6-12-10

I thought it was time to let you know that I still exist. I've been in Carlsbad for an Annual meeting and then I headed for Phoenix on Tuesday. I had some things I had to do and some people I had to see. By the way, the real estate market is still in terrible shape. Most of the homes are upside down unless you bought in the early 90's and I did. Most of the ones that were bought in the 2000's are as much as 1/2 there original price. It might be a good time to buy, but not a good time to sell.

From Phoenix I went to the Las Vegas area, and it ism no better real estate wise. The strip is still there and there were a bunch of California people driving to Las Vegas from LA etc. I stopped to see a friend who has a new business near Las Vegas and he thinks things will be good for him shortly. Now only time will tell, we'll have to see how them wind blows.

As for me, my radiation recall has returned. I've got the medication, so it should get better in about a week. No way to check my BP and HR but my BS has been OK I'll keep you informed

I was on the computer at the CBI and there is a 20 minute limit and I had been on much longer than that and a lady ask me to please let her use it for just a few minutes. Being on the board, it's not a good idea to tell her no.

The entire family will be here in less than a week. It's Caila's 18th birthday on the 18th of June. Her golden birthday. It's the only time in her life that it will happen. It's also the only time in her life that she will turn 18. So any way we are going to celebrate.

Love to all


Tom

6-02-10

Happy Birthday Sharon, she has finally caught up with me, we are both the same age for the next 3 months. As she said today, she got the best birthday gift she has ever had. We found out today that I have only one Sarcoma, left on my lungs. It is close to the surface and should be able to be gotten with a scope and a camera. When I met with Dr. Rushing today he was very matter of fact, and called me a survivor once again. He examined me and said everything look just fine. He then went and looked at the CT Scan. When he came back in, he said I have some very good news. There is only one Sarcoma on your lung, and it has shrunk in size from the last scan. He then went on to explain what that could mean. As he said, they will not know if it is entirely dead at this point, or what % of the sarcoma is dead and what part alive. He also explained, for the first time, that the sarcoma on my arm was actually different than what he had at first thought. Sarcoma's are the rarest of all cancers, but there are still many different kinds of sarcoma's. The reason they stopped giving me chemo the first time was that they could not stop the sarcoma from growing. The chemo they decided to use was not the best one for the kind of sarcoma it turned out to be. The one that I have on my lung is as rare as hen's teeth. The surgeon was actually excited to be able to remove the sarcoma so she could have it analysed and tested to see what chemo's work on it, and which ones do nothing. She told us they never get to see this kind of sarcoma. I've known I was always special, but I didn't know how rare I was. This whole thing has been an experiment I now find out. It was a new use of already tried chemo's, but they were administered differently and in higher amount than normal. They took me down as low as I could go. I found out today that there was no way I could have had any more chemo.

I still do not know what happened to the other sarcoma's that were first visible on the scan. As Dr Rushing said, I know what we can do, I still do not know what God wants to do. He explained that they have not been able to kill sarcoma's under normal circumstances. They have killed just about every kind of cancer in the lab, but not in a human. I only know this, I will never underestimate the power of prayer. I know I had a tremendous amount of people praying for me. I even had a lady at the grocery tell me she was praying for me. To my knowledge, I have never met this lady. I was checking out and she was in front of me, and as she was ready to go and I was getting things out of my basket, she touched my hand and just whispered, I praying for you sir, good luck with your cancer. The ladies at the bread store told me Tuesday that they were all praying for me.

The other prayer that has come almost true it the fact that Maura's old roommate that owns the Boston Celtics, has offered me and Maura a ticket to tomorrows game. I must now some how get on the early flight out of Fort Wayne to Dallas so I can get into San Diego early enough to catch the 6pm game in LA. Now I still need prayers for that to happen. I know it is not all that important, but it sure makes a guy feel special. I knew there was a reason I was always nice to her when she would come to visit during college with Maura. She has been a great friend to Maura and her family.

