too stubborn to die

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-26T01:17:00.000-08:00

I know it's now December 26, but I'd still like to send you a Christmas greeting. The gift of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem was precious to me at an early age, but I was also a typical boy in many ways. I grew up loving the Peanuts Chistmas television Special, and I have watched it as many years as I could since it first aired in the mid-1960s. The story of Charlie Brown's search for the true meaning of Christmas in a modern secular holiday season had profound meaning for me back then, and still does now. I love this cartoon, as well as the outstanding music that accompanies the program.

Here I want to share with you my favorite track from my Peanuts Christmas tradition. It's called "Linus and Lucy," and whether you are familiar with it or not, I hope you'll enjoy this jazz number as much as I do.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Coming home from the hospital

2008-10-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

It has been two months since I have written an entry. There are a few reasons for this. I've been sick for the last month. I have been hospitalized in Hershey Medical Center for the last three weeks. I'm doing better now. I am going home tomorrow. I'm really excited about it. I will write another entry in a day or two upon returning home. I hope you continue to read my blog when I begin writing more regularly. Take care.

I Was a Guest Editor's Pick

2008-08-28T23:46:00.000-07:00

I want to thank Jude of My Way for choosing me as a Guest Editor's Pick in Magic Smoke on August 8. It was an honor to be chosen among those she selected. If you haven't checked out her blog, please visit; it's an interesting read.

Tags: Guest Editor's Pick, AOL Journals, journals, blogs

Happy 5th, JLand

2008-08-21T21:37:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write an entry tonight because this is the 5th Anniversary of AOL Blogs. I couldn't let this day go by without saying what JLand means to me.

I have been writing a JLand blog for less than a year now, about which I have received many thoughtful and concerned comments. I knew two years earlier, however, that JLand was a caring community where people would take the time and go to the effort to support and encourage others who they had never actually met. Even before I had gotten my bone marrow transplant, I was receiving a great deal of traditional mail from JLanders literally around the world wishing me well and offering thoughts and prayers that my transplant would go well. My wife, Krissy, often told me about the outpouring of concern for both of us in the comment section of her blog, and would read aloud comments left there for me by JLanders.

After my transplant, while I was an inpatient at Hershey Medical Center, Krissy would bring to my patient room each morning a stack of cards and letters from JLanders inquiring about my health and wishing both of us well. At Hope Lodge, where Krissy lived while I was hospitalized, the staff would keep our abundance of mail at the lodge office and would jokingly ask her if we had a fan club. The warmth and affection generously offered by JLanders played a large part in keeping my spirits lifted during the long year I spent in the hospital. All of you have my most sincere gratitude.

I learned that JLanders represented the best that humanity had to offer. Your interest in others continues today, not just for my wife and me, but also for other JLanders and people in general.

Happy 5th Anniversary, JLand! Your mutual interest and support for each other makes JLand a uniquely welcoming place.

John

Tags: AOL blogs, JLand, anniversary, bone marrow transplant, hospital, blogplugs

My cancer is not back

2008-08-09T03:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to write an entry for awhile, but I wanted you to know that my oncology appointment on July 28th went well.

My cancer is not back. When my oncologist returned from vacation he told me that the doctors who thought my cancer was back didn't have his experience in treating MDS. That's why they were mistaken.

He's quite pleased with my progress both with the transplant and with my kidneys. The reason my kidneys were not functioning as well as they had been was because of a medication I was taking. My oncologist is taking me off this medication gradually, and my kidneys have already begun to improve. I will be off this medication in about a week.

The only thing my oncologist is concerned about is my iron level. I have iron overload from the more than 100 blood transfusions I've had since my bone marrow transplant. My iron level is more than 7 times the normal level what it should be. In the near future, my oncologist is hoping to put me on a medication which will lower my iron level back to normal.

I want to thank every one for their concern, comments and prayers. Your support really means a lot to me. You made it easier to get through this. I'll do my best to keep you up to date on my future progress.

Tags: remission, cancer, MDS, bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, kidney damage, high ferritin level, blood transfusions, blogplugs

Bad News in My Blood Test Results

2008-07-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

For several months recently my blood test results were quite good. They showed that I was doing well in many ways, and especially that my immune system was stronger than it had been since before my bone marrow transplant. My oncologist at Hershey Medical Center was so pleased that he reduced my blood test schedule from once a week to once a month.

Then, about three weeks ago, my lab results showed that my neutrophil count had fallen well below the normal range, which meant my immunities were low, and were actually on the edge of being dangerously low. I waited a week, all the while wondering if my immunities were getting weaker or stronger. But after a week, I felt that couldn't wait the remainder of a month to see how I was doing. Hershey's Post Bone Marrow Transplant Coordinator, the person I call when I have a problem, was away on vacation. Since I couldn't reach her, I turned to my local oncologist's office for help. One of the nurses there said that I could have labs done twice a month for a while, since my neutrophil count was low.

I had to wait another week, but I had the labs done. The results showed that my neutrophil count was very low, much lower than it had been two weeks before. This means that I will have to stay in our apartment almost all the time, and when I go out I'll have to wear a surgical mask everywhere. I'll also have to wash my hands frequently and use hand sanitizer often. I can't have fresh fruit or vegetables, I can have no fast food, and I must avoid crowds of people.

My wife Krissy called Hershey to see if I could have a Neulasta shot to raise my neutrophil count. We learned that not only was the Post Bone Marrow Transplant Coordinator still on vacation, but my oncologist was also on vacation and wouldn't be back for two weeks.

The doctor and nurse who are filling in for them don't know me. They said that since my neutrophil count is so low two and a half years after my transplant, it could mean that I'm having a relapse of cancer. If that's true, a Neulasta shot could further damage my bone marrow. They said I'll have to wait until my oncologist returns and determines what's wrong with me. I have an appointment to see my oncologist on July 28.

I'm not too worried about the possibility of a relapse. The substitute doctor and nurse may not fully appreciate how much of the last two and a half years I've spent with a dangerously low neutrophil count. Even though I'm not a doctor, I'm reasonably sure that the cancer isn't back. My oncologist has told me many times that neutropenia (a dangerously low neutrophil count) can be caused by something as simple as a mild viral infection which you may not even be aware that you have except for feeling tired. I have been tired lately.

I have a feeling that when I see my oncologist on July 28, he'll tell me that my cancer hasn't come back. I think he'll say that the substitute doctor doesn't have his personal experience with my condition. If I'm still neutropenic at that time, I may get that Neulasta shot.

Even though I'm not worried about cancer, I have to be cautious about being neutropenic. I can't afford to get sick. With such low immunities, any infection could be very dangerous. The last time I was neutropenic, I got a blood infection that sent my temperature up to 104.4 degrees and kept me in the hospital for a week. This time I haven't felt sick -- just tired. I hope it stays that way until my neutrophil count returns to normal.

Tags: Neutropenia, neutropenic,bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, oncologist, neutrophil count, Neulasta, blogplugs

The Man Who Hates Blogs

2008-06-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

No matter what you try to do in life, someone will believe that your efforts are worthless. I had this fact proven to me again recently by a university PhD who paused during a presentation to launch into a five minute attack on blogs and online journals. Let me explain.

Not too long ago, my wife Krissy heard about a writer's meeting which was to be held at the local public library. The topic of the meeting was memoir writing, which is an interest of mine, so we attended.

The talk went well for a while as the university instructor and his female co-leader gave helpful advice about writing, with a focus on memoirs. Then, about 30 minutes into the talk, the man's attitude changed abruptly. He began speaking about blogs in a hostile, mocking manner, saying that blogs were worthless and boring (I believe the term he used was "mundane"), and he claimed that all blogs were written in "stream of consciousness." He was convinced that people who write blogs and online journals couldn't be considered real writers, and wrapped up his attack by saying, "Who'd want to read a blog, anyway?"

I wanted very much to stand up and walk out of the room midway through their presentation, but I forced myself to stay and listen to everything else he said, since I was planning to write him a scathing email.

When the presentation was over, I did walk out, while the audience stayed for refreshments. I was furious and I knew that if I talked to him that night I would have chewed him out in front of everyone there. I wanted to avoid that. Krissy, however, went up front to talk with the man. She told him that she and I wrote blogs, and that we've been told that we write rather well. To this he responded, "Not everyone who can use a keyboard is a writer." She tried to talk about this with him, but he just kept repeating that one sentence. Eventually he said that he might consider editing our work so that someday we might have some hope of becoming writers. Krissy refused his offer. She described him to me as being arrogant. Personally, I might go to him if I ever want lessons on becoming a pretentious snob.

When I'd calmed down a bit, I realized that this man had used arguments that anyone familiar with public speaking or debate would have recognized as being irrational. He might have read a blog or two that was not well written and assumed that all blogs were written that way. I was surprised that a college instructor (probably a professor) could have fallen into an illogical belief like this. Professors are expected to be clear thinkers. Also, despite his claim, all blogs aren't written in stream of consciousness, as anyone who has read a fair sampling of blogs would realize. There are many good blogs, including nationally known and respected blogs which are certainly well written. Instead of saying that he personally didn't like blogs, he tried to throw all blogs on the trash heap. I realized that he had not been giving his professional opinion that night. Instead, he had been expressing a pet peeve.

I never did write that scathing email. I saw that it wouldn't have accomplished anything. I could have given him a piece of my mind, but that wouldn't have changed his view of blogs. I got over my anger after a few days. I understood that I had been angry because he had put me down as well as Krissy and the many fine blog writers who don't deserve to be dismissed out of hand.

Everyone has a right to his own opinion, and if this one professor wants to harbor an unrealistic hatred of blogs and online journals, he's free to do so. My concern is that he may influence the minds of students and other professors, prejudicing them against blogs. Hopefully, one teacher can't do much damage to blog writers.

Maybe I'll write him a calm, thoughtful email about his irrational reasoning. I'll have to think about that.

Tags: Blogs, online journals, blog writers, journal writers, writers, university teacher, university instructor, professor, prejudice, irrational thinking, irrational argument, snob, arrogant, arrogance, pet peeves, blogplugs

A Snapshot of My Mom's Life

2008-05-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, my mother passed away on April 16th, 2008, at the age of 76, following a long battle with advanced Parkinson's Disease. She was a fighter, but a decade or more of Parkinson's, combined with years of constant pain from severe osteoporosis, had worn down her resolve. At the end, I think she wanted to die.

I know that everyone's own mother is special to them, partly because she's their mother, and partly because every mother is unique in different ways, but I think my Mom was one of a kind. Her name was Kathy, she loved the smell of honeysuckle, and her favorite flowers were yellow roses. She liked spicy foods, especially foods seasoned with a lot of black pepper and horseradish. She never drank or smoked, but she loved her coffee. She liked sad songs and sad movies, and she struggled with depression all of her life.

