4-19-2007

What a few weeks. Sorry about neglecting the blog for the last little while but I have been pretty busy, as usual. Again, there are days that I want to write, there are days that I just do not feel like it, and there are days when I am just going from one activity to another and barely have the energy to fall into bed at night.

Health wise, things are going pretty well. I still feel basically normal and am able to do a lot of different activities. Occasionally, I am pretty tired and do not feel like myself, but overall, I still feel extremely fortunate to be doing as well as I am doing. I had another CT scan on the 12th. There is a lot of anxiety surrounding these scans as they are something like progress reports on your body. Good scans can bring hope and enthusiasm for the future and bad scans can just as easily take it away. What has been helpful is to realize that, regardless of the results, I felt good the day before the scan and that I felt basically the same the day after the scan. Preparing for the results is also hard. There are so many different possibilities that you really do not know what you should expect or what you should hope for. I am sure we are all hoping that the cyst and tumors would just disappear but that is setting yourself up for disappointment. Even lesser goals can be prove to be pretty disappointing (ie hoping that it has stayed stable and finding that it has grown 10%. Anyways, I had mixed feelings about my results. I was mostly ecstatic but then, of course, I would have liked a little more. 1) The cyst was basically unchanged since the scan on January 16th. 2) The mets in the liver were also unchanged and remain too small to measure. 3) Other areas of possible metastases were unchanged from the prior study and 4) There were no new sites of metastases. In summary, everything is basically the same as it was in January. Believe me when I say that I was extremely happy to hear that. It would have been nice to hear that the cyst had shrunk a bit, but stability is a wonderful thing. It is scary to think about what the results could have been, although, at this point, I wonder if it would be any scarier than that initial diagnosis. I don’t think I want to find out. From here we will just keep on plugging away with the chemo. If the next scans again show the cancer as being stable and I just have to stay on chemo indefinitely, I will take it. I have a wonderful quality of life and am pretty sure that I could get pretty close to normal, aside from the weekly trips to the doctor’s office. My parents, Eva, and I celebrated over a little picnic dinner before going to a play at the Taper on Tuesday night. I even shared some wine with my father. My one glass was quite exciting, I am quite the lush these days.



There have been a number of little adventures over the last few weeks. I have been to Catalina, been diving a few times, and enjoyed some wonderful time with my wife. Yesterday, I went on a bit of a horseback adventure with my parents. We rode out of the LA Equestrian Center in Burbank and into Griffith Park from the backside. I had never really been through that side of Griffith Park, except to visit the zoo, and it was really nice. It is so amazing to find places that are essentially within the urban sprawl that is LA and still give the feeling of isolation. It is a little striking sometimes when you listen, and do not hear cars or other sounds of the city. It was my mother’s first time really riding a horse (she had done the pony rides at Knott’s Berry Farm when she was a kid) and I was just glad to be there to witness it. It is not like my father and I are expert wranglers or anything, but we have each been on a horse a handful of times. Ask my father about his bareback experiences if you want a bit of a chuckle.



My mother did great. I was really proud of her. She had two goals for the day, which were 1) Stay on the horse 2) Have some fun. She succeeded in both of them though there were a few moments of terror as the horse accelerated to a trot a number of times. Ahhh, that look on my mother’s face was priceless. I also loved the flower hat she donned for the ride. One word, Fabulous. My father also got a bit excited at the prospect of having a legitimate reason to wear his cowboy hat and he certainly did look the part. Our guide for the day was Angel and he was just a really nice guy. He took us on a really nice ride and we all had a great time. Our ride went from the stables, into Griffith Park, and up to the top of Mt. Hollywood. This was the destination of the previous ride with my father, but we had gone from the south side of the Hollywood hills. It was a gorgeous day and you could see downtown LA, Burbank, Westwood, Palos Verdes, and even Catalina. Being on the top of Mt. Hollywood, looking out over LA, just really put a smile on my face and sort of calmed me. It was a good feeling and I am sure just as effective medicine as some of the stuff I am putting into my body. Just being on a horse also puts a smile on my face as it is still just fun and unique to me. I felt pretty comfortable on the horse and even enjoyed trotting a bit though it was a little trippy trotting up some decent little inclines. Our horses were very good to us though there were a few minor inter-horse issues on the ride. My dad’s horse, Austin, was pretty mellow but he did not really like anyone passing him. Actually none of the horses like being passed and if another was coming up, they would usually pick up the pace just enough to stay in front. There was also a fair amount of cutting each other off, too. This may have been a rider issue though. For some reason my horse, Hidalgo (who actually looked like Hidalgo, awesome), and my mom’s horse, Terence, would nip at each other a bit as they would go by. We tried to reason with them, help them resolve their differences, but they would not listen. It was as if they did not even understand the words coming out of our mouths. All in all, the horses were very well behaved and we all felt very fortunate that they treated us well.



After the horseback adventure we met up with Eva back at the apartment and then went out to 3rd stop (the pub around the corner). We lamented that Eva had to work over some tasty appetizers and juicy conversation. Eva seemed to enjoy hearing about the day’s events. Of course, when we relayed it to her, all three of us were in a full gallop up to the top of the mountain. I think I also did a backflip onto my horse. That was right after I roped a pig and shot a squirrel. It was quite a fun day.