In My Time of Dreaming

Cycle 1 Day 1

Back at the doctors today. Yesterday I had my chemo cherry popped. It wasn’t quite like what I had expected, but I guess it never is when one pops their cherry. I imagined something like the scene in the movie 50/50 with Joseph Gordon Levitt, where I would just be sitting in a room in a recliner hooked up to my machine with a bunch of other cancer patients. In reality I get my own private room with bed, recliner, t.v., and WiFi.

Yesterday was exhausting, but let me catch you up on the previous events… Last Friday I had my Groshong catheter put in. It’s a line that is put into your chest and access your heart directly via the superior vena cava. This allows your health care physician to draw blood and administer medication very easily. It’s actually quite amazing. As much as I don’t enjoy going under the knife, given the amount of times I will be in here, I don’t like the idea of having my veins beat up like a heroin junkie. Watching the nurse draw blood from the groshong in fascinating. She just hooks up a vacuumed vial or syringe and the blood just flows out, I’m like a vampire’s slurpee machine. I’ll have these tubes sticking out of my chest for the remainder of my chemo treatment.

My first day I started off on the drug Rituxan. This was supposed to be a six hour session. I knocked it out in four. Apparently my body was very receptive to the medication, so what normally takes a long time to administer they were able to up the dosage and get me on my way. I slept for the majority of the session, while my friend Dave looked after me.

After the treatment was over I was completely exhausted. It wasn’t the same kind of tiredness you get from having an awesome workout at the gym, but more like the kind of exhaustion you get when you’ve been out all night drinking or on all sorts of drugs when your mind is a little fuzzy and your body feels completely used.

After some food at Wegman’s,and a lot of water, I went home slept a few hours, had more food, and felt much better.

fight

Some days my morale is better than others, but I fully intend on kicking this cancer’s ass. I get my groshong catheter on Friday and once I start my chemo Monday it’s on!

heart

Sometimes I’m not sure that I can do this.

Comfort, faith, material things.

When my mom was first diagnosed with her cancer, she made a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France. When she came home she brought me a necklace from there. It was a cross with the Alpha and Omega symbols on it and the symbol of Christianity in between them. On the underside was the famous image of the Virgin Mary.

I don’t own a lot of jewelery and none of it is expensive, but this cross was priceless to me. It was one of the few things, if not only thing that meant anything to me that my mom gave me. After she died I would always wear it when I was feeling sad, or going through a difficult time. It served as a reminder to me to always keep faith and it made me feel like my mom was with me and kept me close to her.

In 2009 my place was broken into, and it was taken from me. My computer was still there, my guitars, camera, and a lot of other more valuable items remained. Apparently the thieves were only looking for jewelery. I feel like I need it now more than ever.

Things to come

When I started writing this blog I had a very different idea of the entries that I would chronicle. I met with my oncologist January 2, 2013, and have been diagnosed with stage 2 Burkitt’s Lymphoma. Although very treatable, it’s a highly aggressive cancer that will require intensive chemotherapy (4-8 months).  I have “Chemo Class” tomorrow and this Friday I have minor surgery to have my groshong catheter put in my chest.

My friends and family have been very supportive, and I feel very blessed to have them. A good friend of mine flew in from Hong Kong Christmas week (week after my surgery) to come visit me. Although I didn’t quite have the energy to do too much, it was great having him around. I’m really not looking forward to the months ahead of me. I pray that it won’t be so bad. I keep thinking and asking god the significance of this illness that I have to go through. In every obstacle or challenge in life there is a lesson to be learned. One that helps you grow and makes you stronger, one that instigates change for better or for worse.

Recovery post surgery

So far my road to treatment has not been an easy one. To start, it took them forever to properly diagnose me. Friday I went in for surgery and the operation seemed to go OK.

However, I’ve been way to sore for the past couple of days and the area where the surgical site is has gotten increasingly redder and has spread. I notified the on-call doctor yesterday that it didn’t feel or look right. She pretty much blew me off. I called her again this evening and now I have an appointment for them to look at me tomorrow.

Really, what is wrong with these people? I don’t understand why they do not listen to their patients. Before I was initially diagnosed with Cancer these doctors assumed the best case scenario and treated for that, without running a variety of tests ruling out all possibilities. That’s basic problem solving 101. I am frustrated, and upset. I know I have a hard road ahead and I feel like this is a mere shadow of things to come.

Happy Holidays, blessings amongst misfortunes.

On Thursday December 6, 2012 I went in for a sonogram and fine needle aspiration biopsy. They drew two samples from the lymph-nodes on the right side of my neck. The pathologist present told me right then and there that I had Lymphoma. 