She and my Dad adopted me when I was a small baby, and at the age of eight I was absolutely stunned when they told me that I was adopted. She had never done anything to suggest that I was not her natural child. My Dad once told me, "Never doubt that your Mother loves you," and I never did.

My Mom thought she was dumb, but I knew she wasn't. She may not have had much "book knowledge," but she was very smart with people. She could win folks over with a smile and a few words. I watched her talk salesmen into selling her merchandise at half price when the items weren't on sale and the salesmen had no obligation to cut her a deal. She claimed that she was shy, but if she was she had everyone fooled.

In many ways she had a hard life. For instance, when she was nine years old, she had to have a tonsillectomy, and her doctor opted to do the surgery in his office. He blindfolded her before he gave her the anesthetic. For the rest of her life she was afraid of the dark, afraid of going blind, and afraid of doctors. I know this was 67 years ago, but doctors back then must have known better than to do things like that. She would refuse to see a doctor no matter how sick she was, and it was only in the last year of her life that she agreed to see a neurologist and was diagnosed with being in the late stages of Parkinson's Disease.

This entry is necessarily an incomplete description of my Mom's life. I could write books about her experiences. I just wanted to give you a snapshot of a part of her life. In my Mom's memory, Krissy and I planted a yellow rose bush in a giant flower pot on our patio. The rose bush will remind us that my Mom is still with us, and that we'll all be together again someday.

Goodbye for now, Mom.

Tags: Mother, Mom, roses, yellow roses, Parkinson's Disease, osteoporosis, adoption, blogplugs

I Fell in the Shower and Injured My Neck

2008-05-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

Six weeks have passed since I've felt well enough to write an entry. Much has happened to delay my writing, one incident being the death of my mother on April 16. I received a flood of online comments expressing sympathy and concern for my wife Krissy and me; I want to thank all of you who kept us in your thoughts and prayers. Mom will be missed.

The latest delay began on Sunday, May 4th. Krissy and I were getting ready for a two and a half hour drive the following day to see my hematologist/oncologist at Hershey Medical Center. Late that night I decided to take a shower to get a head start on what we knew would be an early, busy Monday morning. While in the shower I slipped and fell backwards, smashing the back of my neck on the rim of the bathtub. The pain of the impact stunned me, and the force of the impact split open a respectable length of skin behind my right ear. From the other end of our apartment, Krissy heard me fall like a bag of bricks, and she came running to help.

Though we had a lot left to do that night, we were forced to make an unexpected trip to the local Emergency Room. The pain in my neck and shoulders was severe, and we were afraid that I might have done serious internal damage. The ER staff took my injury too casually to suit my impatient mood. After I explained all the important details, the triage nurse handed me a beeper and told us to sit in the waiting room until someone from Registration was ready to see me. They were having a slow night at the ER, so there was no one ahead of me waiting to be seen. When I had been there three weeks earlier with what I had thought was bronchitis, they had taken me from triage directly to an exam room even though they had been quite busy that night.

Upon arriving in an exam room, the ER doctor had blood drawn to make sure my platelet count wasn't too low due to my bone marrow transplant. The lower your platelet count is, the more likely you are to have internal bleeding. Thena Radiology technician had me walk to the CAT scan unit. On previous visits the staff had always insisted on wheeling me over. I didn't know why this visit was different. The results came back before too long. My platelet count was quite low, but not dangerously so, and the ER doctor said the CAT scan images were normal. The doctor closed the wound on my neck with some kind of super glue. He told me to go home and resume normal activity. Krissy and I weren't sure if we believed him or not. The pain I felt certainly wasn't normal. We got home at about 2:30 AM.

Later that morning I drove us to Hershey. The neck pain was bad and my neck muscles were stiff, but I could turn my head and see in all directions well enough to drive safely, if not comfortably. My doctor's appointment went very well. My hematologist/oncologist said he believed my two cancers would never come back. He did order an Aranesp injection, though, to raise my hemoglobin, which was significantly low. We stayed in Hershey overnight at Hope Lodge, and I drove home on Tuesday.

A week after I fell, my neck hurt as badly, if not worse, than it did the night I fell. Monday, May 12th, Krissy called my local Primary Care doctor. Krissy explained my situation and the nurse said if we could get to my doctor's office in half an hour, my doctor would see me. I don't know how she does it, but Krissy gets things done. Seeing a doctor on 30 minutes notice is next to impossible.

We got there on time. My doctor examined my neck, then sent me downstairs for X-rays. My doctor said the X-rays showed that a piece of bone had broken off one vertebra in my neck. He told me to buy and wear a cervical collar, and he referred me to a spinal surgeon.

I saw the spinal surgeon the next day. He did a series of neurological tests on me, then sent me down the hall for more X-rays, about 15 of them, with my neck in all different positions. After a while, the surgeon came back and told me that my vertebra was not fractured, and that what had looked like a piece of bone was actually a calcification which had been there for a while. I wasn't sure exactly what a calcification was, but I have since learned that it is a hardening of soft tissue which is far less serious than a fractured vertebra. The surgeon told me that I had a sprained neck which would take at least a few weeks to heal. He scheduled me for physical therapy and gave me other instructions, which I'm following.

The pain is considerably less than it was a week ago, but it's definitely not gone. The cervical collar seems to be helping a great deal. I'm writing this entry, so you can be sure that I'm feeling better than I was. I expect to be fully recovered before another month goes by.

Do yourself a favor: Be careful when you take a shower. A sprained neck is very painful, and I could have been hurt much more seriously. All it takes is one bad step. Good health to you, your family, and your friends.

Tags: Bathtub falls, bathtub injuries, household falls, household injuries, sprained neck, x-rays, cervical collar, neck pain, blogplugs

Life Under Thundering Jet Engines

2008-04-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

When my family moved to suburban Chicago in 1969, O'Hare International was the world's busiest airport. While our house was miles from O'Hare, low altitude airliners as large as Boeing 747s roared over us more often than one plane per minute, all day, every day. We also lived near a Naval Air Base. On some days fighter jets rumbled loudly over our house as they maneuvered to land at the Navy base. At first the unceasing noise of military and commercial jets was deafening, and we thought we would lose our minds. But after six months we somehow had learned to tune out the majority of the constant roaring. This may seem hard to believe, but human beings can adjust to almost anything, given time. If I stopped and deliberately listened for the airplane engines, I could hear them clearly. Even so the noise didn't seem as loud as it had when we first moved in.

We made many sightseeing trips to O'Hare during the three years we lived in Illinois. As a boy who hoped to be a professional pilot some day, these trips were a much anticipated joy. Certain areas of the airport had huge windows where we spent many hours over the years watching airliners take off and land. The massive jets would accelerate rapidly down the runways before slowly and with great effort becoming airborne. Once off the ground, the planes soared quickly upward and out of sight. But I was especially in awe of how pilots could bring a jumbo jet safely down from miles above the ground and place it almost gently on a runway. The descending planes appeared to land in slow motion even though they were moving quite rapidly. I also enjoyed watching planes taxi to and from arrival and departure gates. This allowed me to view these large airliners close up.

Sometimes on Saturday afternoons during the summer months, we drove near the ends of departure runways at O'Hare where we could watch planes take off as closely as possible. At these locations there were hot dogs stands that did a surprisingly good business. We would have hot dogs and drinks while enormous jets thundered directly overhead, seemingly low enough to reach up and touch. We not only heard but also felt the almost painful roaring of full throttle engines. This variety of Saturday supper may not be for everyone, but for those of us who enjoyed the novelty, such an exhilarating meal was a unique experience.

While I never realized my dream of becoming a pilot, the ambition led me to many fascinating childhood adventures. Even though I've kept both feet planted firmly on the ground, I will always have my memories of those three years in the shadow of O'Hare Airport. My childhood was deeply enriched by the presence of those thundering aircraft.

Tags: O'Hare Airport, O'Hare International Airport, jets, aircraft, commercial airliners, fighter jets

Bad News -- I Have Five Cavities

2008-03-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had my first dentist appointment in over two years. They took x-rays and gave my teeth a cleaning. The x-rays showed five cavities, which my dentist will drill and fill on May 1, provided my hematologist/oncologist approves of an invasive procedure being done on me. I'm fairly sure that he'll approve because the consequences of leaving cavities uncorrected could be far more dangerous than doing some drilling. Besides, my white blood cell count has been doing well lately, so there should be a minimum of risk.

The cavities have probably been there for at least a year, although they were probably smaller then. As some of you know, I spent about 10 months of 2006 at Hershey Medical Center recovering from a bone marrow transplant. During most of that time I was either too tired or too sick to get out of bed to brush my teeth. I should have tried to brush my teeth anyway, but often I just didn't have the strength to stand at the sink that long. Taking good care of your teeth after a cavity has set in doesn't help much, so all the brushing and flossing I've done since coming home may have prevented new cavities, but the old decay wasn't reversed by my good dental hygiene.

I expected my dentist to find at least one cavity, because I've been having rather bad pain in one tooth whenever something cold touches it. This pain has been occurring for about four months now. I called my dentist right away when the pain started, but she didn't have any appointments available until yesterday. I suppose I should have seen my dentist when I started feeling stronger about nine months ago, but drilling cavities back then would have been a much more serious procedure than it will be now. The chronic neutropenia (dangerously low immunities) I had until this past December would have made drilling cavities a major infection risk without first having a series of Neupogen or Neulasta injections to artificially raise my immunities. You probably wouldn't believe how much just one of these shots costs; when I was told for the first time I couldn't believe it. Because of the expense, doctors usually only order them when the risks to your health are severe. But based on my current lab test results, I think my dentist can now drill safely.

My dentist told me that I won't need to have any root canals or to have any teeth pulled, which I'm sure will be a relief to my hematologist/oncologist. I'm pretty happy about it myself. I'm also glad this dental work could wait until my health allowed the work to be done. I plan to be extra diligent in caring for my teeth from now on, even if I don't feel up to it in the future, because I know I will not enjoy having these five cavities drilled.

Tags: Dentist, cavity, cavities, bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, hematologist, oncologist, Neupogen, Neulasta, neutropenia, blogplugs

I Don't Appear to Be Having a Relapse

2008-03-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

In my last entry I told you that I was getting tired and short of breath without much cause, and that I was waiting for my monthly lab results to see if I was having a relapse. This past Tuesday (March 11) I had my monthly lab tests done. The results were normal for me. I was relieved to hear this since I had been close to holding my breath for three weeks over my unusual symptoms. As far as Krissy and I could tell, there was nothing in my blood counts to indicate that there was anything wrong with my marrow, and my blood chemistry showed that my kidneys are chugging along at about 40% of normal function like they have been for months. *Whew*

Whenever I have labs done, I wait a few hours and then call my local oncologist's (cancer doctor's) office. A nurse there gives me any lab results that I want over the phone. After all this time they know me well and don't mind doing this for me. I like getting the results on the same day the tests are done. Naturally, Krissy and I can't interpret the results as well as a doctor can, but after spending almost a year at Hershey Medical Center, we can draw general conclusions from my labs.

