Clear Scan

- The results are out ...

Which results ??? - Well the results of PET Scan done 3 months after treatment

What were they trying to find out ??? - If there are any signs of cancer cells left in my body

What did they find ??? - Nothing ... it was a Clear Scan

What does it mean ??? - Means that the treatment seems to have worked, the cancerous cells are gone, the residual mass of dead tissue is gone ... and cancer has not returned in the last 3 months

Wow seems good ... so you off the hook ??? - Sort of ... will have to send the report to my doctor and he will decide if this is "remission" ... Then will have to get a few quarterly PET scans done ... to see if the disease is relapsing

So you live life QSQT ??? - Yes I will ... but who doesn't

What are the chances now ??? - Pretty good ... If the cancer does not return in the next year or two there are good chances that it never will

Situation seems good ... you held up will ... Good Show :-) - Thank you

Graceless on TV

Yesterday I spent a lot of time watching TV ... there was the T20 final and lots of bed time latter because I was tired after not eating the whole day (had a PET scan ... which required me to come empty stomach ... so hadn't eaten anything after previous night's dinner ... and since AIIMS is a "sarkaari" hospital, the scan scheduled for10 in morning actually took place at 4 in the evening ... leaving me hungry for longer than I could take)

So I was watching the TV and was stuck by total lack of grace from 2 people ... First was the Pakistani Captain ... he first thanked and then apologized to all the Muslims in the world ... I wondered why? He looked silly cause obviously all Muslims in the world had not supported his team ... infact we can do some calculations and find out his support levels ...

Here we go -

Reasonable assumptions
A> Muslims in India will support India (their own country)
B> Muslims in Bangladesh will not support Pakistan team (Bongs fought Pakis for their independence)
C> Muslims in non-cricket playing countries (like Indonesia) will not be interested in cricket and will support no one.

Now Numbers
World Muslim Population - 1500 million
Muslims in Cricket playing nations - 451 million
Muslims in Pakistan - 158 million
Muslims in India - 150 million
Muslims in Bangladesh - 135 million

Scenarios

Best Scenario for Pak Captain - All cricket interested Muslims except Indians and Bangladeshis support him (166 Million, slightly unlikely as there is no reason for all Kenyan, South African, Britisher etc etc Muslims to support Pakistan)
This translates int0 11.1% of world Muslim support and 36.8% of cricket interested Muslim support

Worst Scenario for Pak Captain - Only Pakistani Muslims support him (158 million, very likely)
This translates into 10.5% of World Muslim Support and 35% of cricket interested Muslim support

Bottom-line is that only 1 in 10 Muslims of the world would have supported him. Even in the cricket playing world only about one third Muslims would have supported him. He made a fool of himself by claiming global Muslim support. Two of my friends have written on this very topic. Samcho in his post Twenty20 and Siddhartha in his post ICC World Twenty20, Religion and myth-busting.

Now on to the second person who lacked grace ... it was Columbia University's President Lee Bollinger.... He invited Iran's president Ahmadinejad to his University and then went on to pile insults on him ... I am no fan of Ahmadinejad ... but I sincerely feel that if one invites a guest one should treat the guest in a civilized manner (if you hate someone to the limit of insulting - don't invite him in the first place) ... BBC showed the most insulting part of Bollinger's speech live ... makes me wonder if (and how much of) Ahmadinejad's speech was shown uncensored (I went to sleep after hearing Bollinger's part) ...

Reminds me of more crude behavior that I pointed out in my earlier post Saddam dead - Winners in West-Asia rejoice ... I don't expect the world to be free of crudeness ... infact crudeness adds spice to the world ... but I did expect the Presidents of a big university to be slightly better mannered

Thats all for this post ... will prolly write something when my PET Scan report comes out tomorrow.

Delayed Plan, Round Trips and a Marriage

Those who have read the earlier post know about my mission-remission plan. In the plan I wanted to wait for normal blood counts before training to first regain and then maintain stamina.

Like all good plans mission-remission slipped from the very beginning - My blood counts refused to hit normal levels - which meant that the plan stood delayed ...

But all was not bad... there was a silver lining ... etc etc ... blood counts actually got stuck after creeping near 90% of normal values ... Being a Mechanical engineer I could easily declare the blood counts as normal ...You see its very characteristic of Mech engineers ... we don't shy away from happily rounding off pi as 3 and the value of acceleration due to gravity 'g' as 10 ... for the illiterate - pi is actually 22/7 which comes out to be around 3.14... 'g' varies from location to location but conventional students like to believe that it is 9.8 m/secsquared ... Mech engineers can do all the approximations because we pad up our final results with a "factor of safety" ... which means that when calculations require a part to be 1 inch thick, the mechanical engineer can safely ask for a 2 or 3 inch thick part :-)) ... Sadly I don't have a "factor of safety" so the optimistic approximation may not work.

Anyways, I could not let technical glitches from spoiling my plan ... Normal blood counts would have signalled that my body could take the load of shaping up ... now I planned to bypass the counts and test my endurance directly ... So I took two adventure trips (must agree that the trips were not solely for testing my load-bearing capacity ... after months of staying at home I was dying to go out and meet people) ...

First trip was more challenging ... it involved driving on Delhi-Agra-Gwalior-Jhansi-Satna route in two days ... Gwalior-Jhansi strech had to be covered after sunset (poor planning by me) on a path which had non-existant roads (poor planning by UP and MP governments) ... the challenges didn't end with the drive ... there was more -> Satna- Allahabad travel, stay with the in-laws, Allahabad-luckhnow-Delhi by various combinations of train and bus ... Bottom line is I endured the trip without too much trouble ...

Second trip was within a week -> I went to Mumbai to attend my friend Andy's wedding. It was a typical Tam affair ... the detailed story is on the IIMB Class of 2004 blog. This one was two days flyin-flyout kind of a trip . Was good fun ... but took some time to recover from it ... slept throughout the day for 2-3 days ...

Anyways ... so that was how I was whiling away my time ... after all I have the licence for doing Haraamkhori ... though I guess the licence will expire soon ...

I have my PET Scan on 24th Sept ... The scan will tell if the treatment (chemotherapy and radiation) has succeeded so far ... an all-clear in the PET means I would be back to normal life (though I will have to take care of my body ... stay in shape and get regularly checked-up to see if the cancer has relapsed) ... In case PET shows that the cancer lingers on, then I will hold my Haraamkhori licence and may have to get on to a second-line of treatment (which is slightly tougher than the first line treatment ... with less optimistic results) ...

So the coming week is a week of uncertainties ... which is nothing unusual for me ... I can continue making full use of my Haraamkhori licence-

Ajgar karey naa chaakri
Panchi karey naa kaam
Das maluka kahi gaye
subkey daata raam