Things are right on schedule

Following in the pattern established in my first round of chemo, tomorrow is my first infusion of the second cycle and my hair is starting to fall out. I will be bald within two weeks. What a thing to have knowledge of. I expect that the chemo brain portion will also kick in in a week or so. That is when I get absent minded, my mind stays in a permanent fog as dense as anything in San Francisco. Not something I am looking forward to.

New York hasn't called yet. I called them today and was reminded of what I don't like about New York. If you can't say it in ten seconds or less they lose patience with you and courtesy is a luxury they seldom chose to afford. Anyway, I know the radiologist's report is on the desk of the head of the team. Now to wait for the analysis at that end.

Tomorrow we are expecting the annual blast of three days of winter to arrive. Snow mixed with rain. The whole recipe is rain and sleet, with ice forming at every inconvenient place like bridges and shady places, just add people who have absolutely no clue how to drive on roads that are flat straight and dry and you have every reason to stay off the roads, at home and inside. I have to go to a doctor's appointment tomorrow, probably before the storm hits, and then chemo Wednesday. That's just about three miles away on a very safe street, no bridges to speak of and it's a reasonably straight shot. But stand by for footage on the national news of cars doing the pirouettes and point to point contact so famous from this area when it ices over. Just hope I am not one of them.

Stay warm America. The new year is in the offing and with it apparently a new set of nasties to vex us. I intend to be here for all of the new year, bald and all.

Merry Christmas

I read something just now that makes me realize how wonderful life can be. "In our youth, we were ungraceful and arrogant; funny how hardships teach you gratitude. We have acquired a greater awareness of blessings; not just the big blessings, but the small ones". I have acquired a sense of thanks and of wonder these days. I am still alive and with the grace of God I will be alive for more Christmases.

I await word from New York. I sent them the radiologist's report from the MRI but it arrived after they closed for the holiday. You might say there is some trepidation in the waiting.

From 'expired' to 'retired'

The news from New york is that the surgical team wants to see more of me. More specifically they want to see an MRI of the area where there was a cancer on my liver. This is quite some task as I now have to get one medical group to cooperate and perform a very expensive test at the request of another. This is the heart of the beast when it comes to medical expense. Apparently though I have two very select groups working for me.

Once I gave phone numbers for New York to my local people things happened and they found a slot for me this coming Monday to have the MRI done. Then I simply request that the imaging group produce a CD and I overnight that to New York. Then New York will look at it and make more medical decisions at what will seem like the speed of geologic time passing.

You may notice I sound a little cynical about medical teams. I am. I have been banged up, beat up, damaged and often in need of medical help many times for simple things like broken bones or repair of gushing wounds. One thing that seldom happens is a medical team making decisions in a hurry. There also seemed to be an unspoken creed among medical teams that they never hurry and they never let the patient feel like he was part of the whole episode. Well, the people working on my case are breaking that whole perception down. From the time I was first suspected of being in deep trouble, every medical team member had made me feel like I mattered. This is different and I am not accustomed to it. The team in New York is human and makes me feel comfortable. The local team is friendly and efficient. give me some time to drop my defenses here and accept that these people really care about me as a human being. It is a rather new and welcome sensation.

So I go into the weekend feeling better about the people who are handling my case. They are doing one hell of a job. I feel am going I am going to make the transition from ready to expire to simply being retired. The I have to work on that situation because I don't want to retire just yet, I still have something to contribute.

And this just in from New York...

Sarah just called from New York. I am a candidate for the resection of the pancreas. What was once an inoperable cancer is now operable.

I have an outstanding chance of living a normal life from here.

Details to trickle out at an an unimaginably slow pace starting Thursday.

From .01% to near 100% chance of living. Things change.

And now the quiet of waiting

I submitted the various records necessary for evaluation to Columbia University and I await their conclusions. It is very difficult to wait for their response. Obviously to me the matter is of utmost importance. And apparently it is to Sarah at Columbia as well. She has just sent me an email saying that she has received the package and will review it. She says they will try to get back to me tomorrow. The hardest part of any process is the waiting.

I am having trouble with my attitude these days. The chemo is weakening me more every day. I sleep later each day and have less energy. Yesterday took a very large toll on my energy, all the excitement of having a possibility of surgery left me shaking and distracted all day. I had dinner with friends and was even home fairly early last night. But today I am exhausted. I slept until nearly noon. I weighed myself and of course I had lost more weight. I find that concentration is beyond me. I have very little energy. Making something to eat is a serious challenge. I finally managed to make a sandwich and another protein drink. That helped some but still I feel like I am just wandering through life. Tomorrow I have my next chemo infusion and that will sap me of more strength.

I am supposed to drive out to see some friends for a camping trip tomorrow after the chemo. Right now that is looking very tentative. I should start packing for it today so I can get going when the time comes. Such an endeavor just looks so far away today. And I wonder whether it is really my energy level or my attitude that is the problem. I am losing at least a pound, sometimes two, a day nowadays. (I changed out my Levi's from 36 inch waist to 34 waist, and they are baggy already.) That must have something to do with not getting any nutrition out of my food. But I have no real method of telling just how true that might be. I know my concentration is nil, I can barely type a few words without having to go back and correct my spelling. I can barely read an article on the internet without losing my focus. Not long ago I would study a particular point for hours, reading every link I found until I understood the situation fairly well. Today I can hardly finish any one article. Part of it may be just being cooped up here in the house and not getting out. It is nearly 2 pm and I am still in my pajamas. A regular fireball of activity I am.

I'll post more when I hear back from Columbia.

Just when things looked kinda grim

Tuesday was another day of being sick from the mung and losing two more very precious pounds. I was pretty much in the darkest of moods all day. It was cold and wet and there was just nothing to cheer me up. I had a little email tiff with Nutri-Nazi over my lunch. I wrote that I wanted to get out and have a meal that I didn't fix, something that wasn't just a sandwich or leftovers. She said I should have a protein drink, at home. I rewrote the email back to her a dozen times before I got it toned down enough to send. Finally I just left and drove around for a while before going to a local pub for a sliced prime rib sandwich with a salad. Getting out did wonders and having a fabulous sandwich served to me just made my day. I came home and eventually did have the protein drink, but only after getting out and seeing that the world was still out there.

This morning I had a thought back to a week or so ago when I found out that without surgery I had little to no chance for survival. I remembered that during my search for mortality figures on pancreatic cancer patients I had come across a site that promised a surgical breakthrough that could operate on cases like mine. To be particular, the pancreas has a series of blood vessels that pass through it. They are like major veins and arteries taking the enzymes and secretions from the pancreas to the organs and the rest of my body. And they bring in the chemicals that signal what the conditions in the rest of the body are to the pancreas. In the midst of that tangle of delicate blood vessels is where my cancer sits. That location rendered my cancer off limits for surgery. But this site promised they had the skills and experience necessary to successfully.

I went back to that site this morning. It was the Columbia School of Medicine in New York City. That is the place where the Whipple procedure for pancreatic cancer was developed. I called them. They asked for my records. I sent an overnight package of the CDs of the CTs and emailed them the original report of my biopsy. They will go over all that and will consider my case for the surgery. I don't know when they will get back to me but a very nice lady named Sarah is right now on my list of favorite people. I can only keep my fingers crossed now. They are my hope for a long life right now.

The Lab Rat in Training may be headed for the Big Apple.

Monday was a down day

I felt miserable. It was a combination of cold and/or allergies and the cancer. The day was cold and miserable, the kind of day that takes away your morale as well as your body heat. I had a doctor's appointment to secure some more insulin. I got up to get ready at 10:30. I had slept late because I felt so lousy to begin with. I weighed myself and I had lost 2 more precious pounds. I got to the doctor's office and visited with him. He prescribed more 70/30 long and short term insulin. Novolin this time. I went to get the prescription filled and the time dragged like waiting for hell to open up and swallow me. It took a full hour, maybe a little more to get the single prescription filled. Before me was a line of people, all of them getting cold and allergy prescriptions filled. You get to know the look of codeine cough medicine being dispensed and listen to the conversations of people discussing their symptoms and you find out how pervasive the mung is among the population.

I had the mung but that was the least of my worries. I felt miserable and just wanted to get home and back to bed. Losing the weight was a major blow. The doctor said it was because of the insulin imbalance. If we can get the blood sugars down the weight would stabilize. I had a screaming headache and a sense of deep detachment from the people around me. I was tired and beat and all I wanted was to get out and come home.

I thought a lot of very dark thoughts during the time I waited. They were all about death and what was very likely waiting for me in the next few months. My mind played deadly serious games with me, like wondering what it was that I was going to miss out when I passed. How much of the 'future' was I going to miss, and that I had no need for new clothes or more tools or much of anything else as my condition was not going to allow me to utilize any of them. I speculated on how long I had left. The weight was the primary indicator.

Pancreatic cancer starves the body. Body weight becomes a primary resource. The more weight you lose the less time you have left. I have now lost 11 or so pounds in about three weeks. The chemo has got to kick in soon and counter act the effects of the cancer. I am hoping the Novolin will stabilize the insulin/sugar equation. I wondered if I would be able to eat enough to put weight on and keep it.

This is no simple question. My body does not benefit fully from the food I eat. I would guess I get about 40 to 60 percent of the nutrition out of every meal I consume. The rest simply passes through. Right now I could eat for two and get the benefit for one, but I will spend half my day in the bathroom as a result. I have been doing that for better than a year now and it wears a guy down. I had some good days during late summer, but they are behind me now. I can only count on the chemo and the insulin to help me through these days. And eating everything that comes my way.

