Radiation whammies putting hurt on hammies but cancer treatments moving nicely outside of that

 

Is it normal to want to chew your own hamstrings off after radiation sessions to blast away a tumour on your L-1 vertebrae? Asking for a friend, mind you.

I kid. Largely. We're four sessions into our set of 10 designed do away with the cancer that's taken refuge in my back. The first three days featured about a two-hour stretch afterwards where it did feel like hamstrings were seizing up. I took some Advil before today's treatment and we're doing better with that.

I decline comment on the number of Advil I took. Yes, even to you mother. 

I spoke with a radiation techie who felt that the pain was tied to swelling in my lower back from the radiation. He said to monitor it, and report it of course if it began to get worse. It seem to set off any major alarm bells for him. 

Other than that, we're muddling along nicely. Sessions take about eight minutes from start to finish. It's about the same as when we had by the end of our 20-session turn for the original tumour in the T-2 in  2010.

The top photo is the current master blaster. The second photo is the version that dealt with the tumour 13 years ago. 

You get a on table and this new machine circles around you. Does the full lap.  I'm not sure if it takes a break on my lap for lunch. Stop that. That's mean.

The first machine brought you up on a table and just blasted away from one position, if I remember correctly.

I worked the first three days of this little episode but my plan is to take a few days off and rest up.We'll see what happens next. The newspaper has been understanding, as always. 

I felt well enough today to have lunch with Vancouver Canucks ratio play-by-play broadcaster Brendan Batchelor. (This shameless name drop brought to you by me being friends with Bif Naked.)

We get the weekend off from treatment and Monday, too, since B.C. Cancer counts that as its holiday for staff. I see a radiologist next week as well as getting blasted, so we'll have some more info then.

We do have a PET scan booked for January already. The hope has been that the 10-radiation sessions will be done with this bout with cancer. It took us six months in hospital and eight operations to get through Round 1 in 2010-11, and a stem cell transplant to get through Round 2 in 2017, so two-plus weeks seems mighty simple, if that's what it winds up being.

I'll check in again here next week.

Phasers get set on Friday and then we start Crushing sometime after that

I promised renowned Canadian recording artist and my close personal friend Bif Naked that I was going to cut back on my shameless name dropping in Crush The Tumour With Humour this time around. 

Really. Promised. I'm working on it.

Anyways, I had to call Don Taylor -- he of Sports Page fame and the much ballyhooed Donnie and Dhali show weekdays on CHEK 6 -- about something work related. He didn't pick up and I had to leave a message. And -- Don being Don -- he called back promptly.

Ewen: Hello. Thanks for tracking me down. How are you?

Taylor: I'm great Steve. And you?

Ewen: I'm great, too.

Taylor: I read your blog. You want to try that answer again? 

Yes, the cancer is back, which is why CTTWH has come out of the bullpen and gotten                                                                                                . Third time for both.

After going through eight surgeries, six months in hospital and learning to walk again the first time and a stem cell transplant the second time things sound much simpler for this episode. The tumour is in the L-1 vertebrae, We met with the radiologist on Monday and she believes that 10 sessions split over 10 straight week days should do away with culprit.

I have a scan Friday at B.C. Cancer where they'll aim the phasers and set everything up and then it'll be another few days while the scheduling department gets me on their list before they start blasting away.

The radiation caused problems back in Round 1, because it took out the T-2 vertebrae as well as the tumour and led to a full back collapse. The explanation this time around is that there's much more of the L-1 intact because they've caught things so early.

I'm going to see what Bif Naked thinks.

Stay tuned.

We're back Crushing for a third time, thanks to another tumour in my back

I was certain we'd come back waxing away on this blog one day. I was hoping that it wouldn't be this damn soon.

I have cancer. Again. We're Crushing The Tumour With Humour (CTTWH) for a third time, following previous Crushings in 2010 and 2017. Carol-Ann and I got word that my blood work was off over the summer. I had a Petscan on Sept. 28, and confirmation came from our hematologist Dr. Kerry Savage last Monday about a tumour on my L-1 vertebrate.

There's a radiation consult on Monday and we've been told to expect multiple zapping sessions designed to blast the thing to smithereens. 

