The Taber Family Blog

Lance Mackey

I read that the Iditarod sled race in Alaska was won a fourth time by the same guy recently, but I just found out today that he (Lance Mackey) is a tonsil cancer survivor too! Simply amazing. Apparently he went through radiation and chemo therapy using Cisplatin and suffered such severe nerve damage in his fingers that he had one amputated. He suffers from the cold like most of us do, but he still has won this thing four times.

That which does not destroy us only makes us stronger.

Way to go Lance!

Read the story here.

We celebrated Elizabeth’s 13th birthday on New Year’s Eve with a boatload of family and friends. We have just arrived back from Disneyland the night before so we were all a little rough around the edges, but the party was a lot of fun and my band got to play some music for the guests throughout the night. Just around midnight, we gathered around the table and watched Elizabeth blow out the candles to her cake. And as the clock struck midnight 2010, my son Wyatt ran his customary lap around the cul-de-sac in his underwear!

2009 was a tough year for me personally. Giving this battle with tonsil cancer all I had was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. There were times during the treatment when I felt like I was never going to have energy, or even feel healthy and strong again. All those thought are behind me now. I’m feeling better all the time. Good enough to take a trip to Europe earlier this year and a Christmas trip to Disneyland with my family. I have been blessed with a wonderfully loving and supportive family. And my friends have been there for me all the way through this challenging year. So let’s say goodbye to a difficult and not-so-great 2009 and hello to a much more prosperous, healthy and happy 2010!!

I had my six week check up with Dr. Woolf on Friday. He typically felt my neck looking for anything swollen, jammed his fingers into the space my tonsils formerly occupied and finally ran a scope down my nose and throat. Signs indicate nothing new and the healing has continued along nicely. My throat is still a bit swollen, which explains the difficulty swallowing I’m still having. Overall it was a good checkup and I feel good my progress.

Also Saturday started my week long (9 days actually) stay-cation over the Thanksgiving holiday. I’ll be hanging around the house, finally getting to chores I’ve been postponing for months. Icky things like cleaning the gutters of years of pigeon poop and fixing the backyard fence.  Oh yeah. Jealous?

Just a quick follow up to my two Dr. appointments from a week or so ago. Undergoing radiation to the neck can have some nasty side effects to a person’s thyroid, so it’s a good idea to have this checked with your blood work periodically. I was called by Dr. Woolf’s office today and he indicated that my thyroid results are normal. Yippee!

I’ve got two appointments with my doctors today. One with Dr. Woolf in the morning which will be a general check up of my mouth and throat and later this afternoon I’ll meet with Dr. Vikstrom and get my blood checked. I’ll post a follow up later today.

Well I had those two appointments and they both went very well. Dr. Woolf poked, prodded and stretched my jaw and said everything looks great. I still have some scarring on my jaw muscles, which explains why I can’t open my mouth as wide as I used to, but he told me some ways I could slowly regain my ability to open my mouth wide again. This is a drag still, because I can’t eat things like hamburgers, sandwiches and other large things, without having to smash them down to size.

I also met with Dr. Vikstrom and he also said things seem to be going well with the healing. My face is clearing up slowly, and I’m getting a little weight back. My lowest was 188, but I’m now weighing in at about 194. So there’s some progress I feel good about. I also had my blood taken for several tests, including making sure my thyroid is functioning properly and didn’t get fried by the radiation (which is pretty common I guess).

So the new was good and I’m doing well each and every day. Still can’t eat anything even remotely spicy but most things are back to normal, except I still can’t drink wine. Whaaaa!

I had my follow up appointment with Dr. Woolf today to go over the results of my Pet-CT scans from last Friday. The first thing he said to me when he entered my room was “your images were completely clear.” Man, that is some good news to hear right off the bat. Thrilled is what I’m feeling right now. I knew in my heart that would be the result, but hearing it from him and after having the images reviewed by other experts as well, gives me such a feeling of relief.

He examined me pretty thoroughly, including the camera up my nose and down my throat, poking me and prodding the site of the tumor and feeling my neck all around. He said I still had some swelling in my throat and near the tumor site, but I already knew that based on the effort it takes to swallow. But the swelling will subside as the weeks roll by.

After the appointment, Denise and I had a brief celebration lunch at Favela’s in Fairfield and I had the quesadillas. They were awesome! And for the rest of the day, back to work.

I had my first Pet-CT scan on Friday at Northbay in Fairfield and I’m anxious for the results. The scan took about 2 1/2 hours, but most of that was preparation, including having the radioactive sugar injection and waiting for an hour while it made its way through my body. Sitting in the “quiet” room for an hour, resting comfortably. After the that I was placed on the scanner for about 30 minutes.

Example Pet-CT Scan - NOT MINE

The way this particular scan works is based on the fact that cancer cells feed on sugar (glucose), so when the radioactive sugar is coursing through my body, the Pet-CT scan will expose where high concentrations of sugar are located. There are normal places in your body where sugar concentrates, such as the brain, kidneys and bladder, but in cancer cases, seeing other places “lighting up” is not typically a good sign.

After the scan was complete I asked the technicians if they could tell me what the results were, and although I knew what the answer would be, I still thought I’d ask. Since they’re not my doctor, they can’t discuss the results with me, but I could take a peek at the images on the computer. I took a quick look at several images, including those of my head and I couldn’t see anything lighting up anywhere in the images. I’m very hopeful about what I saw, but the final say will be up to my doctor this week when I meet him on the 17th. Needless to say I was very encouraged that my treatment was successful!

