Statistics

This was supposed to be an update pre-my last scheduled treatment, but work got in the way.  So instead, it has turned into a post-treatment update.  For those counting, I went in yesterday for treatment number six.  That is six of six, so until someone tells me otherwise, I'm done.  I've had a number of questions along the line of: "So, you're almost there.  Are you excited?"  The truthful answer is, "no, not exactly excited."  Grateful, that I won't be sitting in the leather chair three weeks from now.  Tired of chemo, for sure.  Anxious, perhaps, to see the results of the next schedule PET scan and get the picture proof of remission.  Cognizant that we are talking "remission" and not "cure."  But not really excited.  Not in the way you are excited about an upcoming trip or an upcoming loaf after smelling the bread baking.  Just relieved and ready to rebuild.

Part of the power of administering your own webpage is access to the statistics tools.  The tools largely reveal the expected.  Most of you are in the U.S., and most got here from various mail sites (i.e., someone probably e-mailed you a link to the page).  As of today, there have been 2,116 page views.  I suspect half of those are me, maybe a quarter of them my Mom (unless she got scarred away by the topless pictures some time ago), and the rest are spread amongst those of you who came here deliberately and those who stumbled here by accident.  And there are a few people who stumbled here on accident.  One person Googled "chemo shave" and took the time to read (or at least follow the link).  Whoever you are, I hope you learned something!  A couple (or one person multiple times) got here from a Google search of images on the .ru version of the search site, looking for images of "Alps fog."  I suspect they did not find exactly what they were looking for, but hope they were entertained nevertheless.  Other Google searches were all either looking for this blog specifically or looking for information about the northernmost cobras in the U.S.  The later is a possibility, I guess.  I used to think that there were no snakes in Alaska at all.  Recently, I've read a number of different places that Maine is the only U.S. state without any poisonous snakes.  That suggests that not only is there a snake somewhere in Alaska, but that it is poisonous.  I suspect it is somewhere in SE Alaska, but highly doubt it is a cobra.

So far, I've had visits from the following countries:  United States (2,038), Canada (36 - Hi A and fam!), France (22 - Hi T and A!), Netherlands (4), Belgium (3), China (3), Germany (3), Russia (3), Poland (2), and Switzerland (1).  Of course, this is all just a drawn out request to any of you traveling: Take a laptop or find an internet cafe and dramatically expand the international scope of this blog!  I want to see hits from Burma!  Colombia!  Zamiba!  A Pacific island of your choice (other than Hawaii, which won't register separate from the U.S.)!  We've made good in-roads in Europe, but surely can do better!  Consider it a call to arms!

Of course, statistics can be applied in fields far flung from merely recording website traffic.  Try getting cancer and attempting to learn something about your disease.  It is a little humbling to think you have something that compels people who write on it to develop five-year mortality rates.  Luckily: (1) those numbers are good for NHL patients; and (2) for a disease with an average age at diagnosis of 60, I think a lot of the folks on the bad side of the 5-year bell curve probably had other issues going on as well.  Statistics don't tell you but so much.  Nevertheless, they draw you in, and I've been poking around at average remission rates.  It just creates more questions than answers, though.  Primarily, were the statistics developed using patients undergoing the new post-chemo maintenance regimes?  I guess it doesn't really matter.  I'll just aim for outlier status in any case... on the right side of the curve.  Permanent remission, anyone?

"America's Heartthrob"

Fifth cycle is cycling, and it is time to refocus this blog on what is really important, namely providing pictures from walks I have taken.  Last weekend rolled into town sunny and warm(ish).  C poked and prodded and eventually got me off of the couch (or what passes for a couch in our household... see pictures later in this post).  We drove to Kincaid Park, a park within the city limits with a pretty extensive trail network used for skiing in the winter and walking, running, or biking in the summer.  We spent about an hour and a half wandering around on some of the trails I had never been on that traverse the park's southern border, with views of distant mountains and salt water.

We eventually stumbled upon a bench.  I like to think that every bench I find on a walk or hike was brought  to that location by some eagle scout vying for a merit badge.  Whatever its source, the bench made for some fine napping in the later afternoon sun.

And speaking of napping, it turns out that the fifth cycle has hit me a little harder than the prior four in terms of fatigue.  I spent a good part of the weekend feeling tired and asleep on the couch.  Napping on the couch may not sound like a topic worthy of a blog post, but I like to think the fact that I'm 6'0" and the couch (really, a love seat) sits somewhere around 4'0" makes the napping at least comical, if not truly newsworthy.

Note the expert use of a chair as a couch extender.  This kind of thinking outside the box has really made me realize that the world is my napping oyster.

