Mixed bag!

After chemo last week, no. 5, Carol and I took off on a road trip to New Mexico. We were to meet her sisters, the McGuire sisters, in Santa Fe for 4 days over the balloon festival. We picked a beautiful time of the year to travel, the leaves were changing color and the colors were so rich.

We discovered that by driving down the eastern side of Colorado we could miss the traffic of the Fort Collins, Denver and Colorado Springs corridor. We drove down highway 71 and saw maybe one car per mile. Much nicer than all that traffic!!! Although, there was a constant fight with the GPS lady, she must be paid by the Interstate system, as she was constantly trying to redirect us to the Interstate. But we managed to fight her off.

On our arrival in Albuquerque we had drinks with Linda and Andrew Yianakkis. Carol was a good sport and listened while we talked mostly about martial arts history and culture. It must have been a good discussion as 2 ½ hours went by in the blink of an eye. Great seeing you guys again.

The next morning I woke up with a very upset stomach. I wasn't supposed to get nausea from the Pemitrexid! I spent Thursday in bed, Friday and Saturday also. The girls had a great time eating out at all of their favorite places (El Pinto, La Fonda, Tomacita's), shopping and seeing the sights. Saturday morning they got up early and went out and watched the balloon festival, I relocated to the couch and watched the balloons on TV.

Sunday I felt better, but also felt like I had caught a cold. I had been so ill, that I had a hard time sorting out the symptoms, beyond upset stomach. I was coughing a lot in the morning and having a hard time catching my breath after taking a shower. Carol was constantly checking my temperature, it was above normal, but did not meet the requirements to head to the emergency room.

We checked out of the condo on Sunday morning and headed for Colorado, our goal was to look at some mining and railroad history. We stopped in Chama for lunch, Carol had some Mexican food, said it was the best of the trip. I had a hamburger. We spent the night in Durango.

I was up most of the night coughing so was not interested in taking a train ride the next morning, “the Durango-Silverton Railroad” has an all day trip through the mountains – been on my bucket list for many years. The front at the hotel told us not to wear white as you will come back gray from smoke... good thing we didn't make it to “all aboard”, my lungs wouldn't have made it.

We hung around for a while and toured the train museum and then decided to head for Cripple Creek another mining town and the site of the Molly Kathleen Mine. On the way we got caught in a snowstorm, there was about 4 inches of snow. As we came through the pass we came across tractor trailers jack knifed in the road, cars in the ditch, a horse trailer on it's side, it was a mess. We had a lane through the mess, the road way was slippery, everyone was going 5 miles an hour when they were moving, it took us the better part of two hours to move 5 miles.

We decided to give the highway department some time to clean the roads, we stopped in Salida for the night.

The following morning we woke up to chilly, bright sunshiny day. We continued our trip to Cripple Creek. We stopped first at the Molly Kathleen Mine and rode the skip 1,000 feet down into the mine and spent an hour walking through the mine with a guide. Fascinating slice of history! We were surprised when the guide told us that the mine was the number 3 attraction in Colorado. Then we looked around the Heritage Center and got another big slice of history from the area.

From there we drove to Leadville for some more history. We stayed in an old hotel, recently refurbished, in the down town area. Lot of antiques. The museum that we wanted to see was closed. It was getting late in the season and a lot of places were closed. As I was still feeling a bit under the weather we decided to call it quits and head for home. We angled for our new favorite highway, #71, through Colorado and by late evening we were home.

Home, sweet, home.

Chemo #3

I didn't sleep well on Sunday night, Monday morning. I know it was the anticipation of another round of chemo. I slept fitfully. I didn't dwell on the chemo itself, I thought of judo all night long.

We got on the road about 9:00 am for the trip into Rapid City. I had a bottle of Mocha Smoothie Barium something or another that I was supposed to drink at 9:40 am for a CT scan at 10:40 am. I had previously tried the vanilla flavored one, which was awful, the Mocha was better but only marginally so. It took me about 10 minutes to swallow about a pint of the thick liquid. We got to the hospital, got checked in, and escorted to the Imagining Waiting Room, and shortly thereafter shunted into the CT. They got the line installed in one wrist, laid down and the scan began, it takes only about 20 minutes for the entire procedure.

Then we had some time before a blood draw was to be taken so we went out in the parking lot and checked out the solar eclipse with a pair of paper plates with a pin hole in one... it was about 10;15 and there was about 25% of the sun in eclipse. We drove to lunch at Arby's and after that did some shopping at the drugstore. As we were coming out of the store a nice SUV pulled up, window down, a young woman, mid 30s was waving a pair of solar glasses, saying, “Have you seen the eclipse? Do you have a pair of glasses? You don't, then you really need to see the eclipse through these glasses.” So we borrowed her glasses and looked at the sun, then I showed her my two plates and she was pretty impressed. It was a short, pleasant meeting in the parking lot with a complete stranger.

We returned to the hospital parking lot, it was about 11:30 am and there were a lot of people milling around in the parking lot, obviously enjoyed the spectacle of the eclipse. Our 97% eclipse was due at 11:50 am. As I was standing outside the car with my paper plates we were approached by a couple of guys and they struck up a conversation. They were taken with the paper plate method of viewing the eclipse. Then a guy came over with a welding helmet that he shared with everyone in our small group. Then a women came by with a pair of glasses that she gleefully passed around the now small group of people standing there. It was so nice to see that everyone was exited about the science of celestial movements.

The eclipse came and slowly started its decline. We were drawn back into the Cancer Center for laboratory work, a visit with the doctor and my third infusion.

The doctor's visit went well. The laboratory tests were good. The CT scan showed that my tumor had either remained the same size or was shrinking slightly, anyway both of those were good news. After today's infusion there will be one more infusion with the Carbo Platin drug and then after that I will be receiving only one chemotherapy drug, Prematrexid as a maintenance drug, again every 21 days for the next 2 to 3 years.

After the first infusion I got pretty sick on the 3^rd and 4^th days. It really feels like a bad hangover, except that I missed the fun part the night before. I got out of bed but didn't get off the couch all day. They had given me a schedule for taking an anti-nausea drug, two a day for 6 days. The pharmacist advised me when I picked up the drug to “stay ahead of it.” We drove on the 5^th day to Pierre, SD and spent the night, if I felt better on Thursday we would drive to Fargo for my 50^th year class reunion... we made it to the class reunion.

For the 2^nd infusion the doctor modified the anti-nausea drug regime to 4 pills a day and I felt much better, not 100% but maybe 90%, I was able to read a book and felt like getting up and moving around. The “hangover” is still there but it is a lighter one. The hangover, with pills or not, starts tapering off after a couple of days and lasts about a week. Then I feel pretty good for about two weeks.

Third infusion was nothing different than the previous two.

I am still dealing with the new normal... coughing, especially when talking, laughing, getting excited or changing positions, like from sitting to laying. I am short of breath, walking 5 miles seems like a distant dream, I can barely walk up the hill from the underside of the deck. I did go rock climbing but had to hang on the rope after 20 feet of climbing to catch my breath and again at the top of the rock. New normal sucks but not much I can do about it.

We bought a used riding lawnmower so Carol can mow the lawn easily. It is too dusty for me to cut the grass and I have to wear a mask if I am going to do any gardening.

But not going to complain too much, the alternative is much worse.

All you all take care of yourselves.

Love,

Van