Cancer? ARRGGGHHH!

It's been another while between posts.  I'm always saying that, it seems.  This time, it had more to do with being a bit busy with dealing with the aftermath of being diagnosed with Lymphoma.

I remember when looking at my PET/CT scan, where you are injected with radiation and any cancer in your body is sort of 'lit up' in the image.  My insides looked like a Christmas Tree. (Can I say that?) Anyway, I went through six chemo treatments every three weeks and ended those with being in complete remission.

A treatment that's considered with these types of Cancer, mine being a bit rarer and more aggressive form, is where you are blasted a final time with a high-dose chemotherapy drug, that aims to kill every cancer cell that may want to hide somewhere in your body.  It's such a high dose that one preparation for this treatment is collection of your own peripheral stem cells which are frozen and returned to your body at a later date.  That later date is after the high-dose chemo that not only kills every cancer cell...it kills your bone marrow as well. With no bone marrow we have no immune system and our blood loses the ability to produce blood cells and platelets which cause the blood to clot, should it need to.

Because of that little fact, naturally, you are in the hospital for about three weeks.  The first three days are boring, so they tell me and those middle 10 days are the days you can expect to feel your worst.  Dead tired, development of painful mouth sores, (my least favorite) blood transfusions and of course they keep a close eye on you since you are prone to catch anything that may want to invade your body.  Back to this in a bit...

However, going back to my complete remission, after my first treatments.  In preparation for the high-dose chemo and the collection of my stem cells and other tests I was taking to prepare...I had these killer headaches, for that week or so that wouldn't quit.  relaying this to the Stem Cell Specialist, he at first suspected a sinus infection and gave me an appropriate antibiotic and told me to let him know how I was in a few days.  In a few days, I emailed my Stem Cell Coordinator who was the was the man with the plan for what I needed to do and told him there was no change.  He relayed my email to the Specialist who, in turn, relayed it to my original Oncologist.  My Oncologist promptly called me and asked that I come into Mass General, where all this has been going on to have a brain MRI.  I was driven in by my Brother who took me home following the MRI.  I wasn't home twenty minutes, when my Oncologist called me and told me to 'Come back in.'  I'd have to be admitted.  Seems, he told me, this insidious cancer had infiltrated my brain fluid and when I went back to the hospital, getting another MRI for my spine...that to showed the cancer was also in my spinal fluid.

So now...new plan. I would do chemo treatments of Methotrexate A drug designed to blow this cancer out of the fluid around my brain.  For the spine, each hospitalization included a 'Lumbar Puncture' which was a procedure, whereby they stick a large thin needle into your spine and take out 5 centimeters of spinal fluid and put in the same amount of chemo. As you can guess, the needle never found its mark the first time. This ranked just below mouth sores for me.  Anyway, that was one week in the hospital and one week out for six rounds.  Now that's done and again, I'm clean and again - I'm back on track for my high-dose chemo treatment/stem cell transplant. And, today in a little over two hours is when it all starts.  Three weeks of knowing what to expect with a fine knowledge transfer from the stem cell team but, still filled with uncertainty.

If there's one thing the online world and Social Media has taught me - If you're going through something...a zillion other people have already gone through it and there are a zillion more yet to have the same experience.

With that, I thought I'd 'Tweet' my three week stay for my chemo/stem cell transplant to anyone who might be interested and for those who may find themselves in the same boat but, not there yet.  I'll accompany the tweets with the hash tags: #StemCell and #Lymphoma.

Oops!...I Did It Again

Some further proof that at times, not only do people not learn from their mistakes...they are perfectly capable of making the same mistake twice.  In a BIG way!

I Am a Conservative!

As the governed relinquish their independence to those who govern - those who govern, inevitably, will be comprised of few honorable people.  -Me

Not a New Dawn for America - We're Still In the Dark

I wasn't expecting what happened.  And, I wasn't alone.  There was a sense...a feeling that Mitt was actually on course to wrestle the Presidency from Barack Obama.  It seemed, optimism and big ideas was going to win out over a campaign that, in the end seemed so full of pessimism and so many small things.