As for me, my BP was a little high today at the Dr's office 140/78 and my HR 76 This morning it was 123/65 but my HR was also 76. My BS was a little high again at 156. I feel so much better, I drove both ways, 250 miles today. I did happen to get a hours nap after I got home at pm. It's now 8:30 and I have to o pack. This might be my last blog for a while. It depends on when I can get on a computer in Carlsbad. Love to all. Tom

6-01-10

June 1st., do you believe it. I got up early today, 6:30am and took a long hot shower and got dressed and headed for the bread store. It is the first time I have done the bread order in about three months. I had to get five racks of bread, so it was one of our larger orders. If you get there around 8am there is usually only restaurants there fighting for the good stuff. This time there was a church that gives the bread to the deserving people of their church. There was one of their guys on the floor kneeling in prayer in front of the white bread. I sort of joked and said something funny, at least I thought it was funny, and the other guy said he is giving thanks for the abundance of bread today. I wanted to say if he gets out of the way, there will be twelve less loaves to pray over. I've seen these guys before, but have never seen the guy who was praying. He seemed to be one of those over the top religious guys that prays over anything. When they couldn't find the kaiser rolls I wanted him to pray for me. Not really, I just asked one of the girls if they had any in the back. Thank God, they did. So I knelt down and said my prayer, paid and left.

My next stop was the butcher shop to get some beef for the beef Manhattans. Believe it or not, beef has gone up 20% in a week. Pork went up 40% a week or so ago. We will definitely have to raise prices if this keeps up. It's ok if it is just up for a couple of weeks and then comes back down, but this is crazy.

By the way I was able to walk and do all the lifting in the bread store. At the butcher shop I had the boy lift the 50 lbs of beef, but I did walk the entire distance back to the back of the store. It is a very large place, they have an electric cart, but I walked today. I then took of to the Essen House and was able to walk all the halls of the Manor House. I have not been able to even walk from the restaurant to the nurses station for at least the last two months. Today I was able to walk the entire circumstance of the place. I feet hurt, but I at least have the energy to do the walking. I'm sure that by the time I get back from Carlsbad I should be much stronger and able to walk much further and faster.

My BP today 123/56 my HR 68 and BS 171. It was a bit high today, because Brian brought home some cheddar cheese pop corn and I had some before bed time last night. Brian made me do it.

I'm all pack and ready to go to Carlsbad. Tomorrow we head for Indy early for a 10:30 appointment with Dr. Rushing and a 11:30 with the surgeon. We will know what's what tomorrow and I will let you all know tomorrow night because I will be busy Thursday on my way to Carlsbad.

Thaks all yolks, Tom

5-30-10

Well the 500 was a very interesting race with Dario Franchitti winning it all. This is his second win and he led most of the way for those of you who don't follow such events. Helio was second most of the race, but stalled his car in the final pit stop and lost 10 places coming out. My friend Arie had a young driver Mike Conway who actually got to lead the race for 15 laps until he had to pit and everyone else had already pitted. It doesn't really matter, what you can always say is: I let the Indy 500 for 15 laps in 2010.

I was talking to my brother David and two years he an I and Larry were guests of Arie for the time trials. He was working with an other young man named Alex Loyd. That year he ended his race right in front of Arie's suite in a crash coming around turn four. Today, Mike Conway ended his day in almost the same position, against the wall and damn near destroyed his entire car. Fortunately for both of them, neither was hurt badly. Alex Loyd finished 3rd. today and Danica Patric finished 5th. That's her best finish to date. What is crazy, is that she was so upset early with how the car was handling it didn't even look like she would finish. I've been interested in the 500 since 1958 and have come to understand that it is all won in the pits. You can have the best car going, but if they mess up in the pits you can loose 10 positions in 5 seconds. That's just one little mistake. When you consider they are traveling 100 yrds in seconds, it doesn't take long to loose a lot of precious time.

As for me today, I got up very early and could not sleep past 5:30 so I went to early mass and went to the store for Sharon and came home and tried to do some more work around the house and yard. My BP was high today for some reason 147/80 but my HR was OK with 81. My BS was 121. I feel pretty good, but still get tired way to fast and have to be careful about dizziness.

Well my beautiful wife wants the computer, so I'll talk to you tomorrow. Love to all, Tom

5-29-10

Now this is what a normal day should be closer too. Up at 6:30 and take a nice long shower. Take my time getting dressed. Go down and see all the stuff on the computer. 7:45 head to Sam's and the meat market to pick up some supplies for the Essen House. 9am arrive at the Essen House. Help Sharon get the meat out of the car etc., still not able to do much lifting. I did open the doors for her though. 9:15 help myself to the breakfast buffet. I'm just starting to get my taste buds back. There are some things that I can taste and they taste pretty normal, but sweet and salty thing are still strange. I can eat cold stuff like ice cream with sugar, etc. but I still don't like the taste of chocolate. And I love the taste of Chocolate.

