Cancerless!!!

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This is what two months free of cancer looks like:

Still Cancer Free

Blood tests indicate I am still cancer free! Both pregnancy hormones came bak negative last week. WHOOOOHOOOO!

Cancer Free

I received initial word via text message that my CT scan was clear and that I had no more tumors in late August. Two or three weeks later I received notice from my second opinion Dr. I New York, that he agree I was cured. "Clinically complete remission" are the exact words he used. It felt amazing to hear those words...truly amazing. Since then I am back to running, I've been camping three times, I've been kayaking twice, been to the beach, and I've regrown my beard! I am enjoying my life thoroughly.

Hair regrowth 4reel this time

I had a false start last time around. I guess they pump me up with enough steroids during chemo that it sparked some initial rapid hair growth. It all fell out again after the final treatment, even, as I showed you, my eye brows and lashes. Here we go again though... Patchily distributed, variably pigmented hair on my head and face. As an ecologist I find the patterns interesting. FYI, I am waiting on a second opinion this week to determine whether the chemo treatments were successful in knocking out the Cancer. Initial results indicate I beat it but I'll know for sure this week.

I thought I was in the clear

My hair was regrowing, my beard was thick, I felt good. But then my eye brows and eye lashes started falling out. I guess the 4th round hit me harder than I thought. It is good to see that all the drugs did something:

Post chemo- week one

Hair regrowth tracker:

The pony tail is still a long way off. Half my mustache is coming in strong though.

Dunn

I had my last bag of IV cancer poison yesterday afternoon. CISplatin. Some sort of drug that is essentially platinum that is designed to invade your cells, preferably your cancer cells, and disrupt RNA transcription. When they can't transcribe RNA the cells pretty much die because they can't do anything let respire let alone multiple and spread.

I can't believe I finished. I wish I could feel really good about it and go out to celebrate or something...but mostly I feel like crap. I think that more than just my cancer cells' transcript has been disrupted. Mostly what I am hoping is that there are no more Cancer cells in me to be disrupted and that I am just F'ing with my normal shit now. Cancerlessness is the point right?

People keep asking me "What are you going to do to Celebrate?!?!" well other than spending most of the weekend in bed recovering from this crap, I plan to celebrate by growing a pony tail, a loooong beard, and never having Chemo therapy again. Maybe in a couple weeks I feel up to cracking a beer.

Delayed

Delayed another week. Saturday night my lingering cold became a bit of a problem. My throat turned quite sore, I got quite a headache and I developed a fever with no cowbells on hand to fix it. I peaked out at 100.1, just 0.4 degrees below the "you'd better head to the hospital for some IV antibiotics" threshold. A few weeks back my oncologist had given me a Cipro prescription "just in case" and he advised that I start taking that when we called him at 10:30pm. Sunday I got my white blood cell counts done and I was, as expected, low. Not critically low, but low enough to cause another delay in my chemo treatments. The Dr. came in said, "You're low, and your mom is going to kill me but I can't treat you this week." Sigh, I just want to be DONE! The biggest disappointment was, it was Father's day. My little girl Eva and my wife and devised a very fresh strawberry focused celebration that day. Eva is aware that my favorite dessert is Strawberry short cake and that I couldn't have any for my birthday (for the first time in probably 33 years) because my white counts were low then too. She and Liz planed to bake me a strawberry short cake and as an added bonus make chocolate cover strawberries, because, why not!?! Sadly, with low whites you've got to avoid fresh, uncooked foods. Bacteria hide out on everything and cooking them is the only safe way. They switched up to a strawberry peach cobbler, a pretty f'ing sweet substitute, and I promised Eva that when the summer is over and I am cured of cancer, we'd have a big party with all the strawberry short cake we could possibly want. I can't wait for that party!

Moar Hare

It is becoming a bit of a ritual at my house... Most nights as I put my youngest to bed, I sing her a little song, lean down to hug and kiss her and she reaches up to pluck a few of the few remaining hairs I have out of my head. I guess it is a cute and comforting way for her to participate in this disease I am living through this summer. I probably need to break the ritual though before too long, when my hair regrows and little Faye is yanking on my head getting pissed that the hair no longer just slips right out of the follicle.

Half way done.

Just finished my last bag of chemicals for round two of chemo therapy. That means I am halfway done with my treatments. It feels good.

The other bit good news is that Dr. said my tumor marker in my recent blood test were way down to undetectable levels, meaning that the tumor producing these aberrant proteins had been badly dammaged, i.e., the Chemo Therapy is working well. It is actually a pregnancy hormone that I was producing because my germ cells (the precursors to sperm cells) had started behaving like fertilize eggs instead of make sperm. The test results indicate that my tumor is mostly made up of the equivalent of placental cells, creating HCG, a female pregnancy hormone. 5 or 6 weeks ago if i'd bought and peed on a CVS pregnancy test I would have tested positive as pregnant, now, according to my blood test, I would not.

Biology is fascinating.

Kicking ball cancer in the balls

Hare

There is probably no better way to get over the shock and awe of being told you'll be losing your left testicle to cancer than to be told that the cancer spread to your lymphatic system and that you need to undergo three months of chemo therapy. SHOCK!!! It's funny because at this point I don't really care at all that I am half the man I used to be (Yeah STP reference!)... I mostly just want to be cured of the Cancer.
I've been on chemo therapy for 3 weeks now, sort of. My treatment plan consists of 5 days on two weeks off 4 times; I'll be done with chemo treatments by mid July. So far it hasn't been too bad, in fact it hasn't been bad at all. There have been probably three difficult days, the first day cause I think system was kind of shocked by all the drugs, then the Saturday and Sunday following the first round of treatments was kind of sucky too. I just felt really tired those two days and I'd get nauseated if I went too long with out food. I have been feeling completely fine otherwise. So good that a little part of me was starting to think that maybe the nurse had given me the wrong drugs. Then on Wednesday of this week my hair started falling out. A pretty good clue that I got the right drugs. Monday I go back to start my next round of treatments...wish me luck.

When I was Eva's age...

I distinctly remember thinking about my own death. It sounds weird or even disturbed I guess but I was the the little brother of a dead boy, and I used to wonder if I was going to die too. He died of a brain tumor that spread to his spine and couldn't be treated with chemotherapy. Radiation therapy didn't work either. He was 5 when he died, just about Eva's age right now, and I remember anticipating my 6th as if it was some sort of finish line. After my 6th birthday I remember thinking, 'OK, I made it, I am safe now...' Morbid for a 6 year old, I know, but also quite optimistic. Poor kid right?
Two weeks ago I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Almost 28 years after my 6th birthday, my luck ran out I guess. It took the urologist about 6 seconds to determine that I had a tumor. He said "pull your pants up and sit down...ok you have cancer." Not a surprise really but sudden and coldly delivered. I had been feeling discomfort and really pain on my left testicle for about two months. Two weeks before my appointment I started getting acne all over my torso and then my nipples started hurting. So I knew this was coming, but the delivery was cold and sudden. He told me I needed surgery, probably the next day, and I would lose the testicle. The rest of the appointment I barely remember. All I could think about was my kids and who was going to take care if them, who was going to teach my class, and other non cancer things. I didn't cry cry in front of him, I waited till I got out the the car, and called my girlfriend. I couldn't hold back then.

I did this last week