I've previously described the chemo-infusion room as a room with recliners.  In addition to the chairs, the room comes complete with two tables pushed up against the windows on which people have started doing jigsaw puzzles.  [Are they still called jigsaw puzzles?  I wonder when the last time a puzzle was actually cut by a jigsaw?]  Towards the end of the day during my last infusion, tired of staring into the chemical void, C and I pulled our seats over and puttered around putting pieces into place.  The puzzle presented a stirring scene of horseback riders, mountain streams, and aspens.  Puzzles had been there since we first came in for treatment one, and presumably patients and friends and families had been working away on this (or some other) puzzle since time immemorial.  Nevertheless, one nurse and my oncologist both stopped by at separate times and said, "Huh, a puzzle," as if they had never seen them there.  They both continued, "I haven't done a puzzle since I was a kid."  C and I made the same comment to each other when we first sat down.  While the puzzles themselves were at those tables since time immemorial, I think it was the sight of two people under 65 working them that drew the staffs' attention to them for what was perhaps the first time ever.

Taken by our puzzle experience, and with some time at home recovering on the horizon, we quickly filled our household with puzzles of our own.  Here I am working on a classic from the C family collection, circa 1980.

You'll see that working the puzzle has become all encompassing, and even meals take a backseat to that pig's luscious hair.  I think at this point completing it is really just for the sake of reclaiming our dinning room table.

Shark Physics

Well, here we are.  It looks as though it has been a while since the last update.  I went in last Wednesday for my fifth treatment.  To those of you who might be counting (e.g. me), that means one more treatment pending.  I spent the last two working days at home, kind of tired, keeping nausea at bay by drinking ginger ale, and giving our Netflix account a workout.  It is days like these that you sometimes stumble upon real cultural gifts, advancements in the arts that frankly make everything that came before seem trite and uninspired.  One such gift is the film "Mega-Shark Versus Giant Octopus," available for online streaming.  I won't try to sum up the plot line here in a few words (although the title does a pretty good job itself).  Suffice to say, it is worth finding not only for its entertainment value, but also for its contribution to science.  I learned more about the geography and biology of the Chukchi Sea in the film's opening scene than I ever learned at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  There are apparently whole mountain ranges out there that were never discussed in any of my global tectonics classes.  For anyone wanting to delve deeper into the physics of mega-shark, I can recommend the following post:

http://staubman.com/blog/?p=67

When we came home from treatment last Wednesday, it turns out a little bird had turned our front door into a forest nest:

It may or may not be visible in the photo posted online, but the forest is replete with inspirational phrases marking the "one to go" milepost.  Thanks little bird (and little bird's helper)!

So dealing with a cancer diagnosis has certainly made me more sensitive to cancer news and announcements.  I've had family members who fought cancer, with both success and sadness.  We have a friend in Anchorage who has been fighting hard for as long as we have known her.  We have lots of friends with close family that have had to deal with cancer at one time or another, again with both success and sadness.  Somehow it never added up to a complete picture in the past.  The number of people who, upon learning that I have NHL, respond with: "My brother just went through that" is startling.  The number of people sitting in the big leather chairs with me on a tri-weekly basis is startling.  The number of newspaper articles in our local paper about celebrities with cancer is startling.  [The number of articles dedicated to celebrities instead of news is also startling, but that is a different rant altogether.]  Now we have learned that another friend in Germany has been diagnosed with colon cancer and is undergoing chemo.  I don't have a grand thesis with which to wrap up this paragraph, or rallying cry to bring us all together in the fight against cancer.  Just an awareness that my experience is far from unique and a sadness that so many people have to go through the uncertainty of a diagnosis and the rigors of treatment.  C and I send our thoughts to Wolfgang and Margret in Germany.

Soup's On

The cyclical nature of chemo has taken me from the highs of a week ago, feeling good and lively, to the lows of the present, feeling tired and weak.  It is part of the dance, a complicated choreography involving me, some cancer cells, and some drugs.  I got in between one and two hours at work this morning, before retiring home for sessions of sleep interrupted by sessions of sitting.  True to form, C will likely rally me for a short walk tonight, after which I'll go early to bed.  Simple living with a foggy head.

