Last week I got the results of my latest 3-month blood tests and CT scans, or as I like to call it The Quarterly Scareholders Meeting. The scan anxiety has increased as I get further from treatment. Maybe it just seems that way because it’s more immediate and I don’t remember how bad it was […]
I am typing this slowly because I am in a not-insignifcant amount of pain and while I don’t type the way a dervish whirls, even small movements are rather scintillating in the needle-like pain department BECAUSE I GOT MY PORT-CATH IMPLANT REMOVED THIS AFTERNOON. I was so excited I could barely sleep last night and […]
Hello. I celebrated entering my 206th trimester with a visit to the oncology clinic this morning. It was eventful in it’s uneventfulness. A few items of note: Every NP is pregnant. OK, not all of them, but the ones that are important to my story are, and they’re all gonna push out their new humans […]
Today I had a consult with the folks in charge of wrangling the gremlin perched on my kidney, as I do after every scan. Separated by a month from the appointment with the colon cancer specialists because the renal folks weren’t prepared for the schedule change that happened due to my minor panic about pain […]
Got my surveillance appointments moved up a few weeks because I told them I had some new stabby pains in my gut and the team at Froedtert is FUCKING AMAZING and didn’t want me to worry over the holidays. I will just leave this image here: Short version: clean scan, numbers are good, probably just […]
4 quick items from today: 1. Colonoscopy this morning was clean. I have photos and everything! This time without tumors in them 2. Signatera results came back just now and no tumor DNA detected for the 3rd time in a row. 3. When it comes to sedation, I am not a lightweight according to the […]
I have reached the fun part of the end of the beginning where updates come at much longer intervals and the news is very boring. I am very happy about that and hope to keep it that way. Last week I had my latest trimesterly surveillance scan and it came back with no suspicious findings. […]
I intended to write something 2 weeks ago about the one year anniversary of the discovery of all the lumps inside me, but the date fell on the same day as the Riverwest24 and I was busy and then I was so very tired and there are so many events in my past that all […]
Quick morning doing my usual tattoo show and tell with the folks in the lab while they sucked a whole lot of blood out of me for various tests. I love them. They are so fun for a group that is stuck in a maze of tiny little cubbies full of sick people all day […]
My life has been pretty boring unless you like riding bikes or network engineering or light brain damage. I haven’t had anything to post because the rumor mill has been very quiet. Now I have some news to share. A couple things actually: First thing: Whatever the hell went wacky inside me back in April/May […]
Per Ellie, this is NOT a Tumor Rumor. This is a Port Report. It’s been a couple weeks since I was in a hospital so of course I am being called in. Some medical professionals looked at the CT scans from Fat Neck Day and decided they do not like what the catheter is doing, […]
Got home from the clinic late last night after multiple pokes and scans and waiting and waiting and waiting to finally be told “Sometimes cancer just makes your body weird.” That is not a complaint. It’s true. It really does. I am glad the Oncology folks were concerned enough to refer me to get checked […]
Words of the day are: “supraclavicular lymphadenopathy” I look like someone shoved a couple water balloons under the skin on each side of my neck. There’s dozens of possible causes for this if you search the internet. My favorite is: “cancer.” This happened before back in early October, maybe it was late September, the memory […]
I have NO IDEA what is going on inside me until July, which is super wild to me but I am getting used to it. I am writing here to share that I am excited to be taking part in a Patient Experience Interview to help shiny brand new med students learn how to talk […]
Today I had second consult about The Thing on my kidney as well as a follow-up with the best colo-rectal surgeon on the planet and both went exceedingly well, as far as these things go. Urologists that deal with cancer are way more chill than the other cancer docs, and the general sentiment remains that […]
As much as I enjoy writing about my poop tubes and blood filtering organs it seems tentatively likely that these updates will become substantially less frequent. That is good. This morning I had my first surveillance labwork and clinic visit. The lab was packed wall to wall with patients. I have never seen it so […]
One of the things that happens when you eat like an out of control toddler, then get the particular style of chemo I have been stuntin’ is you can rocket yourself straight into diabetes, as I have evidentally done. Last week my heart rate started shooting up to 120-130bpm and sat there buzzing away no […]
