Small Victories

Friends,

In Lance Armstrong’s first book about his cancer fight, It’s Not About the Bike, he recalls a cancer patient telling him “We are the lucky ones” as he’s going through his chemotherapy treatments. While I don’t fully agree that people who are diagnosed with cancer are lucky, per se, I can understand where that person was coming from. Being diagnosed with this disease changes you in multiple different ways, most for the positive. For example, you begin to relish and celebrate the small victories in life and live in the present instead of constantly being focused on the future (like saving for retirement or growing your career). It’s good to have balance between living in the now and having an eye for the future, don’t get me wrong, but we tend to get too wrapped up in preparing for the future.

It is the small victories part that I’d like to focus on with this post. In the past, I was focused on the big win and getting those really astounding results. Now, I’m much more likely to stop and celebrate the small victories along the way. That said, this past Wednesday was a small, but important victory for me in my fight.

The current chemotherapy drug I have been taking, Doxorubicin (also known as Adriamycin), has stopped the growth and spread of my cancer for the time being. Since this is the type of chemo that attacks cells, it doesn’t come without its set of side effects. However, my doctor and I have been able to manage these side effects with a good combination of anti nausea medications and steroids. Yep, that’s right, no professional sports for me now that I’ve become a steroids user – not that I had anything promising in that regard anyway. During the weeks where I get the chemo infused into my body through a central line in my chest, I have (knock wood) not been set back by the side effects as much as others who have been on this type of chemo. I have energy, am mentally alert, and generally feel pretty good as the week progresses.

I will caveat the mentally alert statement by saying on the days where I do get the chemo infused into my body (Monday afternoons), they fill me up with intravenous anti nausea drugs and give me Lorazepam for good measure. This is a sedative/hypnotic type drug that is used to treat anxiety. So I walk out of my infusion appointments high as a kite for the rest of the night. Feels like Friday nights during my freshman year of college all over again!

I did start losing some of my hair as a result of the chemo though. I remember waking up one morning, going into the shower and just having it come out in clumps, not only on my head, but in my pubic region too. There was some “holy shit” panic going on in that shower, but I calmed down after a while and just accepted it for what it is. My hair is not completely gone, but it has thinned out considerably. So instead of letting the chemo get the better of me, I decided to take action into my own hands and just shave my head. My hair stylist told me that if it ever got to that point, that she would do it for free (so nice!). I hadn’t shaved my head since my freshman year of high school when we had to do it for hazing as rookies on the varsity football team (I remember thinking that I had a really odd shaped head when that happened, so I was curious to see how this round would turn out). A few weeks later a lady in an elevator asked me if I was trying to look like Justin Timberlake with my shaved head and 3 day old scruff on my face. I told her that if I had my choice I would have never shaved my head due to cancer. She gave me this look of complete embarrassment and scurried out of the elevator. Serves her right – I bet she thought she was trying to smart. Bitch.

Since I have tolerated the chemo and am going to continue with it for the near future, I am working with my boss and HR department at T-Mobile to return to work soon, at least part time. That in and of itself is big for me and is something that I was really hoping I could do. It will give me an outlet during the day to focus on something else. It will also provide daily human interaction, when I’m in the office, that I found I missed when I was staying at home recovering from my stroke and the initial side effects of the Doxorubicin. As I’ve said in previous posts, I really miss the work I did and the people I worked with at T-Mobile.

The good thing about being at home with nothing to do is that it has allowed me to become project manager for Michelle and my wedding in September. We are having a small ceremony in Hawaii with family and close friends, and will then be spending a week honeymooning on the island of Lanai in Hawaii. It’s amazing how much work goes into setting something like that up! Really looking forward to it…….

I’d also like to thank some ladies who are putting on a “deLiver a Cure” fundraiser in my honor this upcoming weekend. Thank you Andy, Adrienne, Andrina, Ashley, Heidi, Kim, and Melissa! I can’t express in words how much what you’re doing means to me. I’d also like to thank all those who plan to attend and those who have alreayd donated, your generosity is the reason people like me still have hope for a cure one day.

Keep on fighting the good fight, my friends, and remember to savor those small victories because they eventually add up to something bigger……

Rhone