another week ticks by

This week has been a waiting week, and a test of my patience. I was supposed to go to Moffitt for testing on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I did go on Monday, but after arriving I was told they'd postponed the testing until my platelets come back up. I wasted half a day on that trip. I raced back to Clearwater to have blood work done and was told I need another platelet tranfusion (where DO those little buggers go?) - but the clinic where I get the transfusion closes at 1:00 on Mondays (where do THOSE buggers go on Monday afternoons?). Got a transfusion on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the platelets were still low, but no more transfusions. Tomorrow I go in for blood work again. My angioplasty and stent is tentatively (very tentatively) scheduled for Thursday, depending on the platelet count being high enough. Believe it when you see it. If I get a "go" for Thursday, I'll update this blog again to let you know.

time flies

This has been a busy week for me, reminding me that time flies whether you are having fun or not. My platelet count was low on Tuesday so I got a platelet transfusion. An i.v. bag of platelets looks look a bag of oatmeal, not pretty, but platelets are "transfused" faster than blood. I also had atrial fibrillation and low blood pressure, so I went to the ER and spent Tuesday night and too much of Wednesday in the hospital.

On Friday, my cardiologist told me that a nuclear stress test I had a week ago shows that I have an 80-90 percent blockage in an artery close to the heart. He knows I'm going to Moffitt for testing this coming week. The following week, he will put me in the hospital for angioplasty and a stent. This will be an overnight stay, and I probably won't care that the hospital's TV system does not include the network that carries Rays games.

To his credit, he didn't call the procedure routine, but he did call it a treatable condition. That's been my magic word for nearly a year. If it's treatable, I believe in better living through chemistry. But, I'm beginning to feel like the guy who took his old car in for an oil change and ended up with new tires, shocks, and a rebuilt carburetor.

My blood work on Friday showed some improvement in white cells - 2.0 compared with 0.6 on Tuesday. My platelet count on Friday was even lower than it was on Tuesday, so I went back for another platelet transfusion. I believe Moffitt will do more blood work Monday morning, so we will see if any of those platelets stuck around long enough to be counted.

Thinking ahead to my long stay in Tampa in September-October after leaving Moffitt, I have an idea for a project to keep me busy. A story in today's paper described how a woman scanned all her old photographs - or, rather, sent them off to be scanned. I'd rather scan the negatives than the prints, because the negatives have more information than the prints, the prints are mostly fair or worse, and the scanned images will look a lot better if made from the negatives. I could have the negatives scanned at 39 cents per frame, but a rough estimate tells me that could easily cost me $1,000 or more. However, if I had five weeks to spare with nothing else to do, and if my scanner will work connected to my laptop, and if I round up all my old negatives and take them with me . . . I'll be $1,000 or more ahead and will have a time-consuming hobby to take my mind off of other things. I (almost) can't wait!

here we go, part 2

Well, I promised my faithful readers I would update this more often than I have in the past, but a month has gone by and I'm way overdue for an update. The second cycle of chemo treatments that were scheduled for mid-June was postponed a week because of a low platelet count, and postponed another week due to low white cells. Those little buggers finally got themselves aligned with "normal" and I started the second cycle on Monday. That was an all-day deal, eight hours, followed by four hours today and four tomorrow.

So far, no nausea and no obvious (to me) impairment as a result, except having to get up every hour during the night and having to recover from Benadryl, which knocks me out for a couple of hours when the session starts. I still have my appetite, which is good. I lost a lot of weight last Fall when all this started and the idea of food didn't sound good to me. I think the loss of appetite was a psychological problem. For the first several weeks, I was in (but fighting) the "woe-is-me" mode, struggling to accept the fact I had cancer, the Big C, the death sentence, and then realizing that, no, it is treatable. A wonderful word, treatable. A life-saving word.

The oncology clinic is a wi-fi zone, and I can take my lap-top and my iPod Touch. I can also take my brand-new Kindle, a surprise gift from my in-laws, who decided I'd much rather take a Kindle that weighs mere ounces instead of a dozen or more heavy books to read when I go into captivity - I mean, the hospital - in August. It was a wonderful gift. I have wonderful in-laws. I've mailed them old-fashioned written thank-you notes stuffed with photos of our three grandkids.

