Happy Birthday

I can honestly say that for a while last year I wasn't sure I'd be here to celebrate another year.

I feel quite blessed right now. My best friend is on her way over, my husband is whipping up a killer birthday dinner, and my dog lies at my feet. I have been back at work for about a month, and we just had our (belated due to illness) honeymoon.

THANK YOU GOD!

I am still weak and easily fatigued, but compared to this time last year, that is a miracle. FWIW, I no longer am a transplant recipient, but hey, I don't have cancer either, so who can complain?

Hard to Believe

I reread my last post and it makes me a little sad. That october admission for a fever workup was really my first hospitalization outside of the transplant as an adult.

Little did I know how often I'd spend inpatient at UCSF in the coming months. It is hard to believe, or really even understand how one goes from working routine overtime and loving it, to this. I have so far to go in terms of recovery before I can work again. I think I left the house around four times since new years for something other than the hospital or a doctor. Once I visited pixar, and three times I went to various stores. I write this from my new 'home' at the hospital. I do feel like I live here at times.

To make a long story short, I have a FUO, fever of unknown origin. Over the course of my illness, I've had severe mouth ulcers, severe gastric ulcers (>40), high fevers, low fevers, fevers, drenching night sweats, sweats, lost my pancreas transplant, beat PTLD Lymphoma, and lost my gallbladder. And lost my ability to eat - I get most of my calories via iv.

And about a year ago, I was living it up at the Wall-E wrap party, getting engaged, pigging out on gourmet food. Sigh.

I am still getting married in a few weeks - the one light in my life ;) I really hope I can get a fever break (I do get breaks, I tend to be febrile for like 6-7 days, and then get 2 days off) around then.

It's just really weird to go from healthy and happy one day (October 1, 2008), to this, and not really understand why you are the way you are and how you got there, and how the hell you can get out.

I hope the docs can find an answer for the fevers and nausea soon.

Update

Yes, so it occurred to me that I haven't written an update in a while. Sometimes I visit my own site to reread the proposal story. I cry when I see people get married on tv. I cry when my best friend gets engaged. I WILL BE A BASKET CASE at my own wedding ;)

In fact, because I am so sure of tears, I am pretty sure we'll be doing the pictures before the ceremony - that way we can spend more time with our out of town guests, and perhaps not be a sniffly snuffly mess at the altar ;)

Wedding planning and a touch of illness have dominated my life as of late. Work is still going well. I recently moved off of the Toy Story 1 - 3D project and onto UP. Medically, I have been doing WONDERFUL since transplant.

But.

Yeah, there is always a but isn't there?

I got a fever last week. At the time I had a high heart rate, low WBC (as always), fever, and low blood pressure. These are all possible signs of sepsis, so even though I didn't feel THAT bad, I got admitted to the ICU.

Better safe than sorry! I am happy to report that no infection was found, and thus it was probably viral. I hope all fevers don't have to be treated this way!

I've also been having a mild gastroparesis flare. It's not THAT mild, but the fact that it is a flare and not an unrelentingly angry stomach like the days pre-transplant make me happy enough that I'm sure I'll work through it.

As for the wedding... I'll have to refer you over to http://www.ffwed.com. It's almost done... like maybe it will be in a couple of days :) I've got the church, the reception hall, the dress, the bridesmaid dresses. I don't need anything else right? Okay, so realistically we still have a bit to do, but I feel like we are at least 50% there.

As I write this post, I realize I've gotten old and settled. I have nothing fun to report! I got my trees trimmed, does that count? My parents visited. My dog is still a lapdog (lab mix). Yes, I think that counts as boring, old, and settled. Too bad ;) I love it.

---------
To plug my tree trimmer, I used Matthew Bowman of Complete Tree Care in Berkeley. Did a great job for a great price if you are looking.

Vacation!

We just returned from a lovely two weeks off from work. We had our good days... and our bad.

We started out by driving up 101 N through the Mendocino Lightning Complex to Ferndale, CA. At some point, we had to pull over and don breathing masks. You read reports/watch TV about air quality and the wildfires, but it does not prepare you for how bad it really is. The smoke just hangs in the air. The visibility at times was down to 100ft. Your throat and lungs burn. Given that these fires burned for over three weeks, I simply don't see how people lived through it. My heart goes out to all of those affected.