It is the unfair burden of the caregiver that more of the household chores fall on C's shoulders during the lows (and probably during the highs, and the pre-cancer years too, but I'll pretend otherwise!).  Luckily, we stumbled upon a time saving recipe in the original Joy of Cooking for soup.  Recognizing that many are pressed for time, I thought I would share it here:

Cream of Asparagus Soup
Combine:
1 can condensed cream of asparagus soup
1 can condensed chicken broth
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cups milk

Now there is some home cooking!  The truly accomplished cooks among you will have recognized that the above recipe can serve as the blueprint for a whole week's worth of meals.  Prefer a cream of broccoli soup?  Simply substitute 1 can of condensed cream of broccoli soup for the asparagus soup!  Cream of chicken?  Substitute a can of cream of chicken!  Cream of mushroom?  Just cut the cream of asparagus altogether!  I bet if you are really pressed for time you could leave out the chicken broth and cream of mushroom, scale back the milk, and still call it cream of asparagus soup.

In terms of a status report, my onc doc gave us a "your doing excellent" Wednesday at the last infusion.  He can no longer feel the tumor in my abdomen at all.  He pronounced that I've been handling chemo just fine.  We'll schedule a PET scan following the last treatment, but he expects it will show everything in remission.  I expect the same.  So now it is just a matter of muscling through these last three treatments and laying the groundwork for a long, long remission period.  In the meantime, soup's on.

Savor the Flavor

It would seem I am at risk of turning this blog into an online hiking photo album.  Another weekend came and went, and we spent another Saturday out enjoying the sun.  The morning was blanketed thick in Anchorage fog.  Tired of the gloom, we drove up to Glen Alps, a near-town trail head up in the alpine.  Part way up, we breached the low lying clouds and emerged into brilliant blue skies.  C let out a squeal and clapped her hands.  Just seeing the sky made it all better.

(House above the fog with Mt. Spur in the background.)

(Fog lapping up on the foothills of the Chugach range.  That is what we lived in the whole of last week.)

We had no real destination to start with, but ultimately set our sights on Ship Lake Pass.  The sun continued to shine, our feet continued to move one in front of the other, and the miles ran away like so many scattering mice.  I did tire, and before long we picked a turn around spot not far from the pass itself.

(Standing where we decided to throw in the towel.  The Peak on the left is the Ramp.  The pass is, well, the pass pictured on the right.)

But we had already come so far!  Our we really turning around?  Yes.  We should stick to our guns.  But is it really that much further?  Should we just soldier on?  Yes.  OK, then.  To the pass it will be after all.

(At the pass, looking into the further reaches of the Chugach.)

(Looking down on Ship Lake in its fall finery.)

So the hike ended up being something over twelve miles, with something around 3,000 feet of vertical gain. It was a good day in the hills, and we were glad for the views.  As we creep up on the end of the third chemo cycle, I've been feeling pretty good, and I'm thankful I could put in a good twelve miles.  I've had more energy than at the end of the second cycle.  I'm not sure what to credit for that, but I will not complain.  C and I went for a run after work today, and the legs felt spry.  I was able to push up to a 7:30 pace and hold it for about a mile.  Not exactly pre-chemo levels, but it nevertheless felt good to pick up some speed and let the legs loose.  And I couldn't have done so at the end of the second cycle.

Now to talk hair.  Hair loss is the most obvious manifestation of chemo, and accordingly always a fun topic of conversation.  Long time readers will recall a prior post with "then" and "now" photos comparing the bearded, full-head of hair version of Scott with the post clippers version.  The truly observant will have noted all along the continued presence of a flavor saver, aka soul patch, aka pretentious patch of hair left behind on my lower lip.  The flavor saver started as a joke, something I would wear to work for a few days and then shave off.  But soon thereafter my hair started falling out, and I decided to save the saver until the bitter end.  The other day, C and I were looking at pictures on the hard drive (remember when you had to do so in albums?) and noted a remarkable change in its appearance.  See for yourself.  Then (first in profile, second straight on):

And now (in a smaller crop):

The vast majority of my pretentious lower lip hair seems to have fallen out.  I knew it had thinned, but didn't really appreciate the degree to which it had done so.  At least I still have my eyebrows.  With eyebrows, the general public is left wondering: Is he a racist neo-Nazi from Idaho?  A straight-edged punk from D.C. circa 1986?  Just a lazy guy who prefers low maintenance hair cuts?  Once the eyebrows go you really take on the look of a chemo-patient, and all mystery disappears.   

I start the fourth cycle tomorrow.  Here's to the approaching 2/3 milepost.

The Sun Will Come Out

It feels like it has been a busy two weeks since I last updated the blog.  As previously noted, my parents came to visit.  Concern about their baby's health will prompt even my parents to suffer through the rigors of air travel.  In case you are wondering what became of the green chiles, we whipped up a quick sauce as evidenced by the following picture:

(Stolen without permission from my Dad's Picasa page.)

