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Quote of the Day:

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
- Josh Billings

Cycle 4 MRI Check and Small Group

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It’s been a bit more difficult to get to the blog with so much going on. Work has been really busy for me which is a good thing! I’ve been really busy – in fact, this is busier than things have been for quite a long while. I’m just about finished with a song. I know I have said this for awhile now! I have a few that are in the bag musically but I just didn’t feel it. I think I’ve talked about my digital graveyard before? It’s a place where songs go that just don’t seem to go anywhere. Sometimes they are just chord progressions and other times, as in two cases here, they were fully produced pieces with drums, bass, strings, guitars, grand piano, etc. etc. and I just didn’t feel like they were going anywhere for me. Perhaps it was going through treatment? It doesn’t exactly put you in a hugely creative mood, however, songwriting isn’t something you can force – either a song comes or it doesn’t.

Well, I do really like the sound and feel of the one I’m chipping away at now. The music is nearly finished so the grinding part will start with lyrics and vocals. For many songwriters and me included, it’s the hardest part. A songwriter once said “my favorite part of writing a song is the beginning and the end” and it’s so true! You are inspired in the beginning and once you are done it’s a great feeling to sit back and listen to a finished piece (providing you didn’t cut corners and slam it out), but the grind can be tough. Anyway, when it’s done I will post it here.

So I’m still dragging with fatigue. Seems that each week I come off chemo it takes 3-4 days to feel sort of normal again. It’s just the cumulative effect I think. Not much that can be done that I already am not doing with regard to diet, supplements and the like. I finished cycle 4 as of the end of this week (I’m off chemo this week which is the last week in this cycle) so I’ll begin cycle 5/6 on Monday. Once I get done with 6 I’ll have decisions to make. It will be a difficult proposition for sure. Many of the other drugs are as or even more harsh than Temodar – and discussion centers around adding one in addition to Temodar possibly. Of course one option going off of chemo completely and seeing where we go. Lots of options and we will deal with that when the day comes.

My next MRI is this coming Monday so I could use your prayers. So far, all of them have come back stable – praying for the same or better results here as well. I am tracking this serially every 60 days and my last MRI was at the beginning of December.

Our small group is going through a GREAT study right now on living the life you always dreamed of living. The book that we are reading is amazing. I was reading it last night and the author was telling a story about giving his kids a bath and how his daugther is just filled with joy for no reason at all – she’s a little kid and every moment of the day, for the most part, is joyous. He said that when she is filled with so much joy that words cannot express how much joy she feels, she just dances around in circles. They call it the dee dah day dance because she is so filled with joy that she has had a dee dah day. He goes on to say that one night he gave her a bath and when she got out of the bath she was doing this dance and he’s asking her to come over to dry her off and she’s laughing, dancing and he’s saying come over here – hurry, I need to get you dry – and he starts getting frustrated because she’s twirling, running away and doing this dance and finally with a more stern voice he says “please come over here, we need to hurry and I need to dry you off”. Then he said that she asked the most profound question: “Why?” The point he made and what struck me is that our lives are lived by timetables, when is the next meeting, where do we have to be, what is next, what happened last, etc. and as a result, we miss out on the joy of now. He said that after she asked that question, he got up and did the dee dah day dance with her and they just took their time. What a concept huh? For me, I have done this exact thing with my son in the bath – we need to hurry, it’s time for bed, gotta get out, blah blah blah.

Anyway, this is a great study for us. Again, I could use your prayers for Monday and by all means please continue to email any requests you have.

Best,

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Great Day / Middle of Cycle 4

Chemotherapy, My Story No Comments »

Each day brings new experiences and today was really great. It’s the national MLK observance and I spent the better part of the day with my son. We went to the park and took along our skateboards and skated around together. I picked a board up about 3 months after my surgery, probably against my better judgment, and decided to get back into it so we could skate together. It’s great! I skated all the time growing up in Huntington Beach, California. It’s surf city – we ran around at the beach and that’s what we did – rode our boards, body surfed (I wasn’t a surfer), layed on the sand and had fun. So it’s a nice time for he and I. We ran some errands after that – some clothes shopping which of course he doesn’t care for and then we went to lunch together.

I decided to do a pretty fun craft with him today. I have been saving these crayon pictures he’s drawn for several years. Some of them are great! So I told him that we should do something with some of them so we went to a local craft shop and bought some frames, mattes and so forth. His room is all blue and red with dark woods so we matched them all up of course. We found some of this work – on yellow paper and such and started to frame his pictures. We finished one and it was time for his “quiet time” but he’s so proud of his work! His framed work sitting up on his dresser – what could make you feel more proud as a 5-year old kid? I felt great about doing this with him and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for awhile.