I'm in no pain. I was in unfathomable, indescribable pain the first two times. Prognosis seems good here. Dr. Savage says that there's been tremendous strides made in chemotherapy in my type of cancer -- I don't display in a typical fashion, so right now I believe I'm being classified as a third occurrence of a Solitary Plasmacytoma although there were times that the smart people we leaning toward tagging all this as a Multiple Myeloma -- but the thought is that the radiation will work, give me a few clean years and we can use the chemo somewhere down the line.

I had radiation in 2010. It blasted out the tumour that had infiltrated my T-2. It also demolished what was left of my T-2 and caused my back to collapse, leading to a bunch of surgeries and hospital.

Yeah, that's crossed my mind here. We'll try to get more answers Monday.

The second tumour was in the left leg, just above my knee. It led to a stem cell transplant in July 2017. 

For now. I'll just roam around our house, belting out lines from The Firm's 1985 hit Radioactive. 

Got to concentrate
Don't be distractive
Turn me on tonight

DA DA DA DA DA

'Cause I'm radioactive
Radioactive

Radioactive

Radioactive

I know. I know. People of a certain vintage will suggest I should go with Imagine Dragon's 2012 Radioactive, but have you seen the video? A bunch of puppets, Lou Diamond Phillips and Alexandra Daddario from The Rock's Baywatch movie? No thanks. That's too much. 

This is my blog after stem cell transplant on Wednesday. Any questions?

This is the container my stem cells were delivered in.

This is the bathing area for my stem cells.

This is the nurse taking said stem cells from carrying container and placing them in bathing area.

This is the stem cells getting a bath.

This is Bill Wilms and Brendan Batchelor doing play-by-play on the whole procedure. (OK. Joking. That's the guys from an old Giants game at the Pacific Coliseum.)

I feel gross.

I feel blah. I feel bloated. 

I had my stem cell transplant yesterday to combat my second cancer occurrence and I'd love to tell you that I feel like a brand new guy and I'm super positive but I'm back on the steroids and they simply don't agree with me. I'm a cranky twit right now. And apparently I'm writing really, really, really long sentences.

And I do realize that there are a lot of people a lot worse off than me right now. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just trying to be honest.

I'm carrying five or six pounds of extra water weight already, and I've got three more days of this. Part of my bitchiness is that I lost 100 pounds in 2013-14, in large part because I knew that the cancer was coming back after the solitary plasmacytoma that showed up in my spine in 2010 and led to eight operations and six months in hospital. 

The B.C. Cancer people were blunt about a recurrence, and I knew I needed to better prepared.  I just don't like the idea of getting larger again. I was already up probably 15 pounds from where I want to be, but that probably shouldn't be too surprising since I've been largely inactive since the diagnosis of a tumour in my left leg in February and the fourth months of chemo that prepped me for the stem cell stuff this week.  

Luckily for me, a fantasy baseball pool buddy's wife has went through a similar procedure before and said she put on something like 15 pounds in the early stages of recovering from stem cell but dropped it quickly. I'm trying to stick to that.

I had a Hickman Line inserted in my chest on Friday. Thirty-minute procedure, local anesthetic. Wikipedia describes the Hickman as a "central venous catheter most often used for the administration of chemotherapy or other medications as well as for the withdrawal of blood for analysis."

It has three prongs dangling off it, so they draw out blood and add medication at the same time. It's more a hassle than painful right now, but I realize that all the poking and prodding would mess up my veins. And, to be blunt, my chest modelling days ended long ago.

They used Hickman for the major chemo blast on Tuesday that wiped out my immune system, and for the stem cell transplant yesterday. There was extensive prep with drugs to counterattack side effects yesterday, but the actual transplant took about 25 minutes. On one hand it was anticlimactic. On the other, a doctor and a nurse were by the bed the whole time, just in case there were issues. And they monitored me for two hours afterward.

The plan is to do the whole thing as an out patient, and they've told us that over 70 per cent of their patients manage to do that. They find the patient morale is better and they're less susceptible to infection, which is the major concern. (Lot of sick people in hospital that you can catch stuff from apparently.)
They did a stem cell harvesting a couple of weeks ago. I laid in bed for six hours, a big massive needle in my left arm and a smaller needle my right. They tell you beforehand that you should avoid moving your left arm. The needle is so big that I could not move my left arm. They take out blood, have a machine that collects some stem cells, and then put some blood back in. (I know. That's a terribly basic report. But I blanked out when I couldn't move my left arm. Sorry.)
For the record, the stem cell people have been amazing. The office staff have gone out of their way to make sure all the appointments fit with other parts of my schedule, and the nurses have been absolutely superb at making sure we understand exactly what's going on before it starts going on. We've been so lucky since being first diagnosed in 2010. I know you see a lot of bad stories in the newspapers (damn media) about hospital care, but our experience has been first rate throughout. 

