it's amazing...

...to get to read all of the writing that we did so many years ago, see ourselves as we were then, and at the same time to get to reconnect and see the same people as they are in the present. it's been such a long journey for me in the years since. after spending junior and senior years of high school at north seattle community college, i left seattle for los angeles, spent six months in upstate new york at a university there starting a computer science degree, and came back to seattle when it didn't turn out to be the right place for me. it turned out to be a great decision, because i got to have some really unique experiences and start my career sooner and better than i would have otherwise.

in 2000 i traveled to malaysia, where i got to spend eight months living with friends and working in a small graphic design company that had brought me there from l.a. i picked up some books and learned web programming for a project, and loved it. when i came back from malaysia in 2001 i was able to get a job as a developer in a software company in issaquah, and i've been settled in seattle ever since.

it's seemed like every time i get settled and feel like things are going to be okay for a while, though, something happens to shake it up. in november 2001 i was crossing a street when a woman ran a red light and hit me with her car, and i ended up with serious injuries to my right wrist and arm, requiring a joint reconstruction. after the surgeries were done, i have been left with a very severe chronic pain disorder from nerve damage caused by scar tissue. i am able to work now thanks to an adaptive keyboard that is designed for one-handed typing, which is wonderful. but it has been difficult to deal with the chronic pain and the limitations that come from being right handed and unable to use your right arm.

despite that, i moved through two companies and four years of being a software developer, building my career and honing my skills, and at the time in a long term relationship that was going well. and then in september 2004, i was diagnosed with melanoma, what turned out to be stage IIIB melanoma in my right hip and lymph nodes. there was only one treatment available, a one-year course of interferon, which i was like the poster child for people who should not be given the treatment. i have epilepsy, it causes seizures. i have a history of depression, it causes depression in 50% of cases. i have chronic pain, it makes chronic pain worse. the list went on and on. but it was the only treatment so they let me choose what to do, and i chose to take it anyway -- i felt like i had to do something, i couldn't just sit there. i tried to work through it, tried to keep my job up, but i just didn't have the energy and was fired. after six months, i started having bad seizures and my blood pressure was dropping and they made me go off of the treatment. they are hoping that the six months i got was enough. and so far, all of the scans have been clear. there's a possibility that some cancer is present and is too small to see, but that's something that we just have to live with. if it keeps going like this for another three years, i'll be considered in remission. three years still seems like a long time.

cancer did something really funny to me, that i never expected. if you'd asked me before i was diagnosed and went through all this what i would do if i got cancer, i'd probably tell you that i'd just go kill myself, that it wouldn't be worth the effort and the pain. and even though i don't know how or why i did it, somehow i found a way to live through it and i did go through it anyway, even though i didn't want to. and now that i am on the other side, i have gone from the person who is always negative and depressed to the person who is always positive and telling other people it's going to be okay. i leave little notes on the bus that have happy, inspirational messages on them. it sounds silly, but i feel this core, good feeling about life and that it is short and there is this goodness in it that you have to feel and enjoy because it will disappear way too soon. and i want to share that with people without them having to get cancer.

so i might be in pain, i might be sick and exhausted from the cancer treatment, still, even after a year, but i've got a better outlook and a better feeling about the world and life than i've ever had. i've climbed the mountain of my struggles and seen the view from the top, and it's more beautiful than i'd imagined possible. it's giving me the strength to continue moving forward.

my current status is working, again, finally -- i consider it a triumph, as i'd already started applying for disability and really thought i wouldn't be working again -- and now i'm doing web sites for microsoft games studios, which is just a really fun job and i love the place and the people. way better than the business software i've been writing the past several years.


my other big project is that i'm starting an animal shelter on the caribbean island of dominica (*not* the dominican republic). it's a small country of just under 70,000 people with a stray dog and animal welfare problem, a national and cultural problem of abusive and harmful attitudes towards animals, and no shelters or services for animals that we would consider necessary. when i visited the caribbean i fell in love with the place, dominica especially, but was especially saddened by the dogs, often pregnant or nursing females, who are thrown out and mistreated because of lack of knowledge about spaying and neutering. the dog in this photo is just one of the wonderful animals i met who survived on the kindness of countless random stranger for food, her life doubly hard because she is blind. she is lucky enough to have a restaurant owner who kind of kept track of her and fed her, but even when these dogs find someone to feed them, it's rare that they will be given any veterinary care, nor spaying or neutering. if anyone here is interested in helping with this project, still in its beginning stages, i'm looking for any kind of help that you can think of, so if it sounds good, ask. (beautiful caribbean island, wonderful people, rainforest... and lots of dogs who need help).

it's been a long road since room 12 was still together. it's good to have this chance to reconnect and see how very much we've all grown.

-- jenny m.

postscript: if you would like to see some of the work i'm doing now, go to http://www.vivapinata.com (opens in new window, flash player required). i did the development work and some of the design for the intro that you see when you first go to the site, and for the "hint hunt" game, which you can get to from the right hand side of the main page. the game was my major contribution and while it might look fairly simple, it was designed (for those of you who might understand this, or care) to use XML for managing all of the text, as well as the game play elements, so that the game can be changed to other languages and new questions and items can be added or removed, without making any changes to the flash file that holds the game code. it was a moderately challenging project that hit a few snags, but i had a lot of fun. this is the kind of thing i'm working on now -- flash development for websites about games from companies microsoft owns or handles marketing and design for.