Since the lab results didn't show anything obviously wrong, on Wednesday I called my transplant nurse at Hershey and asked her what they thought down there. She said she had told my transplant oncologist about my symptoms. He said that he saw no problems in my lab results, and that my symptoms could be caused by something as simple as a mild viral infection. My transplant nurse told me to relax, that she would call me if anything important turned up. She hadn't called as of Friday, and after a sleepy weekend I decided not to wait any longer to write this entry.

I plan to call two other doctors this week about possible causes for my symptoms. If these two doctors can suggest anything significant, I'll let you know. But the good news is that I don't appear to be having a relapse.

Tags: oncologist, bone marrow, bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, Complete Blood Count, kidneys, Complete Metabolic Panel

Could I be having a relapse?

2008-03-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

Lately when I work for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes I get tired and out of breath. I'm not doing hard labor. I'm just doing housework or grocery shopping. It makes me wonder if I'm having some kind of relapse.

I don't know if it's something as simple as my hemoglobin being low again (that would explain why I get tired and out of breath). Or perhaps it could be more serious like my MDS coming out of remission.

I'm wondering if the coffee I'm drinking is damaging my donor marrow. I have not heard that caffeine causes damage, but I'm just wondering. I've had to drink a lot of coffee lately just to stay awake.

Perhaps I could be having kidney problems and not MDS. I've been eating too many foods with too much sodium lately.

Other times I wonder if it's the Hemalytic Anemia coming back. I don't ever want to have that again. There was a time when I had to have seven bags of blood a day just to stay alive.

What makes this more difficult is that I'm only getting blood tests done once a month now instead of once a week. I don't know from one week to the next how well I'm doing. I could have some kind of serious problem and know nothing about it.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I'll have my monthly lab tests done. Maybe they'll tell me something I need to know about my condition. Perhaps there's something wrong. The tests could just as easily show that nothing's wrong.

I won't be able to relax until I know what my results are. Worrying like this isn't normal for me. I'm used to seeing the results every week. This helped me feel more secure in knowing how I was doing each week. Not knowing at all is a lot worse than knowing that something is definitely wrong.

If the test results don't tell me anything conclusive I'll call my transplant nurse in Hershey, and maybe she can give me some idea of what's happening. As soon as I know what it is going on I'll be sure to let you know.

Tags: MDS, Myelodysplasia, bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, caffiene, kidney damage, sodium, hemolytic anemia, hemoglobin

My Cool Things -- Battling Tops and Jonny Quest

2008-03-10T00:25:00.000-07:00

Here are more of "My Cool Things." This entry is the last in this series.

Take away a nine year old boy's action toys and you'll have a sulking child. At this age, my favorite store-bought action game was called "Battling Tops," which may not be familiar to you. This was 37 years ago, after all. Could they possibly still make this game? In case they don't, I'll give you a quick description of it. The game had a round, concave, arena-like playing area with four player stations at equal distances around the perimeter. The playing pieces were four plastic tops, several inches high. Each player got one top and a small plastic ring with a length of thread attached to it. The ring fit over the player's index finger and the thread wrapped tightly around a top quite a few times. The top was then placed in the player's station, which was designed to hold the top steady until the game began. All players pulled their rings at the same time, causing the tops to spin furiously in the concave playing area. From this point on, all the players could do was watch and hope. The tops would whack repeatedly into each other, making a surprising amount of noise, until all the tops except one either fell over or were flung out of the arena, often at impressive speeds. The winner was the player who had the last top still spinning.

I don't think I played this game with the neighborhood boys because they seemed to enjoy breaking store-bought toys as much as playing with them. I wanted "Battling Tops" to last for a while, so I only played it with my Dad. I'm not sure if he enjoyed playing the game or if he was just playing for my sake, but either way I had a ball. The best parts were listening to the whirring, rattling, whacking noises the tops made, and dodging the tops as they flew across the room. If you're thinking that this sounds like the perfect non-electronic game for a boy, I'd have to agree with you. Action games that thrill young boys without taking away their innocence are impressively cool.

When I was 10 years old, my favorite cartoon was an action-packed thriller called Jonny Quest. Unlike any other cartoon, the considerable violence on this program was realistic: not graphic, but definitely far more believable than Bugs Bunny/Road Runner pseudo-violence. Bad guys usually met with swift and imaginative deaths. I wasn't interested in seeing anyone die, but I loved the high level of action. I also loved the realistic detail of the animation.

Jonny Quest was different from other Saturday morning cartoons because it had originally aired as a prime time science fiction/adventure series in the 1964-65 season. Probably because it was a cartoon, the show got away with levels of action that never would have been permitted on other 1960s prime time programs. Jonny Quest was quite popular, but was canceled after one season because every episode went over budget. The program was just too expensive for a television series of its era.

The show followed the adventures of Dr. Benton Quest, who was billed as one of the top three scientists on Earth. He apparently had a PhD in everything, and he traveled the world thwarting the plans of evil scientists and other high-tech villains. With him he brought Jonny, his 10 or 11 year old son, and Hadji, Dr. Quest's 11 year old adopted Indian son. Roger "Race" Bannon was the pilot of Dr. Quest's super-high-tech private jet; "Race" was also the boys' tutor and much-needed bodyguard. Rounding out the regular cast was Bandit, Jonny's white bulldog.

After being canceled, Jonny Quest went into very successful syndication until parents' groups against cartoon violence had the program pulled from broadcast in 1972. The program returned years later, when the level of television violence caught up with the precedent set by this cartoon series. In the '80s, and again in the '90s, two new Jonny Quest series were produced for a short time, but I felt they were inferior to the original.

I haven't seen an original Jonny Quest episode since the early '80s, and if I found one now I probably wouldn't watch it. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not a pacifist. I enjoyed the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. But if I had young children I'm sure I'd be concerned about them watching something as violent as Jonny Quest. When I was 10 years old, though, I thought Jonny Quest was awesomely cool.

Tags: My Cool Things, Battling Tops, children's games, Jonny Quest, cartoons, television, the 1960s, blogplugs

My Cool Things -- Aircraft and Dinosaurs

2008-03-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Here are more of "My Cool Things." I'll finish this series in the next entry.

When I was seven years old, my family moved to a suburb of Chicago. Our new home was modest, pleasant, and agreeable in every way, except that it was located under a high-traffic, low-altitude approach path to O'Hare Airport. At first we didn't like the constant noise from the jet engines, but surprisingly, we adjusted to it quickly. Somehow we learned to tune out most of the constant roaring.

Before long I discovered that sitting in our backyard and watching the endless parade of airliners was an entertaining pastime. I had never flown on a plane, so I found myself wondering how being a passenger on one of those jets would feel. My daydreams quickly grew into imagining the experience of piloting a plane. I saw myself sitting in the cockpit, my hands on the controls, maneuvering the powerful aircraft with practiced ease. My parents had been airline passengers; they spoke about the force of taking off pushing them firmly back in their seats, and the exhilaration of climbing rapidly to a great height. In my mind I guided planes through many imaginary flights like my parents described, and still more breathtaking flights which I created in my dreams. I decided that I would be a pilot when I grew up.

Through junior high and high school I considered several different careers, but becoming a pilot was always close to my heart. Then one day after I had graduated from high school, my dream was abruptly shattered. I spoke with a professional pilot who told me that to be a pilot you had to stand at least 5 feet 10 inches tall. I had stopped growing at 5 feet 7 inches in height. There was no escaping the cold facts. I would never pilot jet airplanes. Eventually I recovered from my disappointment and moved on to other dreams. But even today I know that piloting aircraft would be adventurously cool.

Like many eight-year-old boys, I loved dinosaurs. I didn't have any dinosaurtoys or action figures, which my parents probably would have bought for me if it had ever occurred to me to ask for any. Instead, I spent hours memorizing every available fact and theory about these ancient reptiles. My information was provided by many oversized, heavily illustrated books produced for my age group, which my Dad did buy for me.

When I couldn't corner anyone long enough to share my enthusiasm for the Mesozoic era and its inhabitants, my interest turned to more creative applications of my hobby. I'd lightly sketch a member of each dinosaur species on construction paper, carefully cut out each image, and fill in the details of an artist's conception of that dinosaur using a 64 piece set of Crayola crayons. My room would become a child's recreation of the Mesozoic world as I placed each dinosaur in its native construction-paper-and-crayon habitat. One corner of my room became an ocean or inland sea where marine dinosaurs hunted prehistoric fish. Nearby was a swamp where Brontosaurus and other giant sauropods waded while eating soft water plants. A drier landscape could be found by my closet, where Tyrannosaurus Rex and three-horned Triceratops battled, surrounded by a menagerie of other familiar and obscure species. Flying dinosaurs perched in tall, prehistoric trees.

Transforming my bedroom into a world of dinosaurs took much time and effort, but the enjoyment it brought me was well worth the work. I would make the various dinosaurs carry out what I imagined were normal activities for them. They would interact and go on reptilian adventures until their construction paper forms wore out. Then I'd continue reading my dinosaur books and searching for another patient listener who I could privilege with the wonders of ancient Earth. Long before the era of video games and DVDs, being a boy who was passionate about dinosaurs was imaginatively cool.

This is the fourth entry of a five part series.

Tags: My Cool Things, aircraft, O'Hare Airport, airliners, jets, dinosaurs, Mesozoic era, Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, crayons, construction paper, blogplugs

My Cool Things -- Apollo 11, The Starship Enterprise, and Star Trek

2008-02-27T22:29:00.000-08:00

Here are three more of "My Cool Things." I'll finish the last of "My Cool Things" in the next two entries.

The Apollo 11 mission gripped the world as one of the most compelling nine days in history. The mission boasted the first manned Moon landing on July 20, 1969. That day at 10:56 PM EDT, when Neil Armstrong became the first human to stand on the Moon's surface, my eyes were glued to our television screen. I was seven years old, but my parents let me stay up late to watch an event which would fascinate me for the rest of my life. Despite being absorbed in the NASA images of Moon rocks and dust being collected for analysis on Earth, I felt sad for astronaut Michael Collins. He had to remain orbiting the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface and got all the glory.

