Sundae Funday

Not gonna lie, it’s been a bit of a tough week. The side effects from last weeks chemo stuck around longer than they have in the past. This whole cold sensitivity thing can stop now. It’s starting to tick me off that I have to wear gloves to grab ice for a drink. I almost dropped my Hungry Man meals taking them from the freezer the other morning. It’s getting old quick.

Top that off with a pair of canker sores that make it painful to eat or drink anything, mix in some shoulder pain, and you have a week that’s been the cheeks. Now that the week in-between is over, it’s time for round four to get started. I feel like I haven’t really had a chance to recover from Week Three and here I am again. The cherry on top of my sundae is that I’ll be dealing with chemo over my birthday. I’ve been pretty cranky this past week. My mood has been ruined by my miserableness.

Dentist appointment Wednesday night (no cavities, thank you very much). It wasn’t as bad as having a dentist appointment on my birthday. That was a way to celebrate my 30th birthday. First cavity, no Novocain. Yeah… that trip was one to remember. Chemo on Thursday. Saturday, a quick trip to have my chemo takhomasak removed. Due to my appointment, I missed out on the Family trip to AwesomeCon.

Look, I’m not one to get overly hyped up about my birthday as I’ve gotten older. It’s honestly OK. When I turned 40, my Doc gave me Type II Diabetes. I tried to take it back and exchange it for a gift card to Outback; turns out the return policy is bogus.

I’ll paraphrase what Jackie told me. “I’m excited that you’re alive”. I lost sight of the big picture this week. Thankfully, God put someone into my life at the right point in time to put it back in focus for me. When I think about the last few months, making it to my upcoming birthday wasn’t exactly a guarantee. I’m so over chemo and dealing with the nonsense that I have been, I took this last trip around the solar system for granted.

This week was the cheeks. I honestly thank God for Sunday. Sunday is Easter. Jesus is Risen. That is the hope and truth that I cling to.

Sunday also happens to be April Fool’s day. Due to my chemo schedule, I won’t be able to attend my office’s upcoming Off Site meeting. Now, who would leave me in the office. Little old me. Alone. For a Week. I’m sure that everything will be OK.

surely-you-must-be-kidding-i-never-kid-and-dont-call-me-shirley

Three Down

Yes this post is late, compared to the other ones that I’ve made. Chemo Day #3 is in the books. Only nine more to go and I can exit the chemo train. Man am I ever looking forward to that day.

This week was easier in some ways and much harder in others. I felt better on days 1, 2, and most of day 3. Worse on days 4 and 5 than the last time. We made some changes and learned some more lessons. I got my chemo on Thursday this time, and had my port removed on Saturday. This was great as I was able to miss less work. Yeah, I’m that guy; trying to be at work while this is going on. Even had a meeting Friday I was able to get to, Yay! Saturday and Sunday were nice to spend at the house and by Sunday night I almost felt human again. The corned beef I had for leftovers probably helped. No green beer or Jamesons Irish Whiskey was left over I noticed. The hand pain and cold sensitivity was worse this week. If this keeps up I’ll be dressed like Michael Jackson whenever I get something to eat.

Michael-Jackson-Glove

The big change that was made was that I got a second medicine for nausea. That really helped, and made a big difference Friday and Saturday. Stacking those meds like Lego kept me upright most of the day. Just got tired after a little while, but that’s to be expected. Not gonna lie, though. I kinda felt like trash on most of Monday. Just general trash; tired, sore, kinda tired, that kind of thing.

Now, for the harder part. This is going to sound bad, so please let me finish before throwing hate and stones my way. Due to some scheduling fun, my mom went with me to chemo this past week. Not something that I ever wanted to happen. That’s not because we don’t get along, we do. Not because I don’t like her, I love my mom very much. Pretty much the exact opposite. I know I make chemo sound fun and exciting; something that everyone wants to experience. Let’s be honest, just the two of us. The chemo is trying to kill me slower than it kills the cancer cells. That’s the point of it. Ok, that’s not entirely true. This chemo is preventative. Meaning, the Oncologist isn’t even sure that I have any cancer left. There’s a better than even chance it was all removed when Seamus was plucked from my colon. My doc is slowly trying to kill me in the off chance there are cancer cells floating around my body.

