Just Testing My New Camera

The Reason

This old fart needed to get with the program and buy a digital camera; so I broke down and got a pretty good one for use during my trip to Hawaiʻi in November.  That will include a round trip on Amtrak’s California Zephyr through the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies, both in daylight, the latter including a ride along the southern bank of the Colorado River through Glenwood Canyon.  On the return trip, I also hope to catch the lights of Denver way down below after exiting the Moffat Tunnel a bit after dark.

Some folks might also find interesting the mostly open-air KOA airport and the quick rise from sea level in Kailua-Kona up the mountains of the Big Island.

The Sale

On my way to my chemotherapy appointment today, I stopped by a camera store in St. Louis County, Schillers Camera, that’s not far out of the way.  It didn’t get off to a really good start, though:

Me:  Would it be possible to find a digital camera on which I could use some screw-on lenses from my 50-year-old Pentax 35mm SLR?

Sales clerk:  LOL!

Actually, he was very polite and understanding; but the clear answer was “not easily and probably not worth it”; so in addition to the regular lens, I’ll probably want a shorter lens and a fisheye for taking pictures of my bedroom on the train, and a moderately long zoom for scenes outside the train.  Another requirement is the ability to copy the images directly to my laptop without going through anybody’s “cloud”.

The camera is a Canon EOS Rebel T7.  I opted for the “Premium Kit” which came with two lenses:  an 18-55mm zoom, which is supposed to be wide angle to normal, and a 75-300mm zoom, that should be good for shots of the train from outside and views of the mountains in the distance, along with some niceties like a camera bag and a battery charger.  I also bought an 8-16mm fisheye zoom just in case I need a super-wide angle for pictures of my Zephyr room from the inside.  Are all lenses zooms these days?

The Test

So here’s a trial run just to make sure I remember how to take pictures. 😎

I’m also learning how to copy the images to my laptop.  With one exception, that was really easy…just pull the SIM card out of the camera and stick it in an adaptor that plugs into a USB port on the laptop.  On Windows, it magically comes up as drive D:.  I haven’t tried to mount it on my Linux partition yet.  (Friday, 08:00:  just plug the SIM card and its adaptor into a USB port and it magically shows up as a mount point on Ubuntu Linux.)

The problem was that I couldn’t get the SIM card out with my fingers.  Fortunately, the Infusion Center’s lab had a small hemostat that they graciously allowed me to use for the purpose.  I have a really small hemostat at home that will now become a regular part of my camera equipment. 😎

The entrance to the Cancer Infusion Center is next to the emergency entrance;

Cancer Infusion Center entrance

but I don’t normally use that.

[trying out the fisheye] I park in the main garage (on the left), not far from the main entrance (on the right), so that I can leave my car out of the sun or rain.

garage/main entrance fisheye view

From there, I have just a two or three minute walk, all under cover, to where I’m supposed to check in.

When they get around to me for treatment, I’m supposed to sit in what is thought to be a comfy chair while I get my drugs;

reclining chair

but the nurse said that it would be OK for me to sit in a regular chair to write this post; and she graciously provided me with one of those bedside tables that they have in hospitals.

my improvised workstation

(The boxy thing that connects by a short cable to a USB plug is the SIM card adaptor.
The black box with a button on the viewer’s left is my Verizon WiFi hotspot.)

I hope to have more interesting photos to show you in the future, at least by the time of my November trip.

I Got Nuked

Yesterday I had the first of five radiation treatments for my cancer.

A bit over a week ago, I lay down in what I gathered was basically a CAT scanner.  I was lying on a couple of bags that they filled with, I guess, some kind of fluid that hardened, forming a kind of half cocoon which would keep me immobile during the treatments.  They then did a scan to generate data that would be used to program the machine that would actually administer the radiation (something like an industrial robot capable of precise movements).  Thursday was a “dry run” to make sure that the machine would perform as expected; then yesterday was the first actual treatment.

You don’t feel the radiation.  The radiologist explained to me that the beam would have about the same power as a dental X-ray, but would take longer to administer the required dose.  You just lie there relaxed and unmoving, except for normal breathing, for the fifteen or so minutes that it takes.

To mitigate the boredom, I mentally recited the lyrics to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”; and just as I was starting on “The Balad of the Yarmouth Castle”, they were done.  I made it home in plenty of time to catch DW News on the PBS World Channel. 😎

I’ll have four more treatments, Monday through Thursday; then I’ll start chemo on the 6th.