Scientifically accurate details from the Moon's surface captivated me. The astronauts appeared to bounce across the surface in one-sixth of Earth's gravity. Lunar dust which was kicked up fell directly back to the surface, leaving no floating cloud in the moon's airlessness. And when the astronauts left the Moon, the previously motionless American flag, which had been planted at the landing site, whipped as in a furious wind. This effect was caused by powerful rocket exhaust as the Lunar Module rose from the lunar surface. The astronauts' return to Earth on July 24 left me with a profound sense of wonder that the mission had been a complete success. Knowing that humans have walked on another world is astronomically cool.

Star Trek's famous Starship Enterprise first voyaged to distant, imaginary worlds on September 8, 1966, nearly three years before Apollo 11. Science fiction can leap beyond factual science where rockets are the most advanced propulsion system available. The Enterprise journeyed between stars at incredible speeds by using warp engines, which physicists rightly reject as pure fantasy. But that doesn't stop millions of us from thoroughly enjoying the many fictional tales from the Star Trek universe. Obviously, none of the five Star Trek television series or 10 big screen movies ever tried to explain warp drive, but we have been given some tantalizing details.

The original Starship Enterprise could have traveled the 25 trillion miles from our Solar System to the next nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in three days. By comparison, the Apollo missions took three days to reach the Moon, which is only 238 thousand miles away. The second Star Trek series, The Next Generation, introduced us to a new Starship Enterprise which could have traveled from Earth to Alpha Centauri in just 38 minutes! This ship was no slouch. To actually travel at such speeds, a staggering revolution in physics and engineering would be necessary. The Next Generation is supposed to take place in the 24th Century. I don't believe that humanity would have a snowflake's chance in Hades of advancing that far in just 350 years, even assuming that these advancements were scientifically possible. But Star Trek isn't about being realistic; it's about traveling to exotic places and having amazing adventures. Having such adventures by means of the Starship Enterprise is stellarly cool.

In high school, the original Star Trek series fascinated me. Let me speak from experience: This television program never would have worked without futuristic technology and adventure, but another aspect of the show kept me focused intently on the series. Like many viewers, I watched Star Trek to follow the relationships and experiences of its cast of characters. In some ways I saw a reflection of myself and others in the members of this starship crew. For example, I admired Captain Kirk's courage and self-confidence. I wished that I could be like him in these ways, but his quickness to use force and his smooth success with women made it difficult for me to relate to him. I was a painfully shy teenager who was socially awkward and was virtually an outcast among my fellow students. No, Kirk was not a reflection of me. He reminded me more of the popular, athletic boys at school. Then there was Dr. McCoy; he genuinely cared about people, but he was prone to being irritable. Also, he was suspicious of science and technology even though he was a physician and a scientist himself. No, McCoy also was not a reflection of me. I did care about people, but I didn't want to be socially abrasive like McCoy. And again unlike him, I saw science as a great hope for the future of humanity. McCoy reminded me of some adults I had met or heard of.

Mr. Spock was the one character that I could identify with. He wasn't shy, but he was an outcast in profound ways. Spock was half Vulcan and half human. On Earth he was considered Vulcan, and on Vulcan he was considered too human. Anywhere else he went he was a complete outsider. Like me, he didn't fit in well anywhere, except to some degree with his shipmates, a few of whom were his friends. I envied him for having those friends. Also, his Vulcan philosophy of logic and emotionlessness made him very different from everyone else on the Enterprise. He was not allowed to express feelings, or even admit that he had them, which made it difficult for him to interact with the Enterprise crew, even with his friends. I was alone in a crowd, too, although for different reasons. Spock became a role model for me; I saw his great inner strength which carried him through his difficult life, and I wanted to be as strong as he was. I tried very hard to remain unaffected by the harrassment I received from the other kids for being different than they were. In some ways I brought Spock's determination with me in my daily life, and I gained strength from his strength. I don't know if I would have survived my high school shyness and depression without having Star Trek, and especially Spock, to turn to for help. To me, Star Trek became almost a philosophy for being a teenager. Having a philosophy and a role model for surviving a painful period of your life is logically cool.

This is the third entry of a five part series.

Tags: My Cool Things, Apollo 11, moon, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, lunar module, The Starship Enterprise, Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Next Generation, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Vulcan, blogplugs

My Cool Things -- Krissy, Jethro Tull, and Baroque Music

2008-02-01T16:49:00.000-08:00

Here are some more of "My Cool Things."

What challenges me is to capture in words the unique beauty that my wife brings to my world. My words won't adequiately describe her, but I'll try anyway. Krissy loves me; when she first confessed her deep feelings nine years ago, the revelation stunned me. No other woman had ever loved me, and I had lost hope that any woman ever would. That her commitment to our relationship hasn't wavered for almost a decade is still a source of wonder to me. What she sees in me that other women dismissed as insignificant baffles my mind. But whatever she sees has been compelling enough to keep her with me through two cancers and a bone marrow transplant. And my first cancer was diagnosed just four months after we met! That and her willingness to marry me is amazing. I haven't even mentioned her intelligence, her sense of humor, our mutual interests and values, her imagination and playfulness, her patience, and a long list of other qualities that she has. I could write volumes about what has made our relationship precious and still not cover all the details of why I love her. My wife Krissy is completely cool.

I've heard Jethro Tull called the original Alternative Rock band. Musically and lyrically, they are superior to, and far more artistic than, most popular musicians; frequent use of diverse instruments lends their tracks a unique but pleasing sound. Jethro Tull writes largely about the profound social and political issues of our time. A fondness for descriptive detail breathes life into their viewpoints, which are thought-provoking and persuasive. I've enjoyed many of their albums, with the exception of Aqualung, which has a strong atheistic theme. It saddens me to know that they reject religion, but you don't have to agree with everything artists believe to benefit from their work. Jethro Tull's tracks are thoroughly enjoyable; artists who both inform and entertain are doubly cool.

Are you familiar with baroque music? If all of you were, my job in this paragraph would be unnecessary. I have to assume, though, that some of you are drawing a blank. Baroque was a period in European music between 1600 and 1750, marked by an elaborate and ornamental style, which preceded the Classical music era. Now before your eyes glaze over, let me assure you that this won't become a lecture in music history. Elaborate and ornamental -- what does that mean, right? Trying to understand any kind of music by a textbook definition without actually hearing some of it performed is an almost hopeless task. What I would like to do, if you've never heard baroque played, is urge you to give it a chance. Maybe you've heard classical music and didn't like it. You still might find that you like baroque. Let me give you a popular example to listen to and let you judge for yourself: Vivaldi's Spring Concerto If you liked this, I hope you seek out more baroque. If you didn't, that's all right too. Liking baroque music or disliking it are both naturally cool.

This is the second entry of a five part series.

Tags: wife, Jethro Tull, baroque music, Antonio Vivaldi, Vivaldi's Spring Concerto

My Cool Things -- My Transplant, Aussie Hat, and God

2008-01-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

In the sidebar of this journal I will be adding several pictures from time to time. I have chosen things that I think are cool. I'm calling them "My Cool Things." I've decided to tell you about them in a few entries.

Today is a Red Letter Day on my calendar. This is the second anniversary of the bone marrow transplant that put one, and kept another, of my cancers in remission. In the last two years I have been through many complications, numerous procedures, countless infections, and endless tests; I almost died a number of times. But without that transplant I would almost certainly be dead. Being alive against the odds is definitely cool.

Australian hats have a unique style that brings to mind the Outback, exotic animals, and adventure. My wife wanted to buy me a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off my face and neck since bone marrow transplant recipients are at high risk for skin cancer. I picked an Aussie hat that was distinctive and good looking. We chose a hat over sunscreen because shade is more effective than chemicals, and a fine hat can improve your appearance. A little help from Australia is welcome, because avoiding a third cancer can only be cool.

God has been my friend since before I was born, even during those years when I spent my time in rebellious pursuits. He was with me during my treatment for cancer, especially during my many, sometimes life-threatening, complications to my bone marrow transplant. God kept me alive through those difficult times because He has a plan for my life. Doctors, medications, and transplants are several ways God heals us of our illnesses. Supernatural miracles may be the exception rather than the rule; He can heal us that way, but He often chooses to help us help each other. This does not diminish God's role in the treatments that lead to our cures. I am deeplygrateful to God and my doctors for my recovery. Having a friend like God is eternally cool.

This is the first entry in a five part series of "My Cool Things."

Tags: bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, Australian hat, Aussie hat, God, blogplugs

it's the 2nd anniversary of my bone marrow transplant

2008-01-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

This Sunday is a special day. It's a second anniversary for me. On January 27, 2006, I had a bone marrow transplant, which put my bone marrow cancer into remission and prevented me from developing leukemia. This transplant also made sure that my Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which had been in remission since 1999, would remain in remission indefinitely. The transplant did what it was supposed to do, but it left me with nearly constant complications for almost a year, and frequent complications for a year after that.

But during the last six weeks, my weekly lab tests have shown a big improvement in some major areas of my health. My immunities have been in the normal range for a month and a half. This is a great relief after having very low immunities for most of the last year. The three most important measurements of my red blood cells also have been normal for the first time in three years. And my kidneys have improved from 30 percent function to 40 percent. While my doctors are all pleased with these changes, I'm thrilled. Maybe now I can have a life that's closer to normal. I'm looking forward to that.

My home town nephrologist (kidney doctor) was surprised as well as pleased by the improvement in my kidneys. He's told me several times that damaged kidneys don't repair themselves. But that's what my kidneys appear to have done, at least partially. He isn't sure how this can be.

This has happened to me several times. In the summer of 2006, I had total kidney failure. The nephrology team at Hershey Medical Center started me on dialysis the next day, but they told my wife Krissy to prepare herself, because they thought I would die. Obviously, I didn't die; a week later they told Krissy that I would live, but that I would be on dialysis for the rest of my life. A week after that, my kidneys were working well enough that they took me off of dialysis.

When I got home, my local nephrologist told me that my kidneys were functioning at 25 to 30 percent. When I asked him if my kidneys might improve more, he said that he doubted it very much. Now, a year and a half later, my kidneys are functioning at 40 percent. This time when I asked him if my kidneys might continue to improve, he said, "I doubt it -- but never say never." Apparently he isn't completely ruling out further improvement.

I like surprising doctors when it's in a good way. I've set a goal for myself: I want to reach 50 percent kidney function. Maybe it's not realistic, but I'm determined just the same. I know that I owe a lot of my success to the prayers and support of you and the readers of my wife's blog, Sometimes I Think. I believe that the Lord has kept me alive for a purpose that He has in mind. God willing, I'll achieve my goal.

Tags: bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, anniversary, cancer, remission, immune system, red blood cells, kidney damage, kidney function, blogplugs

raising baby rabbits (conclusion)

2008-01-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

our baby rabbits eating pink clover

Here's the conclusion to the story I began in my last entry.

