Student Visionary of the Year


Floyd's Student Visionary of the Year Campaign benefitting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has come to a close. His team, "Cancer's Collapse," took first place in the Golden Gate chapter. Thank you to everyone who contributed. You can read about the gala and more in this blog post.


The chemo begins

Laura Brown has been nice enough to coordinate "Operation: Give Heather some time to visit John every night"  Actually, I don't know if that's what she's calling it, but that's the gist of it.  Essentially, a different friend comes over each night and helps Heather get the kids ready for bed.  Once that's done, she gets a couple hours to come visit.  Last night, Brandon was nice to sit -- thanks, B!

So Heather came by and got to see all the craziness.  She also took some good pics which I'll include in this post.  This first one shows my new best friend -- this IV machine.



What you're seeing here is all of the poison they are pumping through me.  For the next 7 days, pretty much 24/7, with maybe 20-30 minutes off per day to shower or take a walk, I'm going to have these nasty drugs flowing straight into my main circulatory system.  They flow in through a PICC Line which is like a semi-permanent two-way IV.  It's great that they've figured out this combination of drugs that can do the trick here, but it still seems pretty barbaric to me.  I mean these drugs basically kill everything and then you gotta hope that only good stuff comes back.  I guess it's a really tough problem to solve.  I think I'm going to donate quite a bit more to cancer research now.  Imagine if you could just take some pills to target the bogus cells.  That would be cool!  Alas, my road will not be that easy.

Here's another pic:


After the 7 days, there's going to be a "recovery period for a few weeks" where they monitor me pretty closely -- I'll have zero immune system, so I'll be susceptible to all kinds of things -- and I'll need to get some medicine every couple of days.

Based on what my oncologist told me just a little while ago, it's possible that I'll be able to do some of this at home -- not sure yet.  But according to the main data they are tracking, namely: side effects; white blood count; hemoglobin; platelets; and kidney function -- things are going well.  I have no fever or other warning signs (chills, shortness of breath, itchiness, etc.) and all of those other attributes are tracking well.


This is hopefully what I'll be doing a lot of... sitting at the computer.  You can see the city lights (Upper Haight) outside my window in this pic.

More soon.

Comments

  1. I know you're my son, but you are one awesome dude!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, hello my friend... glad to see you got it rolling - the URL is perfect; speedbump, baby, that's all. Some time when you are in between work and Flyers/Iggles games I need to KIRR YOUR PRACE!!! Yahoo games, bring it on - I will still get always de best stuff.

    By the way, MaryHelen told me about this service (she was in hospital ministry for a year), both for people who have to deal with crap like this, and for those close to them:

    http://www.carepages.com/

    You and H might want to check it out, might be a good addition to the blogspot.

    Keep it real, my friend, and we'll talk again soon.

    Matty Nabib

    P.S. Did they get that wireless working yet, or are you still stuck with 3G

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dave and Laura,
    Thank you for all of the love and support that you are providing to John and family. David Greene

    ReplyDelete
  4. Looks like a nice view out the window.

    Dude - those IV hooks remind me of the
    slaughterhouse practice space. Millellium....

    ReplyDelete
  5. Duda circumstances beyond our control...

    Rock on man.

    ReplyDelete

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