It’s been a week since my last chemo appointment and I feel OK overall, though still a bit foggy now and then and sometimes for fun my heart rate shoots up to like 130 and stays there even though all I am doing is demonic spreadsheet incantations for work. It always goes back to normal […]
Tomorrow morning I get hooked up for the last chemo cycle of this round, and after the pump comes off on Saturday morning we officially enter Surveillance! My CEA markers are still very slightly elevated, but the ctDNA test came back 0, all the rest of my numbers are good, and my last scan was […]
This morning I woke up to a test result notification in MyChart and figured out how to trick the system into sending me more info than “see scanned result.” Now I know that the blood test they ran to check for loose cancer DNA in my bloodstream returned no indication that my tumors left any […]
I haven’t posted anything here in a bit because as I near the end of chemo things have gotten more routine and telling the same stories about side-effects and poop is sort of boring. I just finished my penultimate treatment, and only have one more cycle to go in a couple weeks before I switch […]
I mostly only talk here about side-effects and physical maladies, and there is a new one today: my hands are now curling into uncontrollable claws randomly throughout the day, which makes it difficult to put on pants, or do dishes, or type, like I need to do for my job so I can keep having […]
Woke up in the middle of the night because I forgot to set a drugs alarm and slumbered myself right into some minor side-effects. No big deal. Pills down the hatch and I got to see the fattest fluffiest snowflakes slowly drifting down to cover up all the dog poop and half-rotten leaves. It was […]
I have to give a shoutout to the folks that came up with Protonix. One of the worst things about the first few months of chemo was a constant and horrendous heartburn that antacids and various stomach acid reducers did nothing to solve. Eating Tums was like tossing an ice cube into a furnace. Just […]
I have the best Oncology team in the universe. Spent some time joking around with the PA about zoomer doctors and invented the Just Good Vibes Clinic. The scan results are good. I am getting referred to some renal specialists since the kidney tumor has grown a bit, but kidney function is fine and there […]
Hello. Today marks 6 months since Doctor Chad found a tumor up my butthole. As a present from the universe, I got my CT results from Wednesday. No doctors or medical professionals have looked at them yet, but modern medicine means I get access to the report. Sometimes this is a cruel joke, sometimes it’s […]
It’s the tail end of a chemo week and I feel like poop and most of my time revolves around trying to poop and trying not to throw up and that’s just part of the cycle and nothing worth describing for the 1000th time. My lab numbers are all good except platelets, so no knife […]
I had a follow-up meeting with the GI surgeon this morning and everyone is very happy with my pooping and lack of hernias and my very pretty scar. I have been cleared to exercise and get my shit together, carefully. Still not ready to shovel a foot of snow if it happens tomorrow, but by […]
First tumor rumor of 2024! First of all I want to say that as impressive as all the medical doctors I have dealt with have been, I hold the PAs and NPs and RNs first and foremost in esteem. They are all just so damned good at seeing me as a person and not a […]
I am going to vent here a little bit because I am in some pain. It hasn’t been a week yet since the last infusion but I have to say this has been one of the more demoralizing cycles so far. By the end of October I felt like I had a good handle on […]
Pre-infusion lab results came back pretty decent this morning. I even have some red blood cells again! I am still slightly anemic, and my liver enzyme numbers are a little unusual if you didn’t know my liver was recently torn apart and put back together, but nothing that concerns any of the experts. Kidneys are […]
News! Breaking! Broken News! More labs and an Oncology meeting this morning and now we have next steps. I am very very very lucky, as is obvious to anyone paying even the the most cursory attention to this whole mess, but I am not so lucky that I get to just walk away after surgery. […]
When the surgeons closed me up after they got done with work they went a little overboard with the glue at the detour around my navel. They not only closed the wound, but created a bit of a splash zone in that area. I guess they were trying to be thorough at the curve, which […]
Two weeks ago at this time I was splayed out, cut open, and they were taking filets from my liver. This morning I woke up and put on hard pants and walked 1.5 miles for coffee without a single groan or moan. I slept on my side last night. I was given the all-clear to […]
