There is no sign of Alien life on this planet.

We, as in Kim and I, went back last weekend to Chicago for my post treatment 6 weekend checkup.

Had PET Scan and CT scan and blood work done on Saturday with doctors consult

on Monday.  Saturday's not the day to have testing done at a Mon-Fri normal operation kind of place.

They had a skeleton crew on and they were all on the "odd" side of life, not to mention lacking in a little bedside manners and skill. 

But I got my testing completed and now had to wait until Monday for the results. Needless to say, things were a little tense for 48 hours.

Sunday went to see my mom in Milwaukee, who is slowly loosing the battle with dementia.

She is 82 and has hallucinations and memory loss and it is getting progressively worse, although slowly.  She still lives by herself in her house of 50 years and motors around pretty well, although minus her car and we started having help coming in twice a day to oversee her eating and taking her meds.

My sister, who's a saint in my book, has taken on overseeing not only her day to day activity but her financial as well.

Mom curses her out and treats my Sis like dirt, but Sis carries on.  She gets hurt occasionally, but just sort of blows off the pain and continues to forge on.  At the rate of my mom's decay, in 2013 we may have to make the big decision of taking her out of her house for a "home" or bringing in a full time nurse to care for her.  She's already had her driving taken away, which really torks her off, but she got lost one day for hours (she was only 1/2 mile from her house) and Sis had to call the cops.  I feel for her not being able to drive but it's the best decision to keep her and the world safe!

So that was a short and mixed emotional visit.  Back to the hospital for my results.

Saw both my Oncologists and they both confirmed from the tests/scans that I had no visible signs of cancerous growth left in my body.  Apparently, the 70 radiation treatments, 8 Chemo's, and the rest of the crap that happened over the summer did the job.  

I was declared a free man!  There was a great grey funk that lifted that afternoon and it was very difficult to hide our joy as we passed the many not so lucky other patients as we left the hospital.

I now have to finish my recoup and in February go back up for a follow up with testing again to see if the all clear is indeed all clear.

I am still recouping from the radiation.  I'm just starting to eat solid foods.  This weekend I ate 1/2 of a pancake with lots of butter and syrup and about  2/3's of a large cup of coffee with lots of creamer.  Took a while; my throat still doesn't swallow properly yet, but it's a start.  Things I used to like, garlic for one, still taste bad.  But it's baby steps at this point.  It's only been 7 weeks since my last radiation.  Some patients take up to a year before they start eating solid foods.  

Timely for the week of Thanksgiving, I am feeling very thankful and relieved.  There has been a huge stress that has lifted off our household.  Kim and I can jump start our lives from what looked like, 6 months ago, to be a dead '75 Gremlin sitting in the driveway.

I will continue to post as I recoup and that life for everyone is moving in a positive direction.

I feel that if you are in a low point in your life, have a little faith and patience.  Life will turn for the better if you focus on the positive and eliminate the negative from your surroundings. 

I have a renewed faith in that statement.

November and the leaves are gone

It's November 7. The leaves changing colors is over and thank the heavens the election is over as well.  Now we, as in the U.S.of A., can get back to non partisan bickering again and accomplishing nothing in way of rebuilding our country!  There has to be a better way for our democracy and people to come together better than a natural disaster.  It baffles me as I sit at home and slowly recover from treatments.
And I am recovering!  Slowly, ever so slowly, but moving forward in a positive direction.
This morning I am actually enjoying a 50/50 blend of coffee and hot chocolate.  I really miss that morning coffee so much that I'm making myself drink past my semi sore and semi clogged throat.
I am also very nervous.  On Friday I go back to CTCA for my 6 week follow up since my last treatment.  I will have blood work, CT scan, Pet scan, and Dr's consultation as to how I stand in the fight beating my cancer.  Kim and I are both very anxious and the anticipation is grinding on us.
I haven't been very open and chatty for the past 4 months.  That's not something that is new, I have always been withdrawn emotionally at time of difficulty, it's how my right brain logic works.
Withdraw, process, proceed!  In the words of Spock,  "It's all very logical".  Not very emotional, which is where Kim is on the Brain vs Heart Life line.  Here's a diagram:

Emotion___Kirk________Kim_____________________________Jay___________Spock____Logic

So, off we fly Friday morning, all pensive and wound up tighter than a drum.  I will post next week
what the findings are and what is to be the next direction in my journey.

November, it's such a "brown" month.

