Air Is Good

I got back from Reno successfully. I like breathing air that has oxygen in it. I think I was close to passing out some of the days in Reno from the thin mountain air.

Cancer Official Status: Annoying

I decided over the course of today and yesterday that having cancer is actually really, really, really, really annoying. I have wanted to rip my skin off in one big piece, leaving behind a bald, leathery, wrinkly blanket. It is just that being in Reno, with the heat, with the inability to jump and move fully, with the constant whistles and girls screaming and then the losing, and with the stomach pains, I am running a little low on energy. I am just hitting a wall and I have to slow down and rest and I cannot coach or interact with the same kind of energy I am used to having. Last night I did not feel well, so I slept in and missed most of our first match this morning...I HATE missing matches. Insult to injury: we ended up losing that match and the second match of the day to teams we should not lose to, and now I want to rip my skin off AND poke my eyes out with a pen.

But truly, the frustration is a good thing, because it is cropping up as I see the light at the end of the tunnel, where I may be playing and coaching and moving again back to normal. I need to be patient and thankful.

Tomorrow I finish coaching the last day with my team that I have coached for 7 months. Then I drive back to Mountain View. This Friday I will get another CBC (complete blood count). They are going to check to see if my counts are good enough for me to fly to Texas on Monday. I will be back there for a week, because my buddy Chris is getting married. The concern is that if I was to get sick in Texas, I would have to go to the emergency room, and it would be worse for me to be away from my horde of amazing doctors.

Leg Hairs

My leg hairs are falling out. I don't know where they go, but there are many missing. They are probably lying around my new apartment somewhere, and some in the hotel room here in Reno for the poor maid to come vaccuum up. My stomach and other inerts seem to be intact and functioning back to normal.

Bike and Mohawk

My mohawk was just too weak. I tried it, it just couldn't fill out, so I shaved it after I took this picture. I like being bald better...and beautiful...with my brother.

I was on a stationary bike (shown here to the left), going nowhere fast, but doing so 3 days after chemo. Call me Lance Armstrong. I lasted 15 minutes and worked up a sweat, then swam 6 laps. Me and my beautiful brother count our laps as down-and-back in our Junior Olympic size pool, which I believe is 25 yards or so in length.

Today I got a Swedish massage from some dude at this massage place. I will admit that I liked it a lot. The guy squished my stress away and probably smushed around my chemo into the little corners and cracks of my body and deep into the blobs of tissue scattered throughout.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Reno to coach my youngins in our last tournament. This tournament is the one that we are going to instead of Junior Olympics, which we had earned a bid to but could not go to because of paperwork. I think we might win it, I hope we do, because the kids are awesome.

Tomorrow is my last day of Prednizone for this round of chemo. That is the oral steriod I take for 4 days after the injections. It makes me retain water and it makes my face swell up. I hope it is also helping me build muscle.

Neulasta, Zometa, and the Radiation Oncologist

Yesterday I went back to be administered my second round of Zometa, which is a drug that aids in bone "resorption". It is supposed to help my hip bone grow back faster. That was a 30 minute IV, then they stuck me with the Neulasta. Remember the Neulasta? That was the one last time that they squirted out $2,000 worth of juice before they injected me with it. Well, this time they didn't squirt out any, and they gave me the full dose. So, either they messed up this time or last time, and they couldn't figure it out after I brought it up to them and after they checked their documentation. Next time I see my oncologist I'll have to run it by him. Good thing my dad wasn't there, he is very protective. I just ask the nice nurses to investigate for me and I try not to get too pissed off, because life is just too short to spend it getting mad. Plus, not getting angry improves your quality of life by reducing your stress. And, being slow to anger is just a good quality. And, if I yelled at them it would do nothing, the shot was already circulating throughout my body, doing whatever extra damage it would do, and then the nurses would go back and spit in my next chemotherapy bag.

Today I had my first meeting with my radiation oncologist. He is the guy that will oversee the next phase of treatment, which is irradiating the sites of my tumors. Already, the PET/CT scans show that there is significant reduction in the cancerous sites; however, history and experience have shown the oncologists that a combination of chemotherapy and radiation in cases like mine typically brings out even greater likelihood of full cure of the original lymphoma. The problem is that the radiation to the hip will give me a 10% chance of getting an additional tumor as a result of the treatment. The other fun is that the radiation through my sternum and T8 would go through my heart and it would increase my chances of heart failure sometime down the road. I think he thinks those chances were low, let's say something like 2%. But let's break it down:

10% chance of additional tumor from radiation
2% chance of early heart problems from radiation
5% chance of leukemia from the chemotherapy
10% chance of sterility from chemotherapy and radiation

That is a total of 27% chances of long term things. Remember my 90% odds that it wasn't lymphoma? So, let's subtract 90% from 27%, then subtract the 80% chance of cure, so that puts us at -143% (assuming I did the math right in my chemo-brain). Yes, the numbers don't get crunched that way, but my point is that they are just numbers.

