#uams

sum stuff i did w the ptd gang ft wacky and unused for uhhh pinterest some time ago but i felt like i needed to post them here too

the quality in some of them is beautiful

Title: Under a Million Stars 

Previous Chapters:  C. 1 ☸︎ C.2 ☸︎ C.3 ☸︎ C.4

Member: Stowaway to Pirate!Jacob x Female, Pirate Captain!Reader

Genre(s): Fantasy, Romance

Expected Chapter words: ≤ 5 to 7/8k 

<< Full Story Warnings (reoccurring descriptions include): Blood, Strong Language, Weapons, Violence & Slow Slow Updates!!! >>

<< Chapter Warnings: Weapons! >> 

A/N: After an eternity, I finally bring to y’all a preview of Chapter 5 of Under a Million Stars! 

                   ☸︎⚔︎☸︎⚔︎☸︎⚔︎☸︎⚔︎☸︎⚔︎☸︎⚔︎

He fumbled with the sword for the hundredth time, his right hand shaking as he held it towards you, the sharp point moving precariously in front of your face. You waited, arms crossed, your sword under the pit of your arm, for him to stop shaking and stand the way you were trying to teach him.

You stared at him blankly, entertaining yourself with the bead of sweat the was making its way down his forehead and would most likely find its way into his right eye after slipping down and across the bridge of his nose.

It wasn’t until the sword started to slip out his hands that you whipped out your free hand and curled it over his, forcing him to grip the blade properly.

A shiver ran down his spine as he met your hard stare.

“I asked you point your sword at me as if you were threatening me. Be menacing. Install fear in your opponent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said quietly.

“Not only are you not meeting my eyes, but you also seem incapable of holding your sword correctly despite the fact that you’ve been repeating this movement for hours.”

“My apologies,” he said, bowing his head.

You huffed at this and after you dropped your sword to grab his other hand, you pulled it to the hilt of his sword to wrap around his hand, before dropping your hand over his again to hold him steady.

“Look,” you said, curling your fingers tighter over his, “I get that you were malnourished when you snuck onto my ship, but it’s been weeks, and I very much doubt that Kevin hasn’t been feeding you. You’re neither as scrawny nor as weak as you were then.”

You paused for a moment, watching as he gradually lifted his head and locked eyes with you. Then there was silence between the two of you.

The sun started to set then, and the wind began to pick up.

You cleared your throat, “Still, if you are so weak, you are unable to hold a sword with one hand like the rest of us, then hold it with two if you have to.”

He nodded as the moon came out, and the stars filled the sky. He held his position just as you had left him: both hands wrapped tightly around the hilt of the sword, its tip pointed toward the spot where you used to stand.

You nodded both to yourself and him. With two hands, at least, he finally held the sword steady.

You stepped in front of the sword then, letting its point hover a millimeter over your throat.

You locked eyes with him.

He swallowed.

You caught it.

Dear Gus,

Yiayia and I went with Mom to her nursing school for the family and friends tour. We got to see where she’s going to be studying and taking her lectures and labs, etc. And then we went and ate sushi.

Dad

After a break that was supposed to be 6 weeks and lasted almost 9 months, my cancer has returned. Before I get into details, I need to back up and discuss some definitions.

I realize I’ve gone full Voldemort and never actually spoken my cancer’s name on here. Nicknames, sure, but it’s time to get technical. Because now, after 15 months, I’m finally able to spell it right.

My cancer is called Intrahepatic Cholagiocarcinoma. I’m down with ICC. As previously mentioned, it originated in my bile ducts and took up residence in my liver. I have cancer in my liver, so there’s no problem saying that it’s liver cancer. But since it actually started its nasty birth mutations in my bile ducts, it’s not Liver Cancer. This is a level of distinctions generally saved for the doctors, researchers, and people that fuss over language for fun (all great groups of people, by the way), but it helps in explaining the new developments.

ICC has now spawned eight tiny tumors in lymph nodes near my liver and elsewhere in my abdomen. This is cancer spreading. This is not happy news. But it is also not a new cancer. I don’t now have Liver Cancer and Lymphoma. It’s the same cancer, the action has just moved slightly south. It has traded the big house in Liverton for smaller bungalows throughout Abdoeman (pronounced like Imboden).

