Pleomorphic adenoma with neoplasm evident

[miriam_e]

I wasn't going to mention this here. I tend not to advertise my misfortunes. But it occurred to me that LiveJournal is a place where I should write about things of significance to me, and this is certainly an important event.

I'll start with a brief description, then talk more about what this means to me.

Last Wednesday I was operated upon to remove a tumor from my right salivary gland. It was benign, but growing very quickly so chances were that it "intended" to go malignant eventually. This is a very common kind of tumor that can grow benignly for years without presenting great danger, safely contained within the salivary gland, though it always has the risk of malignancy and once it crosses that threshold it can set up colonies anywhere else in the body... and, well, I prefer not to talk about that.

The operation was quick and effective. They took the grape-sized tumor out with about half my right salivary gland. The incision, while quite large (about 5 inches long) down the side of my neck in front of my ear to part way down my throat, will probably be fairly well hidden by the way I have my hair. One of the biggest (though fairly remote) risks of the surgery was possible damage to the facial nerve, but I escaped that completely. One slight hassle is that my right external ear is now almost completely numb. I don't know how much feeling I will regain there -- almost certainly not all of it. A disturbing fact is that this tumor has an annoying tendency to return. This seems pretty logical -- if a form of cancer is common it is because many of us are are routinely exposed to the cause. If someone develops it once then they have shown a sensitivity that is likely to do its nasty work again unless the cause is removed or lessened. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, nobody seems to have any idea why this particular tumor appears where it does.

What has this meant to me?

Like most of us I know that cancer is incredibly common in our society, but had not really considered that it would collect me in its vast, impersonal statistics. I tend to sail on through momentous events fairly easily so it was a surprise to me that I became somewhat ruffled on finding I had this tumor. I thought I would just handle it and move on, like I do with pretty-much everything. I mean, it is no big deal, right? I found the tumor before it was life-threatening and it was removed quickly and effectively with minimal side-effects. But it caused me to call into question my life and what I am achieving and what I am not.

I haven't reached any firm conclusions yet, but so far I can see that I haven't used my potential as much as I should. I have been on this planet for a few months short of half a century and considering the talents I was lucky enough to develop with the kindness and encouragement from others I have fallen considerably short of where I should be.

Where should I be?

• I am a passable artist. I should be making better use of that.
• I have fairly good writing skills and I should be accomplishing more there.
• I am able to articulate concepts and project them into people's minds in a way that few can. I should be using that to encourage more kids to learn.
• I am a moderately good (though pretty slack) 3d artist, and should have achieved far more with that, especially in view of my ideas on VR fiction and how VR has potential to repair most of society's and the planet's ills.
• I have an unusual breadth of knowledge because I compulsively learn almost randomly and almost constantly from a very wide range of interests. But this is not only good in that it exposes me to a plethora of stimuli, but bad in that I never really developed any ability to direct my interests, and in fact explicitly relinquished such control in favor of letting my attention wander free. My reasoning was that you can never know where important information can come from so it was best to leave myself open to as many sources as possible. I should be using this more to develop my other abilities -- drawing, writing, teaching, and VR -- by synthesising disparate facts into information that is denied others who specialise more narrowly.

So where does this lead me?

I don't know. I have to think on it more. I am tired and more than a bit sore just now.

Gonna have a nap to recharge.

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I'll write a more detailed piece about it soon. I have been meaning to for some time.

I don't think the internet can ever be truly locked up. Some companies may have some success in creating bottlenecks but people will become so annoyed that they will always end up working out ways around that.

Thanks to the brilliant insights of Richard Stallman the GNU Public License can't be subverted by corporate interests without them breaking exactly the same copyright laws they themselves want to maintain. GPL software comes with one assurance: that the user's rights are never taken away. All GPL software must make the source code available, and any software that is built on the GPL software must make the source code available. Read some of Stallman's writings on the subject to understand more fully the ramifications of this. Here is a nice clear piece he wrote about it.

I have heard right-wing nutters rant and rave about how evil this is and that it is a communist plot. heheheh Amazing how often that happens. All you need to point out to them is that nobody forces them to use open software. They are perfectly entitled to go back into the closet of secrecy and beaver away on stuff by themselves, but if they want to use other people's sweat then they should comply with those people's requirements. That much is written in law.

It is a wonderful world when the law can actually be used to protect people from robber barons. :)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Oops, I meant to give you a link to Richard Stallman's article in the cool book Open Sources published by OReilly http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/toc.html

Stallman's article is http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/stallman.html

Others especially worth reading there are Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. Heck it is all good. The whole book is online. I have a paper copy if you want a lend of it... it might be a bit hard to buy these days. Though it might be possible to buy online.

Eric Raymond is a particularly eloquent exponent of open source. His work "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is a very influential piece. You can find it at http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/ along with a lot of other cool stuff.

Also I should have mentioned that all this talk of GPL and open source is why it is impossible to buy out open source projects. If you think about it for a little while you can see why. A company that tries to do so just changes itself into an open source company. A lot of companies are seeing that this actually makes good business sense and are doing just that.

Re:

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Here is a nice clear piece he wrote about it.

Where? You seem to have misplaced the link. :)