The radiation machine (I should probably ask what the correct term for it is) was interesting.  The radiation is generated by a roughly disk shaped thing with about an eighteen inch diameter, maybe a bit more, that looked something like this [from Wikipedia] although the rest of the machine was quite different.  Opposite that is a flat thing that, I guess, notes where the other side of the beam is to provide feedback for proper aiming.  The whole thing rotates around you, presumably to zap the cancer from different angles so that they don’t kill the tissues that you want to still be hanging around. 😎

Inside the disk were pairs of pointy things that were about 1mm or so apart.  I had guessed, probably incorrectly, that the “antenna” is actually the space between the points.  There were maybe ten or fifteen pairs, all in slightly different positions so that they would be slightly out of phase with each other, giving more precise control over the directionality of the beam.  This whole paragraph could be way off the mark, though, if the radiation’s wavelength is in the millimicron range, which is what I get from the Wikipedia article.  I’ll have to ask for a more detailed explanation of what’s going on next Monday, not because I have any desire to practice medicine without a license 😎 , but because I’m a geek who’d find it interesting.

Possible January Trip

I just found out that the ISO C committee will be meeting in Strasbourg, France in January.  I haven’t used good old C in ages, but I’m a member of the committee (actually INCITS PL22, an ANSI committee), and so I could attend; and it would give me an excuse to travel.

I could take Amtrak to Boston, fly Icelandair to Heathrow, then the Piccadilly Line to King’s Cross St. Pancras, Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord, and a TGV from Gare de l’Est to Strasbourg.  I could mostly handle the 800m walk between the two Paris stations; but I see that there’s a stairway on the route that might be a bit of a challenge with two bags and a walker.  Does anybody know of a good way around that?

Motion on the Cancer Front

I had a bronchoscopy on Friday* looking for any movement of the cancer to my lymph nodes.  Everything looked normal, and although I haven’t seen the detailed results of the biopsy yet, I got a phone call from the radiologist’s nurse a while ago saying that there’s no evidence of additional cancer.  That’s good news because it means that the radiation treatment can concentrate on the one lump that we already know about.

I have an appointment with the radiologist tomorrow a bit after noon when we’ll work out the treatment schedule.  I’ll also have another CAT scan, I guess to make sure that the lump hasn’t moved; and I’ll get fitted for the cocoon that will keep me immobile during the radiation.  I’ll update this post tomorrow if there’s actually any more to say.

I’m glad to get moving on this.  I’ll have several radiation treatments (three IIRC); and the chemo, which will have to wait for the radiation to be done, will require four sets of three treatments on consecutive days, the four sets separated from each other by three (IIRC) weeks.  This already bumps into a trip that I’ll be taking in November by a couple of days; but the oncologist, who’ll be doing the chemo, said that he can work around that.  We’ll see…

Update 2023-08-16:  I now have a schedule for my radiation treatments starting a week from tomorrow:  six weekdays from Thursday the 24th through Thursday the 31st.  I’ll have about an hour and a half of driving (round trip) for fifteen-minute appointments. 8-(

I’m told that the first visit will be a dry run just to make sure that everything is working correctly; then I’ll have five actual treatments on Friday, then Monday through Thursday.

I also have some chemo appointments scheduled for later this month, but I think I remember the oncologist saying that we have to wait until after I’m done with the radiation before starting the chemo.  I’ve sent the oncologist a message asking whether we need to reschedule.

Today’s visit went pretty quickly.  They had me lie down in a CAT scanner on top of a couple of bags that, I guess, they filled with some kind of stuff that hardened around my torso.  They then did a CAT scan, I guess to make sure that they know where everything inside me is, and made some marks on my chest, I guess to make sure that they get me correctly positioned in my half-cocoon for the treatments.

Pierce R. Butler commented on a previous post suggesting that I might want to take the half-cocoon, which he called a “mesh”, home with me after the treatments are done.  It doesn’t look like what they made is something I’d ever need for anything.

*The bronchoscopy required general anesthesia, so this extreme introvert, because he has nobody he can rely on to take care of him afterwards, had to spend Friday night in the hospital for “observation”.  I’ve never had any problem with general anesthesia, so as expected, nothing was observed. 😎

I didn’t really mind, aside from the boredom; but I thought that I was taking up a hospital bed for no good reason.  When I mentioned that to one of the doctors, he laughed and said that he’d had patients admitted for less reason than that, so I guess I’m not a bad guy after all.

My Story

I just watched a really interesting video that Abe Drayton posted on his blog, a lecture by Tim Wise that was mostly about white supremacy.  Two of his points jumped out at me:

– We have a systemic problem.  It’s not that ordinary folks like you and me are bad people (although there’s some of that), but that the system itself has been designed in a way to allow the majority of folks to avoid even noticing all the inequities in society because they’ve had the advantage of never having it affect their own lives in any serious way (and as a cis, het, white, male boomer, I’m one of ’em).