The rabbits were no longer tiny. My Mom decided that it was time for them to start eating solid food. She called the veterinarian again to ask him what to feed them. He was frankly amazed that the rabbits were still alive under my mother's care. He recommended pink clover as the best food for the rabbits. This left us with the problem of finding enough of it to keep the rabbits fed.

My Dad drove my Mom and I around the outskirts of town looking for pink clover. He clearly found the drive to be an annoyance. I didn't understand why he had never shared our enthusiasm for raising the rabbits. He had little patience with the babies, and searching for pink clover was obviously pushing his limits. My Dad wasn't mean to us about it; he just acted like all the fuss was unnecessary. The rabbits were so much fun to me that I was confused by his attitude.

Finally, to my Dad's relief, we found a field where pink clover grew in abundance. We didn't know how much we would need, so we picked a lot. Back at home, the rabbits nibbled at the clover at first, but quickly began eating large amounts. One rabbit would start eating at the flower end of a stalk, and another rabbit would start eating at the opposite end. The two would meet somewhere in the middle.

We discovered that picked clover would only stay fresh for about 24 hours, so we made daily trips across town to get more, much to my Dad's displeasure. We also learned that even young rabbits are good at leaping. One day a rabbit jumped out of the box and ran behind the refrigerator. My Dad had to pull the refrigerator out from the wall to rescue the rabbit. By the time he had the young one back in the box, my Dad was stewing about the "confounded rabbits." After that we kept a window screen over the top of the box with books to weigh down the corners.

The rabbits grew rapidly after that. My Mom said that soon it would be time to set them free. She hoped they would be able to adapt to living on their own. The rabbits were still wild: They wouldn't let us pick them up without a struggle, and petting them was out of the question. There was an exception to this. One rabbit was tame. We could pick him up and hold him; he actually seemed to like it. Looking back on it now, I'm afraid he may have been too dependent on us to survive on his own.

One day my Mom decided it was time to set the rabbits free. We all got into the car; my job was to sit in the back seat with the rabbits and make sure they didn't get out of the box. We drove across town to the field of pink clover. I knew that an exciting time in my life was ending.

We walked out into the field where my Dad set the box down and turned it on its side. Some of the rabbits rocketed instantly from the box and out of sight. Two others ran a short distance away and stopped, apparently confused by their freedom. They crouched for a minute, then began exploring their new surroundings. The tame rabbit remained inside the box, unwilling to leave. My Dad turned the box over, depositing the rabbit on the ground. Tears threatened to fill my eyes; I could see that we were betraying the young rabbit. We had been a foster family to him. My Mom gave the tame rabbit some words of encouragement, then she and my Dad started walking back towards the car. After a moment, I followed. From some distance away, I looked back to see the tame rabbit still sitting there. I couldn't tell what he was looking at, but I felt certain that he was watching us walk away and was wondering why we were leaving him. I had a great sense of loss and guilt at abandoning him. He was my favorite of all the rabbits.

Leaving the rabbits was hard after caring for them for what seemed like a long time. All of the rabbits had lived, largely due to the care my mother had given them, despite the veterinarian's dismal prediction. I should have been pleased that our efforts had helped the rabbits grow up to be healthy, strong, and hopefully ready to live on their own. But instead our house seemed empty without the rabbits, and a sadnesssettled over me that I hadn't experienced in that way before.

That night, lying in bed in the dark, I thought about the rabbits in the darkness of that field. Was each rabbit lonely and afraid, facing the night alone for the first time in its life? Or had they gathered together as brothers and sisters to share comfort and companionship against a world much larger than any they had ever known? I drifted off to sleep in the security of my family and friends. I hope the rabbits did the same.

Tags: Rabbits, baby rabbits, raising wild rabbits, pink clover, childhood memories, memoir

raising baby rabbits

2008-01-18T06:24:00.000-08:00

The adventure began when I was six years old. Well, for me it was an adventure; for my Mom it was a challenge, but I'm afraid that for my Dad it was a chore.

At the time we lived in a house on the edge of my elementary school's property. A large field of tall grass stretched from our backyard to the school itself. In the middle of the field a mother rabbit had a burrow where she cared for her very young babies.

One day the school custodian mowed the field of tall grass. Of course the tractor passed right over the rabbit burrow, which scared the mother rabbit. She ran off, leaving the babies unattended.

I don't remember how my Mom knew that there was a rabbit burrow far off in the field, nor do I remember how she knew that the tractor had scared away the mother rabbit. I just know that one day I came home from school and was thrilled to find my mother's bedroom slippers filled with sleeping baby rabbits. For a six year old boy it was an unexpected delight.

My Mom had called a veterinarian about this small crisis. The vet had told her that the mother rabbit would not return to the burrow after being so badly frightened. He also told her not to try raising the baby rabbits on her own; he said they would die no matter what she did. The babies wouldn't suffer. They would just continue sleeping peacefully until they died.

No one who knew my mother would have been surprised when she ignored the vet's advice. Her love of animals forced her to take some kind of action. The rabbit-filled slippers on our kitchen floor were evidence of this.

My Mom didn't know what to feed the babies. They were clearly too young for solid food, and since stores didn't sell rabbit formula, she used her imagination. She put some dry oatmeal into a saucepan of milk and cooked it for a while. Then she strained off the oatmeal and set the liquid aside. When the liquid was cool enough, she took the rabbits out of the slippers and fed them a little of the milk-oatmeal liquid with a medicine dropper. Each baby drank only a very small amount. After a baby was fed she put it back in her slipper. The baby would crawl as far as it could into the toe of the slipper and return to sleep. In a short time, all were fed and sleeping soundly again.

I watched the first feeding with wide-eyed fascination. The baby rabbits were better than having a puppy in the house. I wanted to help take care of the rabbits, but my Mom was reluctant; she said the babies had to be handled very gently, and she was afraid I might accidentally hurt them. She let me hold one for a moment, and promised that as soon as they got older she would let me help with them.

The baby rabbits had to be fed frequently, 24 hours a day. My Mom didn't complain. She was determined that the babies would live. The milk-oatmeal liquid must have been adequate food for the rabbits because after a few days they were not only alive, they were growing.

Before long the rabbits were too big to all fit in the slippers, so we put them in a cardboard box with a bath towel in the bottom for warmth and softness. The babies were spending more time awake now, though they still slept a lot. Since they were active, I wanted to play with them, but my Mom said no, they were wild animals. If they became too tame they wouldn't be able to survive on their own in the wild. I realized then that these rabbits would not be a permanent addition to our family. We were only caring for them until they were old enough to be set free. I felt sad about this, and I spent as much time as I could with them, mostly watching them. Even as an observer, having the rabbits there seemed like an adventure.

This story is running too long for one entry. I'll finish it tomorrow.

Tags: Rabbits, baby rabbits, raising baby rabbits, childhood memories

JLand Photo Shoot #124

2008-01-12T14:34:00.000-08:00

Here's my entry for JLand Photo Shoot #124. The subject is 'a close up'. If you want to be part of this, you can find it in my wife's journal Sometimes I Think.

This is the first time I've participated in a photo shoot. I've enjoyed the experience. I've never taken close ups before; it was challenging and fun.

Here are some shots of my wife's and my Christmas ornaments.

Tags: JLand Photo Shoot, photography, photos, Christmas ornaments

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T04:09:00.000-08:00

I wish I could have written more since I started this journal, but I write entries when I am able.

I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. I hope you are enjoying your Christmas day.

I'd like to share one of my favorite Christmas songs with you. Have a Merry Christmas and a joyful week.

Tags: Merry Christmas, Christmas, Caroling Thru J-Land

chemo for my first cancer (conclusion)

2007-12-13T23:10:00.000-08:00

About three weeks ago, before Thanksgiving, I began sharing with you the story of the chemo treatment for my first cancer, Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I've had some unavoidable delays, such as a week in the hospital and depression, but now I'll finish this story.

As I concluded in the first part of this story:

Sometime during the night after my first chemo treatment I threw up in my sleep and choked on it. I woke up in a spasm of coughing and gasping, trying to open an airway. I coughed for quite a while before I was able to breathe normally again. Sleep was slow in returning.

Now to continue:

The next day when I went back for chemo I still felt very bad. I told Dr. W. that I had choked on vomit the night before; he immediately pulled out his prescription pad and soon handed me a script for nausea medication tablets, Zofran I believe. He told me to take one before going to bed each night for three nights after receiving my Cytoxan treatments. He explained that the Cytoxan was the cause of my intense sick feelings, not the Fludara, which was the milder of the two chemos. The nausea medication should prevent recurrences of throwing up in my sleep, he explained, and the medication worked like he said it would: I had no more choking incidents like the first night.

The Fludara treatments which I received the rest of that week were easily tolerated, as Dr. W. had predicted. I still felt sick all day Tuesday from Monday's Cytoxan treatment, but Wednesday afternoon I started to feel better.

Actually, I was surprised by chemotherapy. I had heard horror stories about it on television, in books and magazines, and in movies, but it wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. It wasn't any fun, to be sure, but as the weeks of treatment went by, I fell into a routine of expecting to feel sick Mondays through Wednesdays, and feeling more or less physically normal the rest of the time. I was especially surprised that I only had chemo treatments one week out of four. I had always assumed that cancer patients got chemo every day for months without any breaks. Chemo was tolerable, and I soon would have been feeling more like my usual self, had it not been for my oncologist's statement that death was unavoidable within five years.

I began bringing my Bible to chemo treatments and reading it while the IVs dripped. As my treatments progressed, I found that my faith in God was growing stronger. Faith made it less devastating that I would die despite receiving chemo, but I was still human and I didn't want to die. Though faith helped, I also had to draw on strength from inside myself, which often expressed itself as stubbornness. While stubbornness is usually seen as a negative trait, my stubbornness was often a positive force that sustained me in difficult times when I had little else to see me through. Even though chemo wasn't that bad, knowing that I would die at a young age definitely made this a difficult time.

As my faith in God and my stubbornness both grew, my love for Krissy and my appreciation of her also grew. We had only been dating for a few months when I was diagnosed with cancer, but she stayed with me and added her strength to mine when most other women would have written a man off. She went with me to medical appointments and watched over me to make sure I was in reasonably good health. I can't imagine another woman being that devoted to me. I'm so grateful to you, Krissy.

One day I was sitting in the lab waiting my turn to have blood drawn for lab work when I overheard part of the lab staff's conversation. One woman said that she could usually tell which cancer patients would live and which would die based simply on the patients' attitudes. She said she could tell that I would probably live because of my positive attitude. I wondered what Dr. W. might think of her insight.

