New Blog

Ok, it's time to move up into the world of electronic software generation, and away from hand-writing each line in HTML. (Mostly 'cause I'm not very good at it.)

Pam loves this software, and has been harping on me to use it. Now that I am, let me know what you think of the change.

Tomorrow I'm headed back in to get some more of that tasty chemo-cocktail, and also to discuss last week's scans with the oncologist. We'll see what he has to say, and then we'll head over to the liver surgeon on Wednesday to get his views on the new pictures. With any luck, the news will be as good as we've all been hoping, praying, and "positively thinking" for.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving weekend came at the end of my "no-chemo" week, so I have felt better than ever. They said that I would feel worse and worse with each week, but so far (3 treatments completed) the opposite has been true. I do feel worse each chemo week (side effects are getting more pronounced) but then I build back up in the off weeks. Strange, but true, and I am thankful for it.

Yesterday, rather than shopping and spending like the rest of the country, we worked on the project list here at home. For the first time, I rented a log splitter. It was amazing! With the help of William and Stephanie and Alex (kids and her boyfriend) we split a "wall of wood", perhaps enough to heat the house for the whole winter. It stands more than 2m tall and 10m long! We switched out the wood stoves in the living room, installing the ugly one with the powerful fan to provide better heat. It's supposed to be freezing cold this coming week, so we'll see how well it works very soon.

Maybe it sounds strange, but I have a great deal to be thankful for and appreciative of. This experience has been a lens which has helped to bring into focus the important things in life, and the important people in my life. Friends and family and even distant acquaintances have come to the fore and proven that I have much to value. They give me inspiration to make it through one more day, and keep me mindful of the future beyond this treatment regimen, back in "normal life."

Back to some real-life activities

It's been a busy week, especially for an "on" week where I have chemo. That's good, and I am very happy to be feeling well enough to be busy again. Sitting on the couch napping and watching movies was never something that I could tolerate for very long.

One of my projects has been to move into my little room. The work of a long and hard summer is coming to fruition now and I am happy to enjoy it. My beloved books are mostly on shelves now and available to me. I feel like a kid at a fairy-tale school reunion, running from old friend to old friend shaking hands and renewing acquaintances. Here's a photo of one corner of the room, showing the big picture windows and the high book shelf. The long white table is there for construction only, as are all the boxes of junk that have not yet been unpacked.

Yesterday we had an outing into town. We splurged and went to Romano's Macaroni Grill, a fancy family Italian restaurant chain. What's more, I had one small glass of red wine! Woo hoo! Probably bad for my ailing, failing liver, but what the heck, they say it is therapeutic to have a little red wine and it's been months for me. Then Pam and I went to see the new James Bond movie. He is certainly not my father's Bond any more, but I kind of like the new guy. He is full of grit and is all about the action, with less hokey humor. It's like they took all of the Austin Powers out and replaced it with Jason Bourne.

Today, and for the next two days, I'll be taking a class in Confined Space Entry and Rescue from ERS. My friend and rescue squad team-mate Shane is teaching it. He's a master of his subject so it's a great course. It feels really good to be back into something industrial, even if I'm not back on the job quite yet.

That's about it. Consider "no news is good news" again for the next few days while I am too busy with real life to keep up this blog. Thanks for listening.

Good News from the Doc

Today was "chemo day", which means we get to sit down with the oncologist (cancer specialist doctor) and talk about how things are going. All the news was really good. My blood work is all in the normal ranges, blood pressure is fantastic, weight is stable, and the side effects haven't been too bad. What's more, when he felt of my liver to see how it was doing he was visibly surprised at how it had gotten so much smaller. Woo hoo! We'll know more in a couple of weeks after the next CT scan, but the indications are that the therapies we are using are working like crazy. Thank you all for the prayers, energy, thoughts and just for checking up from time to time. It is working.

We read Lance Armstrong's books. I never thought that much about him or them, mostly because my ex wife's family is named Armstrong and they are also from Texas. It turns out that the Armstrong name is an adopted one for Lance, and he doesn't like those people, either. Anyway, his books get an enthusiastic "squeal of approval" from me. He came across as a really interesting guy who beat some very long odds indeed, and it was inspiring and motivating for me. Also, they are pretty short and easy to read, which is nice for those of us with a touch of ADD.

Working on my "man-pad"

Sorry for the delay in posting. Earlier in the week things were pretty rough around here, but now most of them are resolved and life is better.

Our close friend Doug came by and was a great help. He dropped off a prototype cold frame to help with our winter garden. It's a frame structure that keeps a plastic sheet over the veggies, keeping off the chill wind and frost and making just enough difference to extend our growing season significantly. He also helped me shuffle around the huge mountain of boxes of my junk that is now at home and not in a storage unit.

Today's plan was to install some shelf brackets and then to work on unpacking boxes. I was able to fabricate some pretty cute shelf supports out of an old, retired static rope and some climbing hardware. The shelf is now full of my favorite climbing, caving, canoeing, arctic/antarctic exploration, and mountaineering books. (It extends down the long wall of the room, and wraps halfway around the short wall, too.)

I hope to have a photo of it up in the morning.

More soon. I have an hour-by-hour rundown of a typical "day in the life" in the works, but I can't decide if it's too silly, too boring, or just too much trouble. Cheers!

A Long Week Past

Sorry for the skimpy week, there. I'm getting the hint now that if I don't keep this updated people will start calling my phone to see if I'm still alive! Rest assured, it's not that bad yet. Last week was my roughest one yet. Maybe a better way to put it is that last week was the second best week of chemo treatment so far. Anyway, it hit me pretty hard so I just laid up much of the time. We had several visitors, too, so the "up" time I had was spent on face time rather than on working in the blogosphere. (Yes, that's a real word.)