– Later in the talk, maybe during the Q&A, he reminded us that debunking goofy ideas with facts isn’t particularly effective because the people with the strange ideas just double down.  He suggested that what’s more effective is something that connects with individuals, basically storytelling.

So let me begin with a story from when I was about seven years old; and now that I’m seventy-seven (or will be tomorrow), I still remember it.

We were living in Delray Beach, Florida which, in the early 1950s, was still racially segregated.  I remember us driving home one night after visiting some of my parents’ friends; and at one point, we passed a pedestrian about whom my dad remarked, “He’s going to be in trouble.”  I asked why, and it wasn’t because the guy was obviously inebriated, but because he was Black; and there was a law back then that Black folks had to be in “colored town” after dark.  Even at age seven, I recognized the asymmetry (to put it mildly), although I wouldn’t have had the vocabulary back then to express that.

Tying that in to the first point I mentioned, I guess I’ve long been aware of the evils of racism because I learned something about it at an early age (even though I was in no danger myself); but I didn’t become aware of other systemic inequities until much later.  Just two examples:  I didn’t recognize the unfairness of sexism, and didn’t become a feminist, until I was in my thirties; and I had no clue about LGBTQIA+ issues until about a decade ago; in both cases because I simply had no need to notice.

There are some signs these days that maybe we’re starting to notice, and that gives me a little hope.  At least I hope I never stop learning.

Possible Movement on the Cancer Front

I got a second PET scan* on the 19th; and the results were basically the same as the one I’d had four months ago:  the cancerous lump hadn’t gotten any bigger, and there’s still no evidence of any spread to my lymph nodes.  It’s possible that I might have to get another biopsy of the lymph nodes just to make sure; but the last I heard, the biopsy guy didn’t think it would be necessary.  We’ll see how that goes.

Assuming that I don’t have to worry about the lymph nodes, which the oncologist I saw today said he thought was highly likely, I’ve decided on radiation and chemotherapy.

I’m told that the radiation will be something like a dental x-ray, except that it’ll take about fifteen minutes during which time I’ll be immobilized inside something that they’ll mold around my body.  IIRC, there will be three treatments on separate days, and I’ll be able to drive myself home after each one.

The chemo will be more complicated:  three treatments on consecutive days repeated three more times at 21-day intervals.  This would bump into my trip to Hawaiʻi in November by a day or two; but the oncologist said that he could work around that.  He also said that, although some folks do get nausious from the drugs that he’ll use for the chemo, very few do; and I should be able to drive myself home after those as well.  That’s important because the flip side of there being no one who depends on me for anything is that there’s nobody whom I can reasonably ask to drive me to and from the hospital and then take care of me after I get home.  (This will be an issue if I need another biopsy since that requires general anesthesia; and so I’d need to be admitted to the hospital overnight for observation.  I wouldn’t mind that except for the boredom, but it seems wasteful to me…like I was hoarding a hospital bed for what would likely be no good reason.)

If there are no lymph node issues, and if the radiation and chemo work as expected, both the radiologist and the oncologist assure me that I should retain sufficient independence and cognitive abilities to continue serving on the ISO C++ committee through next year at least.  That’s good news because next summer’s meeting in Stockholm has fallen through, and I’ve made an offer to host the committee next June or July.

I feel a whole lot better now that I have a plan.

*This was basically like a CAT scan except that they shot me up with radioactive sugar; and the cancer cells said, “OOO, FOOD!”  Unlike a CAT scan, I had to observe a low-carb diet the day before and not eat or drink anything except water after midnight the day of the test; and it took about 45 minutes of my just lying around to get the sugar distributed around my body.

New Subject

Katydid commented on my ethics post:

OT: Amtrak in upstate NY halted as tracks were washed out by “once-in-a-thousand-years” flood.

Yes, I’ve been reading about that on an e-mail list, AllAboardRailDiscussion@groups.io.  That’s Metro North’s Hudson Line to Croton-Harmon and Poughkeepsie, so it’s a big problem for commuters; but it also shut down Amtrak’s Empire Service and the Lake Shore Limited which use that track.

I’m not sure exactly where the flooding happened, but I’ve ridden on that line numerous times on the Lake Shore, and there are places where the track runs right along the eastern bank of the Hudson.

Update:  some photos

There’s also flooding on CSX’s River Line on the western bank.