I shaved Matt's head today and people think we are twins and this one sweet lady in the pool today asked us if we were twins while we were swimming in the pool (12 laps, 2 days after chemo) and we said no and she asked us if we shaved our heads for the summer and I said, "no, I have cancer, and this is my 8-years-younger brother that shaved his head to be like me," and she said we are "beautiful," then slowly swam away making peaceful ripples upon the water.

Round IV: Pillage the Village

You could hear the Acetabulum cancer-village in an uproar yesterday as the chemo-demons marched into town to destroy the cancer-infants and anyone else hiding. They were burning them with vessicants and sticking monoclonal antibodies to their sides to slow them from running as the chemo beat the mutation out of them and left their lifeless cancer-carcasses in pools of my blood. It was an especially bloody battle because the actual cancerous cells were blood.

I had gotten cocky since the last round of chemo, so invited some people over to my house to play some halo (video game). Unfortunately, I got to feeling nausiated so I had to pop some Lorezapam at about 8:00 and pass out in bed, only to wake in the morning to find the carnage in my living room was something like the burned village within my hip. My friends were cleaning up though.

So It looks like I may not throw up from this round of chemo. They did back me off on a few more oral antiemetics, which may explain the slight increase in queasiness as well as the slight increase in lucidity. This time I am burping really loudly. I'll record some for you if you'd like :)

10,352 Hairs

I shaved around my mohawk again today. My hair is thinning, but the sparse healthy hair follicles are still growing hair out of them. Because my hair is thinning and the area my mohawk covers is a small portion of my head, I decided it would be feasible to estimate the number of hairs I have remaining after shaving and chemotherapy. Beneath the tip of my index finger in the thick part of my mohawk, I counted about 25 hairs. I then estimated a grouping of index-finger-tip-size chunks in a stripe laterally across my mohawk. Then I estimated the number of stripes accross my mohawk. I am pretty sure I have about 7,352 (+- 3,000) hairs remaining on my head. I have to give some room for error on that, though, because of the inopportune placement of my eyeballs relative to the posterior surface of my head. I took a glance at my chest and I think there is a few thousand more there so, excluding my leg hairs, I probably have 10,352 hairs on my body.

I had not looked so closely at myself in a while, so today while I was looking at my Chia Pet of a head I noticed my face and an unfortunate allignment of facial anomalies. The injury to my face from the stationary door that hit me created two small superficial cuts on my nose, about half an inch apart. They look like normal skin imperfections. The unfortunate coincidence is that there is an actual skin imperfection on my upper right forehead, in the form of zit (hopefully a benign growth), that lines up with the other two nasal lacerations such that you could take a protractor and draw a line connecting all three. Geometric configurations on a person's face are never good for vanity, but after you go through the polymorphosis of chemotherapy, you fortunately shed most image-related self-consciousness. I am more tan now, and I actually look pretty good for a cancer-patient (truthfully, the dots on my face are fading with the tan and with washing), which is just in time for them to poison me again this Wednesday for Round 4: Pillaging the Cancer Village for Remaining Cancer Children and Burning Them Alive Inside Their Grass Cancer-huts.

Pretty Good on Platelets

I am almost finished moving into my new place. It has been a great stress relief to get organized and to be living in a much bigger place. My brother, Matt, is living with me for now, but I might be off-loading him at other places to live. He has been really fun to have around. We have both been trying to keep to our schedule of doing our lap-swimming every day. We decided that if we keep to our routine and continue to swim every day, then we will have earned ourselves robes. We will decide when we feel like we deserve them. The robes we buy ourselves will have our names on them, and they will be long robes, and we will wear our stupid looking long robes to the swimming pool together and we will be proud. When we swim, I always beat my little brother (he is 8 years younger...19 years old...you would think in his prime), and when I finish beating him, I turn to him and remind him that he was just beaten by a guy with Stage IV cancer that is going through chemo and that has a broken hip. He claims I have an advantage because I am bald and streamlined in the water. I told him we need to shave his head and see who is boss. I bet I could beat him still this Wednesday, the day of chemo. He also makes excuses saying "I keep choking on water". I explain to him that IF THERE IS WATER IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE THEN DON'T BREATHE.