As for me, I’m doing alright but it’s been more difficult lately with headaches and I”m not sure what to attribute them to, if anything. My professional life has been a bit more stressful in terms of projects starting to wind up and so forth but nothing I haven’t dealt with many times before. The headaches aren’t bad but the pain can come up quite suddenly. When I get up from sitting or laying down I get a sharp pain on the right side of my head. This has been going on for at least 3 weeks now and hasn’t subsided for more than a day at any given time. Of course I sometimes let my mind wander, then rein it back in. I have another MRI coming up after the 1st of Feb. I’m in the middle of cycle #4 – I start tonight for 7 days, then I’ll be off and that will end the cycle. We’ve talked about the decision point at 6 months but I’ll start thinking seriously about that and research it at about 5 1/2 months.

That’s it for now.

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Chemo – Compounding Effect

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There is a certain compounding effect of chemotherapy that seems to be taking place the longer I am on Temodar.   I believe I have mentioned before in this blog that at the end of a 7-day “on” period I become much more fatigued and it seems to take me a little bit longer to recover.  It seems to take just a little bit longer as time moves on and at the end of the cycle I feel just a little bit more under the weather.  When this first started to happen, I mistakenly thought it was the “radition recall” phenomena creeping back into the mix that was so difficult to deal with back during October and November.  However, it’s not – it’s just fatigue from the Temodar at the end of each 7-day dosing.  I have read that it becomes a little been harder, I just didn’t think it should happen at this point.  However, most people are on a 5/23 regimen, meaning they take it for 5 days a month and are off it for 23.  So, since I am on the drug 14 days each month and off 14, at this point I have 3 cycles under my belt which is 42 doses.  The 5/23 would put you at 15 doses.  Now the 5/23 is a higher dose but I am just thinking that being on the drug more consistently is having a more consistent effect on my body.

The good news is that my blood work is good.  My white count is down but my overall scoring is good and not in a range where it is a concern.  I have had a number of focal seizures but as always I just handle those as they occur.

That’s it for now.  There have been quite a few people that have emailed me lately with newly diagnosed brain tumors or with loved ones that have been newly diagnosed.  I pray for all of you and my wife and I know exactly what all of you are going through.  There is a shock to this news – in time you surrender and accept it and you attack the problem.  As always, I’m happy to answer questions and provide you with what support I can.  This site also has resources – there are links down the left side under “Brain Tumor Resources” that will find helpful and the “Library” area of the site has a lot of useful documents and information. 

Best regards,

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New Treatments for Brain Tumors

Brain Tumor Treatment 1 Comment »

I came across a very good slide set put together by Dr. Henry Friedman, MD of Duke University Brain Tumor center. At this point in my treatment, because I have what is referred to as “stable disease”, the standard of care is what I will continue with which is my 7-day on / 7-day off Temodar regimen. However, if anything were to change there are a lot of different options out there.

This slide set is 100+ pages long but it’s worth taking a look at. Don’t be intimidated by it – there are statistics in it and there are a lot of diagrams that require you to be a chemist to understand them – so just blow by them. It is a good slide set to have, IMHO, just to be acquainted with options. You can download the slide set here or you can go into the resource library and get it there and peruse the other resources available there at the same time.

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Lest We Forget…

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This is an audio clip of a remarkable phone call from a 12-yr old boy to Houston radio station KSBJ FM 89.3.  So profound, the station has it posted on their website.   Everyone should hear this.

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Happy New Year!

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So what will the new year hold? I wrote a post just a week ago that focused on “staying in today”. Last night I wondered how I was going to practice what I preach as my mind wandered into 2008, my health and the last 4 days. I haven’t posted for a week or so but I experienced two focal seizures that were stronger than others and I had one awhile back. For some brain tumor survivors this is not surprising because they have many and are used to them. For me, they have been infrequent and I am always attentive to any increase in frequency or severity.

So on New Years Eve I found myself wading into 2008, certainly with a strong sense of hope and peace but also with a certain tentative stance given the year that we have had. It has been one year that we will never forget! July and August – having the surgery on June 29th and then Keegan being born on July 13th and the ensuing recovery and tending to him following that was in a word brutal! However, through the grace of God and the help of so many wonderful people – our family and I have to say the tremendous support of our small group at Bayside Church, we made it through.  Our small group made it happen on a grand scale more than anything else.  Our group leader, Sarah, immediately sprung into action and had meals planned with a long list of church members making and delivering them.  She was awesome – coordinating everything.  We had the most thoughtful and giving people showing up at our door offering to do everything from going shopping to doing our laundry to cleaning our house, many of whom we didn’t even know.  This was all through the church and because of our small group.  A small group is about more than connecting with others in the church.  It brings you closer to the congregation and provides a network of support so that you can give to others when they need support and vice versa.  We saw this first hand from the perspective of needing the support and we were overwhelmed.  We will forever be grateful for what this army of ministers through Bayside Church did for us in our darkest hour.

Distraction is the key today – Rose Bowl! I have faith that 2008 is going to be a great year. My scans have all shown stability thus far. My tolerance of Temodar has been very good and overall we have a lot to look forward to.

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