I am awake early this morning because I had to get up to go to the bathroom. Getting rid of excess sugars in my blood the old fashioned way. And the melancholy has not left me. I peruse the Internet and I read what purports to pass for news. I look at what is happening in the world and I am not encouraged. We have computers and instantaneous messaging and global reach for data and information, yet stupidity and ignorance are the only things gaining in popularity. Near as I can tell only ignorance can exist in a vacuum and it seems to prosper these days. People seem to read more and more only to confirm their biased points of view. On the plus side I will likely not see the outcome of the current political effort. For that I am somewhat soothed. I can say without fear of contradiction that as a whole our politicians have gotten dumber by the day over the last several years, and their constituents even worse. The more important the politician the more absurd his perspective is. I am waiting for the pictures of the witch, the duck and the scales to hit the front page of the major newspapers across the land. You can tell I am in a fit right now. I feel alone, isolated and completely abandoned by the world. My poor health makes me very self centered and my deteriorating condition separates me even further.

Let's give the Novolin a few days, and another infusion a chance to work. Maybe this weight loss will stop and maybe, just maybe I can make up some lost ground. I'm going back to bed. I will dream of scrumptious meals and exotic treats to get my hunger up. I have to eat like there is no tomorrow, for surely if I don't there won't be.

First infusion of new round of chemo report

I am fine. No nausea, no ill effects. Surfed the web during the infusion. I came home, sent some emails. Slept for an hour or two. Up and doing fine. Cleaned the kitchen and made dinner. Watched the latest Transformers movie out on DVD. I am just hoping I can sleep tonight. I fear the steroids from preps may have wired me for sound. I don't want to be up all night.

We'll see how it goes from here. Life is full of surprises.

Bits and pieces of info

Yesterday my oncologist let slip one bit of information that really sunk in. He said there have been no cases where pancreatic patients have recovered without surgery to remove the cancer. That is important to me because I have inoperable pancreatic cancer. You might be able to see how career limiting the meaning of that information could be to me. I pondered that information for a while. Then I started researching the claim. Seems that for the most part it is true.

Very few pancreatic cancer patients survive six months after diagnosis. I have survived nearly 9 months now and put on 25 pounds while doing it. Most of the data that supported those claims were a few years old. I called the National Cancer Institute and asked them a few questions to get recent data. First, what are the survival rates for pancreatic cancer patients with inoperable cancer? The answer is a very low number, less than 3% over five years. Next, what kills pancreatic cancer patients? Mostly the behavior of the pancreas, it either stops producing enough digestive enzymes and the patient starves to death, or the pancreas swells and blocks the digestive track and the patient starves to death. Or the cancer metastasizes to another site and takes over that organ it fails and that finishes the patient off. Most of the good news they had to share involved the administration of gemcitabine, Gemzar is the label name. I am on the Gemzar, Taxotere, Xaloda (GTX) chemotherapy regimen. Apparently I got the Cadillac regimen right out of the chute. Lucky me.

So here is where I start the possibly self delusional stuff. I put on weight while in chemo, the cancer has shrunk to half the original size and is currently stable. The metastasized cancer on my liver is gone. None of that seems to be going in the direction necessary to set any of the criteria in place for my passing. But there is a chance the cancer can build immunity to the chemo, but that is yet to be ascertained in the general case. So, for now I am properly deluded and I feel better. Also this morning my blood sugars were 135, as compared to over 400 the other day. Thank you Primary Care Physician man for the Novolog, it is working marvelously. Now I get to sleep in late, (slept till 11:30 today) claiming I am on chemo and need all the restorative sleep I can get.

For now I am feeling better about my health, such as it is. I have no idea where I will be in six months. My bet is bald again, fat still, more lazy and whining in my blog about how the chemo is making my life miserable. There is no cure for totally neurotic behavior after all.

And this just in.....

Today I resumed chemotherapy. I began the Xaloda today and will have my first infusion Friday morning. I just came from a meeting with my oncologist. He agreed that given the suddenly rising blood sugars, the weight loss and a few other weird symptoms I have noticed, it all adds up to resuming chemo.

I take Xaloda by mouth and I will get the Taxotere and the Gemzar through an infusion Friday morning. I will see three cycles of 2 weeks of chemo then a week off, this is a cycle, three cyles make a set and then I will go through another set before we re-sample. This time however I may go a third set before a holiday. This time it is for all the marbles; I will keep going until either the cancer is gone or I simply cannot take any more chemo. Then I will take only enough time to get my strength back and then start chemo again.

I call the time I am in chemo the dark ages. I get all foggy and time and memory slips away from me. I will post as often as I can to keep people informed but there will be little to report except how lousy I feel and any weird ideas I may have about mortality.

Just like the old days

All the old things are coming back. My blood sugars have skyrocketed to above 600. I have lost ten pounds in as many days. I am talking to doctors, three of them today, my primary care physician, my endocrinologist, and my oncologist. I meet with my oncologist again tomorrow to discuss going back on chemo earlier than planned. I am very concerned that the cancer is making an aggressive comeback. That must be met and met soon or I may suffer some very difficult setbacks.

My main concerns right now are blood sugars and stress. These two factors seem to hold great importance right now. Losing the weight is a concern, but not a great concern. Vanity is a factor here. I want to end up at or near 200 pounds but not if I have to have some reserve left for emergencies.

Tomorrow when I meet with my oncologist I will have some very direct questions that he will no doubt find very uncomfortable. I won't cover them because they will make my audience rather uncomfortable too. But this is very much a life and death struggle and the answers are very important to me.

So tonight I will take my super dooper pain pills and try to get some sleep. tomorrow is going to be tough.

Just one word

Home made apple pie.

Happy Thanksgiving

I have the flu so any plans for celebrating at our house are dashed. But I am making plans for the relatives to pick up the meal and transport it elsewhere so my family can get together and enjoy it without me and my wife.

I hope all of you out there can get their little bit of family togetherness out of the way with a minimum of family issues. We have so much to be thankful for when you think about it. I may be sick as a horse but even I can be thankful that families all over the country are renewing their family relationships that they are all thankful that their family has the love and bonds that it does.

I am personally thankful for the hydrocodon my doctor prescribed because it takes the nasty edge off the symptoms. I have spent all day in bed going out only to have CT done to ensure that this is not a cancer sourced affliction. I feel like a bus has run over me every hour for 10 straight hours. Dehydrated, vertigo and nausea. Bones and muscles in a contest to see what hurts worse. Again, thanks so much for hydrocodon.

I am also thankful for Nutri-Nazi who is soldiering on despite the bad news. The woman has earned her place in my heart and my undying gratitude. They just don't get any better than Nutri-Nazi, strong shoulders, nice firm butt and a sense of humor for when her husband gets sick at the worst possible time. (I had to put the firm butt comment in because her one failing is believing that her body has started to sag. Far from it, she looks like she is 20 years younger than she is and she has perfect skin besides.) She has helped me through more catastrophes, disasters and just plain bad days than any woman should have to put up with. I doubt I would be here today were it not for her single minded drive to get me through all this stuff. Thank you God for my Nutri-Nazi.

Some Housekeeping issues

Over the several months that I have maintained this blog I have made a few statements or mentioned things were going on.

First, the neighbor that said I had to stick around to help raise his new baby daughter. He and his wife, and baby, moved in August. They now live some forty miles away. We see each other very seldom anymore.

Next, I said I was going to build a CNC machine. Well, I got some of the software, a computer and some parts to build it. But the project sat idle because in my gut I didn't feel like it was going to be accurate enough to do the job. I was proved correct when the source of my design admitted it had some problems along the same lines I had concerns about. I still plan to build one I just have to get a design idea that will fit my requirements. I also play around with the idea of getting a machine lathe.

I talked about getting a job and doing some programming. Well, that is still on the table, just what direction it might go is up in the air. I have studied .NET and I have seen the sorts of things there that would drive a logical thinker out the door. My research has shown that .NET is quite probably the worst collection of ways to do things in programming for the web that I have encountered so far. And it keeps getting worse with everything I learn. I have read on every version of the software back to the beginning at Visual basic, none of which is entirely downward compatible, and it just gets worse the deeper I dig. I have decided to go with PHP and MySQL because they are smoother ways to go and they are not M/S, they are open source. You may wonder what this has to do with cancer. It is simple really. Programming is something to do going forward that might actually pay for the life I will be living after I get cured.

And finally, the problem with my stent. Nobody much showed any interest in pursuing the pain, so it went away. It is not all good though. My blood sugars are back to 250 to 350. I am losing weight at the rate of about 3 pounds a week. There may be some reasons for that besides the cancer coming back. For one I have been unduly stressed out by a member of my extended family who has proven to be more irrational than even I had guessed and I thought she was bat shit crazy before. When a relative exceeds even the worst expectations, then it is time to isolate that virus and limit the damage that person might cause. But it has been a very trying week while she wrote email after email to me, each completely repudiating the previous and each more strident then anything before, even though I answered only the first of them. She held out for three more messages and each got more strident. All over Thanksgiving dinner. Jeez, I am thinking of leaving town for Christmas. But in the meantime I have been very stressed out and drinking to get a distance between me and reality. I am getting to hate drinking. This world needs alternatives to getting drunk to reduce stress. The obvious solution to removing a stress source is murder but there are actual legal strategies in place to directly discourage that sort of behavior. So I have to sort out how I will de-stress the holidays and relatives and avoid drinking myself into oblivion. Apparently exercise is a possibility, but with some exclusions.

So I go into Thanksgiving week with some optimism. I put all my Steely Dan on and played it loud all day and I feel better. Now I am casting about for some way to get an escape in between now and the end of December when my life goes dark again. I wish there was a way to vacation from cancer. I'll have to settle for a vacation from the every day and maybe for a while during that respite I won't be fixated on this cancer.

Friday night and nothing has happened

My gastroenterologist is out of the office so there will be no emergency of any kind, unless I grow scales and non-flight capable wings and get all reptilian and swoop down on the peasants in the next village and breathe fire all over them. So I sit and wait for the possibility of absolutely nothing happening of any substance over the weekend.

As if having a potentially fatal cancer isn't enough for me to think about, now I get to be concerned about a surgically implanted stretched spring possibly going awry in my innards. Thrill a minute around here I'll tell you.

Yeah, about that stent...

