Author Archives: Brian

Hopeful after a lovely evening

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On Wednesday night Christine and I were invited to a recruiting presentation for prospective students of the MBA program. If you’ve been following us since the beginning you may recall that Christine was accepted into this degree program and had just begun courses when I was diagnosed and we made the decision to defer her enrollment for a year. The school has been very supportive of us and our decision and Christine has kept in contact with them throughout this process.

I have to tell you, at every encounter I continue to amazed and impressed by these people. Christine has been guaranteed a spot in next years class but they still invite us to the occasional recruiting event or reception in order to “ensure that you remain enthusiastic and interested in our program.” What they forget is how enthralled we are about the program but that just goes to show how thorough and impressive they are. Throughout the process they given us the impression that THEY have been courting and recruiting US into their exclusive program when really I feel like it should be the other way around. This is one of the top Business School programs in the country and they want Christine! (we won’t tell them that she can’t count)

It was a beautiful reception and dinner at the Sorrento Hotel with a brief presentation and then a few alumni spoke. I got so excited for Christine to start this program again, it was the same feeling I had back in the fall when we attended the “Back the School Night Reception” after her first day of class. I distinctly remember sitting in that room over dinner at the table full of her new classmates. It was a feeling of excitement, hope and endless opportunity ahead of us. It was happening! She was taking her first steps into this amazing program, I had just come off 8 months of solid steady work and was a few weeks away from starting another 3 months of work. Life was good! I was SO proud of Christine for everything that she had accomplished and was about to start, and frankly I was proud of myself for everything that I had accomplished and was about to start. That last bit doesn’t happen often, so I always note it when it does =) Two weeks later… well, you know that story by now.

The thing is, I had that same feeling again on Wednesday when I was sitting in the room listing to alumni talk about the program and the opportunities that it provided for them. I looked over at Christine and again was immensely proud of her and I was excited again for the future like I was back before everything happened. This is important to note, I purposely haven’t been “counting down” my number of treatments or spending too much time thinking ahead about an exact date when I will be finished with chemo since we don’t know, and it could change even if we did. But I do feel comfortable looking forward to next fall when Christine will be starting the program again. I assume that by then this painful experience will be be fading into the rear view mirror of our lives (hey look at that, imagery! This is what happens when you start reading books without pictures in them again). We’ll be back where we started, and probably much wiser for the journey.

Going Back to Work … Hopefully

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The last show I worked on before I got sick was the sold-out run at a small theater

I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s during the the end of our extension while we doing a series of Midnight Shows. It got really difficult for me actually. On one hand, my symptoms from the tumors were really acute and the show was in fact extremely difficult for me to get through at that point, but on the other hand I couldn’t tell anybody. That’s not true. I could have told my cast-mates, and in fact if we had done another weekend of shows like we had originally planned I would have told them as I probably would have had to start make some changes in my performance. At the time I could hardly exert myself without going into coughing fits (if you recall, I had a large tumor pressing on my lungs) and that’s to mention the fact that I had just had surgery. Still, we didn’t want to tell anyone yet, because I hadn’t had the chance to tell my family. But as fate would have it, we wound up canceling the final weekend of shows and I didn’t have to do the show or start telling people that I was sick.

Around this same time I made the tough decision to pull out of an upcoming (but now currently running) show at a larger theater. It was hard to do, and it was hard it was for me to come to the realization that I probably wouldn’t work again until next fall at the earliest. BUT things may have changed a bit. All I need is for luck to stay on my side.

A few weeks ago I was approached again about reprising my role as in their jupcoming remount starting the final weekend in January. They approached me knowing full well that I was sick, and they were upfront about their willingness to have someone understudy the role as well. I had already written it off in my head, so my initial instinct was to decline, but I thought about it for a few days and even after discussing my possible limitation with the new director, they still wanted me back. And so I’m happy to announce that I have agreed to return!