So now I'll have a couple of weeks to recuperate, and in mid-July I'll go to Moffitt Cancer Hospital in Tampa for three days of testing of my vital organs. Barring any ugly surprises, I'll enter Moffitt in mid-August.

And I promise to keep you up to date more often than I have.

here we go again

My half dozen regular readers already know this story, but I'm overdue in updating my optimistic report about my cancer treatments. It seems I was overly optimistic.

So now it's back to Square Two in my fight against lymphoma. I had a cycle of chemo treatments in Clearwater on May 26-28, and will have another cycle on June 16-18. Then, testing at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa to see if my vital organs can withstand what I'll call the Neutron Bomb treatment. If so, they'll harvest stem cells from my blood stream and I will get that treatment at Moffitt in early to mid August. I will be in the hospital at Moffitt for one to three weeks while the stem cells work on repopulating the bone marrow, then must find a place to live in seclusion within 15 minutes of Moffitt, with a live-in companion, for another 30 days or so. When I get home, I must avoid the office and people for another month or so, which brings me down to October before life will begin getting back to normal. I may be susceptible to infections for months afterwards, so if you find yourselves asking "who was that masked man?" - it might have been me.

All of this seems to have coincided with baseball season and the Rays are doing exceptionally well, so I am looking forward to watching the Rays becoming the Boys of October and winning the World Series this time. I am very happy to have gotten my travel "bug" adjusted, having seen all of my beautiful children and grandchildren at least once over the past three months.

As I said to a friend from high school who is going back for treatment for prostate cancer to see if it spread elsewhere in his body, getting old is not as much fun as they said it would be!

happy Hazel

happy
Originally uploaded by megang

proud parents

proud parents
Originally uploaded by megang

Emmet, born 28 March 2010 @9.46am to proud parents Allison & Greg. After one week he gained 9 ounces over his birth weight. Nice work, Mom and Dad!

our newest family member

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Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Welcomed to the world in Cambridge, MA, on Sunday, March 28, 2010. Mother and son are doing fine, and so is his admiring grandmother!

finally, back to normal, whatever that was!

I'm proud to say that my last chemo therapy treatment for lymphoma occurred on February 2, 2010, and that I'm still here to tell you about my experience, for which I thank God.

I'm a skinnier version of my old self and I lost most of what little hair I had, but the weight loss is not regrettable and the hair is beginning to come back.

I'm back at work on a full-time basis. I'm glad to have a job to go back to, doing work I enjoy with people I enjoy working with.

I still have an issue with a kidney but it is not terribly serious and I will spare you the details.

I notice that every sentence in this blog entry begins with "I." I'm not that self-centered. I'll go back to my old form, taking shots at politicians and rooting for the Rays baseball team, beginning with the next entry.

finally - one more to go

This time next week I'll undergo the LAST treatment for lymphoma. Thank God.

The first five didn't bother me much, physically. Looking back, it was the emotional reaction to my whole experience - the diagnosis, the initial treatments - that got me down. Physically, it wasn't so bad except for the four days I spent in the hospital because of three degrees of fever. Four days in a hospital for any reason is a nightmare, and it made me paranoid about getting infections when my white cell count was down.

The last two have begun to beat me down. I still get around, and I'm less of a couch potato than I was earlier, but I'm much more tired at the end of the day than I was.

What's remarkable is that they found blood clots in my left leg, behind the knee and in the ankle, and for that reason the swelling still hasn't gone down despite taking Coumadin and getting shots of Arixtra daily for nearly two weeks. The swelling was the original symptom that lead to all this. The active cancer cells are long gone, but not the swelling. The nurse at the clinic who deals with blood chemistry problems is mystified. She says they'll likely refer me to a cardiologist to deal with the blood clots.

So, if I can get through next week, and if a cardiologist can perform a miracle to get the swelling down, I can begin getting back to normal.

what a difference ten years make

Here we are, looking at the end of another decade (although, technically, it doesn't end for another year, but explaining why isn't worth the energy).