Seems I developed a very bad reaction Wednesday. Later in the day I suffered extreme nausea and vertigo, and a few other symptoms that are less obvious. First off a thirst that couldn't be quenched, my urine turned yellow, very yellow and a fever. I didn't feel good and sleeping seemed to be a relief. Slept pretty much from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning. Thursday I got a doctor's appointment for what I thought was the flu. Today the fever is all but gone, never had the body aches and the pain in my upper chest is still there. After breakfast this morning I felt uncomfortable, right where the biliary stent is. (I'm learning medical terms now just to keep up with the situation.) I called my primary care physician and appraised him of the situation. His office called me back to get the number of the doctor who placed the stent. So I looked his number up on the internet and called them back and gave him the proper spelling of his name and phone number.

Phone calls are ensuing. Primarily to my gastroenterologist who placed the stent. I have a while before this comes to any sort of climax. But worst case I may end up back in surgery early next week. May be an opportunity to take a close look at the pancreas and see what the situation is there as well. Beats hell out of a CT scan. They couldn't even see the tumor/mass in the last CT scan but they said it was the same size. Yeah, this from the guy who said I had a mass in the middle of my pancreas until my oncologist called him back and made him re-evaluate the reading. Modern medicine, two steps removed from shaking neck bones of a chicken onto a floor painted with sacred symbols. And we already spend 20% of our GDP on health care.

Check back for details folks.

Today is 8 months since my diagnosis

I have now outlived more than 85% of all pancreatic cancer patients. To mark the occasion I started working out again. I walked the dogs for about 2 miles and then covered another three on a walking machine at the gym. I also worked my upper chest and arm muscles. I did some abdominal crunches. Did I tell you that I have a stent in my bile duct? I was reminded of it when I did the crunches. Stents do not like that exercise I have discovered. It is now indelibly etched into whatever semblance of a mind I have left that stents react very badly to abdominal crunches. I hurt bad. I need to go take some pain meds and lay down.

Happy anniversary to me. Eight months and counting. Next mile marker is 12/28, Ct scan, 12/29 60th birthday, 12/30 oncologists consult. January 4, chemo begins. I hate my daily planner.

Regular life and a schedule

Awake again in the night. Every night is different since chemo and I started having this thing. Some nights I am up at 2 am and in bed again at 5:50. Night before last I got a glorious full night of sleep. All the conditions were right and I slept through the night and felt well rested. This morning I woke at about 5 am. I feel rested but I wonder what it will take to get a regular schedule of sleep and wake. I ponder this as the process that destroyed my schedule looms ahead. Chemotherapy destroys all schedules.

The chemo is a mess of preparation chemicals that make it so your body won't react violently to the chemotherapy, and chemotherapy itself is a mess of noxious chemicals that are so bad the staff has to wear bio suits just to introduce it into your body. I wrote before about the effects of the chemo prep and chemo itself. The day of chemo is a schedule killer itself. The prep chemicals make you drowsy and sedated. These are different things really, drowsy makes you detached from the world and sedated means you will sleep for an inordinate amount of time later. Chemo just makes you want to be sleeping and detached from the world. So you sleep all day, some of the night, then all morning, up for an hour, most of the afternoon is spent in bed and at bedtime you feel like crap but can't sleep. So sleep becomes an issue of when and how well, for months on end. When I went on chemo holiday I thought I could get a normal sleep cycle. Seems you can't have a normal sleep cycle if you don't have a normal life cycle. And I don't.

I ponder establishing a schedule only to have it destroyed in six weeks or so. What is the point? On the other hand there is discipline and always striving to get what you should have into each day of your life. I should have exercise and I should have human contact and I should have a normal meal cycle. I could work to achieve that for the short term and be happy with that for a short period of time. And then try to establish as normal a cycle as I can during chemo. Now there would be a challenge. I think maybe I will this time.

My wife tries to allay my fears of chemo. She says the biopsy and the stent placement made me very weak and caused a lot of pain when I started chemo the first time and that made the whole thing nearly unbearable. I will acknowledge that later on in the cycle I was pretty much unaffected by the chemo infusions. Except for that whole steroid thing that kept me awake from Thursday afternoon to Friday night. I mean other than that. Okay so maybe I can plan a regular life schedule and get some exercise and get out of the house and do some of the things I want to do and just have one huge gap from Thursday morning to Saturday morning and live with that. Sounds like a government program that works some of the time but not all the time.

On the other hand I am liking the idea of living my life like a teenager, let it flow and see what it is like. Everyday is a new beginning. Ad hoc lifestyle of the undisciplined youngster. I have that now, I'm not seeing a great benefit to it.

I think I will try a short term process. First I will fix breakfast for my wife, have a light meal myself and go to the gym. then let the rest of the day plan itself. Or maybe do what I call the 'trek' where I walk for about an hour and a half at top speed and cover about 6 or 7 miles. It is cool this morning so I can not end up sweat soaked like I did in September when it was 80 degrees at sunup. Just something to break the tedium of indolence. Then there is the whole 'getting out of the house' requirement.

I haven't worked outside the house literally since about 2001. My last days at my last office job were spent waiting for something to go wrong so I would get a chance to do something. I spent a lot of time waiting for the phone to ring so I almost never went to the office. I sat at home and surfed the net. Then I had a business I ran out of the house. Lots of activity, not much money and finally no enthusiasm for the business. Now I sit home and look for a job. I always forget and get on line and look for a real job, then halfway down the third job site I remember, 1/4/2010, the day lights may go out for 18 weeks or more. Even if the world isn't completely dark, that doesn't mean I will be able to work full time. To quote another cancer victim 'it depends on how I feel'. Yeah, plan a schedule when you don't know if you'll be up and ready or nauseous and tired. So I need to plan some fall back positions. I'll let you know how that goes.

Cancer is a fight

Cancer is described as a fight. Problem is that the 'fight' is not so much a direct confrontation between the patient and the cancer as it is a contest between the treatment, in my case chemotherapy, and the cancer cells. The patient is more of a spectator to the fight. The patient is just along for the ride, depending on secret tests and the outcome of blood sample tests and all sorts of other things that are decided elsewhere out of my presence and the results are prepared and delivered during a consult at the cancer center several days later.

That is what is making this time especially hard. I am currently on chemo holiday, letting my body heal enough that I can go back into chemo in approximately 6 weeks. Right now I am waiting patiently for the chemo, knowing full well it will devastate my life. The chemo regimen I am on is called GTX. It is said to be one of the toughest regimens being used. It will rob me of some of every aspect of my life. My mind will be muddled, I will become forgetful of details, my vocabulary will shrink. My endurance will dwindle, my patience and attitude will suffer considerably. These things I know and fear will come when the chemo resumes and that makes me apprehensive.

During the intervening weeks between now and the resumption of chemo I have to deal with severe anxiety and stress associated with having the cancer and then the added stress of the anticipation of the coming challenges of chemo. I realize the risks associated with having pancreatic cancer so I want to deal with that illness. I want to remove the cancer from my list of concerns because those concerns seem to be on a par with or override almost every other aspect of my life. But I cannot do anything about the cancer right now; in six weeks I will once again be involved, if just as a very interested spectator, in the fight for my life. My body isn't ready for the devastation of the chemo just yet, so I sit, and wait, and dread the coming fight.

Meantime the anxiety and stress of cancer distort my daily life. Little issues become stretched way out of shape. Emotional stress from my family becomes a major issue as what is going on inside me exaggerates the personal conflicts into a weird world of surreality. I can no longer depend on my judgment as to what is an issue to be dealt with and what is of no concern. I cry at the drop of a hat. Even little events in a television show can cause me to get all teared up. I overreact and I under react, unpredictably, uncontrollably.

I have been awake now for several hours anguishing over minuscule challenges I might face in the days ahead. When I try to sleep my mind races and bounces off every little thought onto another one and never stops. When I get up it goes blank as if nothing whatsoever is wrong. I wrote most of this blog entry while laying in bed trying to sleep for the last hour. Today will become another day where I try to sleep during the morning so I can have some of the day left to get something done. I want to go take a chill pill but I am afraid it will knock me out all day. If I don't take one the cycle will certainly get more out of kilter.

I wish I could just start chemo tomorrow and get on with it, get the cancer either gone or know the outcome is certain. Uncertainty is a gnawing away of your vision of life, in this case it is causing a great disruption to everything I do in life. So here I sit, unable to do anything while I watch this bizarre life around me where little things become major episodes and other things don't even register, important or not. Where I can't depend reliably on my judgment and have to second guess my every interaction. And oh yeah, I lose sleep all night while I worry about it all. So I write what I can capture of it down in my blog and try to hang on.

Need to recharge some emotional batteries.

Ahh, ever the quest for knowledge. I asked my oncologist's nurse today about how many pancreatic patients she has seen survive. She is a very effective press secretary. She referred me to the National Cancer Institute for more information. So I went there.

I got the same old stats from that site, pretty much I'm screwed, I have a 5.5% chance of surviving more than 5 years. But I kept looking because basically I may be masochistic or curious. I found some interesting stuff that may terminate my shrink sessions. Turns out that terminal cancer causes stress in the victim/patients. Who would have guessed that? Well, once you get past the sarcasm it turns out that there are two emotional episodes that come to light. First, PTSD, that thing the liberals are all sure screwed all of us 'Nam vets is very real and comes out in full flower when cancer strikes. Yeah, you get all weirded out about terminal cancer and it begins to take a toll on you, imagine that. And the other is 'extreme anxiety syndrome'. For some unfathomable reason the web site categorizes them as separate disorders. As if being extremely stressed out over your own demise was supposed to be a soothing event like a Kenny G concert with some really good Colombian.

Yeah, I got both symptoms. Don't alarm me, don't do much of anything out of the ordinary. I may come unglued. No 'surprises' is a good idea around me. I grew up around four brothers, three of 'em thought it was fun to attack me by surprise. I learned all I need to know about hand to hand combat from them. I can go to attack mode faster than you want to know. A term that has bandied about to describe me is 'hypervigilant'. Comes from my childhood. And for the last several months it has been building in me. Since it seemed old and familiar I never saw it. Once recognized, I can deal with it properly.