My lab results had shown since I had begun treatment that the chemo drugs were steadily lowering my white blood cell count, which meant I was becoming more vulnerable to infection. Just before I began my sixth month of chemo, the lab results showed my white blood cell count to be dangerously low. Dr. W. sent me over to the hospital to get a injection which would artificially raise my white blood cell count. After the hospital nurse finished giving me the injection, she said my skin felt unusually hot. She asked me how I was feeling. Well, I was feeling pretty bad, and I hadn't had any Cytoxan treatments. The nurse took my temperature: It was over 103 degrees. She called Dr. W. and he had me admitted to the hospital immediately. Over a few hours my temperature rose steadily to well over 104 degrees. The doctors put me on broad-spectrum antibiotics and started doing tests: blood tests, blood cultures, X-rays, CAT scans, a spinal tap, a bone marrow biopsy. All the results came back negative; they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. They finally had a bronchoscope put down into my lungs and discovered that I had pneumonia. The doctors got the infection under control and after a week in the hospital I was ready to be discharged.

Dr. W. told me that I had had them worried for a while. Strangely, the thought that I might be close to death had never occurred to me. Instead I had single-mindedly lived from one moment to the next without thinking of the future. I don't know if this had been God protecting me from emotional trauma or my own stubborn fixation on life. Dr. W. sent me home.

A week later I was back in the Emergency Room. I had a pain in my chest that ran down my arm, and an unusual itching rash that followed the pain from my chest to my hand. The ER doctor diagnosed it as shingles. I was admitted to the hospital again. Dr. W. put me on an antiviral medication, saying the chemo had reactivated the chicken pox virus which had been dormant in my nerve roots since I had had chicken pox when I was five years old. Shingles, or Herpes Zoster, is caused by a recurrence of the chicken pox virus years after the original infection occurred. After a week or so in the hospital, I had recovered enough to be released. Before long the infection was gone.

After a month's delay, I finished my sixth and final week of chemo. This last week progressed the same way as the other weeks had: sick Monday night through Wednesday, then back to feeling normal. I was glad chemo was over, but according to Dr. W. it had just bought me more time, perhaps a year to eighteen months, then I would need chemo again. He said each series of chemo treatments would be less effective than the last series, until they no longer helped much at all. He still told me I might have as much as five years left to me. He also told me that my hair would fall out from the chemo, but it didn't.

Well, seven years went by and the Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma never came out of remission. I didn't have to have any more chemo treatments to keep it that way, either. In 2005 I was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer for which I had a bone marrow transplant at Hershey Medical Center in January, 2006. This put the bone marrow cancer in remission and worked equally well on my Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. My oncologist at Hershey said there's a 10% chance that one of the cancers might come out of remission at some point during my life. I like those odds.

I'm sure that I have survived through so much for so long because it is God's will that I live. But I also know how stubbornly I have refused to give up through all this. I had trouble reconciling these two forces until Krissy told me that she believes my stubbornness is actually an inner strength that God has given me to help make these trials more bearable and survivable for me. We both believe that God has a plan for my life. We just haven't figured out what that plan is yet. When the time is right we'll understand. In the meantime I'll just keep surviving obstacles.

Tags: Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, cancer, chemo, chemotherapy, remission, faith, God, stubborn, too stubborn to die

from my hospital room to depression at home

2007-12-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

You may know by now that I spent a week in the hospital with a bacterial blood infection. My immunities had been dangerously low for at least five weeks and I finally got sick. I started feeling bad on Thanksgiving Day and the Saturday following Thanksgiving I woke up with a fever of 104.5 degrees. I went to the local emergency room almost immediately; they admitted me and figured out what was wrong with me quite quickly. They put me on three IV antibiotics and around the clock fluids.

I don't remember much of my first two days in the hospital, except that I had a very high fever, was freezing with chills, was badly dehydrated, drank huge amounts of water, and generally felt miserable. On the third day I felt a bit better. I asked the nurse if my condition had been life threatening. All she would tell me is that any blood infection is potentially life threatening. They told Krissy privately that my condition had been serious. They almost never tell the patient anything that might be upsetting.

They kept me in the hospital for almost a week, then my doctor sent me home with a prescription for a strong antibiotic. I'm doing much better now except for a bleak depression that I can't get rid of.

This depression surprises me because I rarely get depressed. I think my depression was triggered by a fairly close brush with death. I think as my recent illness moves farther into the past the depression will fade.

It's very hard for me to write when I'm depressed, so this is the first thing I've written in the week that I've been home. I'll try to write the conclusion to the journal entry I started just before Thanksgiving, and finish it soon, but it will probably be slow going.

Krissy has written about my recent illness in her journal, Sometimes I Think. Thank you for your comments, emails, prayers, and concern for both of us. You have helped both of us a lot.

I'll try to finish that journal entry I started two weeks ago. Thank you for your support.

John

Tags: bacterial blood infection, hospital, IV antibiotics, depression

chemo for my first cancer

2007-11-20T23:41:00.000-08:00

My last journal entries dealt with medical tests which examined my first cancer, Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Now I'd like to share briefly with you the treatment of my first cancer, which in actual time lasted seven months.

Krissy and I were still in the very comfortable room with Dr. W. He said I could start chemo in a few weeks when they had an opening in their chemotherapy infusion room. In the meantime, he told me I could check into something potentially promising. Hershey Medical Center was participating in an experimental study which would compare a new treatment for NHL with a treatment in common use. He said that naturally I was free to choose the study over his treatment if I wanted to. Krissy and I discussed it and we decided it would be good to consider all my options.

Krissy's father drove Krissy and me to Hershey to meet with an oncologist who was involved in the study. He had read all my test results, which Dr. W. had sent him. The oncologist asked me many questions; the answers I gave combined with my test results would determine if I would be a suitable subject for the study. When the oncologist was finished with his questions, he began telling me the details of the study. There would be two groups of subjects in the study. One group would be given the new treatment, a combination of the chemo drugs Cytoxan and Fludara. The other group would be given a commonly used treatment, a cocktail of other chemo drugs. Subjects would be randomly placed into one group or the other. The subjects would be closely monitored during and after treatment to evaluate their progress. The results of the study would help oncologists understand more about NHL and the best ways to treat it. The oncologist told me that I could think over my decision for a while and get back to him.

Krissy and I discussed the experimental study. I would have liked to try the promising new treatment, but if I took part in the study I might have been placed in the group receiving the current chemo treatment instead. I was unsure about what to do.

Krissy and I talked to Dr. W. again, and I expressed my uncertainty about the study. Fortunately, he told me that the newCytoxan-Fludara treatment was available in his infusion room right in my hometown. It was not necessary for me to take part in the study after all, but I would be able to get the promising new treatment. This was what I had been looking for. I accepted his offer.

Dr. W.'s nurse explained to us how chemo would work. I would receive chemo treatments one week per month for six months. On Mondays I would be given Cytoxan and Fludara; Tuesdays through Fridays I would be given Fludara alone. Chemo would be given by an IV bag for an hour or more a day. A nausea medication would be added to the IV bag, which she said would be enough to keep me from becoming nauseated for 24 hours. She told us that my hair would fall out as a result of the chemo, and that they would closely monitor my progress with regular blood tests. I filled out the necessary paperwork and waited for the opening in the infusion room.

My first day of chemo arrived. A nurse led Krissy and me into the infusion room which held seven or eight recliners with electronic IV pumps standing next to them. I sat down in the one empty chair; Krissy sat beside me. At age 36, I was by far the youngest patient in the room. A nurse inserted an IV into my hand and started running a bag of saline. She also gave me some Tylenol and Benadryl tablets, which they always gave me before chemotherapy and blood transfusions. The nurse brought a bag of Fludara and connected its line to the saline line. The Fludara ran for an hour. I felt no particular sensation except for the same anxiety about chemo that I had felt all day, and some drowsiness from the Benadryl.

When the Fludara was done dripping, the nurse connected a bag of Cytoxan and let it run for about two hours, if I remember correctly. I felt little or no sensation from the Cytoxan, either. When the Cytoxan was done, the nurses sent me home, and Krissy came along to make sure I would be all right.

About two hours after the nurse disconnected me from the IV, I started feeling strange. I wasn't sure at first exactly how I felt, except that I knew the feeling was wrong. I gradually began feeling sick: feverish, with body aches and a severe headache, nausea with a dehydrated sensation, restless, and generally awful. It felt like the worst flu I had ever had, but it also felt more than flu-like. I don't know how to describe it, except that I felt terrible. I spent the evening lying down and eating nothing. It had been like this for hours by then, and the sick feeling showed no signs of fading. I fell into a fitful sleep.

Sometime during the night I threw up in my sleep and choked on it. I woke up in a spasm of coughing and gasping, trying to open an airway. I coughed for quite a while before I was able to breathe normally again. Sleep was slow in returning.

Again, this story is becoming too long to comfortably fit into one journal entry. I'll finish it tomorrow.

Tags: Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, cancer, chemotherapy, Cytoxan, Fludara,

medical tests of my first cancer (conclusion)

2007-11-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

The story I was sharing with you in my last entry was running too long to comfortably fit into one entry, so I'll finish it here.

Dr. W. saved the bad test for last. He always did the bone marrow biopsies himself. The purpose of the biopsy is to get a sample of the soft center of the bone where your body makes your blood cells. At least in my case, the biopsies are done on my pelvis, by going in through my lower back. Dr. W. had me lie in a position halfway between lying on my side and lying on my stomach.

The biopsy began with a number of shallow and deep local anesthetic injections into an area of my lower back to help numb the tissue. The injections were quite painful in that area, bad enough to make me grit my teeth and hold my breath. Then Dr. W. penetrated to just above the bone with what felt like an ice pick, or the medical equivalent. I've never seen a doctor actually doing the biopsy on me since he is standing behind me in a place which is blocked from my view by my own body.

Don't think that I didn't feel anything of this penetration because of the anesthetic. I felt plenty of pain and pressure. Then Dr. W. injected the hard part of the bone with a local anesthetic. This shot caused pain so intense that I nearly hit the ceiling, while I made a sharp groan of pain. Dr. W. then took a mallet and a sharp object of some kind and began to chisle through the hard outside of the bone. I could hear and feel the "chip, chip, chip" of the instrument forcing its way through the bone. I was making quite a bit of involuntary noise throughout this. Dr. W. had made Krissy wait outside the room during this procedure, and I was glad that he did. I would have hated for her to hear me gasping and groaning in pain like that.