Fast forward to the present. I met my Oncologist yesterday and she seemed really smart and nice. I think I am in good hands and am hopeful. Tomorrow I have my PET Scan and on Friday I go into surgery for another biopsy. Everything that has happened so slowly seems to be moving so fast now.

I am grateful for all the support my friends and family have been giving me. Despite all that has happened I do feel quite blessed. I’ll try and write more about my thoughts and feeling but that’s all for now.

Prayers for Rain

I’ve been having these odd health issues lately. About a month ago I was experiencing these severe to moderate headaches and pain searing down the right side of my neck. It was constant, very localized and last for a solid week. One night it hurt so badly it woke me from my sleep. I went to the doctor and all they gave me were muscle relaxers.

Not knowing any better, and not getting any help from the licensed doctors I went to see a Chiropractor.  Perhaps it was a pinched nerve? At this point, they did nothing for me either except continue to take my money for the next month. I stopped seeing them. 

For the past week, I’ve had this mysterious lump on the same side of my neck. It was really sore and painful, but now has become less sensitive. Perhaps it has decided to take roots, and settle in. I’ve been on Antibiotics for five days now and it has only gone down a little. 72 hours was what the doctor said. Well it’s been more than that and not much change. Tomorrow I will call them and have a sonogram done.

I’m not worried, just annoyed. It’s either something or nothing. Either way, I could really care less.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I went to the movies this weekend and saw “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” A screen adaptation from the Novel. Not having read the book, I thought it was really a good film. It’s about a boy transitioning into manhood, confronting his demons and finding his way.

We are all in search of being infinite, to fit in somewhere, or with someone, to find purpose and meaning in our lives. Some of us find ourselves in the “freshman” year of our lives no matter how old we are, struggling to make friends, to find love, and to be accepted. 

My personal sanctuary in the city and the Voyage of Life.

Recently I visited the National Gallery of Art to see a retrospective on Roy Lichtenstein. The exhibit was better than I had imagined. It’s been a few years since I visited the National Gallery and it stirred in me a feeling of nostalgia and comfort I haven’t felt in quite sometime.

I attended high school in Washington D.C. not too far from the National Gallery of Art. Occasionally I would leave campus, escape to the the Art Museum and lose myself in the myriad of paintings. It was a wonderful place for me to go and meditate, and to take in the wonderment of whatever was currently on exhibit. This was very much a stark contrast to my peers at school who would leave campus for China Town and relish in the many underage watering holes.

There was one permanent exhibit in a small atrium of the museum that held a series of four paintings called “The Voyage of Life” by Thomas Cole. They were the only paintings in this room and I spent most of my time here. The paintings are titled; Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Old Age. Here is a description of the series taken from Wikipedia:

“The Voyage of Life series, painted by Thomas Cole in 1842, is a series of paintings that represent an allegory of the four stages of human life: childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. The paintings follow a voyager who travels in a boat on a river through the mid-19th century American wilderness. In each painting, accompanied by a guardian angel, the voyager rides the boat on the River of Life. The landscape, corresponding to the seasons of the year, plays a major role in telling the story. In each picture, the boat’s direction of travel is reversed from the previous picture. In childhood, the infant glides from a dark cave into a rich, green landscape. As a youth, the boy takes control of the boat and aims for a shining castle in the sky. In manhood, the adult relies on prayer and religious faith to sustain him through rough waters and a threatening landscape. Finally, the man becomes old and the angel guides him to heaven across the waters of eternity.”

Standing before these paintings entranced me. Moving from portrait to portrait I would reflect on my past, present and hopes and expectations for the future, comparing myself to the child, boy, and now man in the boat. For those of you who are familiar with Catholicism, it was like my personal stations of the cross.

I think about the current stage of my life “Manhood,” and all that I have experienced in the past few years.

Cole is quoted in saying “Trouble is characteristic of the period of Manhood. In childhood, there is no carking care: in youth, no despairing thought. It is only when experience has taught us the realities of the world, that we lift from our eyes the golden veil of early life; that we feel deep and abiding sorrow.”

It’s really amazing to me how this series of paintings captivated me in my youth and still does well into my manhood, and how accurate the artists portrayal of life’s journeys seem to be.

If you happen to find yourself in Washington D.C. in the next few months, check out Lichtenstein, but stay for Thomas Cole. I strongly recommend it.

For now, as I sit adrift in my voyage through life in a river of painting three, I continue to wonder what life will have in store for me.

The Voyage of Life on Wikipedia.