on Wednesday, March 5 nearly a week ago. I failed the test (they don't like it when I put it that way, but it IS a failure), and had to push back treatment by one week.
And today, I learned that I failed the white blood cell test again. This means that treatment will be delayed by at least a week, probably happening on March 20. I am not happy about having treatment on a Thursday, but them's the breaks. Basically, the doctor made the wrong call in my treatment, and this is the result. My PET scan will need to be pushed back, and I may have to do a seventh treatment to make up for the month that I didn't have any. This also screws up my plans for summer school, sports, travel and pretty much anything I wanted to do in the spring.
Good news: I can now pretty much guarantee that I will make it out for Sunday with no problems whatsoever. For those that do not know, my tradition is to get to Hurley's at 9 am the day of the parade, eat the breakfast provided, drink the Irish coffee included, drink a couple of pints, go to the parade at noon and hang out on the south side of Crescent and Ste-Catherine (drinking), then go to some other bar or two and drink until around 7:30 pm. Of course I am not alone; I am with some core people, and I always either make new friends for the day, or encounter old ones. If you are interested, please let me know and we can make room for you at our table.
The girls (that is, Julie, formerly known as Rose, and her daughter) and I went to the Children's Montreal Movie Festival yesterday to watch Papillons (Butterfly in English, Pirret in the native Swedish), a Swedish movie about a girl that learns to fly under certain conditions. I found it to be all right, but the little girl didn't seem all that interesting as an actress. I know I am probably being overly critical, since she's probably about five years old, but the fact is that it would have been better with a better actress, and I think that they exist, even at that age.
Before this film were two short films. The creator, producer and director of the first one sat beside me. Her name is Carla Coma, and she gets asked about her non-existent connection to Massive Attack all the time. Dubbed, the Taxidermy Princess, she works with stuffed animals (not the plushy kind) and animates them to make cute films. Her film from yesterday, L'écureuil d'à côté (The Squirrel Next Door), was so bizarrely cute I had to include it below. It's only one minute and 24 seconds long and worth a watch.
I love it when I get to talk to directors, producers and other creators of art that I like. It brings me outside of regular reality more than experiencing the actual art that they create.
