If This Is It…

Doo Whap, please let me know…If this ain’t love…you betta let me know…if this is it…

Yeah, Yeah, I’ve been diminished to quoting ‘Huey Lewis and the News’…I haven’t had much to talk about these days, unless of course you would like to hear about how I got up this morning and got ready for work, and went to work, and came home from work, and….well, you get the idea…

I’m going to change the idea of this blog! From now on, it’s going to be about Melissa and Myself.. and all the crap we…yes, we….like to do. We will post pictures and ideas and if you are lucky, we will post diatribes and comments about all that is in our little world!!!!!! HAhahahahahahahahah, (Manic Laughter) Don’t know what a ‘diatribe’ is? Well, you will soon find out HAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH….(more manic laughter).

Anyway…..

Went off on a bit of a tangent…

Check, check, baby one two three….here for all that is Melissa and Jay.

Sorry. Not a rapper! Kinda’ white all around. Couldn’t keep a beat if you hit me with a stick.

Dancing With NED!!

For those of you who are not hip to the cancer lingo NED= No Evidence of Disease

That’s right folks…I had my three month scan on Wednesday the 16th and just got word from my oncologist that it is clean!!!  It’s like a massive weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.  I’m also back to work (after a short bout with pneumonia).  I’m just there doing office stuff, but it’s a good way to get back into the daily routine without running myself into the ground.

So, I’ll keep it short for now.  The important thing now is to get back to life!

I’ll update again soon…..

Deportation

Yes, that correct.  I’ve been deported!  Well, not actually.  I had my port removed on Wednesday.  Finally, I’ve gotten rid of that stupid little thing.  It was strange having this little metal thing under my skin.  The doctor took it out and showed it to me…it kind of looked like a little metal UFO!  That marks the end of this cancer crap…hopefully forever.  I spoke with my work and they are discussing my return.  It will be nice to get back to normal…well, as close to normal as I can.

The next things that are coming up are a PET scan April 16 and a CT scan sometime in May.  Until then I’m free to concentrate on getting back into the swing of things.

Here’s to life….

Benny Chases a Flashlight

Goodbye Benny…

Well, I’m sorry to say, I had to have Benny put to sleep yesterday. He wasn’t doing very well…he had lost more weight and wasn’t eating or drinking so I took him to see the vet. The vet felt around his belly and found a mass that didn’t belong there…He had a large tumor and his kidneys were enlarged. It was hard to say goodbye so abruptly, but I couldn’t let him suffer any more. I still can’t believe that we both got cancer.

Benny was with me for a long time, he was one of my best friends for fifteen years. He was one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ pets.  There will never be one like him.  I miss him unbelievably.

With that I’ll say goodbye Benny, I love you and miss you.

Benny Poirier

06/92 – 02/21/08

A Little Something, Something

Just a quick update for ya.

My mood is getting better, the zoloft decided to kick in finally.  Also I only have one more  radiation treatment left!!!   Pretty soon I’ll be getting back to work, gettin dirty and smelling like oil!!!  One thing that made me very happy….the wife bought me a 10″ miter saw for my birthday!!!!  Now I just have to think of something to build so I can use it.  It’s going to make my life as a woodworker soooooo much easier!

Well, that’s it for now.  It’s getting late and the wife will be home soon.  Gonna go downstairs and find something to do.  Later

Hair Today…Gone Tomorrow

I’ll start off by saying that my hair (this includes my head, face, arms, legs…and all those other unmentionable places that I grow hair.) started to grow back at a pretty good clip…I even started to grow the goatee back….

That’s pretty much where the hair growing fun stops.  To bring you all up to date…I’ve now got 13 radiation treatments under my belt, so that means only 4 left to go.  This would usually be a very good thing…light at the end of the tunnel and all that crap.  But as I went to get into the shower this morning I ran my hand over my beautiful new crop of facial hair, and when I looked at my hand…AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!  There in my hand was my new beard!  Yup…the radiation is starting to make my beard and the hair on the back of my neck fall out.  I thought I was over the hairless thing…guess not.

That is only one of the fun side affects of being radiated.  My saliva production has dropped off dramatically, making my mouth feel slimy and gross all the time.  And, to boot, I have a hard time swallowing everything from water to…well, everything.  Not to mention the early sun burn feeling that I’ve got on my chest and back.  Who’s got a sun burn in February?  This guy.

