Overzealous, underwater....

Chemo Week. I started it last Thursday night with the hope of feeling better in time for the Huck Cancer Tournament. Things started out so well. I had some wonderful new tidbits from Joe about how to reduce the amount of extra meds I was taking. My first few days felt better than ever before. My appetite was pretty strong, and I had relatively good energy. I was even being careful and working from home part-time in order to maintain my rest. After the 5 days had passed, I still felt pretty good. Had I figured out the secret?

Nice try. This morning I woke up, and decided I was feeling good enough to pop out of bed and head into work for a full day. One smoothie breakfast later and I was on my way down the highway. As soon as I exited the highway, my body began to revolt. I rushed to the side of the road and...well...let's just say that smoothie tasted way better going down. I ended up heading into work, but suddenly I felt like I'd been tossed into a washing machine, rinse cycle. I pushed myself too hard.

The frustration is really hard to describe. There are certain key parts of my life that are suppressed during Chemo Week. In fact, if I didn't enjoy sleep, for the most part, it would be every key aspect of my life that is suppressed. Work is one of them. It contains part of my identity whether I want it to or not. And when I feel strained from my ability to contribute, it really hurts.

Yes, I do understand what I need to do, I'm just venting from the bottom of the ditch. I mean, really? I need 12 hours of sleep and then naps during the day? For several days? Really? Yes, really.

The "late" latest

Ooops. Sorry. I meant to update about a week ago. See, here's the thing. I start chemo. I nervously start to anticipate my decline, even though I feel perfectly fine the first few days. I feel the slide begin, and my mood shifts. Eventually, I hit bottom, and start thinking about how to describe what the bottom looks like. What it's like to always have fatigue. To gag every time I look at a pill. To not understand if I'm hungry or nauseous. To not really want to chat or e-mail or write. Anyone. Besides, my computer is waaaay up at the top, and I'm still on the bottom. So I take a serious nap. And then another. And another. Then one time, I wake up, and I feel like I have more energy than normal. My lips start quivering with excess energy whenever I talk. My mind starts racing around the inside of my head. And so I leave the house. I go for a hike, a ride, a walk. I try to meet up with all the friends I hadn't seen for the past week. I e-mail way too much. And I forget to keep everyone up to date on my blog....

Quick Update

Got the MRI yesterday, and basically nothing has changed. This time I actually felt relieved. I started the next cycle last night, so I'm trying to exercise as much as possible in the next few days before I fall asleep. That's about all I got for now. Toodle doo!

If you want to send me information....

...this is the kind of stuff I like to see! And it comes with some fun facts!


In the meantime, my next MRI is tomorrow. I'll let you know how that goes.

Game on!

The "Huck Cancer" fundraising tournament AGAINST cancer is now officially on! If you're interested in playing, watching, partying afterwards, or just supporting, check out the following website which has links to all of the necessary locations. The tournament is supporting the Lance Armstrong Foundation, cause after all, he won a sh-t load of Tours de France.....
http://www.huckcancer.org

And a huge hug to all my friends who basically organized this entire event!

Why can't I take advantage of my degree?

I've studied physics for over a decade of my life. My first college class in particular was on "Special Relativity", or the relationship between motion, mass, and time. That theory demonstrates the simple fact that the faster you move, the faster time passes around you (or in other words, you won't age while the rest of the world will). And yet, whenever I'm on chemo, I move much more slowly, yet time seems to fly past me! The evidence is in the phone calls, e-mails, text messages, and work-related requests that I have almost no time or energy to process.

It's been a pretty frustrating week, but I'm now creeping out of it. I had a great New Years weekend up in Yosemite, snowboarding (or, perhaps, snowtripping?) and hiking. Then on Saturday night I began the chemo treatment, and sometime around Wednesday my body began sinking into the molasses dripping from my brain. Today, after lots of extra naps, I'm starting to feel the beginning of normalcy. While I was spending about half my time sleeping this week, I was hopeful that the rest of the world was doing the same. Unfortunately, now I need to somehow catch up. I'm still too tired to run close to the speed of light, so I think I'm just going to have to reset my clock. And everyone else's.

On a rough note, I did check out the blog of a guy I met at my post-radiation MRI. It was pretty disheartening to read that not all of his tumor is being held at bay by the Temodar. He's pretty optimistic as he starts in on a clinical trial that I hope pounds that part of his tumor to pulp. My fingers are crossed for him and his family.

Nuke-u-ler Magnetic Resonance Imaging (aka MRI)

This week I received my first MRI since I started my monthly Temodar cycles. The hope is that the tumor will, at the very least, remain unchanged with each new image. At the very most it will be pounded down into nothingness, never to be seen again. So...what were the results?!?

Well, Round 1 was a draw. However, since I am the current heavyweight champion of my brain, and we all know that "...in the event of a split decision, the victory goes to...", well, you get the point. Of course, in Round 2 I might want to change over to being Rocky....

