Well it has been a while again. I hope everyone has been well and keeping busy. OK, a couple items of business first.

1. June 22 is PANCAN’s Advocacy Day in Washington DC. If you have extra miles we would love to see you in DC (try to show up for the training on the 21st, too) but if you won’t be making the trip, you can still help in a big way. You don’t even need to leave your house. It would be awesome if you all could participate in PANCAN’s National Call-in. All the information is on pancan.org under the national call in heading. You will need to fill out a few web forms and then they will tell you who your senators and representative are and how to contact them. In addition to calling your own representative, it would really be helpful to me if you could call my representative, Dana Rohrabacher. He was a little tough to convince last year. Feel free to say what you want, but maybe you could mention that you are a dear friend of Tyler Noesen and that you fully support pancreatic cancer research funding. The more people who call, the bigger impact we will make. I know some of you have a lot of facebook friends and I am just making sure that everyone knows that they are totally welcome to call my representative and give him their 2 cents. It should be fun. This is democracy in action.

Here is Dana Rohrabacher’s info...

His Washington DC office number is (202) 225-2415.

His Huntington Beach office number is (714) 960-6483.

If you have the time, it would be great to call both numbers. Not to get your hopes up, but you probably won’t actually speak to Rep. Rohrabacher. You will probably speak to a staffer but that is just as good. They will pass the message along.

2. My old neighbor and friend, Dean McCollom, is doing a cross-country bike ride and is blogging along the way. You can follow his journey at

www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/LemonadeMagnate

If you find yourself in a town as he is passing through, call him at 831-239-4118. I am sure he would love to share a meal and some stories.

3. Next week I will be in DC (Jun 20-24) and Richmond, Va (Jun 24-26) so if you are in the area, I would love to meet up and catch up.

Anyways, I am just plugging away as usual. Again, great comments. You guys rock! I really enjoy reading them. The bulk of my time these days is spent working and at dialysis or other medical appointments. After getting out of the hospital, the neuropathy in my legs did get worse for a few weeks before slowly starting to improve. I have been in a wheelchair since about March and it has certainly been a challenge. For a while, even the simplest tasks were exhausting and/or impossible without being able to stand on my feet. After being stumped for a while, I slowly started to figure out how to accomplish little tasks in the chair and recently, I have regained a decent amount of independence. For example, for about a month, I was essentially trapped within my building unless I had someone to help me out. There are two stairs and a pretty high curb between the door to the building and the street and no handrail which pretty much made it seem impossible for me to leave on my own. Eventually, I thought about it, and figured out how to accomplish this simple task. I open the door, transfer from my chair to the ground, scooch on my but down the stairs as I pull my wheelchair down the stairs next to me, put my chair into the street, and transfer back up into the chair. By the time I had figured out this sequence my arm strength had improved, which really helped me get in and out of my chair. Over the last couple months I have also learned how to use hand controls (which we had installed into our Prius), how to cling to the side of my car to get from the driver’s seat to the trunk, how to get my chair in and out of the back of the car by sitting on the back bumper, and how to go up or down a flight of stairs with my wheelchair (again using the scoot on the butt method) to get to the parking garage in our building which is between floors that the elevator services. While these are very useful skills to get around while being impaired, mobility-wise, I have also gotten pretty good at doing wheelies and really have a lot of fun showing off from time to time.

Recently, the nerves in my legs have started to regenerate and my leg strength is starting to come back. I can get around decently with a walker these days and have even started trying out a 4-point cane at physical therapy (with a support belt and my very strong physical therapist with his hand on my back ready to pick my up if I start to go down). It has been very nice to be able to stand a bit without my knees immediately buckling. I still don’t really have any calf strength and cannot really stabilize myself very well, so when I do walk a little (between the parallel bars at PT), it looks like I am a bit of a drunkard.

Otherwise, things are going pretty well. I had a fun day at the butterfly pavilion and IMAX in Exposition Park with Nate and Becky last Sunday and had dinner with my physical therapist, Jafari on Wednesday. The folks came over for the Laker game last night (Go Lakers!) and I am looking forward to my trip next week. Eva is doing well and is in Chicago for the summer, interning at Abbott (who manufactures Synthroid, which I am on, and a few other drugs I have been on in the past). Seems like she is working with nice people and that they are taking good care of her. It will be tough without her for a few months but the timing worked out pretty well as I regained a lot of independence (like driving myself places) right before she was about to leave. Sometimes things workout pretty well.

I hope everything is going well for all of you and if you have the time, a few phone calls would be greatly appreciated next Tuesday.

Take Care and Live Strong,
Tyler