Ten years ago, I was feeling good because it appeared that world peace was about to break out. The Soviet Union was gone, the Berlin Wall was down, the Pope had visited Cuba, and the Parliament of Scotland opened for the first time since 1707. Well, OK, that last item wasn't all that relevant to my false sense that the world was in very good shape, but it helped.

Wow, what a fool I was for being so naive and misinformed. The news media will be full of stories over the next few days detailing all that went wrong in the past decade, ranging from the disputed presidential election in Florida in 2000 to the disasters of September 11, 2001, and downhill from there.

However, on a personal level, this decade has been good to us. Our children finished undergraduate school, and two earned master's degrees. They are all gainfully employed except our son, who's in the third year of dental school. My wife is a ten-year breast cancer survivor, and she's still employed despite budget cuts where she works. I am on the verge of being declared a lymphoma survivor. Better yet, we've been given two beautiful and healthy grandchildren, with a third due in April.

I hit the ripe old age of 65 this year, which is remarkable because a lot of us children of the Cold War never really believed we'd live this long. I've now worked for my employer longer than the three other cities I've worked for in the past and plan to stay on for a few more years if they'll have me. I can't retire soon; I need to pay for my wife's new kitchen and my new Corvette!

To my faithful few regular readers, and the occasional random reader, I wish you nothing but good in 2010 and every year afterwards. May God have mercy on us all.

Five down, THREE to go

Well, nuts. I've been counting down the chemo treatments from the beginning and, according to the schedule, next Tuesday should be my sixth and final treatment.

Not so fast.

Yesterday, the doctor apologized for not telling me the last time we met that I should have eight, not six, treatments. He is concerned because the "pet" scan showed a minute trace of cancer cell activity in the bone marrow - so minute that it wasn't detected when the lab first saw the scan results, but did show up when they were testing a more sophisticated and sensitive machine.

So, instead of being done by Christmas, I'll be done on (or about) February 1.

Meanwhile, I feel fine despite having low white cell and red cell counts during the first 10 - 14 days after each treatment. I'm confident I will feel a helluva lot better when my body finally rids itself of the chemicals but I'm grateful that the chemicals rid my body of active cancer cells.

Stayed tuned . . .

Thanksgiving in Seattle

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Originally uploaded by galbr8th

Two cousins, our first grandchildren, got to share space and toys for the first time last week.

four down, two to go

I'm now four down and two to go with the chemo treatments for lymphoma, and the good news for me is that my "pet" scan shows no active cancer cell activity. A "pet" scan is not like an X-ray. It traces a radioactive glucose solution that runs through your body starting about an hour before the scan. Because the cancer cells gobble up the glucose faster than normal cells, they "light up" on the scan so the doctor can see where they are located.

The scan showed some enlarged tissues but the doctor said they are scar tissue or dead tissue that will be absorbed by the body.

The most obvious sign, for me, is that my swollen left foot and leg have gone down dramatically in the past few days. Today I wore shoes, not sandals, for the first time since this whole thing started back in August.

Light at the end of the tunnel!

Lymphoma, cont'd

I'm way overdue to update this blog with the status of my treatment for lymphoma. My half dozen regular readers already know my status, but I've promised to update this, so here it is:

I'm now three down, three to go, with the chemo treatments. I got the first three treatments every two weeks, not the standard three weeks, because trial work in Germany for my kind of lymphoma and the treatment I'm getting indicates some marginal benefit for getting them every two weeks - plus, I should be done before Christmas. I'm now on a once every three weeks schedule to allow me to travel to Seattle to see my first granddaughter at Thanksgiving . . . and I'll still finish before Christmas.

Remarkably, I've experienced no nausea. Fatigue, if any, has been marginal but they say it will build up. The main problem has been the low white cell count that occurs after each treatment. I get a follow-up shot the day after treatment to prod the bone marrow into generating more white cells, but that takes ten to fourteen days to kick in. During that time I have to be very careful about exposure to viruses or bacteria of any kind. After my second treatment, I wasn't so careful. I developed a three-degree fever that resulted in my being hospitalized for four days while they waited for blood cultures to come back. They were negative, which means it could have been anything. If they had come back positive, they would have replaced my port.