They have been EXTREMELY generous (and frankly I think, a bit a silly) to ask me back. But as there will be someone covering the role, just in case, this should work out. As I explained to them, there is no knowing where I will be at in 2 months when the show is scheduled to open. I can’t guarantee to them that I’ll be physically able to perform. And even if am able to open the show, the ever changing side-effects of chemo may prevent me from being able to continue the run. Or maybe my low white blood cell count will eventually catch up with me and I could come down with some kind of infection and I’ll need to be hospitalized or… well… suffice to say: I feel like I have been very fortunate with my treatment so far in that I HAVEN’T had any serious problems yet. But that’s not to say that I won’t. And fortunately the people there are willing to assume the risks (with the provided insurance of an Understudy!)

Even if I’m only able to do a couple of shows it will be worth it to me for a chance to get back on the stage again, earlier than expected even. And what I’m even more humbled by,  grateful for,  and touched by, is the fact that they feel its worth it to THEM to have me back, even if I’m only able to do a few shows.

I know that everyone out there is already praying for me and sending me good thoughts, but now I think it’s time that we all crossed our fingers and hoped for the best come the last week of January through mid-February. I’m gonna need it!

Chest Port Pictures

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The CT Scan last week went as expected.

Jedi Knight Cancer Patient is hoping for good results!

Contrast this with pictures from the last time I had a CT Scan and you can see that we’ve really come quite a ways, at least as far as my comfort level with these things goes. In fact this time the process was even easier than expected as they were able to access my chest port and use that to administer the intravenous  contrast solution, saving my precious arm veins from another IV.

As they were “plugging me in” it occurred to me that I had yet to really talk about my chest port since the surgery last month. To start, you may want to a take moment to remind yourself what it looks like on inside, before checking out these pictures of what it looks like from the outside.

This picture was taken this evening. You can see can see the chest port under my skin. It’s  little discolored as it tends to bruise a bit for a few days after being accessed. It’s not like bruise caused by trauma to the site, it’s just a small collection of blood under the skin which oozed out of the port as needle is removed from the unit. At least that’s my understanding, it could also just be bleeding from the skin cause by the needle puncture. The benefit of a chest port is that they are able to use larger thicker needles, but thicker needles leave bigger holes and the skin tends to bleed a bit more than with smaller needles.

You can see the three little bumps which form a triangle, the nurses aim for the center of this triangle when they go to access the port. Directly above is the incision scar from when then put it in. Also pictured is the scar below my neck and above my collar bone from the lymph-node biopsy surgery that I had almost three months ago now. Long after I’m done with treatment I’ll have these scars to remember it by. OR, as I’ve said before, I may just come up with stories about this knife fight that I got into at a bar that one time… you should see the other guy!

We took a few more pictures from various angles so that you can get a better idea for how it sticks out from my chest a bit.

In that previous picture, the lighting is such that you can actually kind of see the catheter line a little bit too. If you create an imaginary line using the two little dots closest to the camera (so the bottom of the inverted triangle and the dot on the right), and if you follow it up the chest, you can kind of see a an ever so slight “ridge line” created by the difference in lighting on either side of it. I normally can’t see it, it’s barely visible here due to the perfect angle of the camera and the lighting. I can’t see it, but I can feel it with my fingers running up for about an inch or an inch-and-a-half where it disappears under my collar bone before running deeper into my chest.

… that’s my little nubbin.

Kinda weird, isn’t it?

It’s actually really odd seeing these pictures. I’ve pretty much accepted the fact that I have this little device inside of me, but looking at these pictures… it looks like there are alien eggs, or some kind of transmitter that’s been implanted in me. At the very least you’d think I should be able to tap it like a button and ask to be “beamed up.” That’d be pretty neat. Is that too much to ask? I’d take that over a cure for cancer any day! Though I would imagine that if we did have have the early stages of  Transporter technology, all of that molecular breaking down and putting back together again would probably cause cancer… but since I already have that: so bring it on!