Because of the smoke, we didn't make any stops for sightseeing until we hit the blissful foggy air of the coast. We stayed at a wonderful B&B in Ferndale, the Collingwood Inn, which allows dogs. We spent a delightful day strolling around town with the pooch, and letting her run on the beach. Of course we lost her only ball deep in the sand within minutes! After a lazy breakfast, we headed up and onward to Crescent City, CA.

The coastal drive is beautiful. It was surprisingly cold and foggy at times, requiring headlights et al. We very thrilled to find that our campsite at Panther Flat Campground was just out of the fog zone and thus a little warmer. It still got rather cold at night. The poor dog was cold. At one point I wake to find that she has headed headfirst down into my mummy bag with me. Not sure if she could breathe, I rearranged her :) We thankfully were just across from the bathrooms too. Camping became a lot less fun when I started getting up 3X/night to pee! Unfortunately, the next morning I came down with a bout of diarrhea. We pushed though and still managed to get a decent hike in. I was very paranoid about all of the poison oak everywhere, but we and the dog were spared. We spent two days here before heading up to Lincoln City, OR.

We made a few stops on beaches along the Oregon coast to stretch our legs, and take some interesting photography of driftwood. We eventually landed at the Looking Glass Inn - like my favorite hotel ever. They allow dogs - and give you sheets to cover the furniture should your pooch wish to join you on the couch. It is just a few steps from the bay and beach. Very warm here, heavenly. The hotel is all suites, with a full size living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Kaylee, after a few very cold nights in the tent, was thrilled. The best thing about this inn was that there was zero evidence of dogs - very very clean and pristine and a great place to stay.

After Oregon, we headed back inland to meet up with I-5 to take us to Rasar State Park north of Seattle. We met up with Greg & Agi here for an awesome night. Hot and humid => heaven! It was much much warmer than our last campground. Rain threats persisted all night but never came to fruition. We had one moment in the middle of the night when Kaylee was sure something was attacking her in the tent. I reach over to touch her (she was kind of still asleep/having a nightmare) and that set her off. Now there really was something attacking her, me! She bit me!! Okay, not really, just grazed me. She settled down quickly at least. Then, in the morning, the rain came. Our old tent had the full to ground rainfly; the new one that has room for Kaylee, does not. We quickly learned our tent does not stand up well to torrential downpours. We hunkered down for a few hours and decided to head out for breakfast with hopes that it would stop, but alas, it was not meant to be. I stopped in for labwork in a local labcorp and then headed back to camp to pack up in the pouring rain. Boy were we all a soggy mess.

We made a relatively quick hop across the border and drove to Greg & Agi's in Vancouver (suburbs that is!). Here we got dry out, take a hot shower and relax. We had some thai takeout (now THAT's camping, eh?) and played games. Great night.

Onward ho! To Summerland, BC. We arrived just in time for dinner with Julian's complete family: his two sisters, his brother-in-law, mom, and even his dad visiting from china. Several friends of the family also joined in. We awoke early and headed into town for a desperate load of laundry. We spent the afternoon visiting the Nk'Mip Desert Cultural Centre and wine tasting. We bought David a nice bottle of wine before heading home. Unfortunately after dinner that night, I got a mild headache....

Which grew.

And grew.

I hardly slept a wink. I woke up and ate a little breakfast and was astonished when it came right back up. Other than the slammin' headache, I didn't feel THAT bad. Unfortunately, I could keep my medication or any fluids down. We waited until it was time for my next dose of meds and headed into the ER. Prior to this fateful trip, we made desperate calls to my best friend C. hoping she could find some info on our healthplan coverage in Canada. While I vaguely remembered coverage, when you are looking at an ER bill, you kind of want to know for sure. She went out of her way to get the info for us, driving into work on a Sunday. It is a shame that you can get 24/7 service from our insurance company if you have a mental health issue, but if you have a medical emergency, there is no way to get a person to take your call!! I got an IV of fluid and zofran and thankfully was able to keep the pills down. Of course, I woke up puking and still miserable the next morning. In the midst of the confusion, we failed to notice that Kaylee was perturbed by our lack of attention and all of the 'stress' in the house. She unfortunately got in a little fight with her cousin and got a gash on her forehead. It's healed into a solid lump by now thankfully. Julian's dad was smart and picked up on her mood right away; I was in another world.

In fear that I'd need more fluids and another ER visit, we sadly left Summerland early to go to Seattle - where there is both a transplant center AND where I have full coverage. Fate was on our side. As we neared the end of our trip, I was starting to feel better. I was still severely dehydrated (not wanting to puke alot in the car) but managed to get some fluids in before bedtime. We stayed in Seattle for two days, just in case.

