Yosemite for President's Day

For the long President’s Day weekend we decided to go to Yosemite. We were thinking of going up to Tahoe to go skiing but since this winter has left some to be desired in the snow department, we decided that Yosemite would be fun snow or no snow. We rented a cabin in Wawona, Ca. Wawona is a small Census Designated Place (a concentration of population outside of a legally incorporated area…yup I’m still a nerd) entirely located within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. There are a quite a few private cabins that people also rent for vacation rentals.

We did our normal program for taking Oliver on a road trip, which means we pack the car, have dinner, put Oliver in his PJs, and then hit the road. We got to Wawona around 11pm, unpacked the car, had a beer and hit the sack.

The next day we decided to go down to the Valley and check out the big rocks and some falling water. We brought Oliver’s little balance bike, so he rode and we followed. He’s pretty quick on the bike, but he’s pretty good at stopping and waiting for us. Riding his bike is his favorite thing to do in the whole world, so threatening to carry him puts him in line pretty quick. We walked/rode from Yosemite Village, up to Lower Yosemite Falls, down to Yosemite Lodge for a little lunch, checked out the Ansel Adams Gallery, and then back to the car at the village. All in it was a tad over 3 miles, which impressed me. I thought I was going to be carrying a monkey and a bike a quarter of the way through. But, nope, that wasn’t the case. He’s a pretty high energy kid, but takes it to another level on his bike.

Oliver riding in the Valley

Oliver waiting for us to catch up

Checking out the deer

To bucks hanging out by Lower Yosemite Falls

All of us at Lower Yosemite Falls

Oliver and Meme checking the falls out

Yosemite Falls

The next day we hung out around the cabin went down to the river and threw some rock. Throwing rocks is Oliver’s second favorite thing to do. He could literally do it all day. We decided to have dinner at Yosemite Lodge. Prior to dinner we caught the sun going down in the valley. Dinner was good, the Yosemite Lodge does a pretty good job for being way up in the mountains and serving as many people as it does.

At the river preparing to throw rocks

Sunset in the Valley

Oliver was sleeping so just us

On Monday we packed up the cars and headed up to Badger Pass to find some snow. The road to Glacier Point ends at Badger Pass. A few years back we snow shoed to Dewey Point, you get some phenomenal views of the valley from there in the winter time. It’s a great hike. We got Oliver some little snowshoes to get him use to going for hikes in the snow. We didn’t think he’d get very far in real snow, as the first night he tried the snow shoes on he was breathing hard after on lap around our upstairs.

Oliver walking around in the snow

We parked the cars, went to the trail head were we strapped Oliver into his shoes, and started walking up the barely snow covered road. Oliver was more interested in playing in the snow. Which was completely fine, so my mom built a little snow man with him, he threw snow balls, played with icicles, and climbed snow banks. Oliver wanted to be carried back to the car. I anticipated that so I brought my gear sled that I use for snow camping and strapped a seat to it for Oliver. While initially he was apprehensive and held on with white knuckles, he got used to it and started to have a little fun. Once we packed the cars up we hit the road. For lunch we stopped at the Iron Door in Groveland, had a little mediocre pub food (homemade potato chips were solid) and a tasty beer. Then proceeded to blaze home.

Throwing snow balls

Mush daddy...mush

Monterey Whale Watching

So last weekend we decided to go down to Monterey to do a little whale watching. Every year at this time the 20,000 or so Grey Whales pass by Monterey on their migration down from their feeding grounds in Alaska to Baja where they hang out for the winter. I think this is the third time Lindsey and I have gone and the first time for the Monkey. It was a beautiful day probably mid 60s or so and the seas were pretty flat, which made for great whale watching weather.

 

Meme and Poppy on the boat

 

Oliver looking for whales

 

We ended up seeing quite a few whales, 29 by their count but probably only about a third of those were close to the boat. We also saw a ton of Rizzo’s Dolphins and Sea Lions.

Rizzo's Dolphins

 

Sea Lion playing in the waves

 

Grey Whale fluting up for a dive

While two and half year olds have a limited attention span Oliver was great. He like riding on the boat and had lots of fun walking around the boat.