Needless to say it’s been a pretty crappy couple of days.  I don’t really want to do anything when I get home from treatment.  I’ve found that I need to force myself to get stuff done.  Don’t get my wrong…there’s plenty for me to do around here…there’s dishes, laundry, floors, dusting, all house work in general and then all the little projects that I would like to get done like building a table or returning some beer bottles.  I just don’t want to do them.  My motivation has gone out the window.  It was all I could do to think of what I was going to write on here…as you can see, I decided to make this a bitch session. (I figured I was due for one)

Well, it’s time for me to take my skirt off and put on some big boy pants and get some shit done around here. I know that in the long run…I’ve had it pretty easy when it comes to cancer.

Chernobyl Charlie…

It’s been a few weeks since my last post and I apologize to everyone who comes here to get updates. I met with the radiation oncologist two weeks ago. Thankfully she is very smart, knows what she’s talking about, and has informed me of all the possible side affects that come with being radiated. Some of the side affects are less than favorable…I could loose the function of me salivary glands (they make spit) permanently…that would suck! I will have scar tissue on my lungs because they are too big to protect completely. I will loose some hair on the back of my neck and under my chin…which kind of pisses me off because I just started to get all my hair back. And lastly, I will get a very sore throat…she said that it will feel like I’m swallowing glass…not looking forward to that one. She then informed me that I’ll be having 18-20 treatments…which is about three and a half weeks and it will take two weeks for the side affects to go away.

After that visit I had another visit where they took a bunch of x-rays and lined me up on the machine…once lined up they gave me six little tattoos that they will use to line me up for each treatment.

I started radiation on Monday. When I got there I changed into a johnny and they brought me into the room with the machine. They lined me up, taped me chin up so they can get to my neck, and zapped me three times from the front and three times from the back…that was it. It only takes 30 minutes from the time I get there to the time I leave. I was in a particularly bad mood that day. I didn’t get any sleep the night before and was miserable for the entire day. I’m not sure if it’s just the stress of all this cancer crap or if it was the full moon, but I’m leaning towards the cancer crap. I wanted to break stuff all day, but luckily I stopped doing stuff like that a long time ago. I just went to the gym and took it out on some of the weight machines.

Well, I’ve had three treatments so far and on Tuesday I met with Dr. Lingos (my radiation oncologist) to tell her how things have been going. I told her about my horrible mood on Monday and the lack of sleep. I also told her about an issue I’ve been having with my heart…I have something called PVC (premature vascular contractions) and have been having them for at least fifteen years or so. But now they are getting more prominent and happen for longer periods of time. So…she wants me to see a cardiologist and find out what’s going on. I ran into her again today and she gave me a prescription for Zoloft to help with my sleeping and my mood. She even spoke to one of her colleagues from Dana Faber and presented him with my case…he told her that because I had a negative PET scan half way through treatment that I was cured! That’s cool!

I’ll end on a strange note…I learned yesterday that a girl I dated about five years ago was diagnosed with lymphoma! How weird is that…makes me wonder what it is that is causing so many people to get this type of cancer?

Oh, as for the tittle of this post.  The wife and I were watching a show the other night that was talking about how the Chernobyl explosion ruined an entire city…so I pointed out that what ruined that city is what they are zapping me with everyday…so I joked that I’m going to change my name to Chernobyl Charlie…HAHAHA!  I know it’s strange for me to be making jokes like that but if ya can’t laugh then what do you have?

Scan Results In!

I had some follow up scans just after Christmas.  The CT scan showed that the lymph nodes were about the same size as the last time they scanned me.  And the PET scan showed that there were no live cancer cells!!! So I’m still in remission!  Now I’m just waiting to meet with the Radiation Oncologist in Milford and I’ll be meeting with Dr. Fisher at Dana Faber to see what he thinks about radiation as well.  As far as I know it will be five days a week for three weeks….not really looking forward to it, but if that means staying in remission, I guess I’ll take it.  That’s it for now, I’m hungry, gotta eat some left over pizza!

Pigs

Just because I think pigs are funny….

Actually…the picture at the top of the page is where these pigs live.  It’s a farm in NH that the wife and I visited this past summer.