It's Been A While...

So I guess I've been a little lazy with the updates, it's been well over a year since my last one. There really wasn't a reason why I haven't, but I guess things were pretty boring with the exception of a few events. I'll try to keep this more updated from now on. I'll try to write about some of the things that have happened in the last year and some things I learned from going through chemo and hopefully it'll be helpful to anyone going through cancer/chemo to read this.
Immediately following the last update I finished my last round of chemo and it was a pretty great feeling. I'd go as far as saying that along with my solo ascent of Mt. Everest and winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry , it was definitely one of the Top 10 greatest feelings I've ever had. On top of that, I was given one of the greatest surprises of my life. Kristin worked behind the scenes and for my birthday got me on the field with Coach Frank Beamer and Coach Billy Hite during one of the VT practices. They were awesome guys and I was pretty pumped. So, back to cancer stuff... everything was looking good after chemo was done, but right before the VT vs Florida State football game last year, I started getting the chills and a fever. I called up Sloan-Kettering and they told me to come in. By the time I got there my fever hit 102. They did some tests and it turned out my White Blood Cell count was zero. White blood cells have Neutrophils in them and are together they are responsible for fighting off infection. So I essentially didn't have a functioning immune system. When it gets that low, you can get an infection from simply brushing your teeth. So I was admitted to Sloan-Kettering and put on 24 hour IV antibiotics. I was on the 12th floor with the other blood cancer patients and it was a pretty surreal feeling. I had a guy next to me, Daniel, who was a year older than me and had lymphoma that turned to a leukemia. He was having a tough time and it was heartbreaking being next to him. Even though there was a curtain separating us I could hear him not doing to well and my mother even had to help him after he fell in the middle of the night on his way to the restroom. Daniel unfortunately passed away early this year... that was a tough pill to swallow. There were also people on the floor that were doing amazingly well. There was this lady that was power walking around the floor for what seemed to be hours a day. It was incredible. I actually felt fine, but power walking is against the man code, so I had no part of that. People had to wear face masks though when they were around me and that was freaky to say the least. The cherry on top was that they had to do another bone marrow biopsy. There's no real easy way around this one... it sucked as much as it did the first time and it really sucked the first time. Anyway, after 5 days there, I got woken up in the middle of the night by a nurse and she told me my white cell count went back up and I was going home the next day. It was a great feeling. For about two month after that they were closely monitoring by white blood cell count and it's completely normal now. After that bump in the road, things have gone pretty smoothly. I got married to the perfect girl for me, went on an amazing honeymoon, and after a crappy 2008 work year, 2009 was enjoyable and fun. And I'm also proud to say that I just had my 1 year Remission Anniversary!!

This next part is just going to be a list of some things I learned since being diagnosed with lymphoma, going through treatment, and the year since remission:

-Rule #1 is go the best cancer center within a days drive. If you live in the NYC/NJ/CT area, go to Sloan-Kettering, Columbia Pres, and Foxchase, West Coast has Stanford, Northwest has Hutchinson, Northeast has Dana Farber and Rochester, SouthWest has M.D. Anderson, MidAtlantic has Johns Hopkins, etc. It's so easy to go to a local doctor who recommends their local oncologist and you stay at your local community hospital. It's comfortable and familiar and I understand that. But sticking with those smaller, inexperienced hospitals could be a big mistake. You HAVE to at least get a 2nd opinion from one of the hospitals I mentioned. Three quick notes to give you perspective: 1) At Sloan-Kettering, 10% of the people that come in are misdiagnosed. Either they have cancer when they were told they didn't, they were told they had cancer and they don't, or they were told they have the wrong cancer. 2) A friend of the family went to a very reputable NJ hospital after not feeling well. Tests showed some spots on his liver and lung. They told him he had lymphoma and even though they weren't sure which kind it was, they wanted to start him on chemo right away. He was able to get in to Sloan-Kettering two days later. Turns out he didn't have lymphoma, he had Stage 2 Lung Cancer. He could have gone through a chemo regimen that would've had no effect on his cancer. Crazy. 3) The issue I had with my white blood cells was something that most oncologists will see once or twice in their career... my guy at Sloan sees it almost 10 times a year.

-Everyone has their own advice on how to get through cancer diagnosis, cancer treatment, and survivorship. You'll hear about eating healthy and organic, praying and going to church, "Live every day to the fullest", do your research, etc. All of things most likely help but I realized very early on that none of these will cure me. If any one those cured me, there would be a cure for cancer and we'd all just do that one thing. Not to minimize the advice above, but for me personally I needed something to help me mentally deal with cancer and I realized that there's one thing above all that will get you through it and I can't stress this enough... you HAVE TO COME TO THE REALIZATION THAT THIS IS REAL. It's not a dream, it will most likely not miraculously disappear. There's going to be some tough times ahead, there's going to mostly be some completely normal times ahead. But as soon as you can come to grips with the fact that you have cancer and you've got a fight ahead of you, the better you are. That realization did more for me than any research or advice had ever done.

-A caregiver can't possibly understand what it's like to go through chemo and the mental anguish of knowing you have cancer AND a cancer patient can't possibly understand what it's like to have to watch someone you love go through chemo and the mental anguish of cancer. Sure, the caregiver has a slight upper hand because they have a 0% chance of dying from the cancer patients cancer, but I couldn't imagine having to watch Kristin or a family member or close friend going through everything... in many ways I imagine it to be worse.

-Be careful what you read on the internet about Lymphoma and probably all other cancers. As far as lymphoma goes, most people (including myself) get diagnosed at Stage 4. The survival statistics deal with people that died for any reason, not just from lymphoma and since most lymphoma patients are older, the statistics are skewed. And there's TONS of research on new drugs going on right now, 10-15 years from now I really feel like it may not be cured but can be controlled.

-"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and a good thing never dies"- Shawshank Redemption. As far as I know, there's nothing out there that will 100% kill you within 5 or 10 years. Maybe there's a cancer that will do you in 99.9% of the time, but that still leaves 1 person out of 1000 that will make it. There's absolutely no reason that can't be you. No matter how bad things get, no matter how many consecutive bad test results come back, not matter how long you stay in the hospital, and no matter how many treatments don't work... until you're dead, you have hope.. hang on to it for dear life. Related to that is positive thinking... If you get a bad result, maybe the next one will be good, if that one's bad, maybe the next one will be good. A good video of this is here... Will Ferrel stays positive till the end. This isn't very PG so watch who's around you before you view it: CLICK So whatever will give hope, whether it's a family member, a friend, a hobby, a religious belief, just use it to make sure you always have hope.

-I've always heard cancer patients that are in remission say, "I couldn't have gotten through it without my family and friends." I was interested in finding out if that was just lip service or if it was real. And if it was real, in what way? So after chemo I can say that it is for real, at least mentally. I mean, you can physically get through treatment with nobody around. You can take a cab to and from treatment and just kind of get through it and your outcomes will probably be no different than if you arrived on one of those Egyptian mats with huge guys carrying you in and out of the hospital. Mentally, is where it's helpful. Not because people say, "You'll be fine!" or whatever. For me it was because I didn't want to let this cancer get me so soon. When you have people around you that you care about, you want to spend as much time as possible with them before it's all over. Now, I'm not unrealistic, fortitude and mental strength won't cure lymphoma, but having family and friends that I love so much made me want to stick around.


Well, that's all I've got for now... this may not have been the most humorous of posts, but there was a lot to catch up on! I'll try to keep the updates more frequent now... at least after each update.

GO HOKIES