So today I put a few more pieces of the puzzle together. I returned the book my shrink gave me. I may terminate the sessions. What more do I need to know than a few very basic facts about my life? Life can be simple if you let it be. So I have my glass of wine, a quiet house and Jimmy Buffet coming into my ears. I may load up a stack of Steely Dan and crawl into my cave for some solace. It has been a long time since this all started and I am running low on juju. Need to recharge some emotional batteries.

Sometimes if you study a problem long enough you have to finally acknowledge that the best solution is to just ignore the problem. After a session with my shrink wherein I ranted and raved about the threat of dying of cancer and how my life seemed to have come to a stop, I was sort of ashamed of myself for being such a wuss. My shrink has a thing about how God can solve all the problems if you just trust in Him. The cynic in me asks the question then, if God is in control of everything, then how come I gotta ask him to remove the threat he placed on my life? Makes no sense to me.

I had been thinking about how I have been relatively immobilized by the threat posed by my cancer. Why go through the motions of living if it was all going to end soon anyway? Yeah, maybe I'll survive, but for how long is the question. Like Swayze, maybe I have a few months at most, or maybe a year. Then again I could outlast my shrink who so ardently believes in God. Don't get me wrong, I believe in God, I just don't believe in this stuff about the pearly gates and asking am I worthy to pass through them. My God has infinite patience and a cruel sense of humor. He doesn't play silly games with righteous morality that can be turned on a religious bit of piety and a set of judgments on what I did or did not do and if so why not? No, my God has a strict sense of straight to it methods of delivery. He gives you a bunch of crap in life because that is what life is, a long series of challenges, for no particular reason really and usually in no particular order. But the randomness of the awful events raises the stakes a bit more than a life full of milk and honey mixed with indolence and pleasure. And this life can be a real bitch. Witness pancreatic cancer. So, how best to deal with it?

I will apply the only logic that can be applied. Break the situation down to usable parts and solve them individually. In this case, the pancreatic cancer is simple enough to describe. It is an affliction that may take my life, and while it hasn't yet it can make my life pretty miserable. I can get chemo for it and I can do what my doctor says to do and hope it works. Past that, there isn't diddly I can do. I could pray, but again, who would I be talking to except the God who gave me this disease. Like asking the IRS to excuse me for not paying taxes for no particular reason except I don't feel like paying them. So, I will have to go about solving this whole impasse by simply ignoring the cancer as best I can when I can.

That means picking up my books and studying web programming until I can claim some sort of knowledge then getting a few gigs and proceeding like I have a future. Because sure as hell unless I anticipate having a future and acting like I have one, I probably won't. I mean except for a life of dread and fear of the life I might have before the cancer takes me. It ain't got me yet, and the timing of the end is uncertain. I ain't laughing at God in feeling like this. I'm just not pissing my pants in fear in the mean time.

Friday was my consult for the CT I took Monday. Let's just say it was a bad meeting. I was nervous about it on Thursday. I had been off chemo for three months and I knew there had to be some change in the situation that I was not going to appreciate. Friday mornings my wife and I go to breakfast and we did this past Friday as well. I was so tensed out about the consult that I actually had tears in my eyes through breakfast. We got to the consult at the proper time and then we waited.

We waited for an hour. The oncologist finally came in and he was a little off his usual demeanor. He had read over the radiologist's report and had to call him back because the report was for a pancreatic cancer that was in the middle of the pancreas, not where my cancer was. So he had to cajole the radiologist to re-evaluate my CT. The determination was that the mass had not increased in size. The blood work showed that my CA-19s had gone from 225 to somewhere around 641. That is bad, comparatively it is still in a comfort zone of sorts (it can got o 20,000 or higher), but still having increased by a factor of three, I was not at all happy with the news. The determination was made that I will go back on chemotherapy after the first of the year, the full regimen, Taxotere, Gemxar and Xeloda. That means my hair will fall out again and my finger nails will go yellow again and all the other outward signs of being in chemo. Not to mention having to go through days of feeling like roadkill and losing my mental ability to do much of anything. Chemo sucks and I have no good feelings about facing it again except it is necessary to kill this little demon inside me. But I don't go on chemo until after the holidays, sort of a lackadaisical emergency, plenty of time to contemplate the onset of chemical hell.

Needless to say by the time I left the cancer center I was destroyed, in tears, bummed out, and feeling like I was at the bottom of my spirit. It has been 48 hours now and I am just now starting to get some wind in my sails again. I have gotten some notes from friends and calls from relatives. That all makes me feel better, but the actual analysis of where and how the consult went wrong is the process that let me see how the situation could have been mitigated and from there how I needed to adjust my perception. (Boy, talk about rationalizations!) I had to re-examine every aspect of that consult to see that the situation was really not so bad, just delivered in a way that accentuated every negative aspect there was. I knew my CA-19s might go up, I knew I was going back on chemo sometime, just when was the question. Finding out my radiologist had either misread my CT or reported on the wrong CT leaves me without much faith in his ability. That the doctor had not read the report prior to me showing up at the cancer center leaves me a little uneasy. But they are humans and overworked besides, and I guess these things happen. It was a aggregation of bad events and unpleasant news that left me pretty much devastated. I am climbing out of the hole this Sunday morning feeling like I might actually live, if not without cancer today, then maybe sometime in the future rather than dying. It's the small things in life that eventually make you happy.

Now I have to go mow the lawn and do yard work. Those are little joys of life so unappreciated by people who have never had death tapping its toe in front of them and checking its watch every few seconds. Don't ever let anybody tell you that death is patient. The little bastard is quite impatient. And he gets pissy when denied his harvest.

Tomorrow is the next CT scan. The usual crap, drink some foul tasting chemical that will somehow highlight my innards to the donut shaped electronic gizmo that they will run me through. They test me on Monday. Friday is Ground Hog day. If the specialist sees a shadow on my scan, it's six more week of chemo.

I've had two good scans and my CA-19s have dropped both times. How long will my luck hold? Yeah I'm nervous. I need to pass every test. The stakes are really high. Failure is an option that has deep, deep ramifications.

I'm going to be sleeping very restless tonight.

Here I am, writing again. Nothing to say really. Just having the usual questions of who am I really and what am I doing here? I had those feelings before I got diagnosed with a life threatening disease. They just seem more appropriate now.

I met with my new therapist. This one is a real doctor. We made some progress. He made me feel comfortable and he made me think about things and he gave me some ideas. That may have been a real good change for the better. Especially since what he said about my statements to him about my life made me feel comfortable, his words were believable and direct. That is what this is all about, my life and my pursuit of it. From there things just keep tumbling forward.

I have fewer questions about my life. I have more resolve to pursue it. It could be called focus. All of these things will get tested as my life goes forward. (For those of you thinking that I am being self indulgent, yes, I am. But this is my blog. If you want to get self indulgent, start your own blog.) Of the many things that are more clear, there is the awful truth that as much as I want to find it, there probably is no silver bullet to solve my life and all of the problems I feel I have. It all comes to baby steps; a little step here, a little progress there. I just don't have the strict time schedule so much anymore; time is not that important.

One thing do I notice is that I feel like I understand where I felt off balance. No, I didn't say 'why' I said 'where'. And oddly enough my life stopped having so much of that shaky feeling, as if I was somewhere I did not belong. It is a modest start. I feel pretty good about it too. I picture myself as a traveler of space and time, shedding trinkets in search of a better life. When I stop searching it will be because I will have discovered that I already had it, I just didn't have it in the pocket I thought it was in.

As my favorite author P.J. O'Rourke claims to have said to his father in a conversation regarding his mother having lost her finger. "Did she look behind the refrigerator?"

Today I started making the phone calls to get appointments with a shrink and a therapist. The shrink's office has me filling out a 22 page long form. I read it over. It asked if I had recently experienced stress or other factors. That will be a YES. I could in fact save a lot of time by just cutting to the chase and telling him that being a pancreatic cancer patient means you got the grim reaper's scythe at your throat day in and day out and it won't go away, ever. The cancer might disappear off the scope but you never really know if there isn't one little bit of that demon left just waiting to roar back.

It would help if I had a job to leave the house to go play at. Having people around to provide an external source of annoyance and amusement would be a godsend right now. Being here day in and day out leaves me to play mind games with myself. I'm trying to find a job right now, but not much luck there. A couple of interested people but nothing that is going anywhere. I have to moderate the job search with the possibility that I may have to go back into chemo, either full or into a reduced regimen. My bet is that people will get a little miffed if I start new job and have to go away for a while to handle a chemo regimen that will likely leave me looking like a B-rated movie zombie, with approximately the same intellect. But I plug on, thinking all positive thoughts. Somewhere out there is something that will get me out of the house for money.

I cleaned out my email addresses today. Got rid of some people that I don't remember and some I would just as soon not. That's kind of a hard thought process. In a sense I am predicting the future, but only actually influencing it slightly. Some people just need to be culled from my list of contacts. They could still write me but a response is likely not going to be sent. Part of my overall house cleaning to my new slimmed down and redesigned life. That is a thought far deeper than most of you can fathom. For me it means cleaning my mental house to the bare walls and then moving some walls besides. The cancer wiped many previous experiences clean for me. Think of a hurricane sweeping a swampy coast clean of the trees and grasses and leaving a beach with only few trunks sticking up in the sand. Now just a beach, waves washing over it. The tangles are gone and the tide comes and goes without leaving pools of murky water in amongst tangled tree roots. And then there is always the chance of another angry hurricane coming along. I am searching for driftwood to build my shelter and digging a pit for the small chunks so I can build a fire tonight. One day at a time, no plans for next week because there is no use for such a measurement of time. One day is all I can utilize, the convenient time between sunrise and sunset and darkness to fill in the rest.