But, here we sit, on the day after...in the darkness, barely able to see if there is a chance of light far away on the horizon.   But, it's been that way for so long now.  Four years and counting.  We were running toward that light we saw but, like those cartoons where running down a hallway toward a door that appears to get farther away, with each step, we never quite reach daylight.  For about half of those four years we had been told that the slow economic growth, the job creation at a snail's pace "...aren't where we want to be but, it's positive growth." We were being conditioned for a whole set of  'new normals' in our lives. Unemployment percentage and anemic jobs numbers, month after month.  Increasing gas prices.  Higher food costs, lower take home pay.  All things that contributed to our getting used to living lives, not like we had lived  in the past.  Working at jobs, if we could get them, that were at some fraction less, than we made for most of our adult lives before this time.  Many of us were finding a way to get by.  But, we were doing just that.  Getting by.  Many of us can't remember what it's like to work a steady job.  Some of us, exhausting those economic lifelines the Government had thrown us and still not working.  Twenty-three million looking for employment or partially employed.  We endured it because, somehow...some way we thought that there would be an end to it.

Now, the next day...the day after Election Day.  We're unsure.  It's still dark. The previous day's vote for the status quo, has put that sunrise we had been enduring this darkness, all this time, waiting for...will not come on this new day.  It's years off now...if at all.

There were hurdles, earlier put in the way that will delay us from seeing any real daylight.  The, 'one-sixth of the economy' behemoth, that is ObamaCare.  The implementation of which, was even designed to get this President past the Election, has yet to take its toll on the economy and on our lives.  We were told the bill would have to pass to see what's in the bill...Well, we will see a lot over the next year or two.  Will all those business owners and job creators who have been sitting on the sidelines...waiting to hire, to expand, to invest any of their dollars before they got to see what might unfold now, be any more inclined to jump back into the game?  Why should they?  Now the uncertainty, that had driven all their decisions to stand pat these last few years, has now become certainty that nothing has changed.  Jobs that weren't created then, will be jobs that won't be created now...or anytime soon.  Banks that were not lending money last year have no reason to change anything about the way they do business.  What we had before this election is what we have now, after the votes have been tallied.  Meet the new boss...same as the old boss.

It's always darkest before the dawn. And, we've known the dark for over four years now.  Unfortunately and sadly for us...this too has became our 'new normal.'  We have been conditioned.  And we've been learning, slowly, to find our own way in the dark.  And now we know.  We have, at the very least...four more years before a new dawn breaks.  God help us all...

A Laundry List for Mitt When He Becomes President

The pesky polls be damned.  I'm one who remembers newspapers of the day, back in the 1980 Election, this close to that Presidential election, saying that the contest between Carter and Reagan was 'Too close to call.'  Most of us know how that one turned out.  A Reagan Landslide.  A smaller version of that, is what I see for tomorrow's election.

With that in mind.  This is just a list that I am putting forth, to the, soon-to-be, new President - based on the the way his, soon-to-be, predecessor and those around him behaved and responded to us, the people they worked for:

1. Always be straight with us.  Tell us the truth.  We're adults...we can handle it.

2. Instruct your subordinates to do the same.  And, while you're at it...pick subordinates that don't give us the 'willies', since we are going to have to see them on Sunday talk shows for at least four years.

3. Have a consistent schedule of when you take questions from the press and don't disappear for weeks and months at a time when it may be a bit uncomfortable for you to do so.  A President who's not afraid to take his lumps is a President we will continue to respect.

4.  Ban the use of focus groups, in your White House, in making decisions that affect us. Trial balloons too.  We voted for you because we are willing to take you where you lead us, as long as you consult with us consistently.

5.  We know there's the possibility of a 2nd term so please, please...don't begin campaigning for it, starting the 2nd year of your first term.  We've just been there, done that.  We don't appreciate it, either.

6.  If you're going to have one Czar...Put that person in charge of seeing to all of our returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans.  Whether they're wounded, physically or mentally...need to find jobs, find themselves homeless and on and on. Whatever the need.  This needs to be a high-visibility/high accountability position and pledge to us that everything that can be done will be done for these brave people and that this will continue throughout your Administration and beyond.

Trust me...this list could go on for days after what we've been through the last four years but...you know where we're coming from and it's a start.  Just trust in us and we'll trust in you.  Govern in a way that, from the richest people in the country to the poorest - feel that they have a President who is working for them.  In doing that...the result will be many more of the aforementioned people in that last sentence and far fewer of the latter. And that can only be good for the rest of us, in the middle...