Now, I’ve had people try to kill me. There is an office that I work with, that I’ve joked about this very thing in the past. They would try to drop ladders on my head, starve me, drag me to Border Towns and gunfire, that kind of thing. It’s been a running joke for several years. Up until now, I kinda thought that they’d all given up on trying to off me. I’ll admit I was even hurt a little bit. Looking back, it seems they went with the long game. See, I’ve lost track of the number of hot dogs that I’ve had at Pink’s with those folks. I must say, Bravo. Well played. Before anyone gets horribly upset or thinks that anyone, or any hot dog is to blame, they/you are not.

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Based on the studies, preventative chemo for someone in my boat only takes me from a 20% to a 15% chance of re-occurance in 20 years. In a sense, I’m literally going through chemo for fun. It isn’t even a guarantee.

This is not something I ever wanted to put my mom through. I don’t want her sitting next to me for those three hours. She already has to put up with me at home; this was something I wanted to shield her from. Unfortunately, I  couldn’t any longer. For that I’m genuinely sorry. She’ll say, that she wanted to be there; that she was glad that she could be there for me. It’s just not a place I wanted her, or a situation that I wanted her put in.

I’m such riviting company besides. I end up dozing a good bit during the infusion, sleep most of the afternoon and evening after chemo, including the car ride home. Regardless, this marks three trips down with only nine to go. I’ll take some comfort in slicing that up various ways: 1/4 of the way done, single digit trips left, etc. Any way I look at it, I’m one step closer to done.

Round Two – FIGHT!

Mistakes were made. I underestimated my opponent; didn’t respect what he was capable of and got sucker punched. That’s on me. I didn’t take my last chemo appointment seriously.

Image result for mortal kombat subzero round 2

I felt pretty good when I left. Little tired, but not bad. I went into work the next day. Didn’t think anything of anything. Slept like a rock Tuesday night. Slept like a rock well into Wednesday. Most of Wednesday to be honest. Then the nausea hit.

Fortunately, I think we’ve learned some lessons. I need to keep up on the drugs that they give me. You know, for nausea. I’ve been eating ginger everything. So much so, I think my hair is turning red. At the very least I’m starting to develop a hankering for human souls.

This time, I got the chair in the infusion center that faces the door. I get to see everyone that comes in or leaves. Most importantly, I’m either the first or last thing they see.

It’s kinda like this. Who am I kidding? It’s exactly like this. G.R.owl.

Round Two just started. How it’s going to end is a different story. I’ve got my drugs. Ginger out the yin yang. I’m going to take things a bit slower this week than I did last time. Remembered to shave; sheared would probably be more accurate. They taste like chicken, BTW. Human souls that is.

Hey Girl. Want to do some chemo?

One Down

Finished my first day of chemotherapy. I’m scheduled for six months of chemo, twice a month. So that leaves me with 11 more treatments. I wanted to share a couple of random thoughts I had in no particular order.

  1. There are a lot of old, sick people there. Not sure where the young, healthy people get chemo, but it’s not here. Maybe I need different insurance.
  2. Aaaaaaah…Kelly Clarkson!
  3. My nurse was decked out like he was working in an Ebola ward, dancing on used needles, while handling my IV bags. My nurse is afraid he might get sick handling the stuff he’s about to stick in my IV and he’s here dressed like he’s fixing a Polonium sandwich for a friend of Vladimir Putin’s. Something isn’t quite right here.
  4. There’s going to be some discomfort when they remove this.
  5. I had a cheese burger for lunch, instead of a deli sandwich. I heard that too much deli meat can cause cancer. Good thing I didn’t spend my formative years working at Subway. Or eating my weight in sub sandwiches. That could have some serious repercussions when I get older.
  6. That was probably the chemo brain typing.
  7. My chemo has three pages full of side effects. Not a single decent super power among them. I’m now susceptible to cold, but I don’t get even a garbage mutant ability like Jubilee to make up for it.
  8. I asked for a drink. I got a room temperature Diet Coke. Forty-five seconds after being shown the stocked fridge of drinks. Warm. Diet. Coke. Because of a side effect from a drug I was getting three hours later.
  9. Nope.
  10. I took a change of clothes, but ended up forgetting my sneakers. Bad news: cowboy boots don’t EXACTLY go with sweatpants. Good news: I really am 6’6″ tall in heels. All these years I was joking after all.
  11. One ice cube in a glass of room temperature water is three too many. Sigh.
  12. I don’t glow in the dark. Not even a little.
  13. I numbered the list of thoughts that were in “no particular order”. The sad part, is that I didn’t realize it until just now.
  14. If I say something inappropriate now, I get to blame it on “Chemo Brain”.
  • Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12 that God allowed him to have a thorn in his flesh. Three times, he prayed that God take it away, and each time God said “naw, its good where it is.” I was thinking that I could use a little smaller thorn in my side. Instead. Maybe, I just need my faith to grow into my thorn.

