One To Go!

Well, I'm down to the last treatment - 11 down and 1 to go. I had gone on You Tube trying to find an excerpt from "Bad News Bears" (the original) where, in the championship game, the Vic Morrow character is shouting to his team, "Two down, one to go." Couldn't find it, however; so if you've seen the movie, just think of that scene and pretend you're watching it on You Tube.

So one week from now everything will all be over - I will have just been disconnected from my 5FU (that's what it's called) fanny pack for the final time. I have developed some key dates for me throughout this upcoming process:

• July 18 - Last treatment (where I sit and get IV's for 4-5 hours)


• July 20 - Final disconnect of the 5FU drug which gets pumped into me for 46 hours every two weeks


• August 6 - This is based upon when I went to Michigan a few weeks ago for my brother's funeral. That was during what otherwise would have been an "on" week for me so I had asked my doctor if I could postpone that treatment a week and was told that was fine. So by the time I traveled to Michigan, I had had two "off" weeks instead of the normal one. That weekend was the best I had felt in months. This gave me hope that after my final treatment, I will be able to recover rather quickly towards feeling much better. The weekend of August 6 would be the equivalent of having two straight "off" weeks so hopefully I will be feeling pretty good by then.


• September 20 - My doctor had said that it would take 6 weeks for the chemo to work its way through and out of my system by the time of my last treatment. I'm a little conservative on this so I'm allowing two full months.


• October 7 - This is the first day of my first real vacation of the year. We'll be down in Florida at our time share, sunning and spending time with our son Brian, his wife Lauren, and our grandson Tyler. Might even do some parasailing. Hopefully I will feel great by then.

It is my hope and prayer that next week is the last chemo treatment (#27 in all since the beginning of this) that I will ever need. I will certainly do all I can and all the doctors ask me to do to try to ensure that this is the case. I continue to thank everybody who has supported me during any or all of this process for me. Your support has been very instrumental in my keeping a positive attitude about this throughout. And of course I continue to thank God for His blessings upon me. I know for certain that this could have turned out a lot, lot worse for me than it did - not that it has been a day at the beach, but I am well on the road to recovery and I know many in my situation unfortunately are not. So thank you God for seeing me through to this point. Just one more hurdle to leap.

Crash Landing

Last week I was in the Detroit area for the funeral of my brother who passed away from ALS at the age of 85 - a life full-lived. That particular week was scheduled to be an "on" week for me, meaning my 10th chemo treatment should have been on Monday of that week. However, as I did not want to travel, especially to something as significant as a funeral for which I was participating in the Saturday Memorial service and giving the graveside eulogy the following Monday at the cemetery, on an "on" week and deal with the way I felt, I asked my doctor if I could postpone my treatment a week. They said I could and so I did. The result was that I had two successive "off" weeks after my previous treatment and by the weekend of the funeral, I felt the best that I had in months, certainly since my most recent treatments started. I was happy for this for two reasons: (1) I was more "on top of my game" during the weekend and could enjoy the good aspects (such as seeing family for the first time in quite awhile) as well as deal with my responsibilities in the best possible mood and condition that I could; and (2) it gave me a good feeling that with now only two treatments left, because I recovered so fast for the funeral, I am encouraged that when I am done with this treatment (in only a matter of a few weeks now), I will be able to recover much more quickly to a more "normal" state than I originally anticipated.

But as good as I felt for the weekend, I knew that when I returned home, I would be going through treatment #10 the next day. Cyndy had cautioned me that because I was at such a high, the "fall" after the treatment might be greater than usual. Sure enough, I was brought down to earth on Tuesday quite fast. I didn't even go to work on Wednesday and Thursday (my disconnect was the latter day), as I just did minimal working from home. I wouldn't say that I felt worse than normal (fortunately my chest pains continue to be reduced in number, length, and intensity - thank goodness), but I didn't feel any better either. So now as the weekend nears an end, I go through my normal "weekend after an 'on' week" feeling and just try to recover to have enough strength for the week ahead.


Thankfully my neighbor Tony continues to mow our lawn for me. Mowing takes a lot out of me now and I had mentioned that to Tony and his wife Mo a few weeks ago. I was just telling them how difficult it was for me but I was making it, but they took it upon themselves to voluntarily mow my lawn, not just once, but every week since then. Cyndy and I are still trying to think of an appropriate way to repay them. If you have any ideas (short of cash, as we could think of that ourselves, but I'm not sure they would accept it), we're all ears.


So I am now looking forward to an "off" week. My next treatment is July 5 and then my 12th and last one is Monday, July 18. Based upon the way I felt next week, I am looking forward to August 6, which is a Saturday. That will be a full two "off" weeks after my last treatment and I hope to feel as good that day as I did last weekend. I know the chemo takes about 6 weeks to dissipate itself after ravaging my body internals (and I am allowing two months), but if I felt good in only two weeks, that would be wonderful.


