The Good, Bad and Ugly

Hi today to friends and family, one and all. Back to the living.

The Good. This is truly a daily journey. The trick, I am still learning, is how to fully appreciate each day. I have a tendency to waste way too much time. Things I want to do and accomplish end up in the manana pile. It is easy to fall into this trap, perhaps too easy because of the retired time I am able to enjoy.

This trip breaks down to 3 distinct time periods. Week one is not good, more about that later. Week two is recovery where everything is looking up and I can tell that my strength is returning. Then week three rolls around and there is the double edged sword of feeling normal, yet realizing that lurking around the weekend bend ahead is a week one.

Last week was a pleasure. I was walking every day for at least an hour. I managed to go to my favorite gym class, the exercise ball core training both Tuesday and Thursday. Great feeling to sweat the body up and feel that you are helping it to keep strong.

Went to the onc on Friday and he is clearly pleased with the response I am having to the chemo. The only real visible sign that can be monitored is the tumor under my left arm, which had shrunk a great deal more since our last visit. And though the doctor is able to feel a lymph node under my right arm it is very small and it may be normal size.

Over the weekend we spent time at Tahoe and went to Homewood to jazz concert with friends Scot and Teresa from Sacramento. This was a fun but mildly cool and breezy evening. The music, by favorite guitarists of ours Strunz and Farrah was great. They have a blend of music that sounds at once Middle Eastern and South American, I guess due to the fact that that is where they are each from. They had a percussionist with them from Cuba that played a unique Cuban instrument that was a blend of washboard sounds and bongos and greatly enhanced the overall sound. The other group, which we were not personally familiar, was a high energy saxophone player and his group called Euge Groove. Now this is a jaded crowd of listeners, from young adults to quite older patrons. He struggled for a while trying to figure the crowd he was playing to. But in the end he had us all dancing. His high energy and "getting your funk on" style got us all into the act. Truly the mark of a good entertainer.

Sunday was a rush to return to Sacramento to have blood tests done and prepare for Monday. I found that the lab does a good job and I got the results in a couple of hours, so that I could in turn fax them to Stanford so they could look at them early Monday and approve treatment for that day.

The Bad. I am learning to NOT LOOK FORWARD to these Mondays. Although it went smoothly enough, only a 12 hour day instead of the 15 hours of last time, it is still trying. The doctor was glad to see the progress I have made with the reduction of the tumor under the left are being most pronounced. She is talking like 6 treatments may be enough. I will be having a follow up scan done in about two weeks so that they have an objective way of measuring the results to date.

The discussion turned to nausea. What a revolting development that is. When I visited my Kaiser onc he approved three more anti emetic (nausea) drugs to try, I was able to pick all but one up for Monday. So I was carrying 4 different prescriptions (2 preexisting) to Stanford to see what they thought, since I was more or less totally confused about what to do. The last round of chemo had left me very nauseous for 1 1/2 days and I was hoping to mitigate that. Well they did have there own other ideas. So they included an injection into my chemo protocol for another drug that is supposed to last for three days of relief. Sounded good to me. I was reading the order and this drug is not even listed and they had to write it in the area where the symptoms are listed at level 3/4 the most severe. That made me realize I must be pretty sensitive to this stuff. It is funny that after the first round I was not sick, just did not feel well.

Well onto chemo, this went smoothly and the actual administration of the Avastin plus other poisons only took about 3 hours. Much quicker than last time. So we were on the road home by 6:30. I even felt well enough to drive. A good sign I believed.

The Ugly. I appears to be like clockwork. You can almost set your watch by it. The witching hour came and I was making love to the toilet again. Thank goodness I was smarter this time and did not try to eat much after chemo, only nibbling a bit.

I won't dwell on this, but suffice it to say Tuesday was ugly, Wednesday was only a wee bit better and it was not till today that I could really eat anything. But amazingly you get through it and here I sit feeling like I am mending, after having several good meals to help make up for the last 2 days.

Looks like I need to have more discussions with the docs about tweaking the anti emetic drug regimen.

On the bright side the chemo is working, I am more and more optimistic each day. I can literally feel the difference again in the past three days as the tumor shrinks further under my arm. Is is somewhat remarkable.

A Small Accomplishment. I did spend yesterday and today reading Lance Armstrong's "It's Not About The Bike", the tale of his journey to the dark side and then back to the light. It is about his encounter with testicular cancer which metastasized to his brain and lungs, his surgery and chemo battle and his inspirational journey back to new life. Perhaps his biggest lesson learned was the discovery of a purpose for his life that transcended beyond himself to be an inspiration for many others in similar situations. Life is a force to be reckoned with. It is powerful and calls to us.

I wish each and every one of you good health, it is certainly precious. Now I am off to take a walk.