And Carol-Ann has been Carol-Ann, which is to say she's captaining our little team perfectly. No surprise. I know. She props me up and sends me out into the world every day, feeling like we've got this handled. She's the best. She's buffed up the house, with help from the likes of our good friend Susie. It's never looked better. And Carol-Ann has Googled and read and researched and there's a long list of can do's and can't do's and I'm going to abide by them all since I know what's good for me.

We've been told a couple of times that I shouldn't start feeling really crappy until the weekend. We've been told it's like having the flu or a general malaise. Worse case? Your mouth gets infected and swollen and you have trouble eating. I have a mouth wash that I'm swigging twice a day now to try to fight that off. There's also a good chance that I might need a blood transfusion or two. We drive in to VGH every other day for the next three weeks to a month to get tested.

Hopefully that's it. And hopefully I'm not a cranky moron the next time I blog.

Cancer sucks. Steroids suck. Newspapering sucks. At least I married well.

I'm on the juice. And it's not going well. In conjunction with my chemo treatment designed to evict a tumour from the left leg, I'm on a heavy dose of Dexamethasone, which the good people at Wikipedia describe as a a type of corticosteroid medication that has anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant effects. I'll be on it for four-day stretches over the course of this little journey, and I've been told it's a hefty load of drugs. My chemo nurse looked at my dosage and said, "Oh...that's a lot." The pharmacist at the B.C. Cancer Agency warned my wife that I may not sleep a single wink when I first started taking it at dinner time on Chemo Day 1 on Tuesday. I did get four or five hours that night. Good for me. It makes me edgy. It makes me cranky. I had a phone conversation with former Province columnist Cookie Gilchrist this week where I believe I set a land-speed record for cuss words. I'm not usually so foul mouthed. I don't like it. I'm trying to slow my mind down and take a breath before talking, in a bid to keep from embarrassing myself and especially Carol-Ann. I was on a heavy course of steroids during that first cancer occurrence with the tumour in my back in 2010-11, and I was similar, much to my chagrin. It got better when I could start to get in the swimming pool and wearing out some of the ornery energy. Right now, I have 24 staples in my left leg from the stabilizing rod they implanted in a surgery two Wednesdays ago, and I see the surgeon on Tuesday in hopes of getting them out. That should help. I hope. Carol-Ann probably hopes even more. She continues to captain our little Crush team with grace and courage. I punted well past my coverage. I know it. I do feel better than I felt in 2010-11, when I was hospitalized for six months. I need to keep that in mind. I'm actually trying to work a little. It's helpful to the newspaper at this stage. Bluntly, it's mostly me being selfish, trying to give my mind something else to think about. With chemo, infection is a major concern, so I'm trying to stay out of public places for all but short stretches, so I'm doing stuff over the phone. It's hard. Stupid hard. I wanted to cover the high school girls basketball provincials last week. I didn't get out of the hospital until Friday and I wasn't nearly mobile enough to go to Saturday's finale. I've thought about going to the boys basketball provincials this week but I don't know if that's a good plan for me health wise. I feel rotten about it, though. With the way things are going in the newspaper business, we've hardly been able to give the two tournaments any coverage. In case you missed it, the parent company to the Province and Sun announced Friday that they wanted to lay off 54 people from the Vancouver products, including 29 from the editorial department. It's crazy. I'm still not emotionally over Jim Jamieson and Gord McIntyre being transferred out of sports to news a few years ago. Jim's retired now. He took a buyout. We lost another 20-plus people in the past few months to buyouts, including sports editor Jonathan McDonald, soccer reporter Marc Weber and high school/university reporter Howard Tsumura. Howard hired me at the NOW Newspaper in 1989. He loves newspapers more than anyone I've ever met. He was my first mentor. I helped Marc get hired. He was at our wedding. He took me to a radiation session back in 2010, he snuck into pre-op for one of eight operations during that first hospital stay. I talked to J-Mac often three or four times a day when he was my boss. Those guys love the business. The fact that they think it's time to try to something else kills me. It's so depressing. I'm still smitten with newspapers. I want to stay. I want to fight. I loved the Province and Sun as a kid. I ate them up. I grew up reading Tony Gallagher and Jim Taylor and Archie McDonald and Iain MacIntyre. (Shameless cheap shot at I-Mac, a current colleague who is only a few years older than I am.) I want to stay and fight for those guys. We've brought in some top-shelf young guys in the past few years, like Nick Eagland and Dan Fumano and Patrick Johnston. I want to stay and fight for them. I want to retire as a Province/Sun guy. That's my goal right now. I need to be realistic, though. I need another 20 years. The business may not last. I need to at least be open to other options. At the plus side, I'm not dwelling COMPLETELY on cancer. The next chemo is Tuesday. We'll see how that goes. My understanding is we've got three or four months of chemo, and then likely a stem cell transplant.