4th of July in Vacaville

I love 3 day weekends! I get caught up on things around the house, things around the yard and on holidays like this one, we get to spend time with friends and watch the local fireworks. Except for the constant wind everyday, this has been a great weekend so far, and today we’re going to have our July “5th” back yard BBQ and hopefully do some swimming too. Not too sure about that because it’s ridiculously windy today and a bit on the chilly side outside (so far today).

Last night we all piled into the suburban and drove over to the Costco parking lot (one of the highest places in town) to watch the fireworks. Well I guess last year hundreds of people left tons of tailgater garbage strewn around the parking lot, that this year they closed it off entirely. So most folks ended up parking on the street or on the hill nearby, like us! We had a pretty good view of the event albeit a bit far away. It was nice.

Earlier today we drove to Walnut Creek and did some shopping and on our way home we stopped at Chevy’s in Pleasant Hill. I know, it’s a chain and often a roll of the dice as to the quality of the food, but we were very pleased with how clean the place was, how nice the staff was and how good the food was too. I had the fajitas that Denise and I shared and I was able to eat them pretty well. I also had my first Margarita of the year. I was worried about the possible sting, but it didn’t sting at all and tasted great. Now if only wine were as nice to my mouth, I’d be a very happy boy.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted and I should write something to keep everyone up to date. Probably the main reason I’ve been late on this blog, is that Internet access in France is spotty, so getting a reliable connect to the tools I use in the U.S. was frustrating at times. We get so used to how nicely the Internet works here in the U.S., but forget to think that from Europe, all access to sites in the U.S. has to route through network connections under the Atlantic Ocean, so there is dreadful lag at times. For instance, I was never able to browse to My Yahoo news portal page from France. The site would never come up at all. And Facebook rarely worked at all. Anyway, back here in the U.S., the Internet works great again and I’m back to normal.

Denise and I had a wonderful time in Brussels and Paris over the past two weeks. The weather stayed nice the entire time, except for the very last day in Paris when it started to sprinkle very lightly. While in Belgium and France, we elected to do most of the touristy type of things, like seeing the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame and the D-Day beaches in Normandy, but we also really loved the change of culture too. The French are in a rush for nothing! Events like eating lunch or dinner could and should take hours in France and Belgium. Nobody is in a hurry. We really enjoyed that. One thing that was particularly interesting is that people eat at specific times, and if you miss the meal, you’ll find all the restaurants closed up tight until dinner time (after 6pm). And we also noticed that nearly everyone we saw didn’t sit down for dinner until after 9pm, and a lot of people would arrive for dinner after 11pm. They eat (and drink and socialize) late into the night. Very cool.

So my challenge was finding things I could eat while in Europe. I have recently begun eating soft things, so I had to make sure wherever we went to eat, they had something on the menu I was familiar with and could eat. This really wasn’t much of a problem, because once I became familiar with a handful of French words, I was typically able to find something to eat, like fried or scrambled eggs, or an omlette. I fell in love with a sandwich called the “Madame”. It’s basically a piece of toast with layers of ham, cheese and topped with a fried egg. Easy to eat, tasted great and almost every place knew how to make them.

I was able to keep my calories up pretty well while we were there, which is good because we did a lot of walking and stair climbing all over Paris.

Some of our highlights were:

1. Walking around in the old town area of Brussels and eating a real Belgian waffle.
2. Enjoying real Belgian beer!
3. Riding the high speed train from Brussels to Paris. Super fast!
4. Seeing the Sienne River for the first time.
5. Attending a full Sunday mass in French at the Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris.
6. Walking up the Eiffel Tower at night.
7. Standing underneath the Arc De Triomphe and walking the Champs-Elysees.
8. Standing next to the Venus De Milo and paintings by DaVinci in the Louvre.
9. Walking and biking through the never ending gardens at the Palace at Versailles.
10. Standing in the surf at Omaha Beach and looking out from Pointe Du Hoc.
11. Reflecting at the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer near Omaha Beach.
12. Visiting the Bayeux Cathedral and seeing the Bayeux Tapestry.
13. Walking up Montmarte and seeing a panoramic view of all of Paris.

Photos of our trip can be seen here:

Well, I’m sitting here at the kitchen table after getting up at 3:30am to be ready for the drive to the airport. I’m tired, ready and excited. Denise and I spent alot of yesterday packing and making sure we had everything we needed. We purchased some really nice and big suitcases a week or so ago, and they really are huge. Both of us were trying to find extra stuff to put in to keep the essentials from bouncing around. We made sure to pick up some power adapters too, since plugging U.S. devices into European power can be tricky. Fortunately most of our gadgets are capable of handing the 220 volt power in France and Belgium, it’s only important to have the proper adapter.

I checked with the TSA and I’m apparently able to bring my medicine on board the plane as long as I openly show it to the officers. We’ll see how that goes. I just know these long flights will be a challenge for keeping my mouth in good shape. And eating more solid food is going to be a blessing when presented with all the good French and Belgian food.

Denise’s parents are here too to watch the girls while we’re away and for the ride to the airport. Nice! The boys will be visiting the house later this week and spending the next week there, caring for Molly, Padme, the rabbits and the flowers on the piazza. I feel like we’ve thought of everything, but there’s that nagging feeling I haven’t. Oh well. Too late now. Gotta go!