good and bad and lost

My dad's brain tumor is cancerous and fast-growing. The surgery removed most of it. He went home from the hospital last Saturday and found out the basic diagnosis on Wednesday. He has an appointment next Tuesday to get the details and lay out treatment. I'm hoping for relatively good news and not bothering to prepare for bad news because I don't see any way to do that.

Silence due to intracranial mass

While my silence here may not be unusual, the reason for it is. Here's the (abbreviated) story of the past few days.

My dad had a persistent headache for two or three weeks when my mom finally convinced him to see the doctor last week. The doctor scheduled an MRI for him this past Monday. The MRI showed a lime- or lemon-size intracranial mass (read: brain tumor) and he was immediately admitted to the hospital. I drove from Grad School Town back to Hometown on Tuesday, barely a week after I'd made the same drive the other way returning from my holiday visit. I packed enough clothes for a week since I had no idea how long I'd be staying.

The surgery to remove the tumor went "as well as [the doctors] hoped." They took out almost everything they intended to, leaving a little behind to avoid unnecessarily damaging his brain. Three hours after the surgery, my dad was looking around and chatting with everyone just as he was before the surgery. His recovery is going very well so far, so we are all relieved and happy. We still don't know what lays ahead for his continued recovery, but we are extremely thankful just to have him return from surgery as the same person.

I slept at the hospital Tuesday and Wednesday night. Last night I slept at my gramma's house since things seemed to have settled a bit more at the hospital. Shortly after I returned to the hospital today, Dad moved to the regular neurology wing. That means he has a private room, fewer monitors, and less frequent nursing checks. He and Mom should sleep better tonight. I'm sleeping at their house tonight and will return to the hospital tomorrow.

Dad will probably stay at the hospital at least through the weekend. We are taking it day-by-day until the pathology report comes in (probably by Wednesday). That should help us lay out a more long-term plan. Dad keeps saying he's going to fight this as hard as he can for his wife, his kids, and the rest his family and friends. "You can't hurt steel."

I don't know when I'll return to Grad School Town. Luckily, I brought everything I need if I get a chance to work or don't make it back in time for classes. Hopefully that will keep me from starting the semester too far behind. Posting may be sparse and/or brief.

New plan for a new year

Welcome, everyone, to 2010! I hope your holidays went well.

2009 closed just the way I hoped it would: quiet, happy, with friends and family. I didn't even attempt work over the holidays, so I feel much refreshed on that front.

My biggest challenge last semester was that I didn't know where I was going or why I should care about my work. I wasn't sure I wanted to follow the professor path anymore, and I'm still not sure of that. But, I think I figured out a way to continue with grad school while exploring other options. It's at least worth a try. I should also get back to my motivational program from October. That was a good idea.

If I don't want to be a professor or researcher, why do I need a PhD? Maybe I don't, but it's not going to hurt. The experience of finishing a huge project can apply to myriad jobs. I'm particularly interested in science writing. I've always liked writing, and it's obvious that I like science enough to attempt a PhD. I also see poor or non-existent communication between scientists and the rest of the world. Perhaps I can make a real difference there.

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't try for a journalism degree in undergrad, but that would have added another year and another ~$17k in loans. I have enough school debt as it is. I'm not sure I can take J-school classes here, either. Most of them are reserved for journalism majors. (Why is that, by they way? It was the same in undergrad.) I emailed the teacher of an undergrad science writing course in a different department to see if the course would be useful to me. He suggested it'd be more useful to get an old journalism book and practice on my own since I already (presumably) know how to write. The Idiot's Guide to Journalism isn't exactly a textbook, but it's a start. And it cost me less than five dollars.

Here's my plan. I'll keep working on the PhD and try my darnedest to get the prelim out of the way before next fall semester starts. Then I'm not required to take any classes the rest of the time I'm in school. That will either free me to take whatever classes I want (whether or not they are related to my field) or to leave Uni-town altogether. I can treat PhD research more or less like a normal job, maybe even give myself a time sheet (that probably wouldn't last very long, but it's a funny idea). Then I can schedule at least a few hours a week to work on science writing type stuff. Those add to maybe 50-60 hours/week? If I decide science writing is not for me, I can easily replace it with something else and use the same general framework.