Next thing Sharon had for me to do was to go to GFS and get some makings for the salad bar. So off to GFS some 20 miles away and almost across the street from where I got the meat this morning. After getting the GFS stuff I wanted to go to Lowe's and get some chlorine tabs for when the pool opens this week. So I ask this CUSTOMER SERVICE lady if she can help me and of course she said she could. So I took off for where she pointed me to and of course it was not there. I then asked the next CS person where to find the chlorine and was sent to the garden center. At the garden center they wanted to send me back to where I just came. Finally I remembered at the other Lowe's closer to my house the chlorine is behind the garden furniture not the garden plant area. So off I went to the garden furniture area and was able to locate the chlorine, but no tabs. It has now been about 30 minutes and I'm getting plenty tired walking around. I finally found another CS rep and asked if they could check to see if they had chlorine tabs. I finally left 20 minutes later after not hearing back for the helpful CS rep.

Now I'm sure most of you would have given up hunting for chlorine tabs at this point, but not this old fart. I went to my Lowe's and went to one of my CS people and he got Jim and Jim went right over and got the tabs and brought them to me. Then when I tried to check out there was something wrong with the computer and so I stood there for another 20 minutes while they called the bank card center to see what the problem was. Now after entering my credit card number by hand, I was ready to get the hell home.

After making my lunch at about 12:30 I sat on the couch until about 3pm and then decided to go out side in the pool area and start setting out all the pool furniture. It took a lot longer to do that job than I remember. I could get a swing out and then sit down and take a break. Get the pillows out and sit down. Get a table out and find the legs and put the table together and sit down. Finally about 4pm Sharon came out and said she was going back to the Essen House. I then completed getting all the furniture set up and decided to give the weeds one more squirt of weed killer. When I feed the birds in the winter, I find that all that stuff is, is weed seed. It causes more damn weeds and stuff than you can count.

Now that's the kind of day I used to be able to do. However, I was so shaky that I decided not to cook for myself, but to go out to eat at a new Chinese Buffet. Not a good idea, it was worthless. So now I'm home and waiting for the LA game to start to see if I'm going to see the LA vs Celtics game or the LA vs Suns. I don't care which one, I just want to see one of them in person. I can go to Phoenix if I must, but I would much rather see LA vs Celtics.

As I said to a friend today, it's nice to have friends in high places. It's also nice to know the Grossbecks. And my daughter Maura, who would give up her seat for her old man. Since I'm the one that stayed up until midnight watching the game last night, I get the ticket. Anyway no matter what happens, I want the Celtics to win again.

That's all for now, Love ya, Tom

5-27-10

It has just been a year since I started this blog. That is when I found out I had a Sarcoma and that I would have to have surgery to have it removed. I also was informed that there was no actual cure for the cancer, but that they have had some success with removal and with chemo and radiation I might just beat it. They said that I had a 80% chance that I will still be alive in 12 years if all goes well. They then explained that if it came back, the one place I didn't want it was in my lungs. They also felt that they had all the Sarcoma's when they did the surgery. It looks like they did get all the cancer in my left arm, the problem became the fact that is spread to my lungs.

When I saw Dr. Adhami in Fort Wayne the second time in January, he admitted that he was very surprised to see me this soon. He did again explain that Dr Rushing was still the best doctor that I could be seeing for a Sarcoma. He then went into the treatment that Dr. Rushing was prescribing for the treatment. He said that it would be rough on me and that it was somewhat experimental in it's amount and duration of infusion. He said that they would probably do 6 rounds of chemo and then an operation on my lungs. As of today we did 5-1/2 treatments.

When I went in today, I was told that I would not be given the final chemo treatment. My hemoglobin was too low to get the hard chemo treatment any more. I had to get two leader's of blood. B-Negative is my blood type and they had to order it from the Red Cross. Since I have not given blood since the 80's they asked if I knew people that may have donated blood that I could request their blood. I said that I didn't know any personally, but that I was a Harley rider and I know that they give blood each year and maybe they would do it for me. Within a few minutes they came back and said they were preparing the blood for me.