2012 Presidential Election: Electoral Map

As Mitt Romney has shown to appeal to Independents by a wide margin and basically Middle Americans...My Electoral map shows that he virtually owns a large swath, of the middle of the country.  I see a 52% to 47% popular vote in Romney's favor, incidentally, reflecting his rather astute observation in an earlier released, edited video of Romney speaking to donors - that showed him telling them that he wouldn't capture Obama's 47%.  He gets an extra 5% share, leaving 1% for other votes not gotten by either major candidate.

A big win for Romney and one that indicates a mandate by the Electorate.

Seeing it Slip From Their Hands

I should be going to bed.  I'm tired and I have something new in my life to contend with.  Cancer.  Lymphoma, to be exact.  And I'm tolerating Chemo, actually pretty well - except for some fatigue and just needing to go to bed early, because after a certain point...I'm done.

But, tonight something dawned on me, while watching a rather maniacal Juan Williams, in his nightly defense of the Obama campaign on Sean Hannity's show.  It's that they can feel something big, slipping from their fingers and what can be observed is the different ways that individuals, like Williams, are coping.

What dawned on me tonight, had specifically to do with Williams.  You see, on election night in November of 2008 - Juan Williams was moved to tears at what had just transpired. And these emotions were emanating from a place that not all of us can necessarily relate to.  Here was a black American witnessing the  historic election of a fellow African American to the highest office in the land!  For Juan Williams and millions of other Americans, black, white, brown and red who voted for the man who had presented himself during the campaign as a different Candidate, who'd be a different American President - unlike any we had known before, was huge.  And for them, that promise held, into the the first year of Obama's presidency.  And they held onto it deeper and deeper into his presidency, even when things may not have been quite what he promised they'd be.  But, he was theirs and they were true to the man.

But, in this new campaign...especially from the time of his first debate with the challenger, Romney - something was different and couldn't be ignored.  Actually, there were signs well before of the man who would usher in a new way of doing business as being just another slick politician, only worried about the next election.  Certainly the handling of the debacle that Benghazi is and was from the outset, is a shining example.  But, the debate shined a light, through a magnifying glass, directly onto Obama - exposing all the flaws.  And it wasn't just the Right who saw them now.  Even if the Right may have seen flaws early on, that weren't necessarily that apparent at times. But this time.  The legion who had seen a man who could do no wrong...now saw something that frightened them.  The arrogance.  The pettiness. The amateurishness.  The 'say and do anything' pol who would sell his granny to keep his job.  And, for someone like Juan Williams...this could rock him to the core.  The last thing he would have wanted was for this Man of Hope, who represented him and millions like him...to be just another empty suit.  Not just an empty suit but one who has been insulated, coddled, adored and protected by the very institutions who were put in place to protect us and our interests as Citizens.  It was all crashing down around them and to obvious now, to ignore.  What can you do?  What I saw crystallized tonight was what Juan Williams could only do, for himself - defend this man with all of his might. But, I could see it tearing at him.  You could see by his antics - An almost crazed laugh when trying to drive a point of defense of Obama, home.  The eyes that belied what his words were saying.  It's as though, the ardent supporters of this man were now seeing what we've seen for awhile now.  And it was shaking their very foundation.  And it hurt...

I know I come at this from an opposite viewpoint.  But, I don't see a comeback for Obama.  I don't see this as a one-off that can be erased with more dutiful preparation.  This is Obama.  John Sununu said to Andrea Mitchell the other day, in what seems to be a weekly skewering of her that she brings on herself by continuing to have him on her show - but, to paraphrase, he said maybe too bluntly for her of Obama's preparedness for the next debate - 'He's not that smart!  You can't be better prepared if you aren't that smart!'  But, the truth is, he is who Romney had exposed him to be. And, it's not just Williams.  So many on the Left are grousing about their man.  At least Juan, the good soldier, is fighting the fight.  Days and days later, Andrew Sullivan sounds utterly defeated.  He tweeted the night of the debate whether Obama had 'just lost the election.' And his latest article must have been written on suicide watch. But, elections can be crazy things and anything's possible.  A Romney win.  An Obama win...

But...should Obama still pull this out and win.  I don't see him coming out the other end, wiser from the experience.  He'll be more arrogant.  More petulant.  You thought his "I won, you lost" attitude in 2008 was something?  What I'd say to that is, if he wins..."You ain't seen nuthin' yet"