Crossing the Jordan

Had some great news from my Doc appointment today. My wound has healed.

Truth in lending. My wound was healed on Monday, but I wanted confirmation before I got too excited. Monday when we changed out the ribbon packing my wound we were a little surprised. The ribbon, roughly four inches, had been pushed out of the tunnel and was coiled up nicely at the bottom of my “third belly button”. Yeah, I have three belly buttons now. Miracle of modern medicine. There’s also a nice set of railroad track looking scars. Gonna forgo the pic on this one. You’re welcome

We were shocked; shouldn’t have been, but we were. Our small group prayed for healing for my wound Friday night, and I got it. The tunnel went from 4.5 cm to 0.2 cm in three days. If that’s not God’s healing I don’t know what is. What I know is that God hears Ann’s prayers. There is no doubt in my mind of that.

Now it’s a bit of a mad dash:

  1. Appointment with my Surgeon on Friday
  2. Get a hold of the Oncologist and get chemo scheduled
  3. Bloodwork for my CAT Scan, Thursday
  4. CAT scan Sunday afternoon. Yes. Super Bowl Sunday. Probably why they had an opening. Let’s face it, I don’t watch the 38 hours of pre-game anyways.
  5. My country’s 500th anniversary to plan
  6. More bloodwork 48 hours before I start chemo (see #2)
  7. Probably something else I forgot

I’m at my Jordan river and I’ll admit I’m scared. I’ve spent almost three months recovering from surgery waiting to get moving. I’m moving. Look. It’s not 40 years of wilderness, I get that. It sure felt that way at times. All I have to do now is cross the river and fight my battles. God promised Israel victories, but they still had hard work to do.

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Joshua took 12 stones from the River and set them up as a reminder of what God had done, in the crossing (Joshua 4:1-9). With that in mind, I’m happy with my three belly buttons. There could have been more…

Small Word

My job doesn’t offer disability if you are sick, injured, recovering from surgery or what not. You have sick leave and vacation time that you use. After that, you can apply to be put into a Leave Donor program. What happens with the Leave Donor program is that folks can “give” you their vacation time that you can use. That’s what I ended up having to do. I used up all of my accrued sick and vacation leave and threw myself on the mercy of my peers for donated leave.

I got some news this week that completely humbled me. Three days after the request went out, I had over 300 hours of leave donated to me to use for my recovery. A touch over seven and a half weeks. My co-workers donated 305 hours that they could have spent with their families, to me. That’s incredible. Obviously, I’m thankful. Thank you just seems such a small word to say, but it’s all I have.

Your generosity leaves me completely humbled. Thank you.

 

Missed it by this much

Today was a … challenge. I had an appointment at the wound clinic to have the staples from my incision removed and what not. After the dozen or so staples were removed, the nurse noticed something. Mainly, that one of my staples had been rubbed to the point that it opened up a hole. Yep. A nice little hole that lead straight down to my existing tunnel. So, the tunnel that I’ve been trying to heal, has a second hole to the outside. I will take this opportunity to point out that I didn’t have this second hole in my stomach before I got the wound vac. Last week, I only had one hole. Today I have two. I know that I skipped that day of Medical School, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that is how healing is supposed to work. I kind of expected the number of holes to decrease, not increase. If this keeps up, by Valentine’s Day I’ll look like a Tom and Jerry Cartoon.

That’s more than a little …frustrating, when you consider what a royal pain this stinking wound vac is. On the plus side; with a couple of colored scarves tied together I could do a really neat party trick right now. Not much of a plus side I know. I’m into this thing for a bit over a week and I’m worse off than before it started.

I’ve alluded to previously, how much it hurts to have my wound dressing changed in general. The wound vac dressing is all that and more. So much more. It’s a completely exquisite experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Well, Surgical Harpies excluded.  The internals of the Wound Vac get changed every three days. Or, I should say can’t stay in any longer than three days. Whichever you prefer.  How this all is working out should surprise exactly no one at this point.