But for now, I am just doing my normal recovery from my "crash landing" from my last treatment. I will recover and I know in a matter of a few short weeks, I will feel good again. For all those of you who have taken even one second to think about me, pray for me, or wish me well, I thank you for your thoughts and prayers. They mean a lot and really work.

Reluctant Decision

I mentioned last time that I wanted to end my chemo process while I still had some sanity. I talked to Dr. Y (my oncologist), Dr. Ondrula (my surgeon), and Dr. Beusse (my personal doctor) about this, all of whom not surprisingly suggested that I continue until the end. Dr. Beusse perhaps had the best argument. He mentioned that the cancer that I once defeated ultimately came back so now I have a history of cancer returning, and within 2 years. If the 10th (or 11th or 12th) treatment happens to kill the last remaining cancer cell within me that would have otherwise been missed if I stopped earlier, wouldn't it have been worth it to continue this to the end? At least that was Dr. Beusse's argument that I found hard to reject.

Since that time I have had two more treatments so now I'm only down to three left. These are definitely wearing on me and taking me much longer to recover from (yes, I know a preposition is a bad word to end a sentence with). But I am strong enough to withstand these and know that once they are over (and they will be over now sooner than I think), that I should be able to show signs of recovery and hopefully be relatively "normal" (whatever that is anymore) perhaps by September. Too late for summer, but after what I've gone through, you don't argue with timing. It is what it is.

I have been doing some working from home on days when I don't feel too hot, and I appreciate that. I'm using up so much of my available vacation/personal time that any time that I can be away from work without claiming it is greatly appreciated. If all goes well, I think I should actually have some time off left by September, when I hope to be back to normal. And then in September I get 4 more weeks of vacation. Next year I would actually like to spend my vacation on vacation and not on what I have been spending it the past three years.

It reminds me of when I was at Ameritech and about to start my 15th year, when I would earn 4 weeks vacation. I was excited and we were planning family trips on how we would spend it. Then I got "downsized" and that was that - no vacation time, no trips. So now I'm actually earning 4 weeks vacation for the first time this year and I'm using most of it on chemo days off. I hope you can see why I'm looking forward to actually spending vacation time on vacations, or at least enjoyable personal time off.

HAIR UPDATE
I'm not sure how many out there are interested on my hair situation but here it is. My hair is definitely continuing to thin. I shouldn't become a cue ball by the end of my treatment, but there is a noticeable difference in the quantity of my hair. I had a haircut a while back to make everything short, as I was tired of running my fingers through my hair and having longer hairs on my hand. So all my hair is short now and as mentioned, its quantity is diminishing. Given its color and how short and thin it is, when I wear my glasses, I look like Stork from "Animal House" ("What are we supposed to do, you mo-ron"). I have been told and I am confident that my hair will outlast my chemo treatments. It may be a much closer finish than I originally imagined but hopefully my hair will win. And I hear it tends to grow back even better (and perhaps different) than before, so we'll see how that goes.

Stop the Insanity!

With apologies to Susan Powter (like anybody still remembers her), this is what I am attempting to do today. I went in for treatment number 8 but with the intention of ending it all right now. My logic?

• I have been told over and over again in this process that the final decisions are mine. Therefore it I want to stop, that's my right, whether the doctors agree or not.



• At the very beginning of this process, Dr. Y gave me the option (since Dr. Ondrula had removed all of the cancerous cells in my thigh when he did the biopsy on me) of NOT having chemo treatment at this time. He highly recommended against it, but he did give me that option. I had been gearing up for chemo for a month, and so based upon my first experience, which was unpleasant but reasonably bearable, I said let's do it.



• Though I've been told by several doctors that the prescribed treatment with my current chemo cocktail is 12 bi-weekly treatments, that was also the prescribed treatment during my first go-round with oxiliplaten but due to circumstances (I had just had 4 months of treatment with other drugs), Dr. Y arbitrarily reduced my treatment down to 6 from 12. If he could change the prescription once, why not again?



• My last CEA blood cancer tumor marker score was 1.8, a very acceptable number (it was 35 just before I had my PET scan and ultimate biopsy surgery). To me that indicated that the cancer was now completely out of me. So at this point, why pump more poisons into me when the cancer is gone?



• From a personal level, I greatly underestimated (because I didn't know) the effects of this round of chemo compared to my first round. The thought of giving up another summer for this treatment (which leaves me with not much quality of life) just seemed a little more than I could bear. I'll be 59 in a couple of weeks and I certainly have no guarantee on how many more healthy summers (or years) I'll have. I just hated the thought of giving my summer up when I didn't think it was necessary.