I am growing a mohawk. I am really not going for style points in the first place, so I might as well shave around a stripe down the center of my head, just to say I did. I'll get a picture up as soon as my mohawk grows out a little bit.

About an hour ago I was in my new bathroom throwing a towel over my door, and this other awkwardly placed door swung open very slowly and stopped directly behind me. After throwing the towel over the door, I turned very quickly to go back towards my room and SLAMMED MY FACE INTO THE SIDE OF THE STUPID DOOR. And I slammed it hard, enough to make weaker people (like my brother) cry like little babies. I was tempted to cry myself, but I am way tougher now that I have had a broken hip. Anyway, my nose is swelling up slightly, but not profusely...that is a great sign because that means I am pretty good on platelets. Platelets are the blood cells that do the clotting so that you stop bleeding. If I was low on platelets, I think I would look like Quasimodo, with some huge lump coming out of the bridge of my nose and my forehead. My nose hurts to the touch, but as my dad would respond in his redneckest voice: "well if it herts to tuch it, son, thin dont tuch it!"

Nose Hairs

I have been telling people that when I brush my teeth in the morning, I think my eyebrows or eyelashes have been falling out into my hands when I look down. However, I had overlooked a whole group of hairs up there that I hadn't realized were falling out. When I walked to practice yesterday, and stood there taller than my players finally, they were able to see up my nose, and that is when my lack of nose hair was brought to my attention. I tried to look up the reason for why we have nose hair, but after 30 seconds became bored and stopped. I was hoping they would have some ingenius explanation why our nose hairs stop us from being eaten by predators or something, but I am pretty sure all they do is catch mucus and that you don't really need them unless you like to have mucus in your nose. I think my friend, Heath, likes having mucus in his nose though, because he is a picker.

My dad left town on Monday afternoon. He had been here since Thursday. He had driven out from Texas with my brother, Matt. They did a ton of work to help me move and get me set up in my new place. It was great that I was on crutches all the way through the weekend, because I didn't have to carry any of my own stuff from my old apartment, and I just sat there like some useless blob of cancer. The frustrating thing for them is that my brain is a little less sharp and I am prone to getting irritated (especially when I was not walking) and so they had to help me even though I wasn't all that fun or helpful. My new place is awesome. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large living room. The complex has some kickin amenities too, like a junior olympic size swimming pool, a ping pong room, a billiards room, and a workout facility. I am writing this blog in our third room, which we are calling our office/guest room. Once I get all moved in, I'll take some pictures, including some of my new bed of which you will all be jealous.

Walking

Today I was squeezed in for an appointment with Dr. Mohler, the crazy, but skilled, orthopedic surgeon. The point of the meeting would be to see about walking. Last time I met with him, my mom, dad, and sister were there. He was the doctor that ultimately put in the official request for my first CT-guided needle biopsy. He was also the doctor that moved my leg around very rough and I think my dad almost jumped out of his chair to give him a Texas-sized punch-in-the-face. My dad came with me to today's appointment too. Even though I had to keep him settled down, it was nice to have a body guard there...he is pretty protective. But Mohler eased up on me this time, and the only real negative was the fact that he had me put in these ridiculous blue shorts:

He never actually touched my leg, the blue shorts were of no use whatsoever...we just talked. But they sent me down to radiology to get an x-ray where there were tons of people. The shorts didn't fit right, I tucked the top of them into my undershorts so as to not provide a free show. The other odd observation (Mohler even picked this out) was that my shirt and sweatshirt actually matched the stupid shorts! I am sure the other people in the hospital wondered if that guy over there is actually wearing matching paper shorts on purpose, and they were pulling out their GQ magazines to see if paper shorts were becoming cool. Then, I am sure their next thought was, "Are his pants falling down? Children, run to the car!"

After the x-ray, I went back up with the images. Dr. Mohler reviewed them for about 30 seconds and showed us that the right hip has a spongy appearance, but that it should be solid enough to bear weight. He said that it looks to him that I could break my right hip (the hurt one), but that it would take a car accident or a fall from 6 feet or more. Basically, I have about the same odds of breaking my right hip as my left. Then he had me try out walking, I had forgotten how because I had not walked in 2 1/2 months. I did not feel pain, and my femur did not jam through my hip and stab me in the face, therefore Dr. Mohler said that I should just start walking. He said no competitive sports for 4 months and that I can try things as long as I experience no pain. In 4 months, I will get another x-ray, he will look at them for 30 seconds again, then he will decide if I can try jumping. He seems to think I may be able to play volleyball again. But right now, I am so relieved to be walking, and I'll be happy with what I get. Here is me holding my crutches and standing firmly on both of my feet:

Pretty good progress! We have destroyed many cancer cells and their children and their children's children and now I am walking. Right now, the only thing you would be able to tell about me that is wrong is that I walk like an old man and that my cancer-brain is a little spacey and that I am bald.

