Results are in and Oscar my sweet pug does NOT have cancer. Oh, I am sooo relieved. Although the no-cancer dx is fabulous, it seems little O does have a couple things going on, none of which are life-threatening, thankfully.
Full results: stomach biopsy came back normal; lymph node biopsy came back with "atypical lymphocytes" that his vet said they are not calling cancer yet, but it will need to be monitored to make sure that the nodes return to normal size and there are no further changes; his intestine biopsy came back positive for inflammatory bowel disease, which we can treat long-term with prednisone. So Oscar the pug will start getting hopped up on 'roids starting tomorrow.
I was tagged last week with a meme from Portable Knitting Ann...
Instructions: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place, then add your blog to the bottom slot:
invisible handy wipe knits
K-nits
ARTwin Knits
Portable Knitting
Then add 3 people to tag (you're it... in a very non-pressure kind of way, of course)
Miles, etc. (even though she doesn't blog about it, Heather is a knitter, too)
Okay, I'm only tagging Heather. Because I have been so off reading most blogs the past few months to even know whether anyone else has been tagged before. Bad meme-recipient! :)
What were you doing 9 years ago?
March 1997: I was finishing up my undergraduate degrees in Italian and Economics at UC Davis. I still had to take some writing exam to test out of the undergrad writing graduation requirement. I had absolutely no doubts that this test would be a breeze, so I put off taking it until the last half of my senior year. Proving that I wasn't nearly as smart as I fancied myself (and in some fabulous St. Patrick's Day partying), I got really drunk and showed up for the 8:00 am exam still tipsy with the beginning of a massive hangover. The essay question I remember to this day - Discuss the difference between wisdom and knowledge. Which do you think is most acquired during the college years?
My mind went blank. I had a million half-quotes floating around in my head on this topic, none of which made any sense. Wisdom? Knowledge? Clearly I had acquired neither. In fact, I still remember my essay, scrawled in half-drunk penmanship that slanted precariously south-left: "The difference between wisdom and knowledge is ". Yep, that's it. One completely unimaginative sentence fragment.
In hindsight, I should have written an essay about my night of partying before a major exam and the brilliant discussions that took place at wee hours of the morning over yet another round of tequila shots. But I was too drunk for even that. So if I were to write what I was doing come July 1997 (after walking in the graduation ceremony), you would read a story about a summer school writing class and having to delay starting my job in DC, all the while regretting those tequila shots.
What were you doing 6 years ago?
March 2000: I was back in school, in a PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania. I was just starting to contemplate ducking out with my masters degree and not going the full doctorate route. Which I did three months later.
What were you doing 1 hour ago:
Walking the dog and stopping off at the local coffee shop for a latte.
Name 3 movies/tv shows you can’t turn off if you stumble across them on TV:
Law and Order - any of them
Martha Stewart (shhh...don't tell anyone)
Fight Club (the movie)
Name 3 things you want to improve upon this year:
Get more organized
Keep in better touch with friends and family
Expand my cooking repertoire
Name 3 things you can’t live without (aside from knitting):
National Public Radio
The Internet
Non-fiction pop science books
Name 3 things you could live without:
Television
Telephone
High heels
Name 3 things you really like about yourself:
I'm an empathetic listener
When I love, I love deeply
I don't get pop culture references
