Post No. 2 -- Suprise! and "push forward"

March 29, 2007

Imagine my surprise about 11 p.m. when I checked my office email via the web and found a post with the subject line about my blog and the note from my wife. I was still toying with the idea of what to do with this blog. Freda has done a pretty good job of painting me into corners for more than 26 years, so why should this be any different?

So, I guess the blog is on. Just a quick update (I am still working and need to get back to the job) but I did my second chemotherapy on Monday. I know the word "chemotherapy" just scares lots of people -- and for good reason. My first treatment included a drug that just kicked my butt. I did chemo on Mondays (took all day) and by late afternoon on Tuesday, I was nauseated, chills and fever, shaking, completely zonked. The first time, I could not get chicken noodle soup in my mouth because the spoon shook so badly.

But the chemo I did last summer hardly slowed me down (of course, it hardly slowed down the cancer, too!) I told my docs that I would consider some chemo to extend my time if it was like last summer and not like the first one -- I will choose quality over quantity of time remaining.

Plans call for another treatment on Monday if my white blood cell counts are high enough, then take a week off and let me recuperate. I had plans to be out all this weekend helping as a mentor with an adult leadership training program at our local Boy Scout camp and that is still my plan.

The whole unfolding Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow cancer stories are really telling part of my story. Last June, I heard "treatable but not curable." Talk about a shock. I was numbed.

I decided to keep living life like I will be around for a while.

Elizabeth Edwards really summed it up well last week in an AP story: "Either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday or you start dying. That seems to be your only two choices," she said. "If I had given up everything that my life was about -- first of all, I'd let cancer win before it needed to."

I, too, have chosen the push forward.

Thanks to everyone for the comments.

Why I am blogging

For the past two years, I have been battling cancer. Got diagnosed the first time Dec. 21, 2004, Merry Christmas! It was weird to be sitting in a PET scan machine listening to Johnny Mathis singing "Chestnuts on a Roasting Fire" followed by Burl Ives "Holly Jolly Christmas." In a month of so, we would begin roasting my tonsils and throat with radiation.

Other than about six months when it looked like we had whipped the cancer, it has been hanging over my head.

In March of 2006 I was diagnosed with cancer my my lymph nodes in my chest. At first, it looked like it was not cancer. But it was and after chemotherapy over the summer and more radiation in the fall, it looked like maybe the radiation got it again. But a month or so later, another PET scan showed it had returned and I had cancer in several other organs and my hip (after having two small ones removed from by back.)

The diagnosis is not a good one. The doctors believe that I have maybe four to 10 months without any treatment to 14-16 months with some treatment (from the March 9 meeting) before the cancer kills me. (This is consistent with a second opinion I got in June at M.D. Anderson in Houston.) I am doing some light chemotherapy in hopes it will buy me a that upper limit.

So, for those who want to keep up with me on this journey, you can check back with this blog for a while. I am not sure what I will be writing and how much I will be sharing or for how long I am capable of writing. Thanks for your interest. I hope I can keep it up for a while.