We took our time heading home. We stayed overnight in Portland, OR where we visited the world famous Powell's Books, took a long stroll along the waterfront and hit a pub (none for my stomach thank you!) with the pooch.

The following day we picked a spot at random on the map about halfway home to stay... Yeah, we are dumb like that. When we got to Redding, it was 114F! Poor kaylee couldn't even touch the ground without wimpering - it was scorching her feet. Once again, it was like driving through a warzone with all of the smoke. We shared our hotel (with blissful AC) with firefighters, Forest Service workers, and evacuees. Again, being in the middle of it is just overwhelming. I don't know how the evacuees deal with the stress frankly. Also, the AWESOME firefighters work long shifts for 14 days straight. Thank god for these men! (and women!).

We finally arrived home at last, all semi-healthy (man my stomach is slow to recover), and pretty darn beat. Yeah, I know my health got in the way, but we still had a good trip. I enjoyed sleeping with the dog while sick (we don't let her upstairs at home), I enjoyed our good nights of camping, I enjoyed some of explorations on both the drive up and down... there were still a lot of good days in there.

To recap:
Lowest temp: 45F at night, dog burrowed into mummy bag with me
Highest temp: 114F in redding, dog scorching paws on pavement
Conditions: dense fog, blazing sun, dense smoke, low visibility, clear skies, heavy heavy rain, dry as a whistle drought conditions
Favorite stop: probably Looking Glass Inn, Lincoln City, OR
Least favorite stop: Redding, CA through no fault of its own

Bliss

I have a story to tell... if you aren't a geek, you may not recognize that the formating of this post follows IMs (or for you total non geeks like my parents, Instant Messages). I find this fitting... for reasons I'll explain later.

Friday day (May 2nd):
**jfong sneaks around house collecting random articles of clothing

Friday evening:
jfong: Do you want to go out to dinner tomorrow? It'll be late.
sfisher: how late?
jfong: like 9 pm
sfisher: why don't we go sunday instead. I can't eat that late, I have to take my pills at 9:30 pm (on an empty stomach). I mean, it's not like this is a proposal dinner right?
jfong: ok

Friday night:
**sfisher dozes blissfully
**jfong stares at ceiling, unable to sleep, how will I get her to dinner?

Saturday morning (May 3rd):
**jfong awakens sfisher before he leaves for a music workshop
sfisher: groan, why are you awakening me?
**jfong hands her a card
**sfisher opens very lovely anniversary card
sfisher: awwwwwwwwwww. I didn't know it was our anniversary
jfong: it is the anniversary of our first kiss! (Nemo wrap party)
**sfisher decides dinner is okay, she will take pills early

Saturday evening:
**jfong sneaks around house while sfisher takes a way too short shower trying to pack overnight things

Saturday night:
We drove into the city (early, given our reservation was at 9pm). When we get out of the car, he heads to the trunk and pops it... and hands me a pair of tennis shoes**. I look baffled.

Turns out he had booked a boutique hotel for the night right by the restaurant. After a glass of wine in the room, we went down to dinner at Masa's, a very nice French restaurant. We ordered wine and tasting menus, mine vegetarian. I suspected something was up, trying not to burst out saying that, but failed.... I had globe artichokes with mini-asparagus, cherry tomatoes; a Hen of the Woods in madras curry; tagliatele in saffron infused cream; a wax and fava been salad with horseraidish cream fraiche with lemon oil; strawberry mint sorbet; apple tart; chocalates; brioches.... very good!

Dinner nears the end and I am sad that nothing has happened.

We go to the hotel. We putter. I wonder if it really is just an anniversary...

Finally he says I have one more thing for you. I flirt back and say, "a massage?" He answered, "Okay I have two more things for you." And got down on one knee and asked, "Will you marry me?"

So why the IM format? Because that my dear is how we fell in love. Yes, we work together. But we worked in different cities. We chatted often about renderman bugs, builds, how to fix something, about a line of code. But sometimes other questions would pop in there too. You'd be waiting for a one minute render to return and you'd ask a non-work question. Then I realized I missed the chatting on weekends. I convinced myself it was a terrible idea to go after a coworker. Then, dateless for the Nemo wrap party... I suggested we go together as friends. Yes, FRIENDS. However that evening ended in a kiss...

..and five years later, to the day, we became engaged.

**And since everyone keeps asking about the shoes, they were for the next day! It just happened to be the moment when I realized something was up.