The three tumors in my liver? Still there. But they’ve stopped progressing again. The small amount of re-growth we saw in the spring has ceased for now. So we keep an eye on them, but the main action in Season 2 has shifted locales.

The 8 new tumors are very small, all of them less than 20mm in mass. All 8 combined are smaller than the Death Star in my liver. But small is still dangerous, as anyone who has ever angered a chihuahua can tell you. So, back to chemo next week! Or so I thought…

The morning consisted of getting the new diagnosis and coping with that. Then, in the afternoon, I got a call back from a cancer alliance about a new clinical trial. As luck would have it, I might well qualify for this trial if my next shot at chemo doesn’t slow the new progression. So, back to chemo next week! Then, if that doesn’t work, new science! Or so I thought…

Less than 30 minutes after that call, my oncologist calls. She just got off the phone with the same people, and after more fully explaining my situation, they realized that I might well qualify for this new clinical trial immediately. Nothing is certain yet, however, so right now, at least for a few days, we wait. And there’s our cliffhanger. Tuesday was a rollercoaster of emotions. Or a glass case.

Last year, I started this blog while getting ready for my first round of chemo, having no idea what the treatment would be like or how my body would react. This time, I know much more about the treatment and how my body would likely react. But now that may or may not even be the treatment. I won’t say much about the clinical trial until I know more, and even then, there’s always a Secret Squirrel component to them. Count on more frequent updates in the coming weeks, even if some of them are vague at times.

I was ready for this to be a boring entry in which I would get to talk a lot about the solar eclipse. It was not boring. So, in short, the eclipse was amazing. Saw it in totality in rural Missouri. Here’s one spoiler, the potential cutting-edge case study will not occur in rural Missouri.

Our song is one that’s been bouncing around my head for a few months. Like a lot of 20-something acts, they’ve got a song pondering about the passage of time and life. This one just happens to be very catchy. Enjoy it, as I know that while you all care about my updates, some may actually be more excited to get new music. Either way, stay tuned.

I finally made it to Little Rock late in the afternoon; it took almost exactly four hours from my pulling away from the curb in Shreveport to pulling into the parking garage at the hospital. My aunt and grandmother were there, along with my cousin, who herself was in a pretty severe accident just a few months ago; she was hobbling on crutches and my grandmother was sitting in a wheelchair--she doesn’t really need one, but it was easier to just push her. 

As for my mom, the damage is pretty bad: on her right side, she’d broken both the femur and tibia. I’d heard her knee was broken too, but that turned out to not be true. Both of these bones were shattered and they’d already put them back together with metal plates. And on her left side, the hip is broken--something the doctors seemed to regard as an easy fix--as well as the tibia and fibula, which are broken right at the ankle: it was this injury that led to the story that her ankle itself was broken. She also had bleeding on the brain, which, again, the doctors seemed to not be too concerned with, and fractured ribs. “God was watching out for me,” she said, half her body crushed and held together with plates and pins. 

None of this is too good, of course, but I guess there’s that old saw about how It Could Have Been Worse. She was and is in a lot of pain, and was mostly just sort of drifting in and out. After awhile, my aunt and grandmother and cousin left for home, and I did my best to make myself comfortable on a hard couch that was about ten inches wide. 

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One year since my Stage 4 diagnosis. Six months since my last treatment. And somehow, this break continues.

The latest scan results popped online Saturday night. In the narrative, one word was everywhere: stable. Doing quick math, I determined that the biggest tumor, our dear Death Star, may have grown by up to 7%. After the last break, the potential growth was 4%. Again, for a resumed status of “progressing,” you need to see 30%+ growth. Factor in the potential for measurement variations, since we’re talking tenths of centimeters. I almost wrote tents of centipedes there, which is equally terrifying. I thought for sure there’d be a few rounds of chemo to take a few shots at them tumors, like routine car maintenance, but my oncologist’s response was a nicer version of “there’s no such thing, you lunatic.”

