Hello 2013 and Goodbye 2012

Happy Last Day of 2012! We are in Bethany Beach with my mom and dad to celebrate New Years. Our friends, the Sheas, are down here as well: their place is just down the road. My goal #1 for today, and my New Years resolution, is to get some color on my pale head. As I look at the picture below, I can hear my cousin Miah telling me I should put a lightbulb in my mouth to complete the picture!

Bethany Beach...survived Sandy!

Long Lost Relative?

2012 was a bittersweet year for us. The year started with a promotion, was punctuated with a few trials and tribulations with the kids, and then Hodgkins' Lymphoma introduced itself to our lives. However, we should all count our blessings that Armageddon was avoided when the Mayans incorrectly predicted doomsday this month. Even though it's more likely that we have no idea what the Mayans were really getting at. I was prepared though…anyone need a new pair of size 15 purple Nikes? Only worn once!

2013 looks promising from this vantage point. I plan to be cured of HL by mid-spring. Then Chris will graduate from JWU culinary school (baking and pastry) in May. David will head off to Union College (he was accepted early admission) in the late summer. And Alison will conquer her senior year and figure out where she wants to go to college. Yes we are looking forward to 2013 for so many reasons.

This round of chemo started rough but eventually got much better. The past couple days have been very good days. I slept like a rock last night as I usually do when I can hear the ocean. I think the initial difficulty in this round had a lot to do with the fact that I was fighting some kind of bug. I was also a little out of sorts becuse I haven't been on a regular schedule during the holiday break. My temperature is finally back to normal and I am doing well. 

Happy New Year with Much Love.

Chemo Treatment #6 - Half Way Home!

One of my best friends, Big Money, told me yesterday that my rapier wit was not coming through in recent blog posts. So we'll start this one off with a joke:

A group of managers are given an assignment to measure the height of a flagpole. So they go out to the flagpole with ladders and tape measures, and they're falling off the ladders and dropping the tape measures. The whole thing is just a mess. An engineer comes along and sees what they're trying to do, walks over, pulls the flagpole out of the ground, lays it flat, measures it from end to end, gives the measurement to one of the managers and walks away.

After the engineer has gone, one manager turns to another and laughs: "Isn't that just like an engineer? We're looking for the height and he gives us the length!"

So now that we have some humor on the table, time to get down to business. Today was Chemo Treatment #6. Only 6 more to go! Unfortunately HL got off to a good start in this round and I have some ground to make up to win this round. I've been fighting a low grade fever all week that's been chipping away at my energy. So I was worrying ahead of time that this round might be more difficult than the others. I sent a heads up email to Dr. Seifter mid-week and his reply was:

Hi Mike,
You are doing it all correctly. If you start to have shaking chills or a temperature over 100.5, let us know because you should have a CBC checked and possibly be hospitalized if the neutrophil count is under 500 in the face of fever.Eric

CBC on 21-Dec-12

The pre-chemo checkout went well. Weight, blood pressure, pulse and temperature are all fine this morning. Dr. Seifter and I spent more time talking about the Raven's quarterback woes than about anything else. Neither one of us was a Cam Cameron fan and we both don't think they should put a franchise tag on Joe Flacco. Below is my CBC. Since my counts were all fine (neutrophils or "GRAN") we proceeded as planned with today's chemo.

Mom and Dad accompanied me to chemo today, thankfully. We met Nancy for the first time. She's a a part-time nurse who works full-time at the impatient cancer center at the University of MD Hospital Center. She is also qualified, professional and caring and fits in well with Anna, Dawn and Chris.


Everything was going fine until 1pm or so. I got up to use the bathroom, toting my IV pump machine with me. When I was finished I caught a chill out of nowhere. I then developed uncontrollable chills/shakes and it caused my stomach to cramp. I almost puked and then got three additional drugs (a steroid, Benadryl, and acetaminophen). I was pretty much immobilized in the chair and we didn't go anywhere for another 90 minutes. As my dad said, it was the first time he was seeing me almost getting sick since I was 5. Here's a picture of the sad sack:

Shivering Uncontrollably Under Two Blankets

I finally settled down enough to go home. I was in no shape to drive so it was great having the rents with me. Once at home I laid in bed for a an hour and started to feel better.  

