Author Archives: Brian

Hairloss Part III

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While the hair on my head continues to thin yet has mostly remained, I’m just about out of body hair. It’s almost entirely gone on my legs but is still hanging around on my arms. I haven’t been losing hair in clumps like I was back in October, but what I think is happening now is just normal hair loss that everyone experiences. The difference for me is that while everyone else is constantly growing new hair to replace what they naturally shed, I am not.

The thing about the hair on our bodies is that it serves a purpose. You really notice this when its gone. Nose hair for example is something you probably don’t think much about it, unless you no longer have any. The purpose of nose hair is both a first line of defense to keep things out, BUT it also works to help keep things in. Since I no longer have any my nose runs all the time. You know how when you’ve been outside in the cold for a while, and it can make your nose start to run? Well that happens to me, only it doesn’t have to be cold, and it doesn’t have to be “a while,” I basically just have be outside and it will cause my nose to start to run. And with none of that pesky nose hair to get in the way and disrupt the flow, it rolls on out in a quick and steady pace.

I’ve also lost the hair in my ears. Here is another example of a place that we have hair for a reason. Like the nose, the hair in the ears is again designed as a first line of defense to help keep things out. Without it though, I find the body resorting to an over production of it’s second line of defense, ear wax.

The weirdest place though that I’ve started noticing the hair loss is MY EYELASHES. And whats even weirder about that is that it’s mostly just the bottom lashes that have lost the good fight.

If you’re keeping score, I’ve got about 8 left on the bottom of each eye.

You can a couple of them still hanging on, but they sure went fast. I first noticed it late last week when I rubbed my eyes and noticed several eyelashes still stuck to my fingers when I pulled them away.

Also as the hair on my head has continued to thin at a slow pace, I have finally reached the point when my head is starting to get cold if I leave the house without a hat or beanie.  I really started to notice it in the over the last week or so while I’ve been out Christmas shopping. Still, if you passed me on the street I don’t think it looks to bad, nor do I feel that I particularly look like a cancer patient. Unless you already know.

Chemo today. The good people at the hospital have a couple of early Christmas presents for me:  adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine.

Merry Christmas to ME!

Surprise Doctor Visit!

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[Note: Some the pictures ahead may be a little intense for some readers and are rated TV-MA, though the page all loads at once so you can probably already see them…]

I figured it was only a matter of time before I would need to make an unplanned visit to see a doctor. I just didn’t think in a million years it would happen like this.

The first thing this morning (Thursday), while I was half asleep, I went to pull a cereal box out of the pantry and in the process knocked a jar of Alfredo sauce off of the shelf. I landed squarely on my toe. This picture was taken less than 2 minutes later (note: had I known this was going to happen I would have cut my toe nails this week, but that’s not the grossest part, so you may not have even noticed =):

The damage to the nail was instant. And hurt. Bad.

I didn’t think it was broken, but given my current medical history and the fact that I’m both prone to infection and no longer capable of healing normally, I thought it would be a good idea to check-in with my oncologist to see if she thought I should have it looked at (something I normally wouldn’t have done). Later in the afternoon her office got back to me and as it was still painful they recommended that I have it looked it. I agreed as I was concerned about the amount of blood and pressure building up under the nail, again seems the type of thing that could lead to a problem with so many of my normal body functions as compromised as they are.

Luckily my local clinic had an opening on such short notice (I think it helped when I explained that “my oncologist wants me to be seen today”) so I didn’t have to go to Urgent Care in Seattle or Bellevue. I was able to get in at clinic just down the street at 4:00pm.

By this point it looked a bit worse, but really most of the damage was apparent immediately after the “sauce trauma”:

The doctor quickly confirmed that it wasn’t broken but given everything else agreed that it was probably good of me to have come in. Since I was there she thought it would be a good idea to try and get some of the blood out from under the nail, both to take pressure off the area for comfort and to hopefully save the nail. So with a needle she proceeded to drill a hole in the top of my nail.

Back at home now tonight, the blood continuing too slowly ooze out, and I’ve been putting my foot in warm water to encourage it along. I’ve learned to appreciate medical terms for things so I wanted to share that according to my discharge paperwork I had a “subungal hematoma” for which she performed a “tephination” as her last act before going on break for the holiday. Merry Christmas Dr. Constans!

I hope you had a great Christmas

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We sure did.

Christine and I spent the weekend in Enumclaw with the family and it was fantastic. I hope that everyone else had a great holiday weekend as well.

I found this Family Guy clip a few weeks ago and meant to post it before Christmas but never got around to it.

So dark and so hilarious.

Merry Christmas to all, and my deepest apologies to everyone (Christine included) who had to go back to work this morning.

The Voice

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The voice is muscle, and like any muscle if you don’t use it you lose it. Or at least it can quickly get out of shape. I realized this first hand last night when I went in for my first rehearsal for the revival… We actually all met last week for read through, but this was my first time working through a song again in a long time. In fact, as I realized during my first hoarse sing-through, the last time I sang ANYTHING was three-and-a-half months ago when I last sang this same song onstage. It was a bit of a wake-up call.

It will be fine, I just need to be sure and actually use my singing voice a bit more to get it back into shape. That, and you know actually maybe warm-up before going into a rehearsal. When we last did this show in September, I had been working for almost a year straight with no breaks, so my voice was pretty much always in good shape without having warm up or anything.

Everything was raspy, crackly, weak, and I just didn’t feel like I had any control over it. I don’t know why I was so surprised though. Like I said it’s a muscle, I wouldn’t expect to run every day for a year, then stop for 3 months, and then go out for a run and expect the same mile time that I had when I stopped. But for some reason I was still surprised when my voice wasn’t where I thought it was.

I also wonder what effects my chemo treatments have had on my vocal health aside from lack of use. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something going on there as well. In the past I would Google it. “Chemo” and then whatever possible side effect or ailment I was looking for and it always comes back with a result. I find lately though that I have problems doing that. Its getting harder and harder for me to talk about chemo as I have such negative associations with it that when I start to talk about it or think about it I can feel back in the room, in the chair. It makes my heart sink and my stomach turn.

Along those same lines, just the names of the drugs have power over me. When I’m sitting in the chair and they bring the drugs up, they show them to me and read off the names showing me the labels and verifying that it’s me and that it’s the right drugs. Just the other day I was reading something somewhere I randomly stumbled across the name of one of the drugs they give me, and my body reacted to it. Powerful stuff.

Okay, case and point, I have to stop talking about this now as I’m making myself a little ill. =)

Guilt

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For the first time since crushing it last week, my toe is feeling better and I’m beginning to walk normally again.

Interestingly, since I’ve stayed off my feet for pretty much the entire week I’ve been feeling really good as well. Normally I think I would be trying to do things and would up on my feet working and cleaning around the house etc. This would typically exhaust me and make me feel like crap, so I guess there is something to taking it easy and just sitting on the couch for a few days until I feel better.

Of course I’ve accomplished nothing all week, so I guess its a trade off. Push myself and actually be useful but feel the effects of the fatigue and achyness, OR sit on the couch for several days and feel physically better.

The problem is that I just can’t sit still. Even when my “job” is just to “get better” I still find that I feel guilty sitting at home and taking it easy while Christine is out at work.

It’s something that I’ve actually struggled with ever since I left my old day job last spring. When I’m in a show I work nights, but during the day I always found that I couldn’t really bring myself to just relax and read, or watch TV, or play video games. I did whatever I could to keep myself busy with things I felt made me useful: cleaning, running errands, and working on various projects. So it’s something that has always been issue for me, but has definitely been heightened for me since getting sick.