Great news for the holidays

I had my appointment with Dr.Lawenda yesterday. He is my radiation oncologist. He is a really interesting man. Here is a link to one of his websites, if you ever have a need to check him out... or are just curious: 
https://integrativeoncology-essentials.com/brian-lawenda-md/

Anyway, he had great news; the CT scan I had done December 5th was clear and stable. No cancer, no new things to worry about. The lung and my chest are stable and not worrisome at all at this time.
Yay!!

Thank you for all your continued prayers and well wishes. Mark and I know they make a world of difference. We love your hugs and your smiles and your continued, whether it is constant or occasional, participation in our lives. You have all enriched us tremendously,

We hope you all have a glorious holiday and that 2018 is a fabulous year for you all!

                                                             

PS

I had my 3 month CT scan this morning. My doctor appointment is the 13th. We do not want that phone to ring between now and then... they will call if there is something amiss on the scan. If everything is fine I will find out the 13th.

I feel great. I am doing a little more exercise and getting a little less tired. But, please, think good thoughts for us and this scan.

Jimmy V's amazing speech

So, This is Jimmy V week on ESPN. For those of you too young to remember him, he was a college basketball coach in the 80's and 90's (I know, I am getting old as you would have been babies or not even born yet! sigh).
Anyway, he was funny and passionate - a riot to watch on the side line. He was also very good and even won the NCAA tournament once.
He got bone cancer and by the time they found it the cancer had metastasized/spread all over his body. He died less than a year after his diagnosis, but in that time he formed the Jimmy V Foundation to awareness about cancer and money for research into a cure.
ESPN partnered with him in that endeavor and that year they gave him the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the ESPYs. I saw that broadcast and bawled my eyes out. But his speech was so profound that I go back to it over and over.

Valvano was in the final stages of his battle with cancer when he gave the speech. He had to be helped across the stage by friends dick Vitale and Mike Kryzewski. Those in the audience knew they were likely seeing his last public appearance and, in fact, he passed away 2 months after he gave this speech..

I edited the speech here (it's kind of long). I did not insert any on my own words or change any of his. I just removed a few things. You can google it and get the entire transcript, or watch it on ESPN or YouTube. It is thought provoking and can really make you reflect on your own life.

I’m going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. That’s the way it goes. Time is very precious to me. I don’t know how much I have left, and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people, too.

Now I’m fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how’s your day, and nothing is changed for me. As Dick said, I’m a very emotional and passionate man. I can’t help it. That’s being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love.

When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it’s the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.

… and I always have to think about what’s important in life to me are these three things. Where you started, where you are and where you’re going to be. Those are the three things that I try to do every day.

…It’s so important to know where you are. I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it.

I talked about my family; my family’s so important. People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who’s right here too. That screen is flashing up there 30 seconds like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I’m worried about some guy in the back going, “30 seconds?”

I just got one last thing; I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get your emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day, and Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm,” to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality.
Now I look at where I am now, and I know what I want to do. What I would like to be able to do is spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe, some hope to others. Arthur Ashe Foundation is a wonderful thing, and AIDS, the amount of money pouring in for AIDS is not enough, but it is significant. But if I told you it’s ten times the amount that goes in to cancer research. I also told you that 500,000 people will die this year of cancer. And I also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease. And yet somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background. I want to bring it back on the front table.

We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children’s lives. It may save someone you love. And it’s very important. And ESPN has been so kind to support me in this endeavor and allow me to announce tonight, that —we are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And its motto is, “Don’t give up . . . don’t ever give up.”

And that’s what I’m going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. If you see me, smile and maybe give me a hug. That’s important to me too. But try if you can to support, whether it’s AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease.

…I thank you, and God bless you all.

Kathy

Great News!!

So, on Friday September 15th at my last visit with Dr. Lu ( my oncologist), he told me that my PET scan was terrific! My lung is clear and things seem to be moving along the way we want them to. He did caution me that I am at high risk for return or spread of the cancer one to two years from diagnosis. So we need to monitor closely.

On September 19, at my appointment with my radiation doctor, he said nothing at all lit up in the PET. there is no sign of the cancer at all! But, again, I need to be checked and monitored closely so we catch any recurrence quickly. Did I tell you they determined by the size of the tumor when they removed my lung that the cancer had probably been growing in there for 10 years?

I have a CAT scan scheduled for the first of December and a mammogram for next week.

Thank you to all of you who continue to pray and send good wishes my way. We know in our hearts all that love and concern made a difference. I can never repay you all or explain how grateful we are. you changed our lives and we are very grateful!!

Lead Lined Syringe

These are images of the syringe that the tech used yesterday on my PET scan. After reading more about the scan last week, I was curious about how they contained the radioactive tracers.