Today was not fun by any account and was, without a doubt, my worst day since starting chemo - with a score of 74 . On the flip side, it's now 11:50pm and I'm blogging whilst jacked-up on steroids. And for those keeping score, here's the Round 5 score against the average score.

Round 5 Score

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Much Love.

Round 5: Brack - 5, HL-0...and a Few Things I'd Rather Do Without

Another good round. A bit more up and down later in the round than in previous rounds. I started back on Prilosec daily at the beginning of this round and the occurrences of queasiness or the metallic taste seemed to decrease. My lowest score was on day 7 (Friday) at an 87 and well below my running average for that day of the cycle. It was poor choices on my part, plain and simple. I put off lunch for a meeting at work and never caught up. All I could push down at dinner was plain rice and Newman's Own lemonade (it's the least sweet to me). And the day before that I had a dinner of RoFo (Royal Farms for the uninitiated) chicken and Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia. I had a craving and you'd think I was pregnant. Bottom line…dumb idea. And this was not best timing since Jen and I traveled on Saturday for 4 days for kid commitments. Travel, for the second straight time, caught up with me and my body and let me know it. Twice this week my temperature spiked to the high 99s so I started on Levaquin (Levofloxacin, 500mg) in case I have a bug. Interestingly, if you look this medication up, the Mayo Clinic website description says that it's an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections all over the body… also to prevent an anthrax infection after a person has been exposed to anthrax AND this medicine is also used to treat and prevent plague (including pneumonic and septicemic plague). So I've got that  going for me!

Even though it's been a decent round I would be remiss if I didn't mention a few things (side effects?) that occasionally drive me a little crazy. I got the idea when I was talking with our friend Danita last week. She is making great progress with her breast cancer treatment and should be done with her chemo rounds by now - GO Danita! She and I were comparing notes so I decided to keep track of a few things that I can't wait to put in the rear view mirror. Here goes:

• That metallic taste in the mouth 
• Numbness of the sides of my tongue
• Tingling or numb fingertips
• Runny nose at some point every day
• Raw nose, inside and out, that hurts to wipe or blow
• Mouth sores and random cold sores
• Walking 50' and losing my breath (thanks Bleomycin)
• Being cold often, especially my sizable dome, and not being able to shake a chill
• Retaining water (hands and feet swell) at randoms times
• Really dry skin (yes I've been using lotion) and constantly chapped lips
• Random pains that come and go over a 24 hour period (see example below)
• Random coughing bouts
• Difficulty trying to swallow absolutely nothing
• Not being able to take a cleansing breath without coughing
• Acute, mild pain going to the bathroom (#1 and/or #2, that's the nicest way I can say it)
• Insides of both elbows feels like I have needles sticking in them (I guess I miss chemo so much!)
• Waiting to sweat out a low grade fever
• Thinking about the ER each time my temperature goes over 99.5 (only three times so far)

I try not to focus or whine about any of these and just roll with it. For example, on day 6 I felt like someone had punched me in my ribcage just under my right armpit. I started laughing about it and that caused me to cough, which in turn caused more pain, which caused me to laugh…The pain went away a few hours after a couple Advil and didn't come back. I'm still laughing about it.

Other than that I'm doing pretty well.

Much Love To You All. And my deepest appreciation for all of the love and support this year. It makes it so much easier to keep that positive outlook.

And a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah (just ended) or otherwise joyous celebration this season. Tell your families and friends you love them. We are looking forward to 2013 in so many ways.

Chemo Treatment #5 - An Early Christmas Present!

"It's Clear" - two of the most beautiful words I've ever heard after our wedding vow, "It's a girl, "It's a boy" and my brother telling me he was cancer free.

Lauren, Dr Seifter's patient service coordinator, called me while I was on the way to treatment. I missed her call and was intrigued that she was calling a half hour before my appointment time. I was hopeful after reading the PET/CT report yesterday but I needed to hear it from Dr. Seifter before believing anything I could read from the report. The conversation with Lauren was brief, entirely uplifting and funny at the same time:

  Lauren: Mike, Dr. Seifter wanted me to tell you that it's clear. Your scan is clear. I told Dr. Seifter 'I think he already knows.' 
  Mike: Thanks so much Lauren. I thought the news was good when I read the report, but not that good. See you in 30 minutes.