Side effects included more fatigue, a genuinely painful cold sensitivity (Monday only) and night sweats a couple of times a night. A mild fever and slight cough could have been either nothing much at all or harbingers of terrible things such as pulmonary fibrosis. (Don't click on that unless you're just into horrible images. --shudder--) Today at my lab visit I asked the nurse about it and she reassured me that I'm not there yet, this is something to treat with Robitussin and bed rest. No problem. None of these effects is worth complaining about, but all together they kept me huddled pretty close to the fire last week. Once again, if this is as bad as it gets then I'll be smiling all the time.

Saturday night Pam and I had a bit of a meltdown. This is all hard on her, harder than it is on me. She feels helpless and frustrated and angry (to name but a very few of a very long list) while I'm just tired. After a bit of "anger management therapy" involving an embarassing row in front of a friend, tossing furniture and dishes off the porch, and crashing cars, and things are a little bit better. So far the house is still standing and we're both gunshot free, so we'll take that in stride and go bravely forward, into the fog.

On the "plus" side, we are getting a ton of things done around here. When you own a house, it comes with a never-ending and always-growing list of things demanding repair, replacement, painting, caulking, and re-arranging. This week, we hope to finish moving my junk into the damn-near-finished new room, the "Man Pad." It will feel SO good to have my books, my precious books, back at hand. I feel like I've been lobotomized without all that reference material to tap into. Of course, almost all of the things on the list have been checked off by Pam, working nearly alone. I had a hope that such frantic labor would keep her occupied and keep her mind focused, but it just made her tired and sore and mean sweetly attentive. This week, my "up" week, I plan on letting her work in her art studio while I make up for lost time on the task list.

Good News

Just a quick entry, as I'm still pretty tired from the latest chemo. The word with the liver surgeon today was good--I appear to be operable. We're going to watch for the liver tumor to shrink a bit more, but the cutting will probably happen before the new year. It seems that chemotherapy hurts liver tissue, so we are walking a fine line here. We want to definitely stop the tumor from growing so it doesn't link onto something that I can't live without, but not nuke my body so bad with chemo that what's left of my liver stops working. Also, these "destructive" processes of chemo, surgery, and (later) radiation are all something that I have to recover from, and I may not be able to handle them all at the same time. We'll have to see how well I do and make the call later about how to get all these procedures done.

Off to bed again for me. (Yawn!)

Pump Off!

At last, a photo or two! It's very clear why I am not a model, but at this point I don't have a scrap of modesty left so what the heck.

This one shows my usual position around the house these days, hunkered down and trying to stay warm while working on the computer. This round the "sensitivity to cold" side effect they warned me about came on in spades. For example, just folding up my clothes at room temperature (a chilly 59 degrees F, 15 C) brought needle-like pains in the bones of my fingers. Sipping something like a glass of milk from the refrigerator made my throat feel like it was a clamp with nails, tightening shut around my windpipe. It's easy to avoid, so no real problem, but NOT something that I want to mess with. I am a little tired this evening, but that's ok. If this is as bas as these effects get, I will be thrilled to deal with them. Some day I will learn to deal with these sappy expressions in photos--please tell me I don't look like that!

Round Two

So today marks the beginning of my second round of chemotherapy. This time I get an extra booster drug called Avastin. They didn't want to use it last time because the port-a-cath they put in hadn't healed yet. Speaking of the port, I meant to get a photo of it but somehow didn't. Now it's under a bandage with the pump. I'll get a photo of the pump first, then the port when the bandage comes off on Wednesday. I'll know more on Thursday, when I am scheduled to meet with the liver surgeon to review the detailed, 3-D images we took last week. Watch for news at that time.

The doc seemed to think that my tumors were smaller this time. He used the phrase "melting away" to describe what he thought and hoped was happening to them. Me too! One tool of getting better is to visualize what I want my body's processes to do, helping them along as they do their work. The "melting" picture is one that I really enjoy using. One of his patients, in a similar situation to mine, had his tumors melt away to zero. That's my plan as well. My colon tumor seems to be smaller, in that I have an easier time going to the toilet than I used to. That's important (same as for everyone) but for me they were talking seriously of putting in an "ostomy" or a kind of tumor bypass hose. (Artificial rectum and plastic bag. Ugh.) I'll do whatever it takes, especially temporarily, but I'd much rather be able to just do the usual thing in the usual way--and that's what is happening now. The old phrase "old age is not for sissies" means a lot more to me now than it used to. I don't claim to be old, exactly, but I'm in a boat with a lot of older people and we have to deal with a lot of stuff. It takes a strange kind of courage, but I'm happy to say that I am finding it in abundance with the help of my friends and family.

My diet ranting came to a strange head today. One of the chemo patients sat in the chair next to me eating packaged snack crackers and drinking a diet soft drink. He had a white bread sandwich, a bag of 'tater chips, and--get this--he was smoking a cigarette at the entrance as we were leaving! WTF is he thinking? How can he imagine that he is helping to heal himself like that? Statistically speaking (for what statistics are worth in this situation) he looks like one of the people I'll be able to beat to the finish line. Maybe that should make me feel better, but it just makes me sad for him. You know how it is, though, that tough old bird will live to be a hundred!

So now I'm beginning a slow week of hanging around and napping. Food tastes strange again, cold is more bothersome than before, but if those are the worst side effects I see then I'll be a happy camper. My weight is constant at 198 lbs (89.8 Kg), something that I have been working hard to maintain. My goal now is to devise an exercise regimen that will allow me to work out and not get too cold doing it. Perhaps a wind trainer on my bicycle, inside...

Thank you all for reading along and following me through this. Your positive energy, thoughts, wishes, prayers, offers, emails, calls and cards all really do help. When this is over I will be eager to return the favor, so watch for me in your own time of need, if such should come.