Finally he got all the way through the hard part of the bone. Dr. W. told me that there was no way to numb the very sensitive marrow, and warned me that taking the marrow sample would hurt a lot, as if up to that point the biopsy had only tickled. I braced myself and was certain that this time I would be strong and take it quietly. But when he took the sample, I actually shouted with agony. That finished the biopsy for the moment. He cleaned up the area and put a dressing on the site. He then explained that he had to do another bone marrow biopsy on the other side of my back, and that it would be best to get it over with quickly. I won't bother describing the second procedure.

The biopsy sites hurt for a week. All totaled, I think I've had 11 bone marrow biopsies done on me.

At last the time came to hear the results of the tests. A nurse led Krissy and me into a very nice room which had a sofa and comfortable chairs; the room was reassuringly decorated and utterly relaxing. Dr. W. came in and started explaining the facts.

I had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a slow-growing cancer of the lymphatic system. The cancer was at stage 3B, which meant that it was in an advanced stage and was located in two distinct parts of my body. They couldn't cure it, but with chemotherapy they could give me more time, maybe five years or so. He went on to explain how NHL would progress and gave me other details, but I don't remember much about that now. I do remember that he never used the word "terminal." I'm glad he didn't; the word has an ugly sound.

Dr. W. said that the sooner I started chemo the better it would be for me. He seemed to be waiting for a response from me, but I sat there feeling like someone had hit me. The man had just told me that I was going to die. That's why they had such a comfortable room: to tell patients the bad news.

Eventually I agreed that starting chemo would be a good idea, though privately I wondered what I was getting myself into.

Some helpful notes about bone marrow biopsies --

If you ever must have a bone marrow biopsy, ask for an injection of morphine and 1 mg of ativan. Put the ativan tablet under your tongue so that the medication goes quickly to your brain, where you want it to go. The morphine will help a lot with the pain, of course, and the ativan will relax you so that you don't tense up during the biopsy. Being tense will only make the pain worse than it has to be.

Some of my oncologists have allowed me morphine and ativan, while others have refused. At the very least, try to get the ativan. That alone will help quite a bit. But if you do get either of these drugs, be sure to have someone to drive you home from the biopsy. Both drugs will impair your driving ability.

I sincerely hope you never need to use this information.

Tags: bone marrow biopsy, oncologist, morphine, ativan, Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, chemotherapy, blogplugs

medical tests of my first cancer

2007-11-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

My last journal entry ended with the discovery that I had a malignant lymph node. Now I'd like to share with you the testing which determined the extent of my first cancer's growth.

I wish I could say that when I learned I had cancer I instantly vowed to fight the disease with all my strength and will. But it didn't happen that way. Instead I started sleeping almost around the clock; I probably wanted to escape from life for a while. Krissy would call me several times a day to see how I was, and to urge me to see an oncologist about the cancer, but I kept on sleeping. Finally Krissy and a friend of mine made an oncology appointment for me, got me out of bed, and pretty much dragged me to see the doctor.

Dr. W. gave me a thorough examination which was painless. He had studied the pathology report on my malignant lymph node, so he knew what he was looking for. He told me that I had a lymphoma, and explained in general terms what that meant, but without committing himself to a detailed explanation. I suppose he wanted more information first. He then scheduled me for five things: blood tests, a biopsy of the lump on my neck, a CAT scan, a bone marrow biopsy, and another appointment with him to hear the results of all the tests.

The blood work was a piece of cake. I had had blood tests before and wasn't at all concerned about being stuck in the arm. The needle barely hurt, and after drawing blood for two minutes or less, I was done.

Before doing the biopsy of the lump on my neck, the pathologist asked me two questions; he was hoping to find out why I had developed a lymphoma. He asked me if I had ever been a coal miner, or if I had ever worked in a uranium plant. My answer to both his questions was "No." He explained that he had asked because links had been found between lymphoma and a prolonged exposure to carbon, and exposure to radiation. Aside from those two, no one knew what caused lymphoma, at least at that time.

I was a bit apprehensive about the neck biopsy itself. I had the impression that the pathologist would cut out the whole lymph node which caused the lump, but my fears were unnecessary. He pushed a rather thick needle into the lump to extract a sample. The pain was worse than a flu or tetanus shot and lasted considerably longer, but I was relieved to find it bearable. I'd actually been worried about that biopsy. After all I've been through with two cancers, it's embarrassing to look back on myself in 1998 and realize what a novice I had been.

The preparation for the CAT scans of my abdomen, pelvis, underarms, and neck started with no food or liquid after 12:00 AM the night before. My scan was at 8:30 AM, but before the scan I had to drink two quarts of barium in a short time. I could have easily believed that I was drinking Sherwin-Williams house paint. The radiology technician told me that drinking it cold with strawberry-banana flavoring made it taste better. "Better" must have been a relative term. Drinking large quantities of cold paint for breakfast on an empty stomach put me in immediate danger of throwing up and possibly ruining the CAT scan. Somehow I kept it all down, but just barely. The scan itself was an anticlimax, except for the dye they injected into my veins. This caused me to have an intense sensation of heat everywhere, as if my body temperature had jumped to 120 degrees. But now that I think of it, most of you have probably had CAT scans already, so I don't need to go into too much detail.

Dr. W. saved the bad test for last.

This story is getting too long for one journal entry, so I'll continue it tomorrow.

Tags: lymphoma, blood tests, biopsy, pathology, CAT scan, oncologist, blogplugs

discovering my first cancer

2007-11-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

The discovery of my first cancer, Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, was made when I had a hernia. This may seem like an odd or even funny way to learn that you have cancer, but it's exactly how I got the bad news. Let me explain.

The year was 1998. I went to see a doctor for some reason, probably for bronchitis. I had a recurring problem with bronchitis all through the '90s. While I was there, I asked the doctor about a lump that I had found on the back of my neck. Dr. S. examined the lump briefly, then said, "It's probably nothing to worry about. Just keep an eye on it and see if it gets any bigger." Clearly, Dr. S. was not an oncologist. With that, he ushered me out of the exam room and sent me on my way. After this false start, I'm lucky the truth was discovered before it was too late.

A short time later I noticed a somewhat larger lump in my lower abdomen. I don't remember how I ended up seeing a urologist about it, but just the same I found myself in an exam room with Dr. D. He told me that the lump was a hernia, and he scheduled me for an ultrasound to see how serious it was.

I'll probably never know for certain how I got the hernia. Maybe it happened while I was helping some men from our church move a baby grand piano up two flights of stairs. Maybe it happened while I was helping a friend load boulders into the bed of a pickup truck so they could be hauled away. By whatever means I got it, the hernia caused me no pain or discomfort, so it could have been new, or it could have been biding its time.

I had gotten into the habit of examining the hernia site several times a day. At the time I suspected that I would gain nothing by examining it, but I checked it anyway. Then one day I noticed a smaller lump not far from the hernia. The smaller lump puzzled me. A few days later I saw Dr. D., the urologist, again. The ultrasound had revealed that the hernia was serious enough to need surgical correction. I asked Dr. D. about the new small lump. After examining it intently for a while, he said, "I don't know what this is, but it needs to be biopsied." I didn't realize it at the time, but Dr. D. had come through where Dr. S. had dropped the ball.

Soon the day of my hernia surgery arrived. I don't know why surgical suites have to be so cold that you can almost see your breath. This is especially uncomfortable when you're wearing only a flimsy hospital gown and have a stomach which is 12 hours empty. That morning Krissy, who was then my girlfriend, sat beside the rolling bed that I was lying on. She was doing everything she could to make me more comfortable and less anxious. A nurse gave me something to make me loopy before they gave me the anesthetic, and the last thing I remember before losing consciousness was being wheeled into the operating room.

When I woke, Krissy again was sitting beside me, saying comforting words. She made the entire experience a lot less stressful for me. The surgeon came in, said that everything had gone smoothly, that the hernia was repaired, and that I could leave soon. I asked him about the small lump. He said it was an enlarged lymph node which he had removed and sent to Pathology to be studied. His office would call me at home when they had the results.

I was at home asleep a few mornings later when the surgeon himself called with the Pathology results. He told me that the enlarged lymph node was malignant. I blearily thanked him for the information and went back to sleep. An hour or two later I woke up and wasn't sure if the surgeon had called, or if I had dreamed it. I phoned his office; he told me that he had called and that the lymph node was indeed malignant. I had a strange feeling that the news wasn't real. I also had the sick feeling that the news was very real, and that left me numb.

I knew what malignancy meant, even though I didn't know the specific medical name of the illness I had. I also didn't know yet that very soon I would need all my faith in God, all of Krissy's support, and all of my own stubbornness to wage a battle of wills with a terrible enemy: cancer. But that is another story.

Tags: Cancer, Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, hernia, surgery, stubbornness

a brief history of Martha

2007-10-28T23:01:00.000-07:00

Martha and her clippings

When I was about 14, my family was involved in a rather serious car collision. My parents, my 80-year-old grandmother, a family friend, and I were heading home from a Christian concert at a church which was an hour and a half away from our town. Our friend was driving us in her car. We were almost home. An out-of-state driver, unfamiliar with the area, ran a stop sign and we hit him broadside at 45 miles per hour. It was late at night and none of us were wearing seatbelts. My parents were in the front seat with our friend, my grandmother and I were in the back. I was asleep at the time it happened.

Our friend was left unconscious with a concussion, my Mom had broken ribs, my grandmother's leg was broken, and my Dad's face shattered the passenger side of the windshield. Except for a bloody nose, my Dad was amazingly uninjured. I wasn't hurt at all, maybe because I had been asleep and was relaxed. The car was a total loss.

My parents were treated and released at a local hospital; our friend recovered and was discharged after a few days. But my grandmother was hospitalized for weeks with her leg in traction. During this time she accumulated a number of potted plants sent by concerned family members. I had the job of watering them when they were dry. We visited her for several hours every night. Our visits continued when she was transferred to a nursing home for a few months, where her leg slowly healed.

Eventually she came home again to live with us. She gave all her plants to me; I kept them on a stand in my room. The only one that survived any length of time was a small philodendron in a white glass ornamental container. For reasons now forgotten, I named the plant Martha.

After my parents divorced when I was 17, my Mom and I found our way to Ohio, which became our new home. Martha traveled with us. I moved back to Pennsylvania after about a year in Ohio, but Martha stayed behind. My Mom seemed amused by a plant that I had actually named, so she took good care of Martha over the years. During 1999, my Mom and my stepfather drove east to visit me. They brought clippings from Martha which I put in water for several weeks until they sprouted a good root system. I then planted them in a medium-size pot of soil and hung Martha by a window.

Martha has hardly shown energetic growth. My plant-withering thumb probably has a lot to do with that. But during 2007 Krissy and I saw a little improvement in Martha: some branching of her two single-strand vines which made Martha a bit more full in appearance. Before we moved to our new apartment, we clipped Martha into sections and placed the clippings in water to again produce a root system. Martha's clippings are now growing roots and soon we'll plant her in a soil-filled pot.

