Well, its that time of the year again. LA Cancer Challenge and Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month are right around the corner. Sorry for the late heads up this year, as usual I have neglected the blog mostly due to me feeling pretty well and being really busy.

It is less than 2 weeks until the LA Cancer Challenge 5K/10K run on October 31st at the Veteran's grounds next to UCLA. The 10K starts at 7:30am and the 5K starts at 9:30am.

If you are free, please come out and join Team Tyler and support pancreatic cancer research.

We have taken the 5K Team Title the last 3 years and are looking for another. All ringers are welcome and any donations will be going to a very good cause (at least in my opinion, though I may be a little biased). Past donations have led to UCLA being designated as a comprehensive pancreatic cancer center and also funded a study performed by my endocrinologist which was published earlier this year. Pat yourselves on the back as your donations are helping us to make steps in the right direction.

Healthwise, I have been doing pretty well. I had a biopsy done in July where they could not find any malignant cells on the chunks they took. That was very encouraging though it by no means puts me in the clear. Less encouraging has been that my CA19-9 marker has slowly been going up. It is hard to say what all this means. I will probably be going for a scan soon which may clarify things a little more. I hope not, but I realize at some point I will probably have to go back onto chemo. Luckily, this long break has allowed my body to recover a lot. Some things have been coming back, like the nerves in my legs, while other things will probably never come back, like my kidneys. That is just how it is. I generally feel well and my energy is pretty good these days. Dialysis has been tolerable and the center has actually been pretty good experience this time, though I have found it hard to accomplish anything meaningful on Tuesdays, Thursdays, or Saturdays. I just cannot think like I would like to during treatment and often feel very wasted after treatment. To try to address this, and get back 3 days of my week, I have been transitioning to Peritoneal Dialysis over the last few weeks. Instead of your blood leaving you body, going through the artificial kidney and returning like Hemo-dialysis, Peritoneal dialysis is performed by putting fluid into your peritoneal lining (the sac that holds your guts), letting it sit there for a while, drain it, and repeat. The peritoneum has enough little blood vessels that can act as a membrane similar to a kidney and a little sugar water draws the fluid and toxins out of you and makes it all happen. After some training and trial runs, I switched last Wednesday. So far so good though there are always a few kinks to work out and it takes a little getting used to to have an extra 2 liters in your belly all the time. What sold me was the mindset that the two modalities operate under. With hemo, you are told to be in your chair at your time every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and you spend a lot of you time there. With peritoneal, the nurse (a great guy named Joe) asked me what I would like to do during my day and week and then he tried to come up wit a schedule that would work around that. What a concept! We will run some tests in a couple weeks to see if this will work for the long run. Sometimes, people's membrane transports too fast or too slow and it just is not possible. Here's to hoping my membrane is goldilocks.

Aside from transitioning to PD and also working, I managed to get out of town for a week and a half to Hawaii. It was the first trip I have taken just to take a trip in a long time. Sadly, Eva had school and could not join me. As amazing and gorgeous as Maui and the Big Island were, the best parts of the trip were spending time with some great friends, Bubba, Tom, and Elizabeth. Bubbs and E, thanks for putting Tom and me up and for being the amazing people you are. It was a lot of fun. Here are some highlights.

Well, I hope to see all you at the race on the 31st and I hope that everyone has been doing well. It is still infrequent, but I do update facebook a little more often than the blog and I would love to be friends.

Take Care and Live Strong,
Tyler