I’m so excited about this trip to Europe next week! I have a business conference to attend in Brussels next week, and then I’ve taken some vacation time to extend our trip into the following week. Denise is coming with me, and boy do we deserve this getaway. We fly into Brussels on Monday night – Tuesday morning and I’m sure Denise will find ways to keep busy while I’m at the conference. We’ll take the high speed Thalys train to Paris the following Saturday and spend the rest of that week sightseeing in Paris and possibly outlying areas. This will be Denise’s first trip out of North America and she’s incredibly excited. Heck, I’m excited for her.
I’ve been gearing up for this trip for a while now, trying to get my mouth in shape not only for solid soft foods, but also for the cuisine we’re sure to enjoy in Belgium and France. I don’t think I’ll be enjoying any adult beverages yet, which is unfortunate, since some say the finest beers come from Belgium.
Overall I’m doing pretty well. I’ve been into the office twice now, and both times I felt pretty good all day long. The walk to and from the train station can be a bit tiring, but with an hour ride either way, I’ve got plenty of time to recharge. My tongue is still hurting with what feels like an open wound on the right side and it’s still affecting my speech a bit. But it hasn’t stopped me from eating. I can feel it’s still swollen from the radiation, along with my esophagus, but things are slowly getting better all the time. I no longer have issues with mucus, which is huge. Fighting the mucusitus daily was a real drag. My weight a few days ago was down just a bit to 188 lbs. Not too bad though. I can’t wait to really start taking in some calories each day, so some daily exercise would be possible without feeling light-headed.
Anyway, good news overall, and I’ll try to update the blog while I’m away. If I can’t, then I’ll post a bunch of stuff and photos when I return.
Au revoir!
Well, I’m happy to report I’m able to nibble on some solid foods finally. This is a big deal because it opens up my possible menu choices each day and I’ll be relying less and less on Ensure drinks and protein shakes. I had a bowl of cheerios a few times this week, and it’s pretty easy to eat, since the milk helps keep things moist. I’ve also had some more helpings of tortellini, ravioli and some small pieces of chicken. Yum!
My tongue is still pretty sore with what feels like an open gash along the right side, but I’m able to eat on the other side of my mouth until that heals.
My first day back at work on Wed went very well. I shocked a few people that weren’t prepared to see me and along with them and many others, I was greeted with hugs and smiles all day long. It’s nice to be back and feel connected once again. My lunch that day consisted of a few Ensure drinks and some pudding. Pretty boring, but it kept me energized throughout the day. The train ride there and back was so lovely along the bay too. I had missed that beautiful commute into work and was happy to again ride the train.
The Soloist
In other news, I had another band practice this week, which is always fun and invigorating. And I finished a book entitled “The Soloist”, which is the very same book that was turned into a movie last year starring Robert Downey Jr.and Jamie Foxx. It was a quick read and a great story about patience when dealing with mental illness. I’ll have to now see the movie and hasten to make the obligatory statement that the book was better then the movie.
Last week I took vacation time off so I could hang out with my visiting Aunt Nell and cousin Deirdre who were here from North Carolina and I have to say, a week off felt very nice. This week I’m back to work and digging back into my daily work routine. I’m feeling better every day and have started to nibble on some solid food here and there. So far I’ve been able to eat tortellini, ravioli and the meatballs from a Subway meatball sandwich. My mouth gets very nervous when food is entering, but other than some mild discomfort, I’m able to eat some new things, as long as I have my water bottle close at hand.
I’m still doing my swish and swallow routines, along with a baking soda and salt water rinse a few times per day. My face is clearing up, although I still have the remnants of the red rash on my cheeks and temples, but that’ll clear up soon hopefully. I still do not have much hair on the back of my head, but Denise tells me it’s starting to grow back slowly. I can’t grow a beard or full mustache yet either, but that will change as the months go by.
Grant's Graduation
The big news last week was that my oldest son Grant graduated high school. It’s unbelievable really, but he’s heading toward 19 years old and now ready for some college. I’m very proud of my boy and excited to see where this world after high school takes him.
The big news this week is I’m going to start going into the office on Wednesdays and work with my team at Key. I can’t wait to see them and start feeling like I’m no longer a remote and lonely employee. I’ll have to take my day’s food with me, along with my mouth care items, but I feel good enough to make the travel there and start my reintroduction to the folks at the office. My energy levels are good these days and the fatigue I was having has seemed to diminish.
I think now that the heavy stuff is now really behind me and things will only get better each day. The move into solid food is a real mental boost for me too.
