I'm Taking this Recovery Up a Level!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

The results came back from the dreaded MRI and they were boring in their predictability: I'm still cancer-free (Thank You HA!) I knew it, you knew it, it's a Geico ad;  Everybody knows that!  I have one more to get through and my doctors will then feel reasonably secure in declaring that I'm cancer-free (Thank You, Dr, P.!), because there have been no changes in my brain in five years.  I already know this!  It's been gone for a long time.

Yet, I feel completely changed!  Irrevocably and fundamentally altered.  In 2011 I was diagosed and underwent brain surgery (I still love saying that!  You can practically hear the "dum, da dum!" following the word"surgery")

I awoke to to a new reality:  I can't walk (or speak or sign my name and the list just goes on!) but I feel spectacular!  I sleep, read and write endlessly!  I used to be melancholy and had trouble sleeping.  Since removing the tumor?   I sleep like a baby and I'm always in a great mood!  Always!
My PS "supervises" my every move (Safety First!), and he's pretty observant anyway, and he's noticing the changes, too.

So, in an effort to be more streamlined and faster (and take this recovery thing up a notch)and  to respond to oncoming danger (because you just never know what might happen next!  It might be a dragon, it might be a poorly placed chair - it's a crapshoot!) I've come to a painful, yet inevitable decision: As much s it hurts, I'm going to ignore all cookies/caramels and desserts!

Indeed, I shall say, "Nay!" to confections of any nature!

I really thought that tons of physical exercise combined with a 100% reduction in alcohol (as in: nada) would get me the results I needed after four years.  Nope!

I'm all muscle but I still can't walk!  And you know how I feel about wheelchairs!

I realize my menu choices are a low priority (read: tiny) in the grand scheme of things (OK, non-existent!). but my tall and lessening frame is working every day with tiny but measurable results.  And it is something I have control over, one of the few things I can change.

I know what some of you are thinking,:"Another overfed American, complaining about too many food choices, poor you!"  It's not just "poor me", it's poor Patient Spouse who drags my carcass to the gym.  A lighter me is easier to move around!

 Some of you might have  also thought to yourselves, "Seriously,I just spent ten minutes of my life reading this?  And ordinarily you'd be correct.  However, this particular American is very patient and very motivated to recover!  (And very good at complaining!)

I currently can't walk, talk or see.  But I  think all  the time.  I think and pedal hours upon hours to noplace and bench press increasing amounts of weights to strengthen my core while I think every second I'm at the gym.   It's mentally tedious and physically difficult. I was made for this!  It's like Jury Duty, which I'm too disabled to participate in but I always thought I'd be good at!   Just swallowing now takes five steps!  Swallowing!  And I still choke, a lot!  Cutting anything non-essential from my diet is just another inevitable step on my journey.

Does it work?  No?

Is it cancer? No?(Still the only question that counts)

Then who cares?



PS - To Joyce in Chatanooga!  If you can find "Anna's" (Safeway/CVS) Ginger Thins they taste exactly like Nyacker's.  Barring that miraculous find, I guess we'll just have to wait until we locate another source.  I'll keep looking...  My dad sends me Murray's Old Fashioned Ginger Snaps (Amazon) But they are truly a ginger "snap".  Murray's are small, crunchy, and very snappy!  I love 'em!  "Anna's" is what you're looking for!  Good luck!

MRI's Aren't Scary! UNLESS You Have Claustrophobia! And I Do!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

There is one aspect of this journey that cannot be avoided and I haven't developed any effective coping mechanism for and that's the Magnetic Resonance Imager or MRI.  It's essentially a very precise camera that takes a series of images of my brain. After 2011 I've had several MRIs following the tumor removal.  I have mastered my extreme fears of spiders and things that go "bump" in the night.  Irrational fears of being buried alive are how claustrophobia is defined by Wikipedia.

If you haven't yet had the  thrill of experiencing a Magnetic Resonance Imager let me describe it:  It's like you're placed in the hole of a giant Lifesaver candy and you have to remain as motionless as possible.  Remaining motionless in the MRI is no problem, I'm terrified anyway.  It's the closest experience I've ever had to my worst fear - that fear being of being buried alive.  And you're in the world's noisiest tomb!  There's drilling and pounding and banging!  And it's not white noise either.  It's all really jarring,  like you're at a concert with the worst percussionists on the planet and you are forced to pay attention to them.

The MRI is an inescapable fact of post-cancer life.  It seems to me a positive result (more cancer) would just confirm what the doctors already suspect:  you had cancer, it went away for awhile and now it's back!  And you're probably gonna die, sooner than later!  The MRI just serves to confirm what I already know:  I don't have brain cancer, my neurosurgeon did excellent work (thank you HA!) all pictures and video that are periodically required (twice a year for five years) only serve to reconfirm what we pretty much know already and being in that machine scares the living daylights out of me!

