my cancer story and the treatments

Around the summer of 2017, I developed numbness in my left hand. It wasn't painful. By the fall it had progressed to pain in my elbow. I was hitting the gym every day, so I figured tendinitis. Over the next several months, I tried to work it out on my own. I learned stretching exercises, bought compression bands, tried supplements. By the spring, the pain had expanded to my back, around the shoulder blades. I figured a nerve problem. My doctor sent me to an elbow orthopedic, who sent me to a neck orthopedic, who eventually sent me to a CT scan.

I was scheduled to visit the neck ortho in the second week of October to go over the results, but I got a call a week early: can you come in today please. Shit. That's never good news.

The doctor was trembling. Neck doctors don't usually deal with this kind of thing. He informed me that lesions were found all over my neck and ribs. Cancer. It was surreal, of course. That's the conversation with your doctor that we all wonder how we'd handle in the moment. I was absorbing every word. My reaction was calm, but I knew it would be hard to process. He said, "you're taking this really well." I told him I was just imagining how I was going to tell my family. At that point he slid over and began going over what I recognized as the famous Kubler Ross stages of grief. I stopped him. "Doctor, I know what that is, and I'm not there yet." Damn, five minutes earlier I was sitting in the waiting room wondering if the Celtics would make the Finals. Now I was wondering if I would be around to see it.

So, bone scans followed, PET scans, blood work...the journey had begun. At this point, all I know is lung cancer, both lungs, multiple tumors. And what I've learned are called "mets", metastases which have spread  from the original cancer, are shown in numerous locations on my bones and has also spread to my brain. 15 days of radiation treatments on the mets are scheduled, but the main disease, the lung cancer, cannot be treated until after the biopsy(completed Fri) reveals its nature. The statistics on stage iv lung cancer are dire. There is no cure. Most patients last 9 months after diagnosis. Only 4% make 5 years. And strangely, I have already exceeded that, even without knowing I had cancer. The pain appearing a year and a half ago indicates I had a metastasizing lung cancer at least a year and a half back! Somehow I am still here.

The treatments:

The specifics will be determined by the biopsy. Hopefully, the cancer is a kind where there are good therapies to shrink and slow the tumors. 

But I will need more than that. And thus the fundraiser. 

If you are interested in more details on that, feel free to contact me. 

I want to fight this! I hope to find ways to slow the progression of the disease until newer drugs come out. And breakthroughs are happening every year now. If I can last a couple years, who knows what might be available.

Small contributions are all I ask. And I promise to work my ass off!