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comment by Devac
Devac  ·  2982 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 28, 2016

Update on me

I'm back at the dorm. Different room, same guy to share it with as we both wrote to the administrator to place us together. Considering that administration at my dorm is one of the few places that didn't change since friggin Socialism Era and the only reliable way to summon them is to not pay the rent on time (I have never managed to find them in their office, we left the letter along with some paper on a pail in front of the door) I'm struggling to believe that they actually read it and will therefore say "that's damn lucky of us to get placed at random when there were some 1 to the 179700 odds for that" and buy myself a lottery ticket ;).

Since I'm on the individual physics track I'll meet with my, now former, advisor along with new student that was assigned to him after inauguration. It's customary for me now to give him my contact info and show him the ropes around uni. Anyway, it means that now I'll be working with a different professor. If my luck wasn't spent entirely on dorm stuff, I hope I'll get to work with one theorist who is basically local guru on all things related to superconductors and mesoscopic physics. He was doing his post-doc here at the same time my father was working on his doctorate in the same institute, from what I gather they used to be friends but that's besides the point.

Mathematics was supposed to get a bit on the back-burner for this semester, but that quickly changed after seeing who is going to conduct some of the courses. Not long afterwards I had squeezed into my schedule 'honours' ODE, Complex Analysis 1, Real Analysis, Differential Geometry 1 and Introductory Functional Analysis. Had to sacrifice two other subjects, but I took them mainly as easy and not so time-consuming minimum requirements filler so there's no regret about dropping them to pursue real maths :D.

Update on my brother

He improved a bit. Mostly out on medications but there were lucid episodes. I had no opportunity to talk with him, but according to my parents he was mainly confused and not even close to his normal sharp self. Pretty expected and I'm not surprised. I can still remember my mother's incoherent ramblings caused by the amount of painkillers she was under when she had a cyst pressing on pancreas. It's highly unsettling to know that one of the smartest people I know is in a state where he probably does not get why and where he is, but again… considering what's wrong with him and the amount of meds that he got I would be more freaked-out if he would actually be fully lucid.

Either way, he is in oncological hospital, stable and after simply insane amount of tests. The tumour biopsy is, as I mentioned before, very tricky and not without certain risks but is scheduled on Friday morning. Results should be within a week or so, and as soon doctors will be clear on that the therapy proper will start. This likely means a directed/specialised chemotherapy followed by a surgical removal of (hopefully) shrinked tumour.