I'm not sure who gave me the blood, but thanks to whom ever did it and I will say a prayer for all of those that may have done it for me. The other thing that happened while I was getting blood is the fact that the American Cancer Society provided food for all of us that were receiving blood and other medications. I have always resisted donating money to many of the different charities because you never know what they are doing with the funds and how much they spend on the administration of the funds. The young lady said that all the food in donated and that it is volunteer that deliver the food to the hospitals and place like the infusion center. I will be much more generous the next time they call.

Well here is what going to happen. Tomorrow I go to get the CT Scan at 10:00 but first I go to the chemo center to have the access my port and draw the blood that Dr. Rushing will need on June 2nd. They need to see how my hemoglobin count has come up and to check in general how my blood counts are. If all is well I will go to see the surgeon that remove the Sarcoma's from my lungs. According to the nurse at Dr Adahmi's office it should be at least a month before they would do any surgery. I have an appointment at Adahmi's office set for June 21st. when I get back from Carlsbad. Again that is to see how my blood counts are doing and to see if I need any more blood. She felt that if I do the working out etc. that I should be fine. She said that all my BP 123/72 and HR 84 etc was very positive indication that everything was going to be fine on the 21st.

As for the blog, I stopped the blog once because I thought I was cured so to speak. At this point I don't know that fact. I will be slowing down on my reporting because I will be in Carlsbad and Arizona and will have little to know ability to write when I'm in Arizona. I will be staying at friends homes and don't know what there computer situation is. I do know that one of them has now friggen computer. I will jump on when possible and there is something interesting to tell. If someone knows how to make the blog tell when I have reported something, let me know. Until then thanks for everything and I will hope to see many of you soon. Love ya Tom

5-26-10

Today I got a post on FB from a old friend and he was talking about a website that was for banning demonstrations at soldiers funerals. Before I had my cancer I was given the opportunity to ride in a Patriot Gard ride to a fallen Hero's funeral. As it turned out I had my picture in the Fort Wayne paper as I drove under a large American flag that had been hung across the street. Believe me I saved the picture, but with many of the things I wanted saved, I put it somewhere for safe keeping, and now I can locate it. I was very lucky in the early 60's and Sharon and I had three children and I was never contacted for the Service. However, with my father having served in the Big One, I joined the American Legion as a son of a vet and have been active until my cancer. The other thing that happened was that they were forced to close the swimming pool because the stated got all over them for the Cherry Masters that kept the club in the Black all these years. They now play Texas Holdum, but in the same area where there used to be a pool. I haven't been there lately, but it still does not lessen my feelings about our armed forces, and the hero's that protect what we have.

Tomorrow is fast approaching, I still have the same feelings. Let's get this damn thing behind me. I ordered some special donuts for the nurses tomorrow. I wanted to have a special desert, did I spell that wrong?, made, but our poor restaurant manager is down with a bad back. She too has to get a CT scan to see what may be the problem. The nurses make the process so much easier. They have to deal with people like me every day. They have to be some of the most dedicated people on the planet. They all know that many of us are going to feel like #%^&&^%$$$. for the next week of so, but they still try to make us feel as good as they can while we receive the infusion.

Sammy is finished with school today, so I get her for the next week until the Kinder Care gets their summer program going. The really have a great program for the kids. Every day they go someplace special for the kids. They go swimming, to the zoo, you name it and they keep them so busy for the entire summer. I'm having our pool opened on June 2nd. so she and the kids can swim while I'm in Carlsbad. When I say kids, I mean big kids, like Cate's friends that are still living in Fort Wayne. Even some real big kids that are friends of Sharon. They love to sit at pool side and then jump in when it gets to hot. The one old kid is getting married and I'm sure she will be working on her tan before her wedding in July. Someone has to watch the chemicals in the pool.

For those who care, my BP was 111/63 and my HR was 83 today. Since I had to take the steroids, my BS was 268 this morning. I'm trying to eat right, but it is almost impossible to keep it under 200. I'll keep you informed as best I can for the next few days. If you don't hear from me, you all should know by now. Love you, Tom