 At Pedroncelli |
 Pedroncelli Vineyards |
 Pedroncelli Vineyards |
 At Raymond Burr  At Amphora |
Well, I’ve been pretty busy since my vacation started and having a great time too so I apologize for the lateness of this update. My aunt Nell and cousin Deirdre are visiting this week from North Carolina and we’ve scheduled some fun day trips to show them around the Bay Area. So far, we’ve taken them for a day’s adventure in San Francisco, and yesterday we spent the entire day in the Sonoma/Alexander/Dry Creek wine region doing a whole lot of wine tasting. I didn’t have any wine, so I guess that made me the natural choice as the driver for the adventure. We visited the following wineries: Pedroncelli, Raymond Burr, a late lunch at Amphora and finally Everett Ridge.
Yesterday was such a nice warm and calm day in the Sonoma wine country and we wrapped up the day in the city of Sonoma and had dinner at a local Italian restaurant. I was feeling brave throughout the past two days with my mouth and decided I might try some tortellini with cream sauce. I found that with the proper amount of water sips, I was able to enjoy the pasta fairly well. My tongue is still very tender with some healing wounds along the sides, but I’m getting better at trying some new things here and there.
Today we’re all relaxing and will be attending my nephew Owen’s graduation from Bethany Preschool tonight. Tomorrow is my oldest son Grant’s graduation from high school. It’s amazing to think he’s already done with HS and planning college life and beyond. I’m so proud of my boy.
Well today was my first Dr.’s appointment in a quite a while and I met with Dr. Woolf in Fairfield. The appointment went well and he poked and prodded my mouth like a real pro. Ouch!! He jammed his finger back into my tonsil and said he was glad he felt nothing out of the normal back there and I took that to be good news. He also snaked that remote camera down my nose and throat again, yuck. He said from the back of my throat down to my vocal chords, there’s just a slight redness and it looked fine. But that my mouth, tongue and some other areas are still pretty swollen. No surprise there. He scheduled a follow-up Pet CT scan for July 3rd in hopes that any swelling in my mouth would have subsided by then.
I’ve been still dealing with an extremely sensitive wound area alongside my tongue, which at this point is the only thing keeping me from eating some solid foods. He said it didn’t look like thrush, but seemed more indicative of mucusitis, and if I kept up with the swish and swallow, I’d be in better shape pretty soon. I hope so, because I’m about at my wit’s end with this crappy Ensure, soup and protein shake diet. In fact it get’s monotonously depressing sometimes.
Another thing that’s come up as of late last week is a real sense of fatigue throughout the day. My energy level has dropped off a cliff. I feel like napping all day, and sometimes barely see the need to even get out of bed (just this past weekend). Seems like this change in energy happened almost overnight last week. I thought maybe I was sick with the flu or a cold, but I wasn’t at all. I know my caloric intake hasn’t changed, but I’m wondering if something in my blood chemistry has. So after my appointment with Dr. Woolf, I went to Northbay and had my blood drawn for testing.
Well, progress is slow these days. Some days feel better than others, and I’ve been able to remain consistent with my mouth medications each day, so I know I’m headed in the right direction. Generally my mouth feels slighty better overall than a month ago. The sides of my tongue are still very sensitive and can sometimes become quite painful, especially after talking for a while. Swallowing is not much of a problem, so eating my food each day is not too hard. I feel like once my tongue has healed, I could start eating some different things again, and that is an exciting prospect indeed! I’ve tried scrambled eggs once again (twice now) and was able to get them down. It’s a challenge, but my mouth hesitantly rose to the occasion.
So just to catch up a bit here, other than my mouth, I’m in pretty good shape overall. My energy is good depending on how many calories I can take in each day. I’m able to work outside and get caught up yard work a bit, but for the strenuous things, I’ve relied on my big strong boys. I’ve played drums with the other band mates several times now, which always is a joy. And I love to play my guitars and write silly little songs each day too. Well not really full songs, but more chord arrangements that could evolve into songs.
I also have a checkup appointment with Dr. Woolf next Monday, where we’ll begin to plan for the next Pet CT scan to see how this treatment has fared so far.
Well it seems my consistent use of the swish & swallow (containing nystatin) has kept the thrush at bay and I’m not having the intense mouth pain I had a few days ago. I just have to make sure I do it on a schedule, along with the radiotherapy mixture I was prescribed. Using that just before eating has helped amazingly well.
So I feel that once my tongue has healed (hopefully very soon), I’ll be attempting to eat some different things, which is exciting, since my diet is dreadfully boring and repetitive. I’m feeling stronger every day and have been able to maintain my weight at 195 pretty well, considering my limited caloric intake each day.
Cheap Trick
Denise and I attended a Cheap Trick concert last night at the Dixon Mayfair. The concert was great! The band played as well as I’ve ever heard them and the sound overall was mixed quite well for an outdoor venue. Near the end of the show they allowed everyone to rush the stage, so we ran up with Denise pulling me along and actually got very close. A funny thing happened earlier in the show though. Denise and I had to walk right up near the stage and make a right turn to get to the t-shirt vendors, and when we did, Robin Zander (the lead singer) came hustling over to that corner of the stage where we were. He and I made eye contact, then he started checking out Denise. Then he glanced back at me and gave me the nod of approval. Awesome. My gorgeous lady had been scoped out by the singer of Cheap Trick. (with a few Ensures in me, I think I could still take him down though 
)
And things were going so well!