That is much easier to describe in this blog than it is to implement in my actual life. I have to make my way through everyday life as if nothing happened. Except for the changes in my body and a medi-port on my right shoulder, and maybe the ridges in my nails from the chemo, there are no real marks from this event. Most of the scars are mental. Not so much memories, they are more emotional reactions to things that have happened as the days go by. All the things that got me here are now lying around in a mess that I have to sort through, like soggy photographs of a life I once had. And those around me have little to no idea of what is really going on inside my thoughts. They all bring their own thoughts to this conversation so they apply their thoughts to the situation as best they can and our thoughts just don't mesh like they used to. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. What is the definition of doing the same things you used to do and not getting even close to the same results that you did before? It sure as hell isn't sanity.

Another beautiful day, and more strange thoughts. I have been thinking about the sandwich line story I wrote last night. Many will think I was going off on being impatient. Actually I wasn't. I was going off on being where you are and doing what is necessary to accomplish the given goal at that time and place. If you walk into a sandwich shop and your head is elsewhere the menu is the last thing you will consider. Same with life. If you go through life being someplace else other than where you really physically are you are wasting your life. Driving with a cell phone in your ear is another variation. If you do one thing you can dedicate yourself and your mind to it. Doing two things means neither one gets even 50% of your attention. When you do things like that while driving you are a menace plain and simple. Doing things like that as a matter of practice during your life means you are wasting opportunities daily. Be where you are and doing what you are doing. Multitasking is not only over rated, it is lying to yourself. You are doing neither activity well and the results will prove that out. Life is sometimes all too brief, it can end suddenly, and there are absolutely no guarantees on life unless you were one of the lucky ones with an ironclad contract from God tattooed on your butt when you were born. I checked, I don't have that contract back there. So these days I am rearranging my life so that I do things that are more conducive to living life rather than just passing through while it being somewhere else.

I sort of took today off and tried to let my mind get some focus on where and what I am. It was dangerous because new thoughts came into my head. Music lyrics provided some of those. Things like having to know yourself before you can appreciate other people, corny stuff like that. Other thoughts came from realizing that I have some sort of anxiety that distracts me from concentration. There is evidence I have had it all my life and it just got worse recently. I will have to learn how to deal with that. Self analysis sucks, and it can be very difficult to make it productive. First step might be to keep a tablet handy and write some things down as they occur to me. I started a things to do list like that a few weeks back, it took me several weeks to work through that list. But I did. Now I need one just to record my thoughts so I can get them organized.

I am reading books on some software I want to learn. That's bad enough but the software is from Microsoft and I have to say those guys are insidious in self promotion, and rather crappy at putting together a product right the first time. I am reading several books on some of their software that changes massively from release to release, even to the point of being incompatible between versions. Not to mention that the latest version is like heroin for the user because it purports to do so much behind the scenes that the user actually cannot change the code once the M/S software emits it. I write about this because I see a very big problem with code emitters and code maintenance, like code maintenance being nearly impossible in that realm. It has made my opinion of M/S programmers sink to what I think of COBOL 'programmers', "when they make it so any fool can do it, any fool will". If you think I am being harsh realize that most major banks cannot process your transactions immediately because their critical code is written in COBOL and they have no idea how to figure out how to rewrite it in modern code to make it interactive or ready for real time processing. The guys who coded it are all gone and the new guys have no idea what the code really does. Just like the people writing in the new M/S offering. They really have no idea what their code does behind the scenes so if it goes bad, they have no clue how or where to fix it. Just a bitch about M/S. And life in general too. How many people have given their lives over to modern conveniences and fashion and have no idea how to really do things for themselves?

It's late and I need to go to bed. Tomorrow I will ponder the job market and more programming. And try to keep a tablet nearby to write down my random thoughts so I can accumulate them and sort them out. You can't really appreciate someone else until you understand yourself. I changed and I need to know where I am so I can appreciate life better. This new world I am living in is very challenging.

The excitement of the good news has worn off and the reality of life is pouring in. There are many residuals of the cancer adventure that haunt me. I cry at the drop of a hat. Almost anything will make me come to tears. I feel adrift in life, having many thoughts that would seem outrageous to most people. But they are very real to me.

I ponder living through a life threatening episode this late in life. The point of life can be lost when I consider my age and what I might have ahead of me in life. And then there are all the things behind me. The wonder of life that I had when I was younger was mostly gone by the time I got cancer. My days of courting were long since gone, I have been married for many years. We got the medical diagnosis of my cancer on our 25th wedding anniversary. The wonder and excitement of life had dwindled to the occasional times when I forgot myself and few a very few seconds wonder and awe could return. It slips in at odd times now, surprises me then it slips silently away before I can appreciate it.

There are so many books and stories that have been written about finding yourself after a serious illness threatens a person's life. They are for the most part embellishments of the real situation. What is real is that the ground beneath your feet has given way to squishy sand and you don't really know what is real for you anymore. Things get mixed in ways you never thought about or even dreamed of. Some of the little annoyances of life do actually go away. Other annoyances grow. The one that comes to mind is how much people waste their time, and yours at the same time. You see them everyday, bumbling along with no conscious thought whatsoever as they ponder the menu of ten items at the sandwich shop, seemingly unable to decide on this momentous and life changing decision of which sandwich to order. As if that decision would be of any consequence whatsoever once they have wiped their mouths and left for other places. To all of you out there, think of this next time you order food; nobody is going to die because of your decision, but you might if you don't make up your mind real soon. The people behind you are waiting while your minuscule mind ponders the vagaries of the menu, and believe me those people behind you are plotting your demise in horrible and unthinkable ways. They have a life they would like to get on with, while you apparently don't. They would gladly solve that issue for you.

Otherwise the wisdom of a second chance at life leaves many more questions than answers. What used to be a natural easy situation suddenly becomes a quest across new ground, the things that made your life move along so easily are suddenly laid bare for questioning. No, not just which sandwich to order, but "Why did I take that job several years ago?" and so on. What was obvious or at least possibly a given years ago now seems to be not so obvious. You do suddenly hear people in different ways. You now have exuberance for things that seemed nonchalant before. A baby's laugh, a peaceful scene, music you never had time for, all these things can change for you without your knowledge. And the people around you are not the same as they used to be. Yes, you do find yourself questioning yourself and your motives to your very core of being.

I need to go out and get a job because I am slowly going crazy being home everyday. Sounds simple enough. But the consideration of that brings on a question of what friends do you have to rely on for help in finding that job. In my case, there are few. I find my lack of trust issues have resulted in having few close friends that I can rely on in that situation. I struggle to even name three references because I was so distant from people most of my life. The big question is how do I go about changing the way I relate to people? Try contemplating that monumental challenge for days on end, and then watching yourself as you try to change your behavior. It is tough, very tough. Past that there are the challenges of finding a job that sounds even remotely interesting. It was so easy before, the choices seemed much more obvious, and many of them had to do with money. But now they are not clear at all. What used to be exciting is no more, what were values held close are not so much anymore. I changed and I wasn't here to notice it. I even considered a job that would take me out of town for extended periods of time, away from my wife and my home and my pets. I have spent considerable time thinking about my reaction to that job. I am quietly amazed at my emotions on that point. What do I want to do for the remainder of my life that might be even remotely interesting? That is a question I cannot answer at this very moment. I poke through programming books, I ponder things on the internet, and I discuss things with with my wife.

That brings up a very often overlooked situation about these things. What the patient feels during the crisis is not remotely similar to what those around them feel. As if them and the patient were on different planets while it was all going on. And they were. In different solar systems even. I find the conversations regarding these differences can get very testy. I know that I have to find another confidant other than my wife because we have almost nothing in common on that point. None of our conversations on that point have turned out well. Another observation along that point that I feel I should point out. When things look like crap in your life and you feel like there is no point in staying alive, that particular point has absolutely no relevance when you are really faced with death. It seems almost comical now that I could get so depressed that I didn't want to go on living before. Given the option of life or death, I have much more wisdom on that point now. By the way, whatever depression issues I had before are gone. No problem with being depressed anymore; at worst I am bored. Anxiety has increased somewhat though. Not sure why. Probably because I have so many questions and so few answers.

My next set of tests are two weeks out. I test 11/2 and get the results 11/6. I take nothing for granted any more. I feel just as apprehensive this time as I have the last two times, or at the beginning of this ordeal. In this game if you lose one hand you are out of the game. And pancreatic cancer is not known for having a sense of humor or latitude. Yeah, I am scared. I look around and there is no obvious threat to my life, everything seems so normal. But inside me is a little demon that may come raging back and end this blog unceremoniously. I have no illusions there. I wonder when or how I will ever feel secure about life again. A dragon lives inside me, I wonder if it will ever go away.

Oh yeah, I'm celebrating! Today is the 6 month anniversary of my diagnosis. I am now 1 in 5. I am one of the 20% that didn't die in the first six months after diagnosis.

I intend to live through this, I intend to live more than five years. At that point I will be one in 20. Next stop, 1 of about a dozen in 40,000 victims each year. I'll be one of the survivors.

Let's cut straight to the point. I am going to live!!! My CA-19 count is at 225. Think of it as a golf score, the lower it goes the better it is. Normal is less than 55. Mine is 225, down from 345 in early August, and 725 in June. I dropped 120 points (is that what they call them?) or so while I was on chemo holiday. Life!

Okay, thank you to everybody out there that prayed for me, sacrificed small furry animals, or even had a kind thought about me. Thanks to every perception of the almighty any of you might have had. I am once again among the living, and planning to stay that way.

Okay, party at my house. I'll buy a keg and a complete stock of liquor. Just kidding, Nutri-Nazi would kill me. Hell of a deal, to be killed for throwing a party because I got an E ticket to life. (for those of you who don't know, an E ticket was the all inclusive ticket at Disneyland before the world got modern)

For those that are local and know where I live, come on over, I am available for interviews and I'm serving drinks. I feel like a million dollars, a real million dollars, not the modern day equivalent.

And God, if you are still interested in life here on this miserable planet, thank you too. Between the two of us we worked it out, and medical science helped too.