The pathology reports for everything they cut out of me last week just came in. Highlights: -The words “No viable cancer cells found in margins” at least 15 times -My diaphragm biopsy was just a cyst -They took 50 lymph nodes! 50! -Colon Robinson was taking up almost half the diameter of my colon, and […]
Hello. At home and still alive. I say it that way because there was a small fuck-up yesterday evening that absolutely traumatized me and probably Ellie as well. The thing about being in the hospital is there’s a whole system in place to keep you on schedule and platoons of people making sure you take […]
When I woke up today I was hooked to 3 infusion pumps and not allowed anything but clear liquids. I needed dilaudid just to get 3 broken hours of sleep. By 9am I was unhooked from all tubes. By 10am I was told I can eat anything on the “low-fiber” menu as long as I […]
I had surgery on Wednesday and between the prep leading up to it and the wild day itself and the pain and recovery process I haven’t followed up here yet. Here I am doing that while my remaining guts gurgle and scream at me Tuesday was all prep. Similar to colonoscopy prep but because they’re […]
My hair seems to be growing back curly, which led to a realization this morning during Shower Thoughts. If it really does stay curly enough as it grows out I will finally have gone through all the stages of Stooge: Shemp/Moe in high school Curly a bunch of times over the years Now I will […]
It’s been a minute since I posted anything, and I just threw a backdated update from a week and a half ago when I was minding my own business and ended up in the hospital for 5 days with a fever and the worst blood numbers I have had, probably ever. They still don’t know […]
Everything is about balance. All the good news this week needed an opposite weight on the scale. I was lucky today to finally be able to hug Melody after so many months and hang out and joke and eat good food. It was a great end to a great week, and then I got chills […]
Last night I spent more time in an MRI machine than I think I have in any of the other three times I have been in the tube. They were very thorough, and not very good at placing an IV for contrast, but it’s OK because all that time listening to the SiriusXM Classic Vinyl […]
If you had the opportunity to get outside in 80F weather in WI in late October today and didn’t take it, I am sad. I am not judging you, I have skipped nice days before, and all reasons are valid. I am just sad thinking about it, because I haven’t ridden my bike since the […]
I have not updated here the way I meant to. A lot has happened, and nothing has happened at the same time. The cycle of chemo treatments is just the same shit over and over with a new cavalcade of side-effects to deal with, mostly related to things going wrong with one end or the […]
I have spent a lot of time saying things like “I am thankful for my health.” but I really had no idea what that meant. I still don’t but now I am at least aware of the fact that I am only just beginning to experience the unavoidable transformation that will be the rest of […]
I know I talk about Chemo Day a lot, but FOLFIRINOX is actually Chemo Days as the 5FU gets injected into me over 48 hours via this little meowing pump that lives in a fanny pack that I do not wear as a fanny pack but whatever. This means it empties out later today and […]
A couple weeks ago I did a little rundown of what a chemo day is like. Tonight I am going to spit out a description of what Chemo Day Eve is like for me, because it’s that now and tomorrow I am going to feel like shit and will forget. Due to changing hospitals, and […]
It’s October which means we made it through September which doesn’t really mean anything because the dates don’t matter, the days do. Yesterday was a really good day. I slept through most of the reaction to my covid vaccine the day before and woke up feeling like I had a bad hangover, which is about […]
Today marks two months since someone first set eyes on the mass in my colon. It feels in many ways like it’s been two years, but I am also keenly aware that I am still just starting to deal with all the ways I am changing and will be changed by what is happening. Time […]
It’s day 5 after the latest chemo infusion and I am doing the usual day 5 things. If you are curious, that is: This has been the experience at about this point every round, so it’s good to at least have something expected, even though it sucks so hard to go through. I do have […]
It’s different for each patient. Here’s what it’s like for me. First you go to the Lab. This is a huge waiting area full of people early to their appointment who are sitting well past the time of their appointment. You are also early to your appointment. You will also be sitting here awhile. Eventually […]
I am laying in bed, concentrating on what I fully intend to be a virtuoso performance of a full night’s sleep, and thumbing a short dispatch into this poison piece of glass to let you all know I am thinking about you and wondering how you are doing. How are you? Are you cool and […]