Living like you’ll Live

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We have small group tonight, and have been trying to get plugged into life in Rochester as much as I’m able. We have some new friends and most of them are from a great church we became part of almost right when we got here. 

From the first day here, I’ve been trying to do things that assume I’ll be alive and well down the road. When I got a Minnesota driver’s license, I took the extra test and paid the extra money to get my motorcycle endorsement transferred over from my Hawaii license even though I no longer have a bike. I’m sure I’ll get one at some point and I want to be ready when that day comes.

Annso and I got ourselves a 75 gallon fish tank with a bunch of African Cichlids in it because everything we do doesn’t need to be about medicine, survival and hospitals.

It’s still amazing what you can get on Craigslist.

 Of course having a baby assumes a certain level of commitment and participation in life, then again, we didn’t know I had cancer when Will came along. 

And… if everything goes as planned, Annso and I will close on a single family home right here in Rochester that was made into a triplex sometimes back in the 50’s. We hope to occupy one of the downstairs units and a couple really nice tenants already occupy the others. You can see the house in the background of this joyous tomato harvester.

It’s always been my dream to own a rental property and now we just might be able to do that and cut our monthly housing payment in half in the process. God really does the impossible if you let him. 

God really does take pleasure in looking out for the weak. He loves to help out the broken-hearted. If you read the Bible, you can find it everywhere. He takes the side of the low and the meek while opposing the proud and the self-righteous. 

In the goals I made while we started this fight back in May, 1 of them was to accomplish something every day that didn’t have to do with cancer or directly to do with getting well. 

The fish tank and the house came out of that plan. 

It’s healthy, I think, to work on things that are not only about survival. Write down dreams and share them with God,  then see what happens. He just might help you out in ways you’d never expect. 

Annso and I are looking forward to life here in Rochester, Minnesota even though it’s not a place I thought of living in a million years. 

When our time in Hawaii ended abruptly, I knew we were coming here, but not how long. 

We figure it’s as good a place as any to raise out little family and I need to stay close to the clinic for a few years anyway. Might as well embrace life in Small Town USA. It’s been good to us so far.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”

Ephesians 3:20

Back on the Wagon

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Monday I resumed taking the Mekinist / Tafinlar chemo-combo. It amounts to 1 of the Mechanist every other morning and 1 Kafinlar every morning and every night. The last time I was at the ER, I was told, “These are heavy duty drugs. It’s no wonder you have side effects like you do.” 

The thing is: I had 5 weeks with minimal fallout and at the end there, I had 103 degree fevers, headaches, and extreme fatigue. But the other thing is: the pills are killing this cancer like nobody’s business. 

Annso and I are a good team and God is asking something very different from me than from her. She does 90% of the work with our little baby boy and helping me and I pretty much try to exist and follow the doc’s orders as far as rest, pills, and overexerting myself. 

When I started back on the pills the fever came back right away.

I was hoping it would take a few weeks like it did the first time around. I take Tylenol for it but it’s a far cry from actually handling the headaches and fever. Just takes the edge off a little. 

I ask myself, “Can I do this for 6 weeks straight, a week off then another 6 weeks, then evaluate?” There’s always the chance the symptoms back off and that’s what we’re banking on, but who knows. There are no guarantees. But for me, I really have no choice if I want to live. Cancer is still all over my body and would surge back with a vengeance without this treatment.

The other day I saw an embroidered plaque on the wall at the clinic that said, “Fighting since 2007.” I got a queasy feeling in my stomach when I read it. Wow. Fighting for 15 years. Fighting like I am right now for that long… good grief.

On the one hand, that person was probably delivered a death sentence like me… 2-5 years tops and now they’ve been at it for 15. 

I think that’s why God doesn’t tell us the future. We are capable of far more than we think (with his help of course) if we don’t know what’s coming. 

It seems like forever since we moved to Rochester, but like they say with raising kids, “The days are long but the years are short.”

The days do drag on when I feel like this, but I’m thankful we have the solution and IT’S WORKING. I need God like never before and Annso would tell you the same. She just went on her second walk of the day with little Will in that baby carrier just to keep from going crazy. 

I did the first, but wasn’t up for the second. 

We jumped in at a great church with both feet. 

One of my doctors invited me while I laid in the hospital. 

We have small group and meetings with others who have suffered and overcome like me. Those are some of the biggest helps.

Also, many of the things I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous come in handy. 

“One day at a time.” 

“You won’t always feel the way you do today.”

All we can do is keep on duckin’ and swingin’.

Thank you all for your prayers. We need them now more than ever! 

Major Praise!!

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Today was a big day for us here In Rochester. We had the results of a scan interpreted to us by our main oncologist doctor.

To recap, I’d been on an oral, chemotherapy dose of 2 strong drugs that the research teams at Mayo were able to match genetically with the particular type of “small-cell” cancer I have. This meant that for the past 5 weeks, my treatment is nothing more than taking 2 pills in the morning and 1 at night, which would essentially “shrink” the cancer wherever it is in my body. Each person reacts differently so we didn’t know what sort of side effects I would have, how quickly it would work, or honestly, if it would work at all. The only way to find to is to try. Then, at the end of 6 weeks, do a CT scan and evaluate. 

So here we are. I have 2 pictures here from that scan. 

The scans are taken as if I were cut into .75mm thick slices like a tree.

You are looking up from my feet. 

In the shots below, you have the 2 lungs in black and the spine, organs, and other arteries in the center in white. Notice how the left picture (July 1) looks much more crowded than the right (Sept 17). All of that milky looking white part that you no longer see in the right picture is cancer. Notice how much more clear and open the lungs are in the right photo. 

The picture below is taken from the same vantage point and same dates. This shot is further up toward my head. I asked for this one because I wanted to see a shot of the largest tumor, “before and after”.

The scan said it went from 5.5mm to 3.6mm, but what does that look like? 

In both pictures, I marked the tumor with a yellow square. The white squiggly-shaped area to the left of the tumor in the left shot and the circular-shaped area, also to the left of the tumor in the right shot, show a “before and after” picture of an artery coming into the heart. Notice how it’s nearly totally collapsed by the tumor in the left shot and wide-open in the right!

This is great news! We are praying things keep going like this. Of course there are snags along the way and the fevers this weekend are an example of that. Most of the time, I don’t feel great at all and I hope the feelings and symptoms change as the cancer decreases.

As for the pause in the meds, we’re resuming treatment Monday, pending a spike in my liver levels that showed a little concern today. Each patient responds differently to treatment and I wonder why I didn’t have fevers up until now. The Doc said he has seen patients taking the same meds where one has a totally different set of side effects than the next. I am unique, so we try a pause and resume. Hopefully, we get another 5 weeks of treatment without fever. If we do have to deal with the fever, we react to it and hope to be able to keep going. 

After all, the best 2 words the Doc said today were, “IT’S WORKING!”

Of course who are praying people know God is the healer and in this case, he has given these research doctors the desire and skill to work on solutions for these problems that have baffled doctors from the beginning up until now. I am so thankful for whatever way God chooses to work. Even 10 years ago, these chemo drugs didn’t exist. 

Thank you Jesus!