For those of you wondering, yes Patrick Swayze's death did bother me. I had looked to him as an example of people who continued on after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and might even survive. There are so very few stories of people surviving this affliction, and I thought this was a very high profile case that held some promise for me. When I first heard the news I felt nothing much except a sadness that he had died. Within a few minutes though my blood pressure went through the ceiling and my peace of mind has been out the window since. I have had a lot of trouble concentrating, I have headaches that are pervasive, I cannot deal with much of anything that involves real thought and any kind of conflict overwhelms me whether I am involved or not. Without exaggeration is it as if I am being physically and emotionally attacked from every side. Dealing with people is pretty tough for me. I have become pretty much housebound. Mortality is once again in the room and kicking the furniture around and pretty much screwing my life up. I have had to resort to clonazapam, an anti-anxiety medication and follow it up with a couple vicodin for the headaches.

My wife was kind enough to finagle the cancer center to move my appointment up to tomorrow so I can get the results of my test before Monday. That might alleviate some of the stress I have been going through. I believe it will be good news but I will not be sure until I hear every detail. And then I will probably go over it all again and again until I can remember it. (It took me four months to remember the three chemotherapy drugs I was being infused with, and I was trying my hardest to recall them.) The details in the report tomorrow will have to be written down, maybe I can get a printed report.

Yes, I still blog. Like I said before though, good news is boring. I have been on chemo holiday for 5 weeks now. That is five weeks without evil chemicals and the after effects. Five weeks of not worrying about my blood sugar levels or the ups and downs from the chemicals and preps of chemo treatment. That is over now. Tuesday I go in for the CT scan and blood tests to find out if my CA19s are good or better or lower, if the cancer is growing or shrinking and all that stuff that I put out of my mind for 5 weeks.

I feel fine and I am putting on weight still. My blood sugars, when I check them, are good, still below 200. I had one at 100 the other day. My bodily functions are normal. I really don't think I have anything to worry about. But I also didn't worry before I was diagnosed and that almost killed me. Believe me, nothing has been the same since I was diagnosed. I don't take much of anything for granted anymore. So I am worried or at least concerned about the results.

I take the tests this week and I will get the results on Monday, September 21. I will post the results here when I get them. The options are: Bad news, I'm back on chemo because either the the cancer started growing again or The CA19s are decreased and they see no growth in the cancer so I get 6 more weeks off. Kinda like the groundhog, 6 more weeks of winter or spring begins. Only with more dire consequences if he does see his shadow.

The long awaited news. My tumor (cancer) has shrunk to 2.5cm and my CA19-9 levels have come down from 735 to 345. My oncologist has placed me on a six week break from chemo. I will be tested again in mid September and if the CA19-9 numbers do not go up I may get another six weeks off. The cancer's original size of 4.5cm on my pancreas and a similar size mass on my liver is reduced to 2.5 on my pancreas and nothing on my liver. (A separate test on the liver showed I have a perfectly healthy liver.) The pancreatic cancer is not going to kill me any time soon.

Nutri-Nazi is in tears with happiness that I am going to live long enough to be a grey haired old man. I am kind of numb. Mostly just tired. I had a hard day yesterday. I had flu symptoms and a temperature of 102. Today I feel like I want to sleep for a while and take a Nexium so my stomach feels better. Once I get past the upset stomach I'll make plans for what I want to do next.

Life. I'm going to have a life. I need to digest this news and put it in perspective.

Best advice I ever gave anyone is "listen to yourself". Not just figuratively, though that is a good idea. But literally too. I reread my post of last night and I see why the changes to my attitude are happening today. I have also had occasion to view a film that tells the audience over and over again that what you think of things becomes the way your life goes. Apparently I haven't been thinking about things effectively lately. Late last night into this morning I had another occasion where I did think effectively and today the change is happening.

I had chemo today. My last scheduled one. But I also am that much closer to the CT. I got what I consider to be positive responses form my oncologist. We are both hoping for the best, but in the mean time he has said that most likely I am looking at a 6 week holiday from chemo. That is still on track. I can see at least a brief respite from chemo brain. And my attention to detail started returning however slowly.

I have a project that I am just starting to do some research for some people. It has me excited. I will get to dig way deep into thousands of obscure sources and data and assemble a picture that makes sense in terms of what is likely to happen down the road. I really, really like dong that kind of work. A redneck jack Ryan if you will. This is going to change the way I look at the world in many ways. For one, something to do. For another, something complex and challenging to do, and informative to me. That and the CNC milling machine station both took a solid move forward over the last several hours. I recovered enough composure to order some of the basic parts. Once my body calms down from the infusion chemicals I will light off the saw and start construction and by early next week I intend to have it assembled. The website, well, it will have to come about in another surge of effort. The products of my research should show up on that new site in a few weeks.

The upside is that the research project will likely get me social again. The other night I made a brief speech in front of the people I am doing the research for and got an ovation when I finished. A few people came to enlist my help in their interests as well. It is political in nature but my work will be fact seeking research for myself that I share with them. I am gearing my research to the intent of understanding where the situation is and where it is going. I don't care about political partisanship as much as I care about where and why the players are taking which directions. That is news people can use to understand the system. It is not just issues, it is who is driving the issues and why, what they can do with it that effort and what will likely happen despite their efforts. I intend to play that all to my advantage in terms of being of interest to people. Some people will not like my work. Some others will. But everybody will have a use for it. Least wise that is the goal and direction I will start in.

Meantime, tonight I go through another lost Thursday night of steroid overload. It is nearly midnight and I am cooking, no matter what I do or take it still rockets forward. No sleep tonight. Maybe by morning I can grab an hour or two. A few weeks ago I was on those same steroids when I though of the CNC milling machine, that is going to happen next week. that logjam got broke today, or rather early this morning. I studied the plans and made them stick inside my head. I have the picture, now I can make the reality. The research project is being defined and the team I might collaborate with is slowly coming together. Same with so many things. Listen to yourself. Tell yourself what to see and you eventually will see it and possibly make it happen.

My last scheduled infusion is in a few hours. It is after midnight and I am awake again. I don't know if it is the chemo or my state of mind that keeps me on this odd cycle of sleeping and waking. I know that the cumulative effect of the chemicals used in the chemotherapy can have some strange effects on the body and mind. But then so can a brush with death. I am awake and nervously anticipating the last session with my oncologist before the CT scan. That scan can literally change my life. I am hoping for a reduced size of the mass that haunts my every waking moment. The ultimate good news is that it is gone and they can't find it, no forwarding address, stuff like that. Reality will be less dramatic though I am sure.

I also find that I am constantly melancholy. That too may be a result of 'chemo brain' as we call it. Chemo brain is a condition of slightly off focus and forgetful, distracted and just ever so slightly detached from the world. I have gone into full scale withdrawal from the world outside my door with it or because of chemo brain. My friends don't call for fear of waking me or disturbing me. They have gone on with their lives for these last several months while I recovered. My experience has been for the most part solitary and shared only through this blog. I have introverted for so long that it feels like I have lived my whole life like this. Indeed, for the extent of this new lease on life I truly have lived that whole life as a solitary man, growing distant from everyone including the Nutri-Nazi. I try to talk to her but I have trouble expressing myself in full conversation.

Part of the problem is that I don't really know what I think anymore. Today was a good example. I have been struggling to get a website going and to build a simple CNC milling machine. I was set to go to a hardware store and get some components for the construction of the basic machine. I got so distracted just thinking about what to do that I ended up just spinning out mentally and getting nothing done. I actually got completely overwhelmed by a simple task like that. And the same with the website construction. I know how to do it all, the art, the colors, the layout, all easy enough. I just can't do it. Simple things overwhelm me, concentration eludes me. Inspiration comes only when I try to describe the mess my head is in with words in this blog.

Is my situation the result of the chemicals or have I simply lost the ability to carry on with life? I seriously think this is the culmination of all the things that have happened to me over the last several years, including the cancer. I have been meandering through life for some time now, the cancer is just the latest challenge to come along. I am seeing that I can overcome crisis and challenges but I cannot carry on with life on a day to day basis. Learning how to overcome that problem will be far more challenging than dealing with cancer. I have been left with no method of dealing with most of life and I have to, with no tools readily available, go about reconstructing that life in a new direction and with a new purpose. I don't have much of a history of doing so previously either, my life up to now has been spent reacting to and with the challenges of day to day life of work or running my business or my relationship with Nutri-Nazi, and under the storm clouds of cancer even those situations have dissipated. I have had no challenges in my daily life except to live through cancer, a fairly passive endeavor at best. It certainly was not anything intellectual. Pretty much a dead stop starting point for the rest of my life.

It is not like I am unhappy, more likely this is the point where in a movie the credits would roll and some cool sound track would take over. The audience walks out of the theater never considering that the rush of the crisis is over and the characters have to pick up with their lives and regain some normalcy amidst the scene of recent chaos, without the rush or focus of events to drive them forward. Yeah, real life comes crashing down and the mundane settles in. What the hell do I do now? That is the question. I am a cancer survivor, the drama is over, I have to pick up a life punctuated with a near fatal crisis and that life will never be the same. I can't just go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a book on how to carry on from here. Nope, this is going to be all ad hoc, made up on the fly, and with fewer constraints than when I was a kid. At least back then I had hormones to lead me seriously astray and into one mess after another. These days I have no such evil influence. More is the pity too. I could use some serious insanity right about now.

I have been blogging less and less because frankly the news is all good. My blood sugars are down to normal. I have been active and healthy. So, blogging about good news is boring.

I just started what may well be my last cycle of chemo yesterday. It is kicking my butt. Xaloda is a very dangerous chemical that takes a toll on the body. It takes my energy, my ability to concentrate and possibly several other aspects of my life down to a bare minimum. With luck I will be done with it soon, as well as the Thursday assault on my health called the infusion.

The plan from here is to complete this cycle and evaluate with a CT scan. My doctor and I agree that my progress as indicated by weight, blood sugar levels and so on are very positive. We will review the CT scan to be taken in two weeks and will probably adapt a schedule that will leave chemotherapy off the plan for at least several weeks, maybe more. I look forward to getting my strength and energy back on a long term basis as well as my hair.