Sunday Morning in the Fall

Sunday morning, the 19th of October.  It is an absolutely perfect Chamber of Commerce morning here in the Mountains.  50º going up to 68º, painfully clear blue skies, and the foliage is at the height of the color change.  By next weekend,  it will become a torrential downpour of leaves as they all seem to have changed colors together this year and won't be hanging around much longer.  The house is still and quiet, the dogs have been out and are back asleep, the girls are still sleeping from a well needed evening of revelry (daughter Erika came home with a girl friend for the weekend from college).
And I am up, fairly rested from another night of semi-sleep and a restful day yesterday of college game day couch potato-ism.  Today, I get to drive the girls back down to Greensboro so they can get back to the second half of the semester and Kim and I get back to living in our "empty nest".  I think she really misses having Erika here, considering the brilliant conversationalist I have been since coming back from treatment.
There hasn't been a lot to talk about when your life consists of sleeping, taking liquid diets 3-4 times a day, and having to be in semi lock down because my white blood cell count is low.  This situation is keeping me from going places for fear of catching a "public" disease like the flu or a cold.  A cold could put me in the hospital again in a matter of days if it developed quickly and turned into pneumonia.  WBC's are the defense fighters of the body and mine have been on overtime since June.  The reinforcements are arriving slowly everyday with my blood counts going up but slowly is the definitive term.  Not eating real food does not help the process.  Nutrients are needed to make me stronger, the liquid food is merely to keep me stable, but I am beginning the process of tasting and eating foods again.  Not much mind you.  7-Up is a winner.  Those little effervescent bubbles make my mouth happy by cutting down the phloem attack and cooling temperatures as it goes down my still slightly sore throat.  Sherbet is also good, although the acid in the citrus flavoring tends to bother my throat.  Pretty exciting fair, eh?  It's a beginning.  And that is my new mantra and attitude.  I have been too negative for a long time.  I've finally decided it's time to get off the Pity Bus and take control of my body and my life.
My friend Steve sent me some very positive recordings about Self-Healing through Guided Imagery.  They describe what Guided Imagery is and how to focus meditatively on connecting with my body to basically create a conversation with it to help in the healing process.  It sounded a little odd at first but I am taking the time to do it every now and then and it helps.  If anything, it is refocusing me in a positive direction instead of being such a downer all the time.  That in its self is huge I think, positive vs negative.  I have noticed it has generally helped in all aspects so this is good.
This week I am going to Vegas for a survey of venues at Mandalay Bay.  Work has begun again.
I'm feeling about 80% if you don't count the eating thing and I think that is good.  My hair is growing.
And the world is changing and preparing for the next phase of life and so am I.

Yeah! I'm home , I think

Dorothy couldn't have put it better.  There is no place like home.  Your own stuff, your bed, your pets,
your family.  It was a long summer but now I can get back to a little R&R at home and get back to working.  I was fortunate to have had enough money stashed away for us to make it but I really need to get back and start finding jobs again.
The big rub in all this revelry about being home is that no one from the cancer center sat down with us to discuss what the recovery period for told.  In my mind, I thought 10 days to 2 weeks of laying low and resting while working at getting my swallowing back up to where I can be eating solid foods.
No one told me that my body would be a tortured radiation sponge.  I was home no longer than 2 days and I was off to see my local doctor.  I couldn't keep food down in either direction.  I was totally gagging 24/7 with phlegm build up in my mouth that usually keeps me no farther than 15 ft from a bathroom to rid myself of the nasty stuff.  She admitted me to the local hospital.  So I spent my 2nd-5th days "home" lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to continuous fluids IV, and being tested for something I knew I did not have (like I caught a virus on the plane home).  Got back home at 9:30 at night after being told I was going to be released at 9am that morning.
Love my wife she's a saint.  But I feel totally using and abusing her.  She was and is exhausted in this process as much as I am.  The phlegm is so bad that I only sleep at night maybe 3-4 hours in chunks.
I have to cough and spit out stuff constantly.  So I have driven Kim from our bed.  She is now sleeping in Erika's room at night just to get sleep.  And I know the anxiety is getting to her because she can't fall asleep easily and gets up very late in the morning looking like a train rolled over her during the night.

It sure would have been nice had someone from CTCA sat down with use and given us a little precursor to what was to happen with me during my recovery.  It would have lessened some of the frustration I have.  Yesterday I went to some forums on Head and Neck Cancer survivors to read about others recoveries.  This phlegm this is not a short term thing.  I read one guy had it for 8 weeks, another for 4 months, and still another for 6 months.  Not very conducive for a work environment.

I am not in a very good place mentally.  Last night I fired off a couple of emails quitting a job that I have been contracted for since the beginning of August.  I was feeling about 95% back then so what was to not take it, the job was 2 months away.  Last night I bagged them, I was supposed to leave next week.
There is no way I could travel to Europe for a 2.5 week show.  There may be repercussions but what can I do, I can't be like this and be working a production.  My life is a total production in itself these days with the script writers coming up with new material daily.  I need to find a focus point to get me headed toward a better place.

