New York

I'm here. Things have been okay so far. I've had several very strange experiences and some good ones too. I saw Dr. Feldman and he was still very helpful. I like him a lot as a doctor. He's a lot more optimistic and helpful in thinking of ways that I can keep trying to treat this thing. Most doctors would just be loading me up with pain pills and sending me on my way to die. Dr. Feldman is on the cutting edge of anything new in the relatively small world of relapsed germ cell tumors.

I had an x-ray, CT, and blood test run on Monday morning. At my appointment with Dr. Feldman immediately after, he was able to pull up the results of the x-ray. He said he can see a lesion that is at least 1 cm so I'm "unofficially" eligible for the study. I re-signed all the consent forms and set up my appointment for Thursday at 8AM. Once the CT and blood results are looked at I'll start taking the ARQ pills. I have to stay at the office for almost the whole day as they monitor me and how the pills affect me.

After that I've got to hustle back to the subway and make my way up to JFK for my flight.

The place I'm staying is a little hostel in Manhatten. I've never had any experiences with hostels before so I had no idea what to expect. All I knew is that they are the only affordable places to stay the night in Manhatten. It's not so bad. I wouldn't bring Karen here, but it's good enough for me. My room is about the size of a kitchen and has 8 bunk beds in it. The beds are little more than cots on box springs and I think they might have been made for hobbits. Everything is just really tiny. It kind of feels like Europe. That's magnified by the fact that just about everybody here is college age and European. I think they're all just vacationing on spring break. A lot of Swedes, Germans, Russians, British, and even people from South America. Anyways, it has been interesting.

Perhaps I'll post more of the strange things I've been doing later but you're probably all bored by now.

Thanks for the continued love and support,
Sean