Another remarkable thing is that I still have most of what little hair I had left, although my doctor says the hair loss occurs slowly.

A bigger issue for me is that the swelling in my left ankle and leg is reduced but has not gone away. My oncologist reminded me how bad it was when he first saw me, and says his objective is to get the swelling reduced one hundred percent.

So, here I am at the halfway point, trying to stay out of harm's way while swine flu and other nasty bugs are in the air (and on door handles, and escalator hand rails, and other things we touch). I'm also waiting to see if I get "chemo brain," or a befuddlement that sets in as you near the end of the treatments. Since I'm befuddled more often than not anyway, it might be hard to know if that becomes an issue.

Stay tuned . . .

going public about Lymphoma

Four weeks ago tomorrow, my left ankle swelled to the size of a softball, with no pain or other symptoms. I'd spent the day cleaning my pool, painting the front door, and other such Saturday tasks, and decided to mow the front lawn before it got dark. I noticed my ankle for the first time when I sat down to put on socks and shoes.

Two weeks ago today, I went to see my doctor for the third time. By now, the swelling was all the way up my left leg but still without any other symptoms of illness - no fever, no weight loss - only a rash on the back of the leg. She'd theorized it was an infection, or a blood clot, or shingles. She sent me back over to the imaging center to recheck for a blood clot and ordered a cat scan of my abdomen. When she saw the bigger picture, she put me in the hospital to be seen by specialists and be prepared for a biopsy.

A mass behind the kidney suggested Lymphoma or kidney cancer, the former being preferable if you have a choice. After more testing, probing and scanning, the verdict came in: Lymphoma. Large B-cell Lymphoma, to be more specific, which is treatable.

The oncologist who saw me at the hospital prescribed chemo treatment, and I've already undergone the first one. I suffered none of the dreaded side effects of chemo but they tell me I will lose my hair, or what's left of it. After watching it go slowly for about 40 years, I can deal with that!

Why am I telling you all this? Mainly, to raise your awareness of Lymphoma, a strange disease. The disease can be asymptomatic or the symptoms can be very subtle, such as a swelling of lymph nodes. Seeing your doctor is very important if you feel little lumps in your neck, under your armpit, or other places where there usually are no lumps. The symptoms are often associated with other diseases. There are no identified causes. The disease strikes people of all ages. There are many varieties of Lymphoma, and treatments vary according to type. I'm being given a treatment that has come into wide use in the past two years with very good results.

The lymph system itself is a mystery to most people. You can visualize a heart or a stomach, but the lymph system sounds like one of the "humors" that medieval physicians believed existed in the body. It runs through the body and performs a variety of necessary jobs like sending armies of white cells out to fight infection.

Because the lymph system runs throughout the body, surgery is not a treatment option. Chemo treatments are. I may go into more detail on that later, but that's all for now. I might add that my left leg is still swollen and may not get back to normal for another couple of weeks, which is painful enough without also keeping me from getting into my new Corvette without crawling across the driveway and up under the steering wheel. As kids used to say, bummer!

random thoughts on a Friday

A few random thoughts while waiting until it's time to leave for a doctor's appointment:

I've been driving my Corvette for a month, now, and it has changed my driving habits in a couple of respects.

The dashboard gives me a readout of my gas mileage, both average and "instantaneous." The instantaneous readout is very instructive. Everybody should have one. It teaches you to drive as if you have a raw egg between your foot and the accelerator pedal if you are concerned about getting good gas mileage. I've learned that fuel consumption is worst when you are starting from a dead stop, so no jack-rabbit starts for me. The rate improves, somewhat, driving on city streets. Once you are up to highway speed, it really gets much better. If I ease up on the pedal, the rate jumps to 55 mpg or greater. Because my overall average is about 20 mpg, driving a route that's part city streets and part Interstate Highway, that's impressive!