In addition to the chiles, my folks brought with them more rain.  In contrast, my inlaws came to visit last weekend and brought blueberries and sunshine.  When push comes to shove, I like chiles better than berries, but sun better than rain.  So, we will call it a wash and say C and I had a nice visit with both families.

The sun was actually a very welcome treat.  To those of you who have not been living Anchorage's weather on a daily basis, we have set records this summer for crap.  So having made it through the worst parts of my third round of treatment and with sunny skies beckoning, we headed to the hills last weekend.  On Saturday we walked for four miles or so on the Prospect Heights trials.

We forgot the hand made sign, but I'm holding up a 53 to signify 53 days of chemo.  While those of you in warmer climes may not think it, fall is actually approaching fast:

Having decided that the warm weather and exercise were doing us good, we returned to the mountains on Sunday and made 3.5 miles and 2000 vertical feet up Wolverine peak before I turned us around.  Unsurprisingly, it was turning to fall in the higher elevations too:

Near our high point, with Denali, Foraker, and the whole of the Alaska Range visible in the background:

At our high point, with vibrant yellow tundra countering the glare from my scalp:

And finally, over looking Anchorage with the airport, Mt. Spur, and another hiker all making an appearance:

The warm (meaning 60 degrees; warm is a relative concept) temperatures continued into Monday, but yesterday the fog rolled in.  My best guess is that the sun continues to shine somewhere above the clouds, but visibility in our neighborhood has been cut to a couple of hundred feet.  Its like a balmy January out there.  But as they say, it is better to have sunned and lost than to have never sunned at all.  And the way this summer had been going, we were squarely in the never sunned at all camped a few days ago.  I'm glad the break in the weather came at the right time in my treatment cycle.

As far as I know, I know everyone who has ever laid eyes on this blog.  But this being the information age, and information wanting to be free and all, there is the (slim) possibility that someone out there stumbled upon this page through the power of Google or by dumb luck.  As a newly diagnosed NHL patient, I scoured the web for what information I could glean, and read other's experiences in blogs and forums as a way of getting a handle on what I was facing.  If someone similar is reading this, I should note that notwithstanding pictures of sunny mountains and smiling Scotts, R-CHOP is not all daffodils and Belgian beer.  I feel good this week, but chemo has had its fair share of "This Sucks" moments, perhaps captured by the following picture taken at my second treatment:

And yes, the picture is sideways.  I like to think it is an artistic way of capturing the sideways feeling of bright orange liquid pumping into a valve on your chest, but really it is just that I'm too lazy to open the file in an editor and rotate it.

To wrap up this post (and get myself to bed), I'll just toss out a hello and thanks to T&A in Olivet, France for a CD that just arrived in the mail.  Several years ago, C and I traveled through Europe and spent time with T&A in France and Switzerland.  We spent a night (or two?) with A's family in a small town outside of Geneva.  We spent the nights with A's grandparents with a window overlooking vineyards, and the days at A's parents house, a traditional looking alpine chalet, watching chickens run through the yard.  One sunny, comfortable afternoon, C and I were sitting on the back porch.  Upstairs, A's brother and a friend had picked up some instruments.  The air smells clean, there was probably raclette in the oven, and guitar and accordion music spilling over the balcony.  It is a nice memory, and the playing was very good.  A's brother and band mates have now finished what is being referred to as a "pre-pre-production" version of a CD, and we just got a copy.  Many thanks.  The music is cheerful and will remind us of relaxing days in Switzerland.

Three Down

I received my third treatment yesterday.  That is the third of six.  Depending on how you look at it, I'm half way through.  The alternate view is I will not be at the half way point until I surface from this batch of side effects.  Either way, we're that much closer to bidding adieu to the leather chairs (aside from occasional tuneups, which are limited to one of the 5 primary chemo drugs and should have limited side effects).

Luckily, the Vuelta de Espana (Tour of Spain) bike race is underway.  It gives me something to relax to while shaking off the fogginess and leaden tongue.

Short post today.  Just a celebratory nod to the passing of time.  Some moments you want to last a life time and others can't expire fast enough.  My last treatment is on November 3rd.  I feel a little like a kid staring at December 25th on the calendar wondering if Christmas will ever really come.

But the really good news is that the chemo seems to be doing what it is designed to do.  Previously swollen lymph nodes are undetectable.  The other good news is that my blood counts were good this round.  I have a blood draw every three weeks prior to a treatment to analyze various parameters of my red and white blood cells.  Prior to the second treatment, my white cell counts were on the low side of borderline.  As such, I've started getting a shot to boost production, and it seemed to work.  Counts were good; treatment a go.