Lindsey and the Monkey

 

Taking a break from whale watching

We used Monterey Bay Whale Watch http://www.montereybaywhalewatch.com/ and were on their boat the Sea Wolf II. A couple years ago we went out with them and in addition to grey whales we saw a pod of Killer Whales which was pretty cool.

P.S. I'm hoping to keep up with things this year. Last fall got away from me. Over the next month or so I plan on going back and recounting all of the fun things we did last fall.

Pain in Nick's A**: 363

363 days ago my surgeon removed nearly 12 inches of colon along with the pain in my a**. With that said metaphorically it will continue to be a pain in my a**, probably forever. While, I feel great and my colon is working well, I still have some neuropathy in my hands and feet and follow-up appointments every three months. There’s always some anxiety from the follow-ups, more so with the CT scan and Colonoscopies, than the blood work, but anxiety nonetheless.  So, while my physical cancer may be gone, the mental cancer will continue. But that’s OK.

There is a bright side to the neuropathy at least. You’re all probably wondering where I’m going with this. While it does remind me of cancer, which constantly puts that in my head, it reminds me of cancer. Why is that good? Well it’s a reminder every day that I should live a healthy life. Go to the gym. Take my vitamins. Eat my veggies. I can’t count how many times I’ve gotten into bed, felt the numbness in my feet as they slid along the sheets, and remembered to take my vitamins and baby aspirin. How’s that for glass half full?

I checked in with the surgeon and my oncologist today. Everything is fine, so both appointments were pretty uneventful. They took some blood, poked at me a bit, and that’s about it. Hopefully it’s the last time I see the surgeon. Not that he wasn’t a nice guy, but if I see him again it means things aren’t good. I will continue to be followed by my oncologist every three months or so for the near future. We pushed off my next CT scan until next October. Everything has been stable and I’ve received a ton of radiation at this point, so we thought it was best to start reducing my radiation exposure. I’ll have another colonoscopy in July to go in and check for local recurrences. Local recurrences in rectal cancer treated with radiation are less than 10% so that’s not a bad number. So no more poking and prodding for another three months (let me find some wood to knock on). Sweet!

In December I decided that I should give back, so I contacted the Colon Cancer Alliance (http://ccalliance.org/) to see what I could do to help. The have a buddy program that pairs up the newly diagnosed with those who’ve gone through the whole thing. I know how helpful the stories I read during my treatment were for me, so I’d like to help others with that as well. Also just like most other things, ‘good news’ tends to be ‘no news’ with cancer as well. The problem is, is that if all the stories out there are the ‘bad news’ stories, then that’s all people see. For newly diagnosed patients I think it’s important to get both sides out there, otherwise it’s quite demoralizing only seeing the ‘bad news’. Last week I also volunteered to work at the American Society of Clinical Oncologists GI Symposium in San Francisco. I talked with various docs and other healthcare professionals about the resources that the CCA has for patients and their caregivers.

Me with Martha Raymond from the CCA

Another group that was helpful during my treatment was the Colon Club (http://www.colonclub.com/). They have a fabulous message board where patients and caregivers get together for support and information. The Colon Club has a mission statement of using out-of-the-box ways to increase the awareness of colorectal cancer. One of the ways they do that is with the Colondar (http://www.colonclub.com/about-the-colondar/). The Colondar is a yearly calendar featuring colorectal cancer surviviors younger than 50, to bring awareness that this disease can happen to anyone. So I’ve decide to put my hat in the ring for the 2015 Colondar. Wish me luck.

Pain in Nick's A**: Where the sun don't shine

So back in July I had my clearing colonoscopy. Finally the doc was able to go all the way to the Appendix and Ileocecal valve (where the small intestine joins the large intestine). I should probably be given a discount as the doc doesn’t have go to as far (since they removed about 12” of my large intestine) and the path is most likely less tortuous, but I doubt that will happen. Prior to the procedure I spoke with the Doc and told her that I remembered my last colonoscopy and I’d rather that not be the case this time. She said that must have been unpleasant…yes…yes it was. She knocked me out, took a look around, found the polyp that was seen on the virtual colonoscopy, clipped that sucker off, and sent me on my way. The polyp was determined to be a tubular adenoma with no evidence of cancer. So that’s good. In a year they’ll take another look around.