Anyway for about the past 4 days, my mouth has really started hurting. I’m having sharp and dull pains all together for nearly the entire day and it’s been making it hard to sleep. I’m not sure what’s going on, but the pain seems to be along the sides of my tongue and near the tumor site, so I’m thinking I’ve got some form of thrush or the makings of an infection starting. In any case this is the first real pain I’ve had since the initial biopsy and I’m not embarrassed to say it can bring me to tears occasionally since it feels like a thousand tiny razorblades slicing the sides of my tongue. I’ve contacted Dr. Vikstrom for an opinion, but in the mean time I’ve started think I may have brought this on myself by not being entirely consistent with the swish and swallow medication each day.
Fooling myself into thinking the healing was going well, I cut back on my swish and swallows each day and I’m thinking with the nightly build-up of mucus and going longer between the swish and swallows has allowed the thrush to occur. So I’ve really been consistent with it for the last two days and the use of a new radiotherapy medication mixture I’ve been taking just before eating has helped as well. I think I’m tipping the scales back the other way now and the pain has started to lessen.
By the way, I got out of the house last night and did some drumming with my band. It felt great to play music once again. My minimal daily caloric intake caused me to run out gas a bit earlier than I’d hoped, but I had a great time playing.
Weight holding steady at 195 lbs.
The healing is still painfully slow and I still can’t eat solid food, and it’s really starting to get annoying. I’m so sick of protein shakes, baby food and Ensure drinks! It just seems like the healing is moving at a snail’s pace and I know it has to do with whatever’s left of the Erbitux in my body. I can tell it’s still there because of how slow my fingernails and hair are growing. The mucus is still a real drag too. Occasionally I feel like my mouth is more tender than the previous day, but I’m still hopeful for a more speedy healing process soon.
I’m still hoping to return to a day or two at the office sometime next month, but if the healing doesn’t start kicking into high gear soon, that might even be doubtful. I know I sound grumpy, but I’m really not most of the time these days.
I have a business trip to Brussels, Belgium and Paris in mid June that Denise and I are stretching into a mini vacation. I’m really counting on eating (but maybe not tasting) real food by then. We’ll have to wait and see.
What a nice weekend we just had. The weather was simply perfect for doing things outdoors. And we did!
Wyatt in the parade
Saturday morning, the family drove up to Winters, CA to see my son Wyatt in the annual Youth Day Parade. It was perfect weather for the parade and we got a street-side view of Wyatt walking by with the marching band and pounding on the bass drum. He did great and looked even better!
After the parade on Saturday, Grant and I tasked ourselves with performing a front end brake job on his car and doing some final repairs on the backyard pool filtration system. I’m thrilled to say we got both items done. Grant is eager to learn how to work on his car, so the first wheel I pretty much did myself as a demonstration of how all the pieces and parts come apart and back together again. And on the second wheel, Grant did nearly it all by himself. It’s a good feeling doing something like this yourself, especially when you consider how much it would cost if you took the car to have the brakes professionally replaced.
After we finished the brakes, I had run out of energy and had to sit down and recharge my batteries. The amount of calories I’m taking in each day is clearly not enough to cover me when I’m doing alot of moving around or working on cars. So I rested and drank another Ensure. When my energy came back, Grant and took apart the pool filtration tank and replaced a filter module and put it all back together. We’re trying to get the pool in ship shape for Summertime swimming and Grant’s High School Graduation party/bbq.
Sunday was another beautiful day to be outdoors. So I decided to pull two dead juvenile redwood trees from the front yard and replace them with two more Aptos Blue redwoods from Costco. We planted a total of three redwood trees in the front yard last year and two of them simply didn’t make it. Not sure why, but they finally kicked the bucket over the last couple of weeks and had to be replaced. Well I got the boys together and planned on pulling the trees with their help, but again, I simply ran out of gas before we even started. In fact I had to lay down and take a nap as I wasn’t feeling well at all. While I was napping, my boys pulled the dead trees out themselves to my amazement, which only left Denise and I to run over to Costco and buy the two new Aptos Blue trees. I haven’t planted them in the ground yet, but they look beautiful.
The Movie Poster
Sunday night came to a close with our weekly dinner at Sarah’s house. She BBQ’d some burgers for everyone and I had some soup and jello. Yum. 
After the perfect dinner we all retired to the family room and watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I had never seen it before, nor had Denise, so it was nice to finally seen this classic. Made in 1954, the underwater shots were amazing, but the acting was pretty campy and we all got a kick out of the high waisted pants for the men and outfits they had for the women. Overall it was a fun and entertaining movie for the family though.
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