Why is Monday always a blue day

It's Monday the 10th, a day after my 55th birthday.
went back last week and finished the week out with my Radiologist making me a new mask and informing me that I will be continuing treatments until at least the 21st of this month.  Needless to say it was a very hard weekend when I thought that tomorrow was going to be my last day of treatments until November. (if not treatments, at least checking the status of what my body had done with the bad cancer cells.)  Monday Morning was a ripper.
So away we go again.  No chemo at least, which was really the one factor that was ripping my body apart.  And in a week, no wife for support.  It's time to get back to work for her.  I personally want to thank everyone who works with Kim who donated sick leave to her so she could be by my side for the last 3 months.  There were many days had she not been here, I would have gotten on a plane and just said forget it.  Rather selfish but I was mentally done and she brought me back around.
So now I go and just focus on all things positive.  Get up, try to start exercising again, and just work on being happy.  Happy=Healthy as far as I'm concerned.

September 7th and I'm still going

Hello, my continuing bloggers.  It's still not over.  The Fay lady is not singing in my world.

I'm back in Illinois as what I'd like to call, Overtime.  I have 18 more treatments as of today to complete

of tomo radiation, 2 per day.  'this make me very sad for I now have to forfeit going to to See Peter Gabriel in Montreal in 2 weeks for the following Tuesday the 18th for it is also my official release date at this point in time -  A Special 10 stop tour in North America celebrating the 25th anniversary of the "So" album with most of the original performers.  It was little small engine that pushed me through all the summers crap and  now I can't make it.  Deep breath, Ce la vie.  Hopefully my bestst fiend and her best friend will love Montreal for 5 days, how can they not.  They can eat and drink and enjoy the beautiful city and once in a life time concert I have been thinking about for 6 months  Whoo hoo! 

I get to fly home to mt house in the woods to further my convalescence.  It's not as bad as I make it , except for the easting and drinking part, oh and the other thing, life yea I get that back.  It's a melancholy finish to this part of the ordeal.  I then get to recoup and the in early Nov.  get to fly back to see how all this testing and treatment to fight off the cancer.  See like I sais before, the Fay Lady doesn't get to sing quite yet, doesn't seem at this point there wil be and end.  Just skip over 4 months of hell and resume where I left off.  Ok, I'll take that for know.  Beats laying in a hospital bed whithering away toward a slow death with lots of self loathing pity on the side.  That concert was my spring board.  Guess it did it's job.  More to come if things get interesting,

Week 7, R&R

This past Monday I am still in hospital but the Dr in charge claims that if I go 24 hours without fever, he would release me.  So I rest with cool thoughts in the my head.  All the rest of my doctors also come and see me on Monday.  The radiologist has given me the rest of the week off from treatment to let my neck heal some.  he agrees that we can't keep pounding radiation at my neck, it'll never heal properly.
Cool, 4 more days off plus these guys don't work the weekends or holidays, that's like a week off.  My Hemo-Oncologist has also postponed Chemo for a week.  Whoo-hoo,  No treatments for a week.  Kim and I put together a plan.  We can go home, like get in the car and drive home, if all I have in 6 more days of treatments left.  We can fly back up and suffer in a hotel in Zion for a week.  All we have to do is get me released from the hospital.  Tuesday am, the Dr says I can be released today.  All I have to do is just finish down a couple of IV's.  Cool couple of hours and by mid day we're gone.
Surprise, one IV takes 1.5 hours, the other 6 to fully drip out.  6 hours- I complain.  Squeaky wheel does get something sometimes.  Dr cut's order in half, only 3 hours.  So we're out, not mid day but by 5pm.
Kim's made all the arrangements and is chomping at the bit all afternoon.  She pours me into the car and off she flys into Chicago rush hour traffic.  She's a trooper but is not a city girl any more.  By the time we get to Indiana, she is totally fried.  We get to Lafayette, Indiana, about 3.5 hours from the hospital and quits for the night.  Which is ok, she's toast, I'm toast, we changed time zones so it's 9:30pm.  Sleep for tomorrow is a very long day in the car to make it home.  But we do it, I drive a few hours here and there but by 8:30pm, we are pulling in the drive of our house.  It's been almost 2 months and it feels good.  So we get to rest the weekend at home.  Kim sleeps 12 hours day one, guess she needed the rest as well.  Daughter Erika comes home for the weekend.  Now that I'm home I don't want to go back.  But I only have 6-7 more days of treatments, then it's a 6 week rest and then another evaluation as to the status of cancer.  I may even go back to work, we'll see how the eating thing goes.  But for now, rest at home is well needed.  I need more mental then physical so I can get back up for this final week.
It will be difficult, like falling of a horse and getting back on, but I am sure it will be worth the effort.