Cancer Thoughts 6

The end of week 1 of treatment 4 of 40 radiation treatments and 1 of 8 chemo therapy treatments completed, 36 and 7 left.

First under the heading of the USC Oregon state game, I have nothing for you on that. The best team won Thursday,

Nothing exciting until the 3rd radiation treatment as you know I have a face and shoulder mask that snaps to the table that I lay on and keeps me strapped in. For the past 6 months I have been having unrelated issue with a nerve in my neck that causes pain in my right arm only when I am laying flat as I do in radiation. So my arm is in agony the entire 25 minutes I am on table. So I ask the radiation technician if he could tie my arm down to see if the support would help the pain, which he did. Now the treatment starts and I panic, keep in mind I have both top and bottom mouth pieces in and a wax protector in between, I am pined down and now my arm is tied. I managed to get my arm out of the tie as they had left the other arm untied. They had to reset leave my arm untied and everything went OK with no more panic.

For me getting through this has required a lot of prayer, prayers as simple as help me god, I trust in you Jesus, and some like the Lords prayer, which I say before and during the treatment, on Thursday when I was panicking, my mind when get me out here. On Friday I spent the morning being calm and in prayer and it seem like the radiation was over before it started. I do know my mental attitude will go along way in helping me get through this.

Jim Valvano said “Now I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day, and nothing is changed for me”. That is the difference between famous rich people and normal working class people, for me everything has changed and that is what I am trying to learn to adjust to.

I have no projects at work to finish or start, I have no place to travel to. I have no boss (I have a wife), I don’t always drive now. My schedule Monday – Friday is not determined by work or social outings it is determined by doctor’s visits, treatments, blood test, shots, when I am suppose to take what pill. It is a very unexciting life, but very necessary. I am also very lucky I do not have to the burden of working, I am sure trying to do everything would make this very tough for me, so the thing is that I am trying to adjust to is the thing that make this easier to deal with. Everything about cancer is backwards for me. I have a lot of thoughts on that and I am working on putting my thoughts down about cancer, my rage, and my anger about this battle we are in with cancer. Cancer affects everybody not just the person who gets it; it is a family disease, I see it everyday, in ways I never thought I would. Enough about cancer for now, I will talk about that much more in the weeks to come.

For now the side effects are almost non-existent I do get tired quickly and after chemo I was a little nauseated but other than that I am good. I had a play day with Madison on Friday she is 6, for those of you who don’t know, she is my niece’s daughter (actually Patty’s niece) she calls me Buddy and is my best little friend we went bike riding, swimming, played play dough, her and patty made me dinner and then we made cookies, and then we watched Shrek now that was a good day. I am hoping for a few more Friday’s like that but I have been told one more might be all I get who knows what will happen in the future but now I am well as I could hope for.

Thank you for listening and being there for me, I still choose to fight on.

Michael