So I took my thoughts to the doctor this morning. We shared them first with JoLynn, our nurse practitioner. Because of the seriousness of what I wanted to do, she called in Dr. Y and we talked. He emphasized that the 12 week period wasn't arbitrarily chosen but has been selected based upon years of study as being a required amount of cycles that should be administered. He also was concerned that the CEA test could possibly miss small microscopic cancer cells which additional chemo could still kill. While he admits that there is no guarantee that cancer will not return, he just indicated that the chances of it returning are less if I go for 12 cycles rather than stopping at 7 (they have no studies of results after only 7 treatments). He also indicated that I could receive a 20% lower dosage of each drug, which should hopefully make my dealing with all of this a little easier.

So I thought about everything, talked it over with Cyndy, and we decided to go with the 20% lower dosage today, see how things go over the next two weeks before the next scheduled treatment, and make an on-going decision then. My point in this was never to simply stop treatments because I'm tired of them (which I am but if they helped reduce my chance of contracting cancer again, I'd do it). I know I could handle this to the prescribed end. My only point was "Why?" if the blood test indicated no cancer in me. Any decision here is simply based upon how much risk do I want to take and at what cost. Dr. Y was concerned that there could still be something undetected within me that he firmly believes further chemo would kill. Of course there's a chance I'm right and there's nothing in there and I could be having multiple poisons injected into me for the next two months for no worthwhile reason. Then it comes down to what risk am I willing to take.

So right now we're playing it safe. I have completed my 8th treatment so we'll see how I feel, especially in the next few days, which have always been the worst for me. I must admit that I am probably reluctantly leaning towards continuing this to the bitter end, especially if my reactions even slightly improve due to the reduced dosage. That increases the "on hold" portion of my life that I am currently on, but if I'm honest with myself, it is only a few extra weeks and if Dr. Y is right and my chances of recurrence are more reduced (if not guaranteed) by completing the 12 cycles, then maybe it will be worth it. It's all about risk. I've seen people make risky decision regarding their cancer health (e.g., Farrah Fawcett) and it often doesn't turn out well. Any choice I make has risks, but I think I may be preparing for the one that offers the least amount, despite the temporary price I have to pay.

Thanks to all for your thoughts. Continue to think of me in your prayers. Believe me, they are not going unheeded. Despite what I am going through, I know I continue to be very fortunate.

The Other Victim of Cancer

This is my 2nd atttempt at this topic. My first got lost in cyberspace (just the letter 'n' survived, in case you saw that and wondered, "What kind of post is that?"). As you all know, I am a victim of cancer. I have undergone 21 chemo treatments (with 6 to go), 25 radiation treatments, a life-changing surgery to remove a Stage 3C (not good) cancerous tumor, had a separate surgery to remove my second set of cancer cells, and continue to deal with the side effects of 4 cancer-killing chemicals injected into me every two weeks. I am an obvious victim of this insidious diseases.

But I'm not the only victim in this case. My wife Cyndy suffers in many ways besides the physical ones that I do. It is no doubt a helpless feeling to see a loved one suffering through chemo side effects and not being able to do anything about relieving those symptoms. And when I talk about the "other victim", I don't only mean Cyndy. I'm really talking about any loved one of any patient of cancer because they all deal with the same issues.

Cyndy has been wonderful throughout this whole situation, going back to my initial cancer. She has even told people that "we" have cancer, not just me, because in a way, she is going through this process, too. She sees me every single day. She sees my bad days as well as my not-as-bad days (I'm never "fine" any more - it's just a degree of how bad I feel today). She encourages me when I don't want to do what I know I need to do. She understands what I'm going through and supports me by telling me to take it easy or take a nap or sit down and rest or whatever. She doesn't even want to hear it when I tell her that I'm sorry I'm putting her through this or is she sure she's going to continue to be there for me through every single thing I have to go through (she really gets upset at the latter). I know better than to ask such a stupid question but sometimes there's an insecure part of me which says, "Will anybody be there for me when I need it?" She is always there to reassure me that she will - and to tell me to shut up and stop asking such stupid questions!

Yes, it's no fun having cancer. And it is no fun to be the loved one who must daily deal with a cancer patient. Cyndy is not special in the sense that she is certainly not the only one dealing with what she does, but she certainly is special to me for all the support she provides to me, given the difficult issues she must deal with in being the "caretaker" of a cancer patient. I'm sure it's not easy and I know she wishes she didn't have to do it, but she knows that's not the case, and therefore it has to be done and she willingly does it.

So to all the "other" victims of cancer out there, I just say that just like you might not quite know what your loved one is going through, I and they likewise don't know what you are going through by being the daily care provider for us. All I can say is keep doing what you're doing. It is necessary and appreciated more than you'll ever know. And God Bless You for doing it all as well. I'm sure there's a special place up there for all those "other" victims who sacrificed in so many ways on behalf of a loved one. I could never thank or repay Cyndy enough for all she has done for me. I just pray that soon this "victim" status for both of us will be over and "normalcy" (whatever that is anymore) returns to both our lives.