The Recluse Report - April 2026 Part 1
1,087 words.
Obligatory tax day remark. I did the responsible thing and waited until the last minute again. Literally throwing numbers into the software about midway through the 15th.
Because of the timing of tax day, following just a couple of days after one of the worst chemotherapy reactions I’ve ever had, I actually waited more last-minute than usual.
Gaming
I saw Bhagpuss talking about Pathfinder: Kingmaker so I played a little more of my game that I started some five years ago.
I managed to wrap up all the pending quests from the Troll Trouble chapter (the one with Jubilost and the one on Candlemere Island with those godawful lightning-blasting wisps) and now I have a clean slate ready to begin the Season of the Bloom chapter.
I pretty much do all the quests that are available to me. In fact it’s very unclear where the “main” quest even is.
That’s the only thing I remember playing. Most of my memory of the last half-month is either watching the Artemis II mission or feeling sick.
Media Consumption
I’m suffering major Artemis II mission live stream withdrawal. I had it on pretty much constantly for 10 days, from when it started, watching the fueling of the SLS, to when it ended, after the last of the astronauts walked off the deck of the recovery carrier.
During my post-infusion fugue state (see below), I had Family Guy running pretty much constantly.
Cancer Corner
I sat down a week or so ago to write a post about the ordinary nature of my chemotherapy treatment weeks. Then, after my 14th treatment on Tuesday the 7th, I had to go to ER twice, struggled with fevers and vomiting, hardly ate or drank anything for about four days, before finally getting to other side of it. So that post spiraled into a novella which is still sitting in a draft I don’t know what to do with.
Long story short: I was a given a new bone strengthener in my infusion cocktail, and the following Thursday night my temperature suddenly spiked up to 101.3 and I started getting chills, so I went to a local ER.
I wasn’t sure if I needed to, but we are told to watch for fevers after an infusion because it could indicate an infection during the time when we’re immunocompromised because white blood cell counts drops after chemo.
And this was the first time this had ever happened to me. I recall measuring temperatures of around 99 before, but nothing higher than that. For reference, my temperature is normally somewhere around 97.5, so a 101.3 feels really feverish to me. In fact, I start to feel feverish (skin hot to the touch) around 99.5.
The ER did not find anything serious wrong. No sepsis, no neutropenia, no flu, no covid. The on-call doctor suspected maybe an upper respiratory infection because I was very congested, but there’s nothing they can do for that if it isn’t a flu or covid.
In the end, they gave me IV fluids for dehydration, and some Tylenol for the fever, and sent me home. I felt much better.
The next day, however, Friday, I felt awful. I struggled to eat and drink. My stomach felt very queasy. My temperature kept creeping back up over 100. I threw up twice. (The second time was right after the main parachutes deployed during Artemis II splashdown, so I missed the actual splashdown.)
Saturday morning I went into the infusion center for some IV fluids. I really needed it. I thought it would jump start my weekend, but it didn’t help as much as I’d hoped.
The whole weekend my stomach was hungry and queasy at the same time, my temperature kept creeping back up to 100 now and then, I threw up once more, and I struggled mightily to eat and drink. I may have eaten a few grapes, a cracker, and a spoonful of peanut butter all weekend.
Monday morning, I actually started to feel better. But I also developed an itchy red skin rash on my upper chest and neck, which included my IR port. Then I threw up again.
None of this had happened to me in recent memory of infusions. The last few infusions had actually been a relative breeze, in terms of nausea and appetite.
I reported all this to my oncologist’s office, sent them a picture of the rash, and they wanted me to come into the ER (again) to rule out a port infection. So I spent most of Monday in the ER getting yet more tests, all of which came back negative. From their perspective, nothing was wrong with me. I got some more IV fluids and went back home.
On the way home Monday afternoon I was craving some food so got a soft taco from Taco Bell. I successfully ate it when I got home, the first solid thing I’d eaten since Thursday night. A reckless gamble, but I had no nausea, no vomiting. Later I ordered some more Mexican food from a local place. No issues.
The next day, Tuesday, a week after the infusion, I woke up feeling much, much better. Tired and weak, about 8 pounds lighter, but human.
Thusfar I have no idea what happened. This was by far the worst reaction I can remember having since about the third infusion. The only thing that changed was the addition of bone strengthener, which I had no idea might cause any serious effects.
Subsequent Googling reveals that it might produce a flu-like reaction. They didn’t warn me about that. They only told me it might make my joints ache for a few days. (Which it also did.)
On a different topic, shout-out to everyone who’s worked in cancer research over the last 35 years. I found some notes I’d written down some 20-25 years ago about my mom’s lung cancer, and she had the same thing I do. The timeline isn’t clear, but she died less than 6 months after diagnosis. Her treatment options were almost non-existent back in 1991.
World Context
Apparently prime minister Viktor Orban (too lazy to do the accent), one of the main guys in the World MAGA Order, lost a big election in Hungary.
That’s nice and all, but the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. It’s now very plain for everyone of every political affiliation to see how easy it is to manipulate democratic institutions using the complacent, uninformed, uninterested masses and social media.
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