On Tuesday I had a CT to check for recurrences. There are some nodules in my lungs that the docs are keeping an eye on. They don’t think they’re cancer as they have been stable on all of the previous scans. Well this scan was no different. The nodules continue to be stable. They are the exact same size as the day they found them nearly a year ago. Seeing I went through some nasty chemo and they didn’t get smaller, most assuredly they are not cancer. No doc will give you a 100% guarantee, but I'll take a 'most likely not' at this point. So the scan came back clear.

So as of today I’m considered NED (No Evidence or Disease). They typically don’t start throwing around the ‘cured’ title for colon cancer until you’re out about 5 years without a recurrence. So surveillance mode it is. I’ve got another follow-up in 3 months for blood and a check-up, another CT scan in 6 months, and another colonoscopy next July.

In the meantime I feel great. So getting back to living a normal life is in order and hopefully the last year will just become a bad memory.

Pain in Nick's A**: Chemo...DONE!

So here I am...I take my last Chemo pills in the morning. DONE...Freaking DONE. Oh how glad I am to not have to feel crappy again next week.

Last Chemo Drip Treatment

During my last drip the Stanford Infusion Center staff sang me a little song.

So what are the next steps? Well on the 18th of July I get the pleasure of finally having a full colonoscopy, since they've been unable to get a good look past the first few inches. So that will be fun. After that I'll have a CT scan sometime in the fall just to keep an eye on everything.

As of now I look forward to recovering from the Chemo (little neuropathy in the feet), then hopefully this can all go in the history books as a bad nightmare.

Pain in Nick's A**: Senseless Violence

Right now by the thousands, my cells are being massacred. Destroyed by this nasty cocktail of drugs I'm taking and hopefully for absolutely no reason at all. One might wonder why I say that. Don't I want the drugs to be killing the cancer? Well yes, killing cancer is a good thing, I'm all for it. As a matter of fact I'm one of the biggest fans of dead cancer. But, my best shot of a long healthy life is that all of the cancer was removed by the surgery. Unfortunately there's no way of knowing if the surgeon got it all. So that's where the Chemo comes in, to mop things up. Chemo is good at prolonging life, which is a good thing. Unfortunately it is piss poor at 'curing' cancer, at least colon cancer. So here's for hoping there's some serious senseless violence going on.

I'm about 66% through treatment now, four infusions down, two to go. If the schedule holds, I take my last chemo pill the last week of June. So there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I can't wait, I feel so good during my off week, it will be nice to feel good for consecutive weeks. The side effects from the infusions are hanging on a little longer each time. This last infusion kind of sucked. I started getting a tingling sensation around the IV site, by the end the inside of my whole right arm felt like it was asleep. The cold sensitivity is the most annoying, feels like you're swallowing razor blades when you drink cold water. The peripheral nueropathy causes tingling in the hands and feet, isn't great by manageable. So far I've been able to keep the hand/foot syndrome (cracking, swelling and blisters on the palms and sole of your feet) at bay, by slathering up with bagbalm before bed. I think I'm also experiencing a little "Chemo Brain", my short term memory seems to be slipping and forming and saying words in a conversation is challenging from time to time. Telling someone a story I've told before doesn't seem to be affected, but with new speech sometimes the words just don't seem to flow. I see the words in my head, but they just don't get turned into sounds out of my mouth. Really kind of annoying. So if I seem slow from time to time, you'll have to forgive me. Luckily it seems to be temporary.

Once the Chemo is done I'll probably have some scans (CT and another colonoscopy) in the mid Oct. time frame. Oh how I'm looking forward to potentially two consecutive months of no poking an prodding.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I still don't recommend cancer. It's not that fun.

Oliver's Second Year

Here's the video of Oliver's second year on planet earth. The video is a bit long, but I don't know cutting a year of memories into about 20 mins isn't to bad.

Just a quick note the video won't play on the mobile youtube app because of copyright issues with some of the songs we used for what ever reason (probably because they can't efficiently place ads on mobile devices but have no problem on computers). But you should be able to watch it on a browser on a mobile device just fine (worked on my Android phone using Google Chrome).