Meanwhile my Mom moved to Florida, taking her part of Martha with her, and recently I found out that one of Krissy's friends wants to take part of Martha to Oregon. This small 30-year-old philodendron may soon be growing around the country. Who knows how far she may ultimately spread.

My grandmother passed away 25 years ago. Maybe I'm just sentimental, but I see Martha as a small part of my grandmother's legacy. I hope Grandmom is pleased with Martha's continuing life.

Tags: philodendron, Martha, grandmother

photos about my 100 things

2007-10-23T22:21:00.000-07:00

I hope you found my "100 things about me" interesting. I thought I'd show you some photos that illustrate a few of the items in the "100 things" list. You'll even get to see my 10 lb. pet Australian rabbit
Bun-Bun.

                  Me at age two in my Dad's Salvation Army hat

Age five, with my Mother

The wild rabbits my Mom and I raised in her bedroom slippers

Bun-Bun, my 10 lb. pet Australian rabbit

Meisha, my companion for 16 years

Right after my baptism, 2002

Krissy and I at our wedding, May 2005

Our Maine Coon Cat Michael

Getting chemo before my bone marrow transplant

Bone Marrow Transplant Day

Dialysis Catheter

Tags: photos, 100 things about me, Salvation Army, bow tie, wild rabbits, Bun-Bun, cat, Meisha, baptism, wedding, Krissy, Maine Coon Cat, Michael, bone marrow transplant, chemo, dialysis, shiley catheter, blogplugs

100 things about me (51 - 100)

2007-10-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

Here is the conclusion of 100 things about me . . .

51.   I'm sad to admit that I've only been to two Star Trek
         conventions.
52. Oddly enough, some people are surprised to learn that I like
         pickled eggs.
53. When I was in fourth grade, my Dad told me I was missing the
         point when I felt sorry for Charlie Brown instead of laughing
         at him.
54. One good thing came out of a year of bone marrow transplant
         complications: I went from 275 pounds to 175 pounds. But as
         a weight loss plan, I wouldn't recommend it.
55. Our new apartment has been without television cable service
         since we moved in three weeks ago. So far I haven't missed it.
56. I was named after the Protestant reformer and no-nonsense
         Scotsman John Knox. I'm sure my parents grieved when I
         converted to Catholicism.
57. My ancestors were Highland Scots who were mostly horse
         thieves. They fled to Nova Scotia to escape execution. A
         proud family heritage . . .
58. I've never worn a kilt or played the bagpipes, but I do enjoy a
         round of golf now and then.
59. I've had more than 60 days of chemotherapy treatments.
60. Krissy and I have already named our first two children, but
         after all that chemo we're not likely to have kids.
61. After my transplant, I developed a red-blood-cell-destroying
         disorder called hemolytic anemia. I must have had 100 blood
         transfusions, needing as many as seven bags of blood a day.
62. I haven't needed a transfusion since February, thank God.
63. One of my post-transplant medications damaged my kidneys,
         causing total kidney failure in the summer of 2006. I had to
         be on dialysis for two weeks.
64. My kidneys recovered to 25 or 30 percent normal function,
         enough to keep me off dialysis.
65. I'll probably have to go back on permanent dialysis eventually.
66. The Green Bay Packers are my favorite football team.
67. Krissy's mother thinks I look like James Taylor.
68. My Mom claims that I'm responsible for her hair turning grey.
69. From third grade to eighth grade I played trumpet in our
         school's band.
70. To my surprise, I survived the Disco Era without needing
         psychotherapy.
71. When I was 15 I had a crush on Princess Leia from Star Wars.
72. I have a 30 year old potted philodendron named Martha.
73. My immunities regularly drop to a dangerously low level,
         forcing me to wear a surgical mask everywhere I go. When I
         walk into a convenience store, the people there often think I'm
         going to rob the store, and watch me with slack-jawed dread.
74. Krissy jokes that I should wear a shirt which reads, "Don't
         shoot! I had a transplant."
75. When I was eight years old, I was throwing stones in our front
         yard while my Dad was mowing the lawn. He came around the
         side of the house and a stone caught him in the head. He hit the
         ground like a bag of bricks. I think he would have killed me if
         he had been able to get up.
76. A black cat named Meisha was my close companion for 16
         years. After occasionally boarding her at the animal hospital,
         she would ignore me for days.
77. When I was a teenager, I liked to catch snakes. Sometimes I
         was bitten, but not very often.
78. My Dad introduced me to classical music when I was ten. I
         loved it. He told me that I might enjoy what I had heard so
         far, but if I heard more I wouldn't like it. My Dad was wrong.
79. When I was young my parents liked to take me to the zoo. My
         favorite exhibit was the reptile house. My Dad would say,
         "You're weird, John."
80. I give our diabetic cat Michael two insulin shots a day, just like
         I do for my wife.
81. I don't like candy or sweets very much.
82. However, I do enjoy bread pudding with vanilla sauce. Krissy
         says bread pudding tastes like wet bread. She doesn't know
         what she's missing.
83. My favorite restaurants are Red Lobster and Outback
         Steakhouse.
84. Once when Krissy and I were in a restaurant, a waitress
         dumped a tray of food on me. It didn't do my leather jacket
         any good.
85. In my twenties I volunteered in a nursing home, spending time
         with an elderly man. All he wanted me to do was watch
         television with him.
86. Once I tried to bake brownies. I left them in the oven so long
         that they baked to the consistency of hockey pucks.
87. I like octopus, squid, and frog's legs, if they are cooked
         properly.
88. I saw the original Star Wars movie 13 times during the first
         year it was released.
89. When I was 13 I got a chemistry set for Christmas. I
         learned some valuable principles of combustion by charring a
         large section of my bedroom carpet.
90. Health permitting, I attend monthly meetings of a local
         astronomy club.
91. We moved 16 times before I was 21.
92. I still watch the television specials A Charlie Brown Christmas
       and How the Grinch Stole Christmas every year.
93. I enjoy listening to my Box Set of J. S. Bach's Complete Organ
         Works, a gift from Sassydee50 (Deb).
94. My favorite holiday is Christmas. My next favorite is Easter.
95. Some of my favorite movies are Pride and Prejudice, A
         Beautiful Mind, and Jane Eyre (the Masterpiece Theater
       version).
96. The book I'm currently reading is Sense and Sensibility by
         Jane Austen.
97. I wear long sleeves, long pants, and a wide-brimmed Australian
         hat to keep the sun off my skin. People who have had bone
         marrow transplants are at high risk for skin cancer.
98. I love Krissy dearly.
99. I find that writing an online journal is addictive.
100. In the priorities of my life, Jesus comes first.

Tags: 100 things about me, blogplugs

100 things about me (1 - 50)

2007-10-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

I realized that I haven't properly introduced myself to you yet, so here are 100 things about me.

   1. I am 45 years old.
   2.  I have survived two cancers:  Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and
        Myelodysplasia.
   3. I had a bone marrow transplant in January 2006.
   4. I had many severe complications after my bone marrow
       transplant which kept me in a hospital bed for almost a year.
   5.  I remember when gas was 18 cents a gallon.
   6. My favorite color in clothes is brown.
   7. People keep trying to add color to my wardrobe. They have
        been a little successful. Very little.
   8. My father has finally started buying me neutral colored clothes,
        but always throws in one colorful shirt in an attempt to make me
        wear it. He is not successful.
   9. My favorite television program is The O'Reilly Factor.
10. I drink three or four cups of coffee a day.
11. I don't do mornings.
12. In college I majored in astronomy and psychology. Ipreferred
        astronomy.
13. I dance about as well as Al Gore.
14. When I was young I wanted to be a pilot.
15. I didn't meet the height requirement.
16. When I was a boy I liked dinosaurs, Peanuts comic strips, and
        Star Trek.
17. As a teenager I loved to go in my room to read and to listen to
         music.
18. I liked classical music and heavy metal.
19. My favorite subjects in high school were my science classes.
20. My worst subject was Phys Ed.
21. When I was young my parents were Captains in the Salvation
        Army, then my Dad switched careers to the United Way.
22. I have only watched a few minutes of American Idol.
23. When I was six, my Mom raised wild baby rabbits; at first she
         kept them in her bedroom slippers, then in a box. Later we set
         them free in a field.
24. In third grade I had a large pet Australian rabbit named
         Bun-Bun.
25. My Mom decided that this would be his name, and that was the
         end of it. I always hated the name.
26. I was raised Protestant and became Catholic at age 40.
27. During college I did a lot of sleepwalking, and I would
         rearrange the furniture in my sleep.
28. I would wake up wondering how the furniture got moved around.
29. Once I put my hand through a windowpane while I was asleep.
         I don't think my landlady believed that I was asleep when I
         broke the window.
30. My wife is diabetic. I give her two insulin shots a day.
31.   I once had a job as a janitor in a hospital.
32. One of my responsibilities at the hospital was to take
         amputated limbs to the cemetery for burial. It was a Catholic
         hospital, and they believed that even limbs should be buried.
33. At the Catholic hospital I went to the department picnics.
         They drank beer and listened to polka music.
34. I hate polka music.
35. Drunk people are annoying to me, especially when they get
         rowdy and destructive.
36. Parents who don't discipline their children also annoy me.
37. I like 19th century classic British literature.
38. I almost drowned in a friend's swimming pool when I was nine
         years old.
39. One year for Halloween I went Trick or Treating as a tax
         collector.
40. When I was very young my favorite television show was
         Flipper.
41. In junior high school I was a Trekkie, but I grew out of it and
        became a Star Trek fan.
42. There are 17 keys on my key ring. I have no idea what ten of
         them are for.
43. My favorite soda is ginger beer -- the English kind, not the
        Jamaican variety.
44. I met my wife in a Starbucks coffee shop at a local
         Barnes & Noble.
45. I dated Krissy for seven years before we got married.
46. On our honeymoon we toured a bat-filled cave, took an exotic
         animal safari, and visited ReptileLand.
47. Krissy and I spent our first wedding anniversary in a hospital
        room at Hershey Medical Center. The nurses threw a little
        party for us.
48. For a long time my favorite breakfast was hot dogs and
         sauerkraut.
49. On Christmas morning when I was 14, I was delighted to receive
         the dictionary I had asked for.
50. Brussels sprouts are my favorite vegetable.

Tags: 100 things about me, blogplugs

I don't have kidney cancer

2007-10-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Hershey Medical Center on Sunday was well worth the time and effort it took. Stop-and-go traffic brought us to Hope Lodge later than anyone expected, but Krissy and I were up early Monday morning and