I got everything changed out on Wednesday, right on schedule. Thursday, I go to the Wound Clinic to have my staples removed. With the location of the staples, and the wound; the wound vac “covering” had to be removed to pull the staples. Once the seal is broken, everything has to be replaced; you can’t just throw new plastic covering on it. Yes. I asked. So, two days in a row I have to go through this. For those of you playing the home game; what’s three days from Thursday? If you said the Sunday before Christmas, you’d be right. The next time I can get to the Wound Clinic or my Home Nurse can get to me is … Tuesday. Wednesday to Tuesday is how many days? More than three… That’s WAAAAAAYYY to long to leave the packing in place. So, I get to have everything replaced on Friday. That’s three days in a row of exquisite pain having the wound vac changed. For the record, Friday to Tuesday is OK in this case. Apparently, Christmas Day doesn’t count. Yes. I asked.

Yeah…

I don’t understand it either at this point. I just don’t understand. So… I go back to what I know:

  • Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character, and character, hope. Romans 5:3-5. Suffering: Check. Check. And… Check. Fairly confident I’ve got this covered. Perseverance: Um… Check?  I’m still persevering. Character: I’m most definitely a character from what I’m told. There’s probably a Widget I can add for an online poll and pie chart the results. Check. Hope: This is the one that I’m still working on.
  • Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged for the Lord your God is with you where ever you go. Joshua 2:9.
  • He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. Philippians 1:6.

I know these things. I know them in my head; I just need to work on knowing them in my heart. It seems that I’m off by about twelve inches.

Well… This sucks. Literally.

This past week was … something. My wound has been healing very slowly. It drains a lot and the top dressing needs to be changed twice a day, as it will just weep and seep through the bandages and padding. Not only is that (hmm… not just gross) ooky, having a ginormous wad of gauze on my stomach has made wearing anything more than sweatpants extremely uncomfortable to say the least.

Enter the Wound Vacuum. I totally get the idea behind it, it makes sense. Pack the wadding with sponge. Seal the whole thing up. Apply some suction. Not only does that remove the ookiness, but it helps pull the skin and tissue together so that everything can heal. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this wonder piece of medical technology; you’re free to make the same mistake that we did and Google it. I’ll give you a minute to hit YouTube and check out some videos. Take your time.

Isn’t that fantastic? What a modern miracle of science and medicine. Now that we’ve marveled at what a … device this is, there are one or two downsides. These things are STUPID expensive. I mean. Government Acquisition expensive. I half expected to see a little star logo on the bottom next to a Made in Ft. Worth, TX line. See, I never forget who I’m picking on.

KCI (the real manufacturer) doesn’t allow the devices to be sold. They can only be rented. Rented at the tune of $40 per day. If you’re thinking, wow.. that’s a lot of money. I sure hope you have insurance. Um. We do have insurance. We’ve got pretty decent medical insurance through work. That $40 per day is how much we pay for this little darling. Yep. $1,200 per month. After insurance. That means, the total bill for this is, a whole lot more. If that’s not bad enough, these things are tied up in patent suits; companies will buy out other companies and then shut down their competing products.

The price isn’t the only detraction to this marvel. Let me take you through how this works. Instead of shoving a wad of soft, soaked gauze into my wound, a piece of sponge is cut and shoved inside. Not a soft, cushy, nice sponge, but one of those stiff, black, medical sponges. Then it’s all covered up in adhesive plastic. A hose is taped in place. Everything is covered up in adhesive plastic again. That’s when the wound vacuum is turned on and suction is applied. Imagine the exquisite feeling of your insides being pulled all together, at the same time. Yeah, it’s fantastic, but it’s not the best part.

This is the part that I’m really looking forward too. The vacuum helps promote healing, right? Brings the tissue together, so it can grow back. Guess what happens when the sponge needs to get changed? The three rolls of adhesive plastic get pulled off first, along with the first two layers of skin and all of my body hair. Then the sponge gets pulled out. The sponge that has been pulling all of my insides together promoting growth. Tissue that has been promoted to growth into the sponge. This is why I think the wound vacuum was dreamed up by a Surgical Harpy. And, I get to pay for this. Ya for me!

At least I don’t have a 5 lb boat anchor tethered to me that I have to haul around every where I go. Oh. Never mind. Something has to provide suction, and that suctioned goo has to go somewhere. I’m just glad that it comes in such a stylish bag to put over my shoulder. Sigh.

There is something good, though. I don’t have a big wad of gauze shoved in my pants anymore. Ok, typing that, it reads a lot worse. How about, pants almost fit better. I actually managed to wear a pair of jeans for a few hours on Saturday before they hurt too much. As long as this Harpy inspired wunderkind gets my wound healed faster, it’s probably worth it. The sooner my wound is healed, the sooner I can get back to my life.