I know that tumor is gone.  I know it will never come back,  I have more important things to do than seeing how long I can stand being buried alive (Another unfun aspect of the MRI?  If you freak out and falter you have to restart at the beginning. I've never faltered!  I refuse to start over! )

Chemistry to the rescue?  You know what they try to give the claustrophobically challenged?  Ativan!  For me that makes the seconds crawl by even slower.  Giving me even more ways to be even more anxious.  So put me down for a "no", strictly speaking.  By my calculation I have exactly one more MRI left, whoopie!

I'll hate it but get through it and will show no cancerous tumor growing in my brain

Phoenix, AZ in July IS Less Expensive! But Mostly It's Hot!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

I now count myself in the vast throng that is the San Francisco Giants fan base. I'm learning about "the game within the game" and the mellifluous voices of Kruk and Kuyp lulled me through some of my darkest days in Brain Cancerland (sounds a little like Candyland, doesn't it?  Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part).  Those guys became my friends, my summer rehab partners.  Being a fairly recent fan of  Baseball, I'm grateful to Ken Burns,  Ben Affleck and Kevin Costner for their baseball contributions,  I wear Giants gear on game days and I'll, watch any retrospective that features any Giant,  From any era.  The Giants 2014 ascension was nothing short of spectacular and completely predicted by me, I have no "feeling" about Giants' Baseball in 2015; I knew the Giants were going to win that trophy in 2014 like I know how many calories are in a Ghirardelli's Hot Chocolate (many, but they don't count and who cares anyway?).  Like so many events in 2014, I just knew!

PS has been instrumental in my growing understanding of America's game!  He has taken me to see games at the Stick and then in the Giant's "new" ballpark that's so perfect, it makes me smile when it's on TV!  PacBell Park  has everything!  Fabulous snack foods, microbrews, excellent wines, shopping!  And all of it, the Park, the restaurants, the kiosks selling hoodies and bobbleheads,all are dedicated to the Giants! Forget Disneyland.  PacBell Park might be the happiest place on earth!

Especially since I've been "disabled", I finally appreciate the subtle nuances in the game and the season itself, it literally goes all summer and into fall!

As we've all gifted other family members over the years, Giants' tickets are an old standby.  They're always appreciated and anyone can buy them!

So when PS saw that there were Giants tickets available at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, and they were playing the Diamondbacks he gifted freely, with my support!  What we didn't know until much later, or what I didn't know is that the Giants/DBacks game was in July.  In Phoenix!  

Phoenix is frigging hot in July!  It's like a Geico ad:  "Everybody knows that".  What is not commonly known is the quality and the quantity of the heat.  The heat doesn't relent for months!  You step off a plane at Sky Harbor and it's like walking into a convection oven.  You're blown away by it!  And it doesn't let up at night either!  Nine months out of twelve are perfect, ideal, but three months out of the year, every summer, Phoenix is a heat-blasted wasteland no amount of air conditioning can remedy.

Southwest heat in summer is as restrictive as Midwestern cold in winter!

"Respect the heat!"  And I do but I'm not sure PS does.  He seems to be convinced that lots of air-conditioned environments will trick our senses into tolerating 90+ days (and nights) of triple digit temperatures that the greater Phoenix area enjoys every summer

I know better.  But as a member of "Giants' Nation" (albeit an uncomfortable member!) I am committed to going inside "the Belly of the Beast" no matter how miserable it is!  Because that's what baseball fans do!  We go to games.

Bicycles - Recreation or Transportation? Both!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

My father-in-law is a man of few words in my experience, but last week he shared a rare story of his boyhood in Ireland and the subject of bicycles came up.  John had a wonderful (dry!) tale about how he acquired his first bike!  I found the story to be very compelling, very inspiring and very "American" (ordinary guy makes good), so I hope I can properly retell it here.

When John was a youth in Ireland he spent a pound to purchase  his first alternative transportation (a "rebuilt" bicycle, the original mode of transport, of course, being his legs).  According to both of my in-laws, back then it took a huge amount of picked potatoes to generate a pound.  But generate he did, and he purchased his first bike from a fellow named Peter Briody

When the "news" that John had bought a bike, for a pound (yes, this was news!) reached County Longford in general, and his cousin Peter Reilly in particular, Peter commented, "You bought a bike from  Peter Briody?  And you paid what?

John would not be dissuaded or deterred.

John rode that bike all the way to Dublin!  Where he bought a new bike

He moved to America and onto other means of transportation, but bicycles will always be an integral part of my life.  I ride 30 miles to nowhere every day!  I'll never drive again but I have every expectation to ride a bicycle again.  It/s in my DNA, I've always ridden a bike of some kind.\.  And I won't be deterred either.