Survey says….

It’s only early July, and we’ve had quite a bit of activity this summer! For those of you who like pictures, there are many.

In early June, we visited Kevin and Linda in their new town and new church. They live about 30 minutes from Calaveras Big Trees State Park, so we spent Saturday afternoon hiking in the South Grove, which I highly recommend over the North Grove if you really want to get into the forest. The weather was amazing, ranging from a sunny 70 degrees to overcast and raining. Along the trail, we found ourselves about 30 yards from a brown bear cub who was just foraging in the bushes. I didn’t have the camera out, so no pictures. The cub ran off, and after we waited quietly to make sure mama bear wasn’t coming to eat us (parents, tell your kids whatever you want about bears), we continued on the hike. Did I mention how big the trees are?

Jen tries to wrap her arms around the concept of how big these giant sequoias really are.

Recreating our wedding dance at Big Trees.

Kevin didn't get the memo...

I’ve been playing in a co-ed softball league with some colleagues, and in our fifth game, I started out playing first base. Even though Jen will say otherwise, I did some stretching and warming up before the game. Apparently it wasn’t quite enough. As I did what any good first baseman would do and stretched to try to catch an errant throw while keeping one foot on the base, I heard a pop in my groin area and promptly fell down without catching the ball. I’ve had groin injuries before, but not this bad. The injury happened on a Thursday, and this bruise showed up on Sunday.

The bruise as it first appeared, 3 days after the injury.

The week after that, we drove down to Santa Barbara for Jen’s sister Amy’s wedding. Amy is the youngest of the three sisters, so you can imagine Dad’s relief!

Whew...almost done with the third wedding!

It’s much different when you’re just in the wedding and not the people getting married. You can actually goof off a little during rehearsal!

Gotcha!

After the rehearsal, we headed to Amy’s then-boyfriend, now-husband Jim’s aunt’s house for a tasty meal of tri-tip. The baked beans were good too, and there was some other food, but I don’t really remember it.

Mmmmmm...tri-tip!

After a week of hobbling around and a total of 13 hours driving to and from Santa Barbara, my bruise changed a little. I wonder if my low platelet count (99k at last visit about three weeks ago) has something to do with this?

The bruise after a week of interacting with gravity.

We enjoyed a quiet 4th of July weekend at home. I took advantage of my holiday off work, and with the help of a few good friends (thanks to Sean V., Eric C., and Rob C.), finally got started on that shed I mentioned last summer by pouring concrete on Friday morning…and early afternoon. I’m pretty sure they made a mixing error and gave me too much concrete, because we had to scramble to build additional forms for places to put an extra 3/8 of a yard of concrete! Either that, or I just miscalculated how much I needed. Since we were pretty busy with that, I didn’t take any pictures of the process. More to come as actual construction begins!

On the actual holiday itself, Jen had to work. It was one of the two holidays that she signed up to work at the beginning of the year. We wanted a quiet (relatively!) evening at home, so we just had dinner alone and watched a movie, and briefly went around the corner to see the neighborhood fireworks.

Happy Independence Day!

Let’s see…what else? Oh yeah, Jen is about 21 weeks along now. We had an ultrasound today, and TJSJr. (XX) is developing just great. Our ultrasound technician happened to be the employee of the month this month, and we experienced no less than excellent service from her. I’ll add an image from the ultrasound tomorrow.

Jen at 21 weeks.

Tuesday morning edit: Ultrasound picture added.

Already sucking the thumb!

Two hearts beat as one.

Since there’s no real health news for me right now, this space will be used to keep everyone updated on Jen and TJSJr. Who is TJSJr., you ask? Here’s a photo.

In anticipation of taking many photos in the upcoming months and years, we also splurged on a new camera to adequately capture our collective progress. Here’s a new picture of Jen, with our offspring at 16 weeks. Only a teeny little bump…isn’t she cute?

I must admit, this new camera is taking a lot of my brain power to learn all of its features and settings. Something in that photo doesn’t look quite right…or maybe I’m playing too much with the bundled software.

We had an appointment this week, and heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time. Whoosh whoosh whoosh! Pretty cool stuff! Our next appointment is toward the end of June, and then we find out TJSJr.’s gender in early July.

Sowing the seeds…

It’s officially spring, so that means it’s time for an update, right?

In September last year, I mentioned that we had a garden and were enjoying fresh tomatoes. This year, we got on it a little earlier, and decided to expand the garden from its measly 5 feet by 6 feet to about 6 feet by 16 feet. That meant digging up grass, rototilling the soil, mixing in a topsoil/compost blend, and finally planting. We stopped by the local nursery this week and picked out a variety of veggies and herbs: 4 different types of tomatoes, corn, bell peppers, serrano peppers, sugar snap peas, cilantro, mint, basil, and some reddish-green lettuce-like stuff that goes in salad.

This morning, we got up at the crack of 10:00 to eat a hearty breakfast, drink a nice big cup of coffee (Todd, not Jen), read the headlines online, and finally dragged ourselves out of bed. I had to do some yard work while Jen went and exercised. Finally we got around to planting everything in the garden and installing the irrigation system, which consisted of replacing the spray sprinkler heads with a drip system. We also planted the best large shrub/small tree ever: Osmanthus frangrans. It has small flowers in the spring and fall that smell really good, so we planted it out back near the living room window.