Physical Therapy

I just marked new territory in my crutchedyness. I was crutching myself to the kitchen to get a water and I felt my nose running, and instead of crutching "all the way to the bathroom" to get something to wipe it off, I used the bottom of my shirt (the inside part on the bottom, so no one can see it). I guess that also solidifies that I'm still redneck in my roots.

I had physical therapy today. I had to schedule this appointment 5 weeks ago. I was very proud that 1. I remembered the appointment and 2. I still had the referral from the doctor filed and I was able to locate it within 5 minutes. Both of those things qualify me as a grown-up. They had me come in at 11:20 for my 11:50 appointment, that way I can fill out the 5 minutes of paperwork and then sit there for 25 minutes in the waiting room. The paperwork had this drawing of a guy's front and back and they wanted me to draw in where the problem is and where I need help. I found great enjoyment in drawing in the tumor on the right acetabulum, then writing out to the side "there was a big tumor here, and now there is a permeative lytic osteolysis", and I pointed an arrow to the blob I drew. Then I drew arrows to the poor man's quads, hamstrings, calfs and gluteouses maximumusses and said that I "need muscles here". The physical therapist said that she appreciated my drawings, and I am glad, because I had been sitting there in her waiting room laughing to myself like an idiot while drawing them. She did some range-of-motion stuff on my leg and measured how far I could bend it. Then she had me do these isometric exercises that were pretty tiring. It felt great to actually move my leg around. I was given the go-ahead to start really using my leg and moving and stretching it, but I have to remain non-weight-bearing until the orthopods clear me.

PET/CT Clarification

I have had two PET/CT scans so far. The first PET/CT showed three different cancer spots, one on my hip, one on my thoracic spine, and one on my sternum. The second PET/CT, done 2 weeks after my second round of chemotherapy, showed that the three different spots actually faded to the background...there was no more visible signs of cancer in my body. I also don't show any blood markers that indicate cancer. What this probably means is that most, if not all, of the cancer cells in my body are dead. There could still be cancer cells that don't show up, like if there are some in my bone marrow. But basically, after two rounds of chemo, the cancer cells are all dead. The third, fourth, fifth, and six rounds of chemo are just for the purposes of killing the dead cells more. Then the radiation is also going to kill them even further. The next set of medical decisions will be about getting me walking again...and possibly jumping.

Thursday is physical therapy during the day, then my dad and brother (Matt) come into town. Friday I move to my new place.

Needle!

Here (left) they are about to poke me with the needle for my IV. If you click on the image to see it larger, you'll get even more creeped out! I watched it go into my arm and I feel like some kind of a tough guy.

Two of my vballers came to visit me while I got my chemo. They were so cool and fun to be around that I fell asleep within about 20 minutes and they had to leave. Just kidding Lindz and Pace! My bad...it was the drugs! Thanks for coming by! By the way, look at that dude in the window above us! He will now be my symbol of health, my odd guardian angel that is probably on the same drugs I am.

So far, the chemo rounds have gotten incrementally better! I guess I am a rare case all around. Still no vomit stories unfortunately. Yesterday I got a shot of Neulasta again. That shot gives me a boost of white blood cells. The shot is $6,000, then they have to squirt out 1/3 of it ($2000) to give me the right dose. Now I feel like royalty with all the excessive waste. I can't believe I have gained 5 pounds since I started my cancer. I really gotta get out and swim.

[by the way, I heard some of the USAA people are keeping up on my blog...notice I've still got my USAA recsports volleyball shirt from back when I was an intern!]

Feeling Decent Again Today

Woke up, took about 10 pills, and everything seemed to start pushing on my stomach at the same time. Now my body feels decent still. I am even not going all that crazy in my brain with the brain drugs. My heart rate was elevated at one point, but now it has slowed to about 82 (a little higher than normal). I am still checking for a reaction to one of these drugs.

Yesterday I swam a few laps in the pool, including a few fast sprints in there. My heart was beating like crazy and that felt great. I hadn't done that in months. I need to get on a regular workout so I can feel better and not feel like a slob. I gained 5 lbs since I started cancer. That is fine though, we want my weight to increase, except then I feel lethargic and annoyed.