So, I got no work done this week. I saved my time on Thursday and Friday afternoon to print, but then things got all messed up. I knew that something was wrong with my arm on Tuesday, but I ignored it and hoped that it would fix itself. But by Thursday my arm still hurt, so I went to see the nurse and told her I thought I had a clot in my arm. The bugle and the pain was not really convincing, since my arm was not discolored. But after some persuasion, she agreed to order a test for a clot anyway. So, on Friday afternoon I got to visit the hospital. When I got there the technician even told me that she didn't expect to find a clot, that I was too young, and again my arm wasn't cold or discolored. But to her surprise, and none to mine, she found one right where the bugle was. Then I got to walk over to the emergency room and get pumped full of blood thinners. Luckily they only kept me for 2 hours and sent me home with some prescriptions. I will have to be on blood thinners now for a few months, but one more medication is nothing to me. While I was in the ER they did some blood work, and as I asked they did test my kidney functions. And, to my disappointment, my kidney functions are not getting better, they're not even staying stable, they are getting worse.... I guess I knew that, I mean I haven't really been feeling better, but I still hoped that all the medication they've been dumping into me would have done something. Well, something other than raise my blood pressure so that I got a blood clot... So that's my life right now. Tomorrow, or I guess this morning, since I couldn't sleep, I am going to a programming competition. This one is smaller than the last one I went to in the fall, but I think it still should be fun. Google reps will be there, and I hope that if there are less people, then maybe I'll get noticed more... Well, I hope we do well and that the drive (to Pittsburgh) and back in one day won't kill me.

Ok, so I haven't done much work at all... I did take some amazing pictures on vacation and I should have them tonight to show. Anyway, it seems that my health is going from day to day. Sometimes I feel great, and other times I feel like crap. Some nights I sleep like a baby, and others I don't sleep at all, just stare at the clock all night. I know that this is mostly from my medication, but it still upsets me. I'm so frustrated because my blood work didn't change, even after 2 weeks of steroids. I guess that I should be patient, but it's really hard to be patient waiting to find out how long you have to live. If I don't start responding to medication in the next month, then my chances of losing my kidneys go way up. Right now the doctors keep telling me that the medication should help and that I should regain functioning in my kidneys, but what they aren't saying is that if the medication doesn't work, then I'm going to go into kidney failure eventually. It could be in 5 or 10 years, or it could be in a few months. So now I'm playing the waiting game, which is frustrating.... This week, when I'm up to it, I will start mono printing and hopefully, if they turn out well, print some more pictures. I know that the printing has nothing to do with my flash project, but I need to do something different, I don't feel like everything that I do in one semester has to have the same theme.