Year in Review
Dec. 31st, 2005 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellyssianI started this year off (LJwise) with a Year in Review for 2004, so I think I'll finish it off with something similar...
The last line of that YiR was "but hopefully it will have more positive changes and less of the less so…", and although none of my family got into an accident and I didn't see a worsening of my blood pressure and asthma issues, it still has had some serious rough patches.
Justin suffered from an inexplicable bout of hair loss in February - just a small patch, but 100% of the hair in a 1"x2" oval disappeared completely, overnight. At the end of October he wound up in the emergency room again, and was diagnosed with a rare viral disease Henoch-Schönlein purpura. Half a month later, my dad was in with blood clots in his legs. After returning with even more severe conditions, tests revealed a stage 4a gall bladder cancer infecting his liver.
With that kind of insight, I suppose it is still worse not knowing - the time from our noticing the hair loss until the tests turned up okay and the doc said "no problem" (yeah, that one still leaves a nagging feeling...) or the time I spent Google-fu-ing the heck out of words like "rash" and "legs" and "swelling joints" and stuff and came across every single disease and symptom known to man except the one the emergency room doc noted it on first glance, having run into it before; or the time spent waiting to find out what exactly was causing the blood clots because they weren't reacting to the blood thinners like they were supposed to.
But, yeah, finding out it was cancer, and a rare, severe, aggressive one isn't all that relaxing, but still better than the unknown. Sort of. Clean bill of health after treatment will be even better.
Of course, for me personally, nothing else really comes close to making it to the horizon of a YiR - those things have a matter of priority, and that doesn't even begin to describe the devastation and loss that so many of my friends (and their friends, and a few thousand or million handfuls of other folks as well) went through in New Orleans...
So once again I find myself ending with a summary of not being sure where the next year is headed, "but hopefully it will have more positive changes and less of the less so…"
The last line of that YiR was "but hopefully it will have more positive changes and less of the less so…", and although none of my family got into an accident and I didn't see a worsening of my blood pressure and asthma issues, it still has had some serious rough patches.
Justin suffered from an inexplicable bout of hair loss in February - just a small patch, but 100% of the hair in a 1"x2" oval disappeared completely, overnight. At the end of October he wound up in the emergency room again, and was diagnosed with a rare viral disease Henoch-Schönlein purpura. Half a month later, my dad was in with blood clots in his legs. After returning with even more severe conditions, tests revealed a stage 4a gall bladder cancer infecting his liver.
With that kind of insight, I suppose it is still worse not knowing - the time from our noticing the hair loss until the tests turned up okay and the doc said "no problem" (yeah, that one still leaves a nagging feeling...) or the time I spent Google-fu-ing the heck out of words like "rash" and "legs" and "swelling joints" and stuff and came across every single disease and symptom known to man except the one the emergency room doc noted it on first glance, having run into it before; or the time spent waiting to find out what exactly was causing the blood clots because they weren't reacting to the blood thinners like they were supposed to.
But, yeah, finding out it was cancer, and a rare, severe, aggressive one isn't all that relaxing, but still better than the unknown. Sort of. Clean bill of health after treatment will be even better.
Of course, for me personally, nothing else really comes close to making it to the horizon of a YiR - those things have a matter of priority, and that doesn't even begin to describe the devastation and loss that so many of my friends (and their friends, and a few thousand or million handfuls of other folks as well) went through in New Orleans...
So once again I find myself ending with a summary of not being sure where the next year is headed, "but hopefully it will have more positive changes and less of the less so…"
