Thursday 10-5-2006

Today was my 3 month anniversary from diagnosis. What a crazy three months it has been. If you had spoken to me 4 months ago, I would not have been able to predict 10% of what I have been through. The last 25 years I would consider myself to have lived pretty even keeled. I have definitely been through some pretty amazing things, but my disposition and emotional state was always pretty stable and general mood contented. The highs and lows that I have gone through (not to mention my family) were like nothing I had ever experienced before. I think back and just shudder at the thoughts that went through my head during that first week after diagnosis. There were times where a random commercial showing a father and son playing in the park would put tears in my eyes. Well, the tears still come a lot more easily, but I am in a pretty good place right now. So far things have gone as well as I could hope for. We have a good plan, the plan is being carried out, there have been some minor hiccups but nothing we have not been able to deal with, I have complete confidence in Dr. Isacoff and the medical care I am receiving, and I am looking past this and planning my future with Eva.

In the morning, I took care of a few things around the apartment and then headed down to SP as it was my dad's day off. He was working in the backyard, as usual, and a neighbor Rosemarie was keeping him company. It was a gorgeous day and just really nice chatting with Rosemarie while sitting in the new swing in the backyard (by the way, open invite to check out what a good job my father has done on the backyard. Just pop in, he will be happy to show you around). We spoke a bit about my treatment and she expressed how the nausea and vomiting would probably make her elect to not go through chemo. Again and again, I feel so lucky for the relatively few side effects I have gone through so far. People should know that cancer treatment has changed so much over the last 5-10 years and it does not have to be like the horror stories we all think of when we hear "chemo."

In the afternoon, my father and I headed over to Long Beach to check out the Aquarium of the Pacific. It was a really fun outing. My dad said that since I have not been scuba diving or snorkeling in a while, this would be the next best thing. That little comment just fired me up a bit to go diving but, you know, you do see a lot more fish when they put them right there in front of you (I still hope to get back into the water sometime soon, maybe after the wedding). The Aquarium has expanded quite a bit and has really wonderful exhibits of all sorts of fish, lots of touch tanks, and they even had a few animals. My father and I splurged and bought the $2 nectar to feed the lorikeets (something my cheap-ass never would have done in the past) and it was awesome. It was just a lot of fun to have a couple birds sitting on your hand and drinking the nectar. The video shows my father with his buddy "Oscar."

Overall, just another wonderful day with my father. Later that night we met with the caterer to hammer out some of the details. We had pretty different visions for what the reception is going to be like. Somehow, my definition of "low-key" did not include a full bar or lobsters for everyone. Don't worry, there will be plenty of Pilsner Urquel. If you need something stronger, bootleg it.

Just a little rant on the stats...

Eva had mentioned how a decent percentage of people who are diagnosed with cancer and need chemo, refuse to go through the treatment. Not that I put much weight into the stats anyways, but all of those people are included and only make the numbers look worse. If I look at the smaller groups of people, those who choose to go through chemo, those who have access to the very latest treatments, and those who can actually afford to get the latest treatments, I really fall into a very fortunate subset of the whole population that has been diagnosed with PC. The numbers on that subset are unknown (and probably still not great) but I still feel like an incredibly lucky person to be where I am amongst those with PC. It would be nice if more people were in that subset, then, not only would more people survive this disease, but the numbers would start looking a little better (If you have lots of free time, write Bush concerning the state of health care coverage in the US).

-TN