However, once I'm up to speed, I no longer appreciate being passed by fools driving clunkers or pick-up trucks with the pedal down unless I happen to be driving slow and cool on purpose. I especially do not appreciate being passed on the right by somebody "slalom-skiing" down the highway, or being boxed in by truckers and slow-pokes. If there's empty space between me and the car in front, it is there for a reason and I don't appreciate someone trying to fill it. I used to tolerate such behavior on the road, but now it is comforting to know I can leave such fools behind in a cloud of dust by goosing the gas pedal. In fact, I've done it, and it is very satisfying!

Changing subjects:

When I heard that the Congressman who called President Obama a liar was a Republican from South Carolina, I was not surprised. He's now the poster boy for the Republican Party, which seems to have nothing constructive to say on any issue but simply stands about, arms folded, hoping our President fails. The GOP has been veering to the extreme far right, headed for the cliff, ever since President "Tricky Dick" ("I am not a crook") Nixon and his band of rogues.

About that doctor's appointment: I have had a swollen ankle, going all the way up the leg, with a rash on the back of the leg, for two weeks. My doctor at first thought it might be an infection or a blood clot, but ruled them out. Now, her diagnosis is shingles, but without the typical symptoms of shingles. I am going to see her today for another look and possibly a new diagnosis. I hope she can at least get the swelling down. I'm tired of sitting about with my leg up, or feeling guilty when I'm at work and can't sit that way. I'm grateful my Corvette has automatic transmission because I no longer need to work a clutch pedal with my left foot.

Enough of this; it's time to see the doc.

If you are what you drive, I'm a Corvette!

After several years of driving a nice little Nissan that was paid for and got great gas mileage, I gave in to the impulse to buy a sexy car. If I tell you I bought a six-year-old Chevy, you'd not be impressed. I bought a 2003 Corvette that is in mint condition, pictured here.

This came after weeks of eyeballing other cars on the road, noting that most cars nowadays are pickup trucks, citified versions of pickup trucks called "SUVs," or generic cars that look like bars of soap with four wheels, designed in a wind tunnel with absolutely no sex appeal at all. Where are the great cars of yesteryear with the fins, the fenders, and distinctive design features that allowed kids like me to identify a car by make, model and year on first glance? (I almost said running boards, but they were way before my time.)

I was attracted to the Saturn Sky and actually visited a Saturn dealer for a closer look, but the Sky has no room for a duffel bag with the top down and barely room for one Scuba tank and nothing else with the top up. Then I drove across the street to a Jeep-Chrysler dealer and saw this beauty with a price I knew was right. The salesman wanted to sell, and gave me a huge trade-in on the old Nissan to make it hard to resist. My resistance collapsed because I knew, if I slept on it overnight, it would be gone.

So, goodbye to the Buick station wagons, four-door family sedans, and fuel-efficient cars with no power in the top end gear that I've been driving. The two cars I most enjoyed were the big old Chevy Impala I bought when I came home from the Army, and a Pontiac Catalina we used to bring the twins home from the hospital. The rest have been sedate cars that a father of four is supposed to drive. I'm now a Chevy man again, and I love it.

this old house

Fixing something in an old house is like replacing a part on an old car. Once you get started, one thing leads to another and you have that '56 '57 '58 '59 Chevy that somebody wrote the song about.

We replaced our kitchen, which sorely needed replacement. That included the kitchen window, the ceiling, the floor all the way down the hall to the bathroom, the shelves and cabinets, the a/c ducts over the kitchen, and most of the appliances. And a new electrical panel to replace a panel with those funky old glass fuses.

Then we replaced the front door with a door that should withstand a hurricane.

Then the garage door began to disassemble itself after one of the two big springs went sproinggg, so now we have a new Miami-Dade rated hurricane resistant garage door.

Then the air conditioner died, after 18 years of faithful service. We could have just replaced the a/c unit but there's a nice tax credit if you replace the cooling and heating system with an energy efficient system. That meant taking out an oil furnace, new six years ago, and putting in a heat pump. With the tax credit, the cost difference was less than a thousand bucks. We lived without the a/c for ten days which reminded me how much fun it was to grow up in Florida without air conditioning. I didn't mind it then because we all got sweaty and we all smelled alike, but now I thoroughly dislike the high humidity.