If my mom can handle a full-time job and two tech-school classes on top of normal life, I should be able to make this work, right? I just need a little more self-discipline than she does since I have much less accountability for my time and progress. Maybe a more quantitative plan... next post? We shall see.

Friday-Saturday, AGU 2009

Friday was my big AGU day, the day of my poster session. One of my group's collaborators had a talk first thing in the morning, so we all got up early for that. It was quite good--one of the best I saw at AGU. We left a few talks later to pick up my poster from Kinko's. Along the way, we picked up some caffeine and breakfast from Peet's Coffee. I highly recommend the California Raisin Roll. It's like a honey bun filled with some creamy filling and raisins, then glazed. After all my (mock) worrying, the poster turned out fine. Huge, but fine. Like a good little group of lemmings, we all trooped back to Moscone South to put up my poster. The advisor had a lunch meeting planned and invited me and my lab mate to join them. My lab mate went along, but I declined. I wouldn't have as much chance to look at the posters in the afternoon as they would. That set me up for another solo lunch outing.

I wandered back to the hotel, checking menus posted in windows along the way to see if anything appealed to me. Cafe Mason seemed like a good option, so I grabbed my laptop and headed back there on my way to the afternoon poster session. I ordered a turkey club sandwich with fries. Not exciting in itself, but it was really well done. Thin sourdough toast, tomato, lettuce, turkey, and crispy bacon for the sandwich and light, non-greasy fries on the side. Perfect for a pre-poster session meal.

The poster session technically started a few minutes before I got back to Moscone South. This was my second poster presentation ever and I was late. Oh well. I met several scientists I knew only by name about my research. All of them gave positive feedback. If I told them my plans for wrapping up this work, they said they look forward to the publication. If they made suggestions before asking me about future work, it was already on my to-do list. In other words, I didn't get much new feedbck on my research, but the reassurance that someone values my work outside of my little research group was valuable, especially with my recent motivation issues. One of the scientists commented that my poster looked very nice, too (someday he'd learn to make a nice poster :P). If nothing else, I got to meet other people in my subfield and they got to associate my name with my work. I'd say the poster session was a success.

My group left the poster session an hour or so early since we had dinner planned in Berkeley. Most of the attendees were in the free beer line anyhow. We caught the BART to Berkeley and found Beckett's Irish Pub for dinner. I ordered a fish fry, which was again excellent. (I'm fairly certain this area does not know how to make bad food.) I didn't intend to order a drink unless something sounded particularly interesting. Of course, my lab mate found a something that fit that description a few minutes after we ordered our food: hot apple cider with brandy. How could I pass that up? It was tasty! I was stuffed and happy by the time we left the pub. We had a bit of time before we needed to catch the BART back to San Francisco, so we wandered the Berkeley campus. Beautiful campus, at least in the dark.

We'd hoped to fit Muir Woods in somewhere, but our flight was too early in the day to make it on Saturday. My advisor suggested a self-guided bike tour of the city instead. Sure, why not? San Francisco only has a few hills. Eight miles later, we'd toured a good chunk of the city between our hotel and the Golden Gate bridge. We ran out of time to cross the bridge. My advisor was sore the day after the long bike ride. I was fine :).

After returning the bikes and retrieving our luggage from the hotel, we made it to the airport with just enough time to grab a bite to eat and board our plane. The San Francisco adventure wound down with a 15-minute delay on the tarmac for air traffic control delays at our destination and a quiet flight back.

AGU09 blogging delay

My last day of AGU and last two days in San Francisco were such a blur that I didn't get a chance to blog about them yet. Rest assured, I will get to it. It might be a few days, though, because I'm leaving for the holidays on Tuesday and have a full schedule until then.