Cancer hit first. I plan on hitting harder.

This is a long one. And probably pretty boring. The short version goes like this:
They sent me in for an MRI today in an attempt to rule out brain involvement as an explanation for the rise in bHCG numbers. Turns out that they couldn’t rule it out. They found a 1.7-centimeter tumor in the frontal lobe of my brain. I have an appointment to see another oncologist and a neurosurgeon tomorrow to talk about gamma knife surgery, which might be scheduled for Friday. There’s some chance the brain tumor is the only reason for the rise in the numbers, but I’m having CT scans done on Wednesday to see what else is going on. Or not going on, hopefully.

I’ll try to update again tomorrow after I talk to the doctors.

On another note, Emeline and Egan are tongue-tied. They’re having the little things underneath their tongues cut tomorrow at the recommendation of the ENT doctor. It’s a very minor procedure, but please pray for them tomorrow morning. They will be sedated (though not under general anesthesia), so please pray that they won’t have any adverse effects to the sedation and for a speedy recovery. Thanks.

Aimee and I got to have lunch with a friend downtown this afternoon. When we were done, we went up to the Sanders\Wingo El Paso offices to drop in and say hi. It was great to see everyone we had time to talk with before we left to pick up the girls from school. Thanks to everyone who took a minute or two away from their desks (I swear that’s all it was, Bob… Just a minute or two) to talk with us. My apologies to all the folks we missed. We’ll be back.

Anyway, aside from thanking everyone at the office for chatting with us this afternoon, I wanted to post tonight for another reason. It’s impossible to ignore the love and support that I’ve been offered from every angle throughout this whole thing. I never could have imagined that family and friends and people I’ve never even met would care this much about me. And while I hadn’t forgotten the support that everyone has offered, I had forgotten the intensity of it.

I could never thank any of you enough to adequately express the gratitude I feel for all that you’ve said and done and prayed. I’ve done nothing to deserve any of this. But thank you. You keep me going.

p.s. I may have been in the El Paso offices of Sanders\Wingo today, but they’re not the only folks from the agency who’ve been with me in this thing. Everyone at this amazing company has shown me their love and support in countless ways, from raising money to help us pay medical bills to mowing our lawn and decorating our front porch with flowers. And much, much more. AND that only includes the stuff that I know about (and that I can remember… that first month or so is a little bit cloudy from the liver pain and the morphine). I’m sure there’s tons more that’s gone on behind the scenes. Thank you all. I’m blessed to be surrounded by such incredible people.

I have a bunch of videos to get up here on the blog, but I haven’t had the time to import them onto my computer and get them all exported and then sorted out on vimeo, but I wanted to quickly let everyone know what’s been going on.

Today’s dose was the third week in the second cycle of Taxol and Gemcitibine. Each cycle is, in theory, four weeks long. Three weeks of chemo and then one week off. They made me skip the third week in the first cycle because my white blood cell count was so low, so I did the break week when I would have been receiving chemo.

This chemo hasn’t been too bad in terms of side effects. The biggest thing is that it aggravates the nerve pain I have leftover from the surgery in Indianapolis. I can’t stand still for very long without getting a decent amount of pain in my lower back and left leg. Sitting down with my feet up seems to help a lot, and the doctor has given me a prescription for something to block the nerve pain and then some regular painkillers as well. I try to take them as infrequently as possible, but I need them occasionally just to make sure I can stay up off the couch.

The other thing is fatigue. I’m still spending more time than I used to in bed or lying down. I wish that I could be more active with the kids, but if I don’t get the rest I need, the nerve pain gets really bad and triggers these migraines where I get a really intense pain in the front of my skull, experience some weirdness with my vision, and end up throwing up (so far once on the side of the road in Kansas and twice in the desert behind the movie theater here in El Paso!). Once I get the migraine, I’m in pretty bad shape for the next three or four days.

And lastly, I have a pretty disgusting, acne-looking rash on my face, scalp, neck, chest and back. So that’s cool.

All-in-all, though, not really that bad. Especially in light of the fact that it looks like the chemo is already working! Dr. Einhorn told us to expect the tumor markers to rise until at least January, and that we’d have to do at least two full months (and maybe more) before we could determine whether or not it would be worth proceeding with the full course. But they drew blood last week to check my tumor markers and (you have have seen this on twitter), they’re down! The last time I had them checked in Indianapolis, my beta HCG (the only marker that’s really been out of normal range since sometime during the first course of treatment) was at 14K. Last Monday, they measured it at 496! So in spite of Dr. Einhorn’s prediction that they would be up right now, the levels are down. And way down! I still haven’t had a chance to speak with him about it and get his opinion, but Dr. Valilis (my oncologist here in El Paso) is encouraged. He, like me, is ready to continue being aggressive as we can be. We’d both like that number to come all the way down into the normal range (0-5 IU/ml).

I think the only other news right now is upcoming events. I’ll be in Brownwood, Texas this weekend with my friend Noel Kerns for a showing of our photography, next Thursday is the Fight for Feuille Benefit Concert featuring the band Portable models in Chicago, and next weekend is the Phoenix Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon. For more details on the concert or the run, please click here. Thanks!

Love you all. I’ll have something new up soon(ish). Promise.

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated, and I’m sure that there’s information that I’ve forgotten to include in this video. Make sure to let me know what questions you have in the comments. Thanks. I’ll post again soon with answers soon. Promise.

Also, in case you don’t already know, you can sign up for email updates by typing your email into the box over on the right underneath the twitter updates. This is a different system from the CarePages updates, and if you want to be notified via email when there’s something new here, you have to submit your email address again. Sorry about the redundancy. And just so you know, the text from each post will show up in your email, but you have to click through to the blog to see the videos. Thanks.