A Battle Lost to Heaven's Rewards

To all who knew Joe and/or have admired his strength and bravery:

Thank you for all of your support and love, but unfortunately Joe will no longer be updating his Blog. After an arduous and insurmountable battle, Joe has claimed his reward in heaven.

Though Joe may live in our hearts, he will be truly missed. Be joyful for he has found true happiness in his new life.

For more information, please contact his sister Sarah at sjesena@gmail.com. Also, please mention how you knew Joe. With sincere thanks.

Oh, The Agony

It was NOTHING like the two thorasentesis I had before. The pain after the procedure would normally wear off within 2-4 hours, but this has so far lasted past 12 hours and at a higher pain grade. To top it all off, I ran out of my primary pain medication and was a huge hassle to get another bottle.

As for taking video of the procedure, we did, until one of the medical directors came in and confiscated my SD card. Apparently, the management wants to know before you start filming anything in the hospital. I deleted the video files just for that day - since that's what I excepted him to do anyways, but to also relieve some fault of responsibility to the nurses and the doctor that allowed us to film it. It was some really awesome footage of the best very high-tech procedure rooms I've ever seen. This was at UCLA's new Ronald Regan hospital.

A little over a litter was removed again, but this time through the new catheter. This now makes 3 implants in my body.

And did I mention it HURT?!?! The majority of my left side hurts and also whenever I take in a deep breathe - I can feel the pain coming from my insides.

I was told that I have to drain the plural space everyday for a couple weeks or so...and hopefully it'll be much better at that point.

I guess one good thing that happened today is my purchase of Crysis Warhead - a computer game that I've been waiting for for quite a while. My next "absolute-must-have" game would be "StarCraft II" which should hopefully be released by years' end.

Getting Another Catheter Installed

Tomorrow I'll have a Pleurx Catheter installed for me to easily drain the fluid around my lungs. It's similar to the way they do the a thorancentesis, but it requires a different kind of doctor.

While I'm getting the procedure, they're going to drain another 1000cc of fluid that has accumulated since my last thorancentesis - that's about 2750cc of fluid so far!

I actually had about 4 or 5 choices to deal with the fluid build-up - one would have involved not-so-minor surgery, which I did not want. Going the catheter route seemed the easiest and less painful method.

After The Procedure

The procedure went better than last time - not as painful. The worst part before was the sudden evacuation of the fluid which caused a painful pressure differential. This time I told them to do it very slowly, for my lungs to get used to it.

The total amount of fluid removed was 1000cc. Two weeks ago it was 750cc. If fluid keeps collecting, I just might need to get a catheter that I can drain myself.

If you want to see the actual procedure done on me, check this link out. It was taken by my Hi-Def camera, but obviously YouTube has certain bandwidth constrains so quality is just "OK".

ACk! Not Again!!!

Had another chest x-ray today at my weekly doctor's appointment for the clinical study that I'm in. It revealed even more fluid around my lungs than last time. I have an appointment for tomorrow for another thoracentesis. My oncologist thinks that this may happen again so he suggested that I get a semi-permanent catheter installed for me to drain the fluid myself. This will be done probably next week. All this is most-likely due to the cancer that has spread around my lungs.

The endoscopy that I had a few days ago went OK - everything looked basically normal from what the gastroenterologist could see.

I'll try and take my own video of the procedure (in High Def!) if they'll let me.

Here's a good resource that I found.

What's On My Desktop

Or rather, what's my desktop background?



This is currently my desktop background - character images from the game FFXI Online. I stole some images from another wallpaper but the two Red Mage images are direct game renderings of my own character. The complete Red Mage "Artifact Armor" Relic Set (sometimes called AF2 gear) took over a year to get and its one of the best armor sets in the game for the "Red Mage" job/class.

The desktop that I have at work shows a picture of the starship Enterprise NCC-1701-D; the one used in ST: TNG.

I've also had background images of Gixxer bikes before I bought the real thing. And let me tell you, it looks much better sitting in my garage than on display on my desktop.

Joe's New Tech Toy

I finally came to my senses and bought myself a Canon HF10 Camcorder. This thing captures both picture and video in AVC H.264 at 1080i! Wonderful high definition clarity! It arrived last week and have been playing around with it for some time.

I took some sample shots of me on my bike by the use of a newly purchased camcorder mount for sport-bikes. The one thing that I over-looked was that my windshield was smoked - and so that would mean the video would be darkened and distorted. You'll just have to see it [here] to see how bad it looks.

I also have a video of before and after of my recent endoscopy (they wouldn't let me actually take video of the procedure).

note: I'll be uploading the videos soon...