Wanna know what the MRI's look like? I thought you might.

This is the original MRI before I had surgery. Now look carefully. Can you see the tumor?

This is approximately the same image taken in my most recent MRI. It shows how nicely the tumor spot has filled back in with actual brain material. Or gumballs. Either way, I'll take it.

This is an MRI from October, right before I started my first cycle of chemo. In the red circle you can see a few white spots and a bit of discolored area. The circle is red because those things are evil.

This is an MRI image from my most recent series, also highlighting that same area. Essentially there is almost no difference between the two images, which is considered very good news. Even better news would be if those spots completely disappeared, but I'm trying to teach myself not to count on that. The sizes and positions of the spots might appear slightly different between MRI images, but mainly that's because the cross-sections are about 5 mm apart, so sets of images taken two months apart will never perfectly align.

In the meantime, I'm starting my next cycle tonight, and will be meeting with my 2nd opinion doctor on Monday.

Ding ding....

Feeling thankful on Thanksgiving...and every other day as well

This week I came back to Michigan to be with my family for Thanksgiving. I hadn't seen anyone in my immediate family since shortly after the surgery. I hadn't seen my nieces, nephews, or in-laws since before all of this happened. So while this might sound obvious to some, I feel incredibly thankful to have such wonderful parents who raised such fantastic siblings, each of whom married amazing partners so they could raise some of the most adorable, wonderful, caring, and sweet nieces and nephews I could ever imagine. And of course, I feel incredibly thankful for all of my doctors and nurses and all of my wonderful friends (in particular "H-Lo" and the "Freighbor") who've kept me going long enough so I could get back here this week to see them all!

The rest of my thanks are spread out far and wide:

To the people I work with and the place I work. I can't even begin to explain how easy it's been to make it this far because of their support, and how crazy it could have been if not for them.

To my mom's chocolate cake. Damn that's good.

To Chana and her mom, for helping me keep perspective.

To blogs, so I don't need to write quite as many e-mails....

To other survivors, for helping me learn how to pull myself through.

To ultimate, for connecting me to some of the most amazing people I know.

To Lance, mainly for making me laugh.

To the Lions, mainly for making me...laugh.

To the X-men, for giving me a quick way to explain things to strangers.

To all the turkeys who sacrificed themselves (including the Lions).

To layers. Remember, layers are key.

To drug companies. While they aren't perfect, they are keeping me alive.

To the parts of my hair that seem to be slowly returning.

To the members of Congress who are caring people and understand that an incredibly wealthy nation can afford to keep its people healthy.

(And again) To my luck of being employed by a great company, and therefore having health care to keep me alive.

To my siblings' dogs, each of which is adorable in its own way! (I still like you more, Chana....)

To music....sweet sweet music. And, of course, dancing in the street.

To wilderness areas. They keep me sane. Ok...close to sane....

And not to be too repetitive, but I'm most thankful for my family (immediate and extended) and friends (local and long distance) for all the kindness and love they've shared. And yes, that's you I'm talkin' 'bout. Youse gotta problem?!?

Second verse, same as the first!

Last week I was in the middle of my 2nd round of chemo, and my first round of chemo with cold virus. How did it go? Well, in retrospect, it was about the same as the first round, with some bonus tracks from the cold. In fact, it mirrored the first experience so much, I felt the same level of frustration and disappointment towards the end of the week, when the fatigue and lack of appetite carried on longer than I expected. And yes, as "H-Lo" and my mom both said, I was once again too hard on myself. So...lesson learned? Hopefully regarding that particular pattern, but if not, I did at least learn some technical lessons which seemed to work pretty well.

There is a woman who has a different blog for her own brain tumor. It's actually an incredibly detailed blog. In fact, it's so detailed, "Lazy Logan" will probably just refer to her to explain more particularly the "ins and outs". One of her entries gave a great description of the meds I can take to, well, "improve" my digestion during the chemo. I also increased my anti-nausea meds from the previous cycle, and made sure to aid my sleep towards the end of the week. In fact, I improved my sleep so much it continued well into the following day! Not bad.

Now that I'm done with the 2nd chemo cycle, I'm feeling great. Looking ahead, I'm making my first plane trip since the surgery to head home for Thanksgiving. I'm super excited to see my family, including my nieces, nephews, and in-laws, whom I haven't seen since before this all happened! And now I'll finally know if the screws in my skull will set off the airport alarm.

After I return, I'll have my next MRI, the first one since I've started the chemo cycles....

No hall pass for me....

This past week, I was hoping to finally get myself back into river kayaking. I'd even told all my kayaking friends to continuously harass me to join them. But as the weekend got closer, I started to notice a little dizziness and fatigue. I knew that I was starting my 2nd chemo cycle this weekend. Is my body foreshadowing my reaction to the meds? Well, it turns out that having cancer does not, after all, give me an exemption from other illnesses. It was just an annoying cold that kept me from kayaking.