So, I seem to be staying healthy. For a hipster-cancered person, anyway. Mostly, it has felt good. Still weak/fatigued at times, but the best overall energy since this whole thing started in late 2015/early 2016. I still get too deeply inside my head in the days and weeks before the scans. I was all but certain this time that I could feel the tumor fluid buildup returning. Nope. Not there. The most likely fluid buildups are ketchup and ranch dressing, so back to the gym. There have gradually been more workouts, but hopefully I’ll get back to pre-disease levels of regularity soon.

No clinical trials arose that fit me, so we left them all in the dressing room and went home for now. The next big dates circles are in a couple of weeks, when the biggest annual oncology conference occurs in Chicago. I offered to go as a cancer model, but have not heard back. It looks like they don’t care how everyone is wearing liver tumors this season. Fine. However, if new ideas and methods return to Arkansas from this meeting, we might try something out. To be determined.

Unless there’s a new treatment or a clinical trial, the break now runs until mid-August. The even better news within that is there likely won’t be heavy-duty treatment during the hottest part of summer like I had last year. I’ll still be inside plenty, don’t worry, but I won’t be as constantly worn and wilting when I do go outside.

During the past two months, I did get around a lot more. I just got back from upstate New York and Vermont, where I saw my dad finish his 400th marathon, as he insists on continuing to create even more ridiculous numbers math than me. I also had a lot of fun with my 9-year-old niece, who hadn’t seen me since the peak of the heaviest treatment, which left her unsure and a little distant about my status and how to act around me. This gave her a lot in common with other people much older than she.

 I also spent a long weekend in Seattle, where I saw U2’s first American tour date celebrating The Joshua Tree’s 30th anniversary. Amazing and immersive. Look at Larry Mullen, Jr.’s drum set in this photo for a sense of perspective. Somehow, it was a May outdoor concert in Seattle without a drop of rain. That’s a species of unicorn you rarely see.

 Which brings me to a serious aside about something I deeply love, music, and something I deeply hate, fear.

The bombing outside a concert in Manchester, England was horrific. Seeking to kill so many in a setting of joy is beyond the pale. The reaction to the attack, beyond the obvious grief and empathy, is the amplification of the fear machine.

Here are the news stories we always see in the U.S. within hours of such a tragedy. They answer no questions and create more anxiety.

Despite this happening an ocean away, we are conditioned to freeze in the fear that it could happen to us. Regardless of the longest of odds and lowest probabilities, some Americans will avoid big venues, some parents won’t let their kids attend shows. Taking lives doesn’t just mean killing people, it means stealing the ability to enjoy what we have.

Nine years ago, someone with the same intentions tried to kill me and thousands of other concertgoers in Chicago. A man placed a bomb inside a trash can outside of Wrigley Field, set to explode as people exited the sold-out show inside. You likely haven’t heard about this because the FBI caught wind of his plan, made sure he acquired only fake explosives, then arrested him after he planted his fake bomb. No one got hurt, there were no videos filled with screams and carnage, but the intent was just as deadly. Did it keep me from attending concerts? Hell, no. There are thousands of concerts in the United States every night, and the chance you’ll be at one where something terrible happens is minuscule. Awareness and a little fear are good survival instincts, but living scared isn’t living at all. This is a philosophy I’ve tried to hold strong to during the past year.

Don’t worry, we’re ending this post with happier notes. With no medical work planned until Mid-August, I will try and post more updates, even if there is no specific news to base it around. A good problem to have.

This photo best captures the fun of being out in the world more this spring. The talented and goofy Casey Abrams lovingly got up in my grill during a Postmodern Jukebox show. If you don’t know them, they’re a fun musical collective that re-imagines pop hits in musical styles spanning the past century.

Instead of posting a PMJ video, I must end on this song. It has also been a big part of my break in ways that you’ll hopefully get to see in the coming months. Keep singing out there, everyone.

Dear Gus & Magnus,

Gus started his week-long day camp experience at Lake Nixon today. He came home and said, "IT WAS AWESOME." He spent most of the day in/on the water. He said he even got to fish and caught a large-mouth bass. We're so glad he liked it.

In the meantime, Nene and Pam brought Nana to UAMS to the ER because her platelets were low. After helping get you two to bed, I went over to join them in the ER. They admitted her into a room shortly after I got there. They're running tests and giving her blood infusions.

Dad.

Little Rock, Arkansas. 8.4.2025 - 9.50pm.