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).

Pain in Nick's Ass: Serious Bussiness

So probably everyone realizes Cancer is a big deal. If you don't let me tell you from experience, it's a big deal. It's easy for cancer to become the 'elephant in the room', but one of the reasons I decided to write about it in this blog was to at least reduce the size of the elephant. I really have no problem talking about it, if you have a question and I know the answer, it's yours. Beware though, I'm am not a believer in the, "there are no dumb questions," paradigm. Yes, there are dumb questions, some really dumb questions. "Does having cancer suck?" Yes, dumb question. "Are you going to die?" Yes, we are all going to die at some point, dumb question. "Is Chemotherapy fun?" Yeah, I kind of like feeling like poop for days on end...No Chemo is not fun, dumb question. "Does it hurt to have a portion of your colon removed?" No, it tickles...of course it hurts, dumb question. I think you get the point.

One of the first things you do when you have a serious health issue, is you look at the odds of a good outcome. It's human nature to try and correlate those odds to your individual case. The problem is each case is individual. As of 2000 stage IIIB Rectal Cancer had a 5 year survival rate of about 45% according to the American Cancer Society. Yeah...55 out of 100 people with my Cancer don't make it 5 years. That number is a bit sobering, huh? On the other hand 45 do survive, unfortunately there's no way for anyone to know what group you're in. The 45% is a bit of a worst case number as it includes non-cancer deaths and the data is a bit old. A better number is probably is probably in the 60-70% range.  Even then I have a number of things on my side, my age being probably the biggest one. If the cancer comes back, I'll be strong enough to kick in the teeth again. But, the fact is, there just isn't enough data of people my age to get at the survivability rate for my little demographic for my particular cancer. In the end, I'm not sure it matters. What if the survivability is 90%, that is still 10 people dying out of 100. Is that suppose to be comforting? Not if your one of the 10. In the end the odds are what they are. It really doesn't matter what the odds of getting struck by lightening are to the guy that gets struck by lightening, because his day just got really bad. I have basically been struck by lightening. Out of 300,000,000 people in the US about 150,000 are diagnosed with Colon Cancer. Of that 150,000 only 10% are younger than 50. So that takes the 150,000 to 15,000. The numbers are a little sketchy, but of the 15,000 approximately 1500 are less than 35 when diagnosed. So, I'm one of 1500 in the entire US to get Colon Cancer under 35. About 400 people a year get struck by lightening. So really you have two options let the scary numbers scare you or not worry about them knowing that I will do everything in my power to punch caner in the nose over and over again until one of us wins. I'll choose the later.

One of the other things that go through one's mind is, "what caused this?" Unfortunately a question like this could drive you crazy, because no one knows what exactly flips the switch of a epithelial cells that gets them to start multiplying unchecked. There are risk factors like smoking, obesity, drinking, to much red meat, lack of physical exercise and genetics. But all they prove is correlation not causation. Maybe 'Fat Nick' and all those burritos I ate for lunch were the cause, but there are plenty of people who are infinitely less healthy than 'Fat Nick' ever was, yet they never get Colon Cancer. So in the end I'll never know what caused the runaway cells and it was likely some mutation that there was no way to control. With that said I'll probably be living a bit healthier, so don't expect the return of 'Fat Nick'. Yeah I know, he was a fun guy and his head doubled as a basket ball, but he's gone from this world.

I will say it sucks to have to start contemplating your morality at such a young age. No fun at all.  Lindsey and I were forced to have hard conversations about the future of our family. We were going to start trying for kid number two last October. But, "surprise you have cancer", kind of put a halt to those plans. So kid number two goes on hold, or is there even going to be a kid number two? It's really easy to say, "oh just live your life," or some other free spirit BS. To some extent I agree, you don't want every waking thought to be, "damn...I might die in a couple months." With that said a more than healthy percentage of stage 3 cancer patients, don't make it to five years. Would it be responsible of Lindsey and I knowing that, to pop out kids like Pez candy? I personally don't think so. If I'm gone who's going to kill the spiders in the house? It's crappy to have to think about these things, but in the end we both have responsibilities and not taking into account a future potential issue is irresponsible, in my opinion.

With all of that said given the free and clear signal, the significant reduction in the amount of crazy drugs I'm taking, and appropriate length of time to ensure there are no 3 eyed swimmers left in me, we are going to try for another kid. With Linds and I both having siblings and how cool it is, we just can't imagine Oliver going through life without that.

This all might sound a bit pessimistic to some, but it's real and sometimes reality isn't all that great.