"It's Clear." I didn't imagine I'd hear that. I read the words at the end of the report that said "Good response to therapy..." so I thought I was doing well based on my white blood cell counts being where they should be. All of my enlarged lymph nodes have either "markedly diminished in size or even resolved..." They're gone, not possible - already? Absolutely! And I really appreciate that Dr. Seifter wanted me to have realtime info from him as opposed to waiting until the appointment.

I was 15 minutes late to my appointment and arrived with a smile on my face. I was planning to go to work afterwards so no one accompanied me today....not for lack of volunteers between my buddy Sean and my dad. First was the consult, where Dr. Seifter also had a smile on his face. Good news is hard to contain. My PFT score, while lower than the previous two tests, is still fine. The option here is to quit the Bleomycin if my lung performance deteriorates to where the score drops too low. Then on to the checkout where, as Dr. Seifter remarked, there's not much to check out!  My blood pressure continues to be good at 110/80 and my weight is steady. So we will continue with the treatment as planned. Time to kill off all of the residual Reed Sternberg cells to be sure I am cured. My new hope is that I continue to respond to ABVD they way I already have.  And with no further adieu, here's the PET/CT report.

PET/CT #2 Radiology Report

Anna and her son Chris were working in the chemo room today - a great team. I was the first person in this morning and it was not overly active with 4 other patients in this morning. My blood work was first, as usual. My WBC was 1900, the lowest measurement yet. Given that it was only 11 days since the previous treatment, this is not unusual. And my RBC (for you Ellen) is still holding steady at 4.44 so my energy level is still decent. Everything else was routine. I was out by 1pm and heading home since the meeting at work finished early.

It's been a great day everyone! 
Much love to you all.

Round 4: Brack-4, HL-0...and some cool extras

Round 4, the shortest round at 11 days, was a busy 11 days with PET/CT #2 and PFT #3. Fortunately it was mostly uneventful in terms of chemo effects. Days 4 and 5 were probably the worst two days I've had on chemo yet. Both days I had achy joints, less  energy, and a spotty appetite. I had to force myself to get up and stay active when I felt like laying on the couch. The metallic taste in the mouth gets old quick. I probably sound like a broken record on that account. And my fingertips occasionally tingle, the sides of my tongue sometime feel numb,  the top of my head is whiter than fresh fallen snow, and now and again I can't swallow larger bites or large gulps of liquid as easy as I used to…other than that I'm doing pretty well.  As a friend from work said last week "…be honest, don't tell me everything is peachy."  Not everything was peachy in Round 4. My good friend Eileen felt the same way on the same days as me, so we commiserated. Below is the latest graph. The graph was getting busy with all rounds on one page, so I am now showing just the latest round with the running average.

Round 4 Score

I also had my second PET/CT. I had the same tech as last time and he sent me home with the images from both scans as well as some knowledge about the software that I can use at home to view the images/movies. The results look promising and the report looks even more promising but I need to wait for Dr. Seifter to say the magic words. Below are some images from both scans. Take a look to compare the images from both, particularly in the neck region where the crosshairs are. Pretty cool.

PET/CT #1 Image

PET/CT#2 Image

One really cool thing happened during this round. My dad, who has never sent an email to anyone other than family or someone connected to a great fly fishing destination, struck up an email conversation with the President and Founder of HeadBlade, Todd Greene. He told him about our battle to beat Hodgkin's Lymphoma and next thing you know Todd makes me the HeadBlade "User of the Month". Here's a link to the really cool writeup:

Thank You Todd & HeadBlade!

You know it's a solid company when they offer a great product, fronted by a sincere and accessible owner, and shirt sizes up to 3X - for us larger than normal guys. Thanks for everything Todd, particularly the kind words, positive thoughts, opening your community up to my story, and the honor of being a recognized HeadBlader. Much health, happiness and success to you and your team at HeadBlade.

Last but far from least, I stopped in to my local a few days ago – The Judges Bench. Mike, the owner and a beer/single malt/cognac/bourbon aficionado (my kid of guy!) graced me with a small snifter of 50 year ofd cognac. Wow, what an expression! I'm sure it's doing it's part helping to get me cured.