It is a specially designed syringe that is lead lined to protect the techs from over-exposure to the radioactivity. The techs even wear badges that track their exposure. The IV needle they put in your arm to receive the glucose is actually smaller than a normal IV needle - which was a bonus.

And because they are shooting you full of a concentration of glucose that is straight sugar, you have to have a finger prick blood test to see if you can tolerate the sugar. My sugar levels are "perfect". Yay! - I don't have to worry about diabetes she said..

I will find out on September 15th or 19th what the PET showed. In the meanwhile I am making plans, keeping busy, and to lower my anxiety I am trying to be crafty on the weekends (since the Mariners have let me down and I can no longer watch them, without extra anti-anxiety pills!) Does anyone want a home-made apron?

All about Thursday's PET scan

For my two other PET scans I asked a couple of questions – enough to understand the basics. But this time I am a little more curious about how it all works. So, I did a little research and here is what I have found out:

PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. A PET scan uses small amounts of radioactive materials called radiotracers, a special camera and a computer to help evaluate organ and tissue functions. A PET scan can identify body changes at the cellular level.

Positron emission tomography is a type of nuclear medicine imaging.

Nuclear medicine is a branch of medical imaging that uses small amounts of radioactive material to diagnose and determine the severity of a variety of diseases, including many types of cancers, heart disease, and other abnormalities within the body. Because nuclear medicine procedures are able to pinpoint molecular activity within the body, they offer the potential to identify disease in its earliest stages.

Nuclear medicine imaging procedures are noninvasive and, with the exception of intravenous injections, are usually painless medical tests.

Depending on the type of nuclear medicine exam, the radiotracers are either injected into the body, swallowed or inhaled as a gas and eventually accumulates in the organ or area of the body being examined. Radioactive emissions from the radiotracers are detected by a special camera or imaging device that produces pictures and provides molecular information,

A PET scan measures important body functions, such as blood flow, oxygen use, and sugar (glucose) metabolism. Cancers thrive on sugar and in a PET scan the injected glucose gathers in the cancerous spot and lights up.

This is a PET scan image, not mine, that shows a significant cancer in the chest. 

My PET scan is being done to determine whether my cancer has spread to other parts of my body or see if my lung cancer has returned after treatment.

Cancer is a complex disease and occurs when cells in the body begin to grow chaotically. Normally, cells grow, divide, and produce more cells to keep the body healthy and functioning properly. Sometimes, however, the process goes astray; cells keep dividing when new cells are not needed. The mass of extra cells forms a growth or tumor. The sooner the tumor is found, the better the survival rate and Pet scans are valuable tools in that endeavor.

My Pet scan is Thursday morning at 7:30. Cross your fingers for darkness; we want no pretty colored lights in this old body of mine!

The Definitive Guide to Cancer

After my July appointment with Dr. Lu I was pretty depressed. after all I'd been through I was really hoping he'd say "It's all gone and it will never come back". That of course did not happen. But my dear friend Shawna reminded me that there are people like Chuck Watson who help themselves and live way longer than the doctors ever predicted. I FULLY INTEND TO BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.
So... I've been read like crazy. And implementing the things that make sense to me. This book

is a wonderful book. It is written by 2 doctors who had cancer and have achieved long term survival.
It deals with a lot of science, but they've managed to make most of it very understandable.
When I started chemo Dr. Lu did a terrific job of educating us on foods to eat and foods to avoid to help ease the side affects and boost the chemo results.This book does a lot of that, but bit looks at how to prevent cancer, how to treat it, and what you can do to help stop it from spreading.
Mark and I have eaten healthier since I was diagnosed but now we often evaluate our meal by how colorful it is; green salad, tomatoes, cantelope, and steak make for a colorful meal and that's what we strive for. Lots of fruits and vegetables and especially green leafy vegetables.That is from the book.
We exercise (I am limitted to my treadmill for now because of the smoke) and plenty of rest. I also take a bunch of supplements (vitamins D and C, COQ-10, tumeric, melatonin, and a multivitamin with selenium). I would recommend this book for anyone at any stage of cancer- even if you do not have it and want to prevent that from happening.

A second book I read was by Kris Carr, also a cancer survivor. She's a little out there (retail therapy is still therapy she says). I would not give the book to a man or to my mother to read.  It is titled Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips. If you are thinking of getting it would preview it before I bought it.It did have some good things in it like remember to be grateful and to express your appreciation, don't keep it to yourself. And find something artsy to do to get your mind and heart back into seeing and creating beauty in your life.  Hence, many of you are getting things I am making because it really does feel therapeutic and good for me. It rachets up my positivity, which we ll know is important for healing.

So, I am so grateful for my friends and colleques. For people this last week who hugged me, smiled at me, told me how glad they were to see me again. You are good medicine and I thank you all!!