The Chest Port … IN ACTION

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Yesterday I posted pictures of my chest port, but I realized that I never included any pictures of it in action. Well is is what it will look like when they “access it” (the term they use) today for Chemo.

And what it looks like up close:

As you can see they just plug right in. The shiny stuff is a layer of film or tape that they stick over the access needle just as extra layer to hold everything in place. I wish I had a better picture of what they actually stick into me, I’ll see if I can get a better photo today during chemo. The whole process is so much simpler and believe or not, less invasive than an IV.

I wish they were able to use it at the clinic here in town for my blood draws, but they can’t, it has to be done by a nurse. So my blood draws continue to be taken through the veins in my arms, but even that is beginning to get more and more complicated as they are having to deal with scar tissue in and around those veins from the repeated pokings. By “more complicated” I just mean that they tend to hurt more and bleed for longer afterward.

The pictures above were taken the day after I had the chest port installed, and as you can see the area around the port was a little bruised and discolored. It’s not too bad in those pictures. It got worse. Much, much worse:

Sorry for the grossness. I promise not to post anymore shirtless pictures of myself for at least a short while. 2 days in row might have been a bit intense for some readers. To make it up to you, here is a picture of Pepper in her Christmas hat:

For the record, I do not and will not ever approve of dressing up pets. But Christine cannot be stopped. (Correction by Stine: “That’s not true! I’m anti ‘dressing up dogs’ as well… With the exception of her raincoat, which is practical. And her Christmas hat, which is cute.”) So there’s that.

Today is chemo session 3A, its my 6th treatment and the beginning of the 3rd cycle. We also meet with the oncologist today to discuss the results of my CT Scan from last week. Like I said, we are expecting good news and have no indications so far that it will go any other way, but there is always that little bit of uncertainty in the back of my mind, so I’m understandably a tad nervous. Check back tomorrow for the results of that conversation.

I haven’t seen the results from my CBC test yet, but as they haven’t called to cancel, I assume at this point that my white blood cell count is within the “safe” range for chemo, but probably still well below normal levels. The rest of my blood work that has come back is all normal including the liver function test that they run once a month (to ensure that the chemo drugs are not damaging my liver).

We are going to try some new tactics today to help minimize the anticipatory nausea that I’ve started to get. Basically I’m going to try taking some of the anti-anxiety medication that I’ve been prescribed BEFORE we leave for the hospital. It will mean that I should be pretty high by the time we meet with my oncologist but I think it’s worth it in the long run.

The results are in…

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We met with the oncologist yesterday and she showed us the results from my latest CT Scan. And they are impressive!

Lets start with the original CT. September 14, the day after I went to the doctor with a cough and walked out with cancer. This is from the first CT Scan I had. First the image, then again with some explanations of what you are looking at:

I lie on my back with my arms above my head and the scanner take 2D pictures of slices of my body. This is probably just above the center of my chest. Some helpful explanations of what you are looking at:

It’s no wonder I couldn’t breathe and I had that cough. The tumors and the massively inflamed lymph nodes were pushing on my lungs. The little white spots that you scattered throughout the lungs are just blood vessels within the lungs, doing their thing!

Now for the big one. The picture of the original CT Scan, vs the CT taken on Thursday. This is the two of them side by side:

The cancer is clearly retreating! The oncologist told us she is very encouraged by these results. You can see the reduction in the size of the tumors and the inflamed lymph nodes.

This second set of comparison pictures is little higher up into the chest. You can see many of the same things. But in this picture the windpipe is still in one piece as its before it has split into the two lungs.

I just can’t stop looking at these pictures. What a difference a couple of months can make and what poisoning yourself  every two weeks can do. It sucks, but I guess these picture show that its worth it. blah, blah, blah, miracles of modern science and all that…

But seriously, this was great news to get today from the oncologist. The medicine is working. It’s worth it. Everything is worth it!