Now a question I thought I would not be able to ask "What do I do now?" I have to actually start behaving like an adult human and go live a responsible life, and get a job or something. No more laying around feeling all sick and being lazy. Oh bother!

I read some employment ads today. I am not qualified for much of anything. At least nothing I would seriously consider. This is going to get difficult. But at least I am here to stand up to the challenge.

I haven't posted in nearly a week. It is complex.

I wrote before about the steroids that they give me with the chemo infusion. They are really starting to cause problems. They keep me awake Thursday night, make Friday miserable and then Saturday I thought I was okay but I still feel some effects come Monday. This week things got a new twist.

Nutri-Nazi is really having problems with adjusting to my situation. Yesterday it all came crashing down. She called me from her drive home complaining about numbness in her hands and feet and severe stomach cramps. I directed her to the nearest ER where she was admitted. After a night in the hospital and several injections to calm her down she is home. But we have to do something to calm her down after all the stress my cancer has caused. We are planning a spa day or three for her to get away. While I am doing very well, the long term stress has taken a serious toll on her. This is what they are talking about when they say that close relatives are at risk when caring for a cancer patient.

I am not sure how we are going to get this handled. The spa time is a calculated effort, but it may not be enough. I am probably going to have to enact some long term plan to reconstruct her faith in life. That is not going to be easy. Recovery for the care giver is not as plain and simple or as well documented as for the cancer patient. This will take some time.

That is all for now. I need to go make sure she is comfortable, maybe draw her a hot bath and maybe just talk.

Good night.

Life is what happens while you are making plans. I wrote about working on my 12 year old clunker on Monday, well yesterday I got a flat tire on my motorcycle. Had to ride between gas stations to keep air in it to get it home. Yesterday afternoon I took the tire off and put it in the back of the clunker.

Nutri-nazi got home and her car battery died so I had to take time to go get a new battery for her car. Got up this morning and took the motorcycle tire to have a new tube put in it. Got back and started to install it and saw that the brake pads were worn out. Ran to the shop for rear brake pads. Expensive, very expensive. Stopped at Sears to get 12 point sockets to take the brakes apart. (New thing these days is having to use 12 point sockets for certain bolts, time was six point sockets were favored, but no more.) Anyway, got the brake pads on, got the tire on. Then tested brakes, oops, pedal is all soft, need to bleed the brakes. Back to motorcycle store for equally expensive brake fluid. Bled the brakes so the pedal is all solid. Put it all back together and ready to ride. It is 96 degrees with a heat index near 106 right now. I am not going riding right now. I would have come back with the moisture content of a Cheetoh. Something you learn while living in Texas.

I am very dehydrated already anyway. My pants were soaked to the knees, my t shirt needed to be wrung out. I showered up and I will hide out in the house until later tonight. I am drinking water like it is beer. Wishing it was too. After chemo, then next week I'll have some beer.

I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing the maintenance on my vehicles myself. It is tough but I figure I am learning and saving somewhere near a hundred bucks an hour on labor, at least on the motorcycle. Only about $95/hr. on the clunker.

So anyway, tomorrow, another chemo infusion. Another Thursday. Then next week I have an off week. Such as it might be, it will take me until Tuesday to feel even close to normal and then maybe Friday I can really enjoy a beer or two.

That is all for now.

The interesting news for my blog is sort of short right now. Essentially I am doing well and my doctors are pleased. I am hoping to go off chemo to maybe a maintenance series at the end of July, or maybe no chemo at all for a while. That is of course dependent on a positive result of my CT scan. Just counting down the days to then. I am almost looking forward to my next infusion this Thursday. It makes a big difference when you know the cancer is responding. So not much cancer news. I have to remind myself that I may well have bad news and have to stay on chemo till hell freezes over as well.

On the other hand Nutri-Nazi is having her issues. The stress of the last few months has taken its toll on her. She went to the doctor today and got some prescriptions and is scheduled to undergo some tests for some sort of stomach issue, could be ulcers, could be an infection, but we do know she is having issues that look like she is worn out from worry. This situation has taken a toll on her for sure.

We had a very nice Fourth of July. Friday was relaxing, just hanging out in the house getting ready for friends to come over for the Fourth. They brought tons of food and barbecue. We ate till we had defined gluttony. Then we walked over about a mile to watch fireworks in the park from front row seats, nice breezy night and beautiful fireworks. Walked home and had some wonderful homemade key lime pie. Got to bed real late.

Sunday found me worn out and useless. The long day Saturday did me in. I had a problem with my car blinkers not working right so I tried to fix that. Too tired and no luck. Went at it again today and ended up going to the junkyard. When your car is 12 years old you get to know junk yards. Got the part I thought would fix it but it didn't. While I was there I assembled a new driver's side mirror out of two broken ones. I broke the old mirror getting in and out of the garage one dark and stormy night. The mirror was installed and the new blinker module was installed. But the problem with the blinker was that the front directional bulb had actually developed a very minor problem. I fixed that with some solder and all is good now. But I got to have some fun poking around in old wrecked cars for a while. It's a guy think I think. So is having everything on the old clunker working.

Over the weekend I read a lot. I read "Band of Brothers" by Steven Ambrose and Dick Winters' book "Beyond Band of Brothers". I read both books cover to cover. I need some time to absorb what the books said about war and life in general. I had seen the series numerous times. The books amplified some of the episodes I sort of missed the point of, but the books also made me think about what life in war was like. And a lot of other issues of life. And reading all that made me think about my time at war and some unusual aspects of life that occur to me while I face cancer. I'll be thinking about that for a while.

I also installed the CAD/CAM software today. Tomorrow I start cutting parts for my CNC milling machine and rounding up the other components. Then I will buy the controller kit and assemble it and then commence learning actual CNC milling. It will be assembled in a few weeks. So much to do. So much new stuff to learn. I am excited.

All in all I wore myself out so I am going to bed to read and fall asleep. Long day at the junkyard; day was even longer getting everything working just right on my car.

I have chemo today, as usual my days and nights are messed up. It is near midnight now and I am going to bed in a minute and hope to sleep.

The chemo episode was different today. My oncologist and I had quite a talk. He said I am a very unique patient in that I am tolerating a very heavy regimen of chemo and thriving on it. He is pleased that I am putting on weight, now thirty pounds. I am not so pleased. I want to go on a diet to lose it. I am opposed in this effort by both Nutri-Nazi and my oncologist. We'll see.

My oncologist also bought a motorcycle, some sort of bike I am not familiar with. But he said it had a wide back tire and lots of chrome and fancy paint. Probably not a road bike, more of a showboat. But we talked riding and we even discussed whether I could haul ass for Sturgis after chemo completes. I thought about it and ruled it out. For one thing Sturgis starts before I finish chemo and second the price had gone up significantly. Maybe another adventure will suffice. But I told him about my other trips to Edmonton Alberta and to Monterey CA. We'll see what I do to celebrate finishing chemo.

Chemo for me may end this August. We talked about the follow up, something he doesn't get to do very often with a pancreatic cancer patient. Follow up is a wait and see episode. I may still get noxious fluids dumped into me at times but more of a minimal dosage. He is going to have to research it, like I said, this is sort of a new venture for a pancreatic cancer patient of his.

The actual chemo session was a mess. They fought with the Medi-port for an hour or more before they put a blood thinner in to clean it out. Then to demonstrate that it worked they pulled some blood up into the test syringe and injected it back into my artery. Strange sight to see, but I have gotten used to a lot of things lately. I am a trained lab rat by now, experienced in all sorts of things cancer related.

My blood cell counts are still low, just not dangerously low. A comfort to me but a concern to Nutri-Nazi. There was little concern about my blood test results so we proceeded to dump highly toxic and very expensive chemicals into my body to ensure the pale green glow that I have made my own fashion statement. And of course the treatments all made me very tired so I came home and slept for a few hours. I got up and made up a recipe for potato and leek soup that turned out delicious, nice sauce and consistency. Now I will try to sleep through the night. No small feat when you have alien growths attacking your organs and toxic chemicals coursing through your blood stream to fight them. But I try, Damn do I try. Three day weekend ahead, got to mow the lawn, do some more maintenance. Maybe even take a long walk.

To do any of that I need to get to bed and actually sleep. Goodnight folks. I intend to make tomorrow another productive day.

I have discovered a new and undocumented side effect of chemotherapy. It is called the 'stealth headache'. It is characterized by a subtle feeling of angst with a general sense of not liking anything or anyone without being able to narrow it down to one twit or another. That lack of focus leaves the victim sort of pissed off at anyone they encounter, with no real chance of attaining the satisfaction of settling what is annoying them with or about that person or any other offender in the general vicinity. Instead, after every interaction with human or machine the feeling of peace and quiet is noticeably diminished with no particular issue identified as the culprit.

The sense of general disapproval of the world detected only in slight bits and pieces with each encounter is made all the worse by reading the media. What used to be a surge of disapproval with the news will be more of a sense of ill defined disgust with the entire media and all participants in it, the telling feature is that you actually wish some deranged fool would deal with the media harshly on your mental orders. Since this is an unreasonable expectation it should be taken as an indication that you are out of sorts in the way herein described.

Once the stealth headache is suspected, I recommend a good long nap surrounded by any and/or all small animals of your household. The ceremony should be held quietly in a darkened comfy bedroom. A few hours should be dedicated to this ceremony. I prefer to follow it up with a heavy dose of pain relievers that are generally prescription strength. Being a cancer patient I have those easily available. (Being on chemo this week six shots of Wild Turkey is not an option.) I have followed this procedure carefully and I am feeling better by the second. I am achieving mental clarity as I type this.

I include this in my blog about cancer because I recognize that these days the possibility of the general public having this syndrome is quite high. The proposed remedy is useful in most cases, and should be followed even if there is a reasonable suspicion that the condition might not be a stealth headache. It is always a good idea to bond by napping and snuggling with your pets. A clear case of win/win for everybody.