Yes, that's a rod in my leg and, yes, I'm also happy to see you

Just got home from VGH. Being told that the Wednesday surgery to implant a rod in my left leg went well.
The care we received, once again, was amazing. The give-a-damn of the medical community in the Lower Mainland continues to astonish both Carol-Ann and I.
Surgery scares me more than anything. Yes, even more than cancer. I don't hide it at all, but our surgeon -- Dr. Peter O'Brien -- and our anesthesiologist -- Dr. Jacqueline Trudeau -- went out of their way to try to calm me down. Dr. Trudeau suggested a spinal (yes, Scott Rintoul...you can call me Spinal Tap for the time being) instead of the full pull and I found things a little less daunting.
We see our oncologist -- Dr. Kerry Savage -- on Monday to go over what's next on the docket, but I believe right now that we'll spend about 10 days healing, get the staples out of the leg and then have one radiation session before starting chemo/stem cell transplants/infusions.
The rod -- technically a "gama spike" -- was brought into play with fears that the treatment to knock the tumour out of my left leg would have left it susceptible to breaking.
My one concern remains that the rod in my leg is stainless steel, while the six rods in my back from our eight surgeries in 2010-11 are titanium. Will the other multiple hardware patients out there mock me because of various metals in my body? It just doesn't feel fashionable or trendy.

Cancer's back, but it better not get comfortable because it's getting evicted

I have a surgery some time this week to put a pin in my left leg. Hopefully it doesn't clash with the rods in my back.
The cancer is back. Multiple myeloma. I had been in remission for six years, but when I was diagnosed with a solitary plasmacytoma in 2010 we were told that there was a good chance that it would return. We received recurrence rates of anywhere between 30 and 70 per cent then.
Carol-Ann and I both understood the possibilities.
This week's surgery (likely Wednesday) is to stabilize the leg, with worries that treatment (chemo and infusion and stem cell) will leave it susceptible to breaking if something isn't done. Chemo, right now, is slated to start March 7.
It will be my ninth surgery, following eight on my back in 2010-11 after radiation led to the collapse of my t-2 vertebrae. I have six rods and a bunch of other shrapnel. We did six months in hospital, including about two and half months at G.F. Strong,  a rehab hospital where they started teaching me to walk again.
Crazy.
This is why we trained after getting healthy from the first cancer. This is why we got a trainer, Derek Baker. This is why we have dropped 100 pounds. We wanted to be ready to fight again.
The prognosis is good. Dr. Kerry Savage has said that, being in remission for six years, makes her think that whatever she throws at this cancer will send it packing.
It's still rotten. I'm angry and I'm terrified and I'm confused. I feel bad for Carol-Ann.
Dr. Savage has been great. We found out on Monday. I had my first of surely several meltdowns on Wednesday, wondering far too much if I was in jeopardy of losing the leg altogether. I sent her an email. She got right back to me. She was decisive, saying that it wasn't happening, that it wasn't that kind of situation.
I buy what she's selling. She diagnosed the original cancer in 2010, and she was blunt and to the point then, and she's been that this time, too.
This is a good place to be sick. That's what part of what I'm rallying Everyone we've dealt in the medical profession has been a rock star. The give-a-damn of these people is astounding. They're angels.
They seem to have picked this up early. I had elevated protein markers in blood work in August and December. That led to an appointment with Dr. Savage.
My knee had been bothering since October, but I had been toying with the idea of running a 5K. I had been training in the pool largely. I had been playing a little ball hockey.
The knee morphed into the quad in the past few weeks, after my initial appointment with Dr. Savage. We tried massage therapy and physio. The physio diagnosed it as a strained quad.
No such luck.
Stay tuned. Looks like we'll have reason to update this blog more frequently.