I’ve got work to get back to, chemo to start, and Gilda to frame for it. Frankly, I’m swamped.

 

Look Out for Yourself

I’ll be the first to tell anyone, I had some amazing nurses and great assistants during my Hospital stay. Their care got me through my stay. I told the patient advocate as much in person, in my customer service survey, and in writing. My Doctors, for the most part, were pretty good. Not nearly as good as my nurses, but not bad. I mean, they’re only doctors after all, right? Now the other part, eh… not so much. They were the Surgical Harpies as I (fondly?) refer to them.

As I’ve alluded to before, after my surgery I ended up with an incision that is roughly 10″ or so long starting just above my belly button. During my time in the hospital, it got infected. Enter the Surgical Harpies. A Surgeon, who we will refer to as Dr. … C and her assistant came in to check it out and make things right.

Making things right included:

  • Taking out some of the staples
  • Opening up a hole roughly the size of a quarter in my abdomen
  • Expressing puss and other nastiness from incision
  • Identifying that from the hole, the wound “tunneled” roughly 4″ up and 1 1/2″ down from the hole. The hole itself was almost an inch deep
  • Then packed the whole thing with gauze

The Harpies flitted away to wherever Harpies go. Hades. It’s Hades if my Greek Mythology knowledge check is correct. If you read that and thought to yourself, that sounds like it really hurt. You’d be wrong. It really, really hurt. On a scale of 1-10, it was a Super Saiyan level of pain there. The part that endeared the Harpies to my heart wasn’t when they ignored my pleas for pain medicine, but when the assistant threw a package of wipes on my chest and told me to “use these to clean yourself up” before they left.

Now, the packing of my wound needed to be changed twice a day. Fortunately, I had a skilled and caring nursing staff that took care of that. Until the Harpies returned a couple of days later. See, they insisted on repacking the wound that my nurse had packed just three hours earlier. While I told them to stop, and begged for my pain medicine, then begged for them to stop so my nurse who was standing right there could give me said medicine; they continued. They pushed on, did a half assed job and finished with a “See, we’re done.” Before galloping off to… Hades I think is what we determined.

At that point, I’ll admit it. I was pissed. I grabbed the phone and tried to call the Patient Advocate. I say tried, but my nurse gave me the belated pain medicine and they hooked me up with some primo stuff. No idea what the street value on it was, but I sure wasn’t seeing straight. To give you an idea of just how angry I was. Normally, the shot of pain medicine I got was enough to take me on a nice long trip to Nap Land. Not today. I was wide awake and angry.

Shortly, after all this went down my Hospitalist came in and I regaled her with the tale of what had happened in the morning. She was mortified and paged the Harpies and the Hospital Patient Advocate. Amazingly, the Surgical Harpies were slow to answer their page. As I told my wife, they were dodging me. It was a good while after lunch before Dr. C showed up.

The part of this that I regret is, some of my coworkers had stopped by. We were having a really good time talking and laughing, just hanging out. When the Harpies decided to grace us with their presence, my friends had to take off. I think my exact words were, “I’m sorry, guys. There is something I have to take care of.”

I chaired the meeting with my Mom, Wife, Day Nurse, Hospitalist, Patient Advocate and Dr. C in attendance. I started off fairly nonchalantly thanking everyone for coming. From the start I stated the reason I asked everyone to attend was so we could “discuss the completely unacceptable way I had been treated as a patient at the hands of Dr. C and her assistant.” When Dr. C started to say something, I cut her off stating that she “misunderstood her role in this meeting.” and that “her input was not required.” I was direct and blunt; channeled my inner inspector when the inspection goes straight down the toilet and the site tries to argue that their complete lack of execution is in some way admirable behavior. I had none of it. I did stipulate that her assistant was not to be allowed into my room again during my stay. Should she come in, I would notify security. Dr. C tried to play the “I’m stupid” card, and say that she didn’t understand what was wrong. So, when I described what happened that morning as examples of unacceptable behavior, the Hospitalist asked my Nurse if she was present for any of this. She confirmed what happened. Now, my wife claims that I went too far when I informed Dr. C that “if it ever happened again, I would snap her finger like a twig.” Here’s the thing. She tried to use the “I didn’t know” defense and I wanted to make sure she understood what “unacceptable behavior” meant, and the consequences of those actions. Hey, I saw Doctor Strange, broken fingers are bad for surgeons. Like, really bad.

I’m not one to advocate violence. In talking with my night nurse that evening, the Surgical Harpies had been mistreating every patient on the floor. No one else called them on it. Somehow in their minds, this was an appropriate way to treat another human being; a person under their care.