All of this should make the house easier to sell someday if we (or our children) put the house on the market.

This gives new meaning to the expression, "I'm out spending my children's inheritence," but in this case it's all borrowed money. They might get most of it back whenever the house sells - which we sincerely hope will not happen for the next 20 or 40 years!

major and minor marvels

Yesterday evening I was thinking of two marvels, one major and one minor, but not unimportant.

The major marvel is that my opthamologist zapped my bionic right eye with a laser, cutting a square hole in a cloudy membrane behind the artificial lens that was installed last summer, and making my world look clearer. It seems that getting a cloudy membrane behind an artificial lens is a side effect that occurs in some cases. The good - no, amazing - news is that the problem can be fixed with a laser beam that cuts a hole in the membrane, cutting out a little tiny squarish piece that becomes a "floater." The doctor says the floater will become less obvious with time; in fact, should sink out of sight (so to speak) in a week or so. Even if it does not sink out of sight, it is so minor and the improvement to my visual acuity is so great that I don't care!

(My next appointment with the eye doctor is to have X-ray vision installed. Just kidding, but wait a few years. It might become possible some day.)

The minor marvel is my obtaining a . . . (drum roll) . . . meat thermometer, one of the instant-read kinds with a digital dial, of course. I used it last night on a nice piece of salmon. I waited for it to get to 145 degrees and it was perfect. No more stabbing with a fork, trying to decide if it's done enough, no more bringing it inside to be told it isn't done enough. I've always had the hardest time with salmon because I don't want to burn it or overcook it, and it looks pretty much the same to me whether it's done or only half-way done. No more of that! All I need to do now is replace all the working parts of my grill and I'll be set to grill with the best of them.

Speaking of marvels, the Rays are on a roll. They have discovered that the thin air of Denver seems to allow baseballs to fly out of the stadium easier than at sea level. Or, that's my theory for today.

Saturday

I'm "celebrating" today (Saturday) in my favorite manner: Slept in late, but not too late; enjoyed reading the paper and drinking coffee in bed with my best friend in the whole wide world; fiddled with the computer long enough to transfer photos from my camera into it; got out of the house long enough to clean the pool filter and then sweep the pool manually with a new-fangled brush; trimmed back two bushes that were threatening to take over a wall; came in for lunch with my BFITWWW after doing her the favor of taking a quick shower; and now I'm fiddling with the computer again, thinking about how HOT it is outside.

I'm overdue with the task of sending photos to people. My friends can find me in Flickr, where I will upload some photos of grand-nieces taken in Naples last weekend. I also need to add new photos of our grandson, Quentin, to our iPods. I need to run up to the library to get another book by Randy Wayne White, an author from Ft. Myers who writes adventure/ mystery stories that remind me of the Travis McGee stories written by John D. MacDonald, a Sarasota writer. White's main character, Doc Ford, is like Travis McGee only smarter and tougher. The stories are page-turners and I feel like I've been there, like I could drive down to Sanibel Island and find Doc Ford in his house/lab or on his boat.

I'd take my bike to the library but I also need to go pick up more chlorine for the pool. The house next door has been gutted, right down to the masonry walls, and we've had dust blowing around the neighborhood and into the pool for weeks. Today, the filter wasn't green with algae as usual; it was brown with dirt. That new-fangled pool brush has a big flap that forces the brush into firm contact with the pool wall and bottom, making the job easier. I seldom brush the pool manually but, today, it was overdue.

I need to get back from the pool store in time to get ready to go out for dinner and a movie, bringing this Saturday to a perfectly suitable end.

Before I go, let me digress: The last time I was in Tarpon Springs I drove out to find the house where we lived when I was a kid, in the early 50's. Couldn't find it. I've now figured out where it is and why I didn't recognize it. The city acquired the lot next door, then ran a new street back into what used to be piney woods. Those woods, which used to have old brick streets left over from Florida's boom days of the 1920's, are now full of houses. Progress, Florida style. Disgusting.