Other than that I am in a sort of procedural flatland where I go through one infusion treatment after another and plod on to the magic day when they will test me again for the presence of an alien growth. No news, just plain old same old, day in and day out. Sort of the medical equivalent of being on Highway 50 through Nevada with nothing but the scenery to entertain you. I am tired of being tired but glad to be alive, living severely below optimum performance but thankfully above the minimum performance levels for existence.

The road goes on forever and the chemo never ends. (My apologies to Robert Earle Keene)

In the movies when the hero is hanging on to some high precarious perch somebody always tells him "don't look down". Well that advice goes for real life too.

Yesterday I was doing some research to clear up a disagreement between me and Janice. The essence of the question was the difference between a field trial and a clinical trial. In the course of doing that research on line I stumbled into the midst of all the research being done on pancreatic cancer. Then it got more particular, the research being done on the regimen I am under which is using Gemxar, Taxatere and Xolodan, or GTX. These are new clinical and field trials, I would guess it came about in the last couple of years. At any rate it is purportedly much more successful than any previous treatment for pancreatic cancer. The baseline subject for the trials was a pancreatic patient with metastasized cancer, usually to the liver. The results are scant, the trials are on small groups of 4 to 6 patients. There were some patients who died during the first set of three cycles or they could not handle the side effects of chemo, which are pretty considerable. There were some that lived through the first cycle and most of them saw the cancer on the liver go away. But still, with a 40% improvement in results, there is no guarantee of living through it all and seeing a full recovery. The only guarantee was that more people were living longer, but there was not a great big dent in the mortality numbers, lots of pancreatic patients are still dying, and dying fairly quickly under the GTX regimen.

Well, after a few hours of research and seeing all sorts of numbers go by I was in a pancreatic cancer fact overload. I was staring at my life in those numbers and they were not good. I was looking down at the potential fall if I let go. I was freaked out. I sat out on the deck and sipped wine and contemplated it all. My first realization was that I had handled chemo well enough that the oncologist thought I was healthy enough to undergo a second set of chemo. (The field and clinical trials only had one set of chemo to base their numbers on.) That I was healthy enough to undergo the second set of chemo was a real encouragement. Then I realized that I was performing as well or better than most people under the trails because I had actually put on weight and had minimal side effects from chemo, in addition to losing the mass on my liver. I found enough encouragement in all that to settle down and accept that while situation was not cause for wild eyed optimism, it wasn't cause for doom and gloom either. Actually, I have reason to look forward to the next CT scan because I may actually see the cancer mass reduced in size and that would mean an important milestone had been reached. If the mass in my pancreas is reduced in size that means that there is hope for a full recovery because the GTX is affecting the growth of the cancer.

But I still had several hours of sheer terror while I analyzed the mortality figures. It was a little like reading the coroner's report on my own death for a while. Then I got a perspective and I calmed down. Today I can talk rationally about it all. I even feel optimistic. Tough road to getting there though. Just one of many nights I am going to have where I get a little freaked and not too sure about this whole scene. Sure cleans out the emotional closets for a guy though. I feel like I went to a spa for a few days of psycho therapy. Good day today. I can even accept 102 degrees with 50% humidity because that is how life is in Texas in the summer. And life is where it is these days. I am starting to see the whole 'every day is magic' viewpoint.

This will be a real short post. You'll see why in a minute.

Yesterday I went to the doctor, my primary care physician, because of a mild sore throat. My wife has one too. So two sickies go in and we both get the same meds. The prescriptions are for a Z-pac antibiotic or something like that, and some other medicine that is to be taken every 12 hours. Fine print department, the second med says "may cause drowsiness". That may have been a bit of an understatement. I have slept most of the day, so has Janice. I was already sleepy just now when I took a pill that will cause drowsiness along with my chill pill, which also causes drowsiness.

Great, my week off from chemo is going to be spent sleeping. Somehow, it could be worse, I just don't want to explore that option. At least the dreams are so passive and relaxing. No wild nightmares or anything like that. Just relaxing sleep.

Tomorrow is another day - to sleep through.

I have not posted for several days for a few reasons. It all goes back to chemo on Thursday. There was a guy there who came in for chemo. When he got up from the recliner after chemo he was sick and very out of it. Janice said that is the way she expected me to get up every time I went in. Obviously that is not what happens to me, not once even. I get up, walk out, drive home and go to bed for a nap because all the prep, mostly the Benadryl, makes me sleepy. I sleep and wake up Friday and try to get some things done. No problems whatsoever except for the yellow-green skin thing I bitch about. My appetite is great, I have fairly normal bodily functions and enough energy to do things around the house.

Then there is this time. It went sideways when I told the oncologist that I was taking Unisom for sleeping, a little tiny bit of it. He got kind of twisted and recommended that I take Ambien. They also tested my blood, like they always do prior to chemo. My red and white blood cell counts came back off the bottom end of the charts. Everything else looked okay. But the nurse said I should avoid fresh salads and vegetables, eat steamed or well cooked foods and so on to avoid food borne infections because my resistance was low.

Now, back to the Ambien. I have a loose association problem with Ambien. Carlos Mencia did a skit on it, he stretched the side effects to include sleep bull riding and a few other comic events. It affected my opinion of Ambien very badly. Well, I filled the prescription. The crap comes with a full page of side effect warnings to read. I took the pill and waited and nothing happened. After an hour, I went to bed. Bad night, not sleeping, crappy dreams, felt like crap Friday morning. Along with a weird sort of feeling that wasn't normal. And tired because I hadn't slept well. So Friday night, ever hopeful, I followed the instructions exactly. I took the pill, went to bed and tried to sleep. I had nightmares so ghastly I will not recall any of them here. Luckily I was able to stay 'outside' of the bad dreams and not get swept into the madness. I watched them for about two hours and they just got worse. Finally I got up, wide awake, and spent some time surfing the web before I tried to sleep again. Same thing happened, bad nightmares and no productive sleep. By Saturday morning I was tired, spacey, slightly dingy, and thoroughly finished with Ambien. I would describe how I felt as on the verge of hallucinations. All day long I felt very off, barely able to deal with life. Ambien was a total disaster for me, I only want to know how to dispose of the rest of the prescription so nobody else will have the nights like I had. I went back to Unisom, good night sleep Saturday night on about a sixth of a tablet.

Saturday though Janice was all on edge, tears every few minutes, withdrawn, just a mess. I tried to talk to her. It didn't go well. No matter what I said I could not comfort her. I told her to back down from trying to control my every move, she couldn't live my life for me, that taking care of a cancer patient is not something that a loved one or close relative should do and so on. No effect. About an hour later she tells me she is reading this story in some magazine about some woman who has pancreatic cancer and the trials this woman had/has are nightmares compared to my episode. I won't go into particulars, but I have the easiest pancreatic cancer in the world to deal with compared to this woman. So, my wife is all seriously depressed over some story some woman wrote about her struggle with pancreatic cancer and it is making my day and my life a miserable hell and making my wife's day even worse. I hope the stupid ass who decided this was a story people need to read gets her just desserts in hell. Some stories just don't need to be told. Especially one that sends my wife and caretaker into the pits of depression like that. And of course I need to caution my wife that reading other stories and transposing that setting to me is a major Bozo No-No, and don't do that again.

Besides the Ambien episode and the crazy ass scary story about some woman who had hell with pancreatic cancer, Janice has now gone way off the deep end about the possibility of all sorts of sources of infection that might plague me because of the low red and white cell counts. She is way off the scale, nuts is not even close to describing it. I can't eat this, she is researching the threats from that set of sources, she panics every time I open my mouth because a fly might go down my throat and kill me with hoof and mouth disease. She is hovering over me like I am a seven month old baby with thirteen diseases that were wiped out in the 19th century like typhus and typhoid and green eyed chancre cholera and monkey borne spastic left eye twitch and in general making me feel entirely uncomfortable. The worst part is she is trying to force me to use that silly hand sanitizer crap she carries with her to wash my hands every time I touch food. I wanted to get good and sick and throw up a stream of mutant green slime across the room so she would get some sort of validation for all her efforts at worrying. Instead I went in and took a nap. All healthy when I went to sleep and got up healthy and the worst I ever got was a dry throat from sleeping too little because of the Ambien. I should send the rest of that Ambien prescription to the doofus bitch that printed that story and pay her back for the suffering she caused in my house.

But all in all, I have it pretty easy as a pancreatic cancer patient. I have never had vomiting, or even gotten really sick. They caught the cancer in time and except for the time when they had to hustle to put the stent in, I am fairly well off and even well comparatively. I have put on weight, I have even started growing my hair back while I am still in chemo. I am in general such a healthy case of pancreatic cancer that my primary care physician practically brags about me. I have it so good and so easy, most of my problems are external to my illness, they are peripheral to the medical issues I really have. And that concerns me because when I started this blog and I got all self involved about how tough it was and how sick I was. I'm really not that sick nor am I close to dying anymore. Mostly my big complaints are about how much of my energy is being sapped by the treatment and the disease. I hate losing so much of my life. But in a while it will be over and I will slowly get back to my normal way of life, that is all I have to complain about. So I will change the tone in my blog to reflect how well I really have been, and that I am on the recovery side of it all. There will still be pissy days when I really feel down because of either the chemo or just plain being worn out, but by and large when you read about my whining, know that it is temporary and I will feel stupid for having written very shortly after I post it. But I'll leave it up because it was true when I wrote it. I will have to contravene it later. That is how this is supposed to work.

So, I had a crappy few days because of some prescription medicines, a stupid pity party story about cancer that my wife read in a magazine and the slight possibility of food borne infections. Besides that I had four beers and a great steak that my neighbor cooked for me yesterday. I am eating way too much (because I can because I have an appetite) and I am too lazy and a bit too self involved. Tomorrow I intend to eat less, pay more attention to the people around me and thank my lucky stars that I have such an easy time of pancreatic cancer.