Why did I decide of all the things that occurred during my stay, this was something to share? It’s to tell you this. You are your own best advocate. Not your nurse. Not the Patient Advocate. Not even another Doctor. No one else. Only you are the best suited to speak on your behalf. Well, and stop forest fires. If you aren’t going to speak up, then you must be OK with how things are going. I’m sure that if I hadn’t had that direct and blunt conversation, the Surgical Harpies would continue their reign of terror on that floor. If you’re being mistreated, its up to you to say something. You don’t have to go it alone,  but if you desire change … start with the man in the mirror, or woman as the case may be.

Things Not Said

Let’s not think of this as me leaving things out, or trying to conceal or hide anything. Rather, me just taking my time to reveal all the details. Kind of like Burlesque Story Telling. You know… that might make a better title than Things Not Said. Need to think about that one a bit. Don’t feel bad or take it personally, I didn’t even get the full story when all of this went down. It also took a fair bit of time to get all of the information from all of the various doctors that I’ve been dealing with. Enough of that for now.

My Surgeon removed the mass that was causing my blockage, as well as 14″ of my colon. I took to calling the mass Seamus. Looking back, I really should have named it Gandalf. I’ve  the name Kuato suggested as well. Since it’s my mass, Seamus will do. Well, apparently Seamus took a parting shot at me, as if starving me half to death wasn’t enough. Based on the pathology repoort, Seamus was malignant.

That wasn’t the result that we were looking for. As a matter of fact, we were pretty optimistic that everything was OK and that Seamus wasn’t the mean drunk that he ended up being. I mean, I knew I wasn’t pregnant. Crisis adverted. Ok, I was pretty sure I wasn’t pregnant. My daily bloodwork showed that my white blood cell count was normal. A whole host of other things that we were keeping an eye out for all looked fine.

We kinda figured that if things weren’t OK the Surgical Residents that saw me every morning, the Hospitalist that stopped by in the afternoon, the Surgical Harpies (I mean other members of the Surgical practice) that stopped by every afternoon; I mean, someone would have mentioned it, right? “So, let’s take a look at your staples today. How’s your pain? How are you eating? Do you feel nauseous or like you need to throw up? You have cancer. Be sure to get up and walk around today, that will help your incision to heal.”

Well, my surgeon took a couple of days of leave after he stitched me back up. Now, I don’t begrudge him a bit. I really like my surgeon and am appreciative of the work that he did, the Surgical Harpies, not so much. While he was on leave, the other docs that saw me on a daily basis all thought that one of the others had that conversation with me. “Which way did he go? Which way did who go?” Pretty much how that went down. So, after my wife and I pestered for the results of the biopsy for a few days we got the news.

That took a little bit to sink in.

There was good news, and the Hospitalist that broke the news to us was very positive. My margins were clear. At 14″ the margin should have been clear for crying out loud. A dozen lymph nodes were removed and looked at; they were clear as well. No history of Colon Cancer in my family. I’m young (relatively) for Colon Cancer; it’s typically found in patients that are in their 50s and older. Ton of things going my way.

So, it’s with all of these things going through my noggin that we met with the Oncologist. We were taken a little bit back when she said that she had appointments book for me already to start Chemotherapy. How it goes down is that while I have some things that are going my way; given my young age and some other things I’m at a high risk of reoccurrence of Cancer. I honestly appreciate the Oncologist being aggressive. I’m just not thrilled with six months of chemo, twice a month. Oh yeah, that’s once my wound gets all healed. Here’s the kicker. I’m doing chemo, to kill off any loose cancer cells that may have gotten dislodged or broken off and are floating around in my blood stream. To counter this threat, chemo needs to be started within three months of surgery. So, I’m roughly a month out of surgery already (my clock is ticking like this). After three months, anything floating around will find a place to hang out and future hilarity can ensure. Now, that is assuming that I can tolerate/finish 6 months of chemo. One of the side effects of the drugs is neuropathy. One of the side effects of my diabetes is neuropathy. Wait, huh? The chemo is going to raise my chances of developing neuropathy, as well as the usual cast of characters: loss of appetite (not again), thinning hair, etc.

It’s a bit of a race at this point. Will my wound heal in time for me to start chemo? Are there any cancer cells floating around my body looking for a home, maybe just a couch to crash on for a few months? Tune in next week to find out if our hero can defeat Seamus and the Legion of Malignant Cells.