Here is the finished garden:

Let’s see…what else is going on these days…Oh, yeah! I almost forgot. A few weeks ago, I came home from church to check on Jen, who wasn’t feeling well and had stayed home to rest. She said she had a little gift for me, and made me walk all over the house to find it. Here’s what I found:

In case that’s not clear enough for you, this might help:

Yep, Jen’s pregnant! She’s about 11 weeks along right now, due in mid-November. You all know what this means, right? I don’t know that I’ve ever written about it, but early on in my treatment, I talked with my doctor about the risk of infertility from chemotherapy and transplant. He recommended providing sperm samples to be stored in a sperm bank, which I did. I don’t need to explain how that works, do I? Anyway, my boys have been on ice for a few years, just in case we needed them. It turns out that we don’t need them, at least not right now. My boys can swim!

A new oncologist…again!

Those of you who are long-time readers of my past emails and posts here know that I have been through three oncologists since I was first diagnosed. First was Dr. Spears, who left to another practice only a few months after I started chemotherapy in 2000. Next was Dr. Rosenberg, who retired in April 2005. I chose Dr. Sayegh to replace him, and was with Dr. Sayegh until January this year when he decided to move to Oregon. Jen and I decided that Oregon is too far to go for a check-up every three months, so we chose a new oncologist locally. I also took the opportunity to change my primary care physician back to Dr. Beckett. Long story short, I had to change insurance a couple of years ago, and wanted to keep Dr. Sayegh as my oncologist. In order to do that, I had to change my primary care doc to someone who was in the same medical group as Dr. Sayegh. Due to a mistake by my HMO, I ended up with a primary care doc who was, ummmm, errrrrr, a disgrace to the medical profession. Is that too harsh? Oh well. Here are some examples of the quality of care and service:

1. His waiting room is a filthy mess, complete with plastic patio chairs and a large folding table stacked with magazines. There’s a TV mounted on the wall in the corner, right next to the reception window. It blasts Dr. Phil right at ear level so you can’t really hear or understand what the receptionist is saying, even if she spoke better English. That’s not a statement about her ethnicity, it’s about customer service.

2. Payment options: cash or check only. No, you can’t pay with your debit card or credit card. Receipts (if you remember to ask for one) are hand-written out of a petty cash receipt book that you would buy at any office supply store.

3. The buddy system. Normally, this is a good thing, right? When it comes to patient care, though, it’s not. Remember when I had shingles (see below if you don’t)? I went to my primary care doc, thinking he would do something about it. Silly me! He just referred me to a dermatologist, who coincidentally also only accepted cash or check for payment. That’s right, another co-pay, which also means that they’re billing my insurance again. The dermatologist told me that there wasn’t much that could be done at that point, but told me to get some over-the-counter items to help soothe the pain, and prescribed an antiviral medication. In my non-medical opinion, I believe that the primary care doc should be able to write that prescription and give that simple advice. To be fair, I had a very good experience with the dermatologist, despite my frustration with my primary care doc.

So I guess that’s a short story made long. Anyway, since Dr. Sayegh left, I took the opportunity to get Dr. Beckett back as my primary care doc, and found an oncologist in the same medical group. I had my first visit with Dr. Carroll on Wednesday this past week. I was so happy to pay with my credit card and earn rewards! I’m doing my part to stimulate the economy!

The results of the visit were as expected: no treatment at this time; we’ll continue to track my blood counts and check in every three months. My white cell count is around 15,000, but there are no significantly swollen lymph nodes and my spleen is normal.

We have no other major news here. We are enjoying the beginning of spring, which often consists of watching the birds at our bird feeder. The oranges on our tree are ripening, and the squirrels love them. I often pick up the hollowed rinds as I’m doing yard work. Sometimes the squirrels like to get some whole grains in their diet, and go for the bird feeder.

Shingles: not just for roofing.

Last week, my back started hurting really bad. This isn’t anything new; I periodically have back pain because I’m lazy and don’t do my core stabilizing exercises or stretch as much as I should. I have core stabilizing exercises because back problems run in my family, and when I was 19 I had a lower lumbar discectomy at the L4-L5 vertebrae. So when the pain started, I started stretching more frequently and doing the ice/heat routine while popping ibuprofen.

On Saturday, I noticed a small irritated spot on my skin, around my waist. I figured it was just a spot that I scraped while doing yard work. On Sunday, the spot had grown larger and more irritated. My back was hurting more, too. When I tried to get up for work on Monday morning, I couldn’t stand up without severe pain. I’m not one to exaggerate, so you know it had to hurt. Jen called her mom, who is a nurse practitioner, and she suspected it was shingles. I went to the doctor, and he confirmed it.

I consulted Jason M, who is a very knowledgeable physical therapist, and he told me that the virus triggers a lot of nerve activity in the T12-L1 region of the spine. This was the likely reason my back has been so messed up: the nerve activity is random and chaotic (is that redundant?), which leads to multiple symptoms that may not seem related. I was experiencing muscle spasms, soreness, stiffness, and shooting pains.

Now that I’m on some good meds, the pain isn’t as bad. The doctor prescribed acyclovir (800mg, 5x/day) to treat the virus, and a painkiller. Fortunately, the painkiller doesn’t make me sleepy, so I’m able to go to work and function. According to the research I’ve done, this should be over in a few weeks.

Oh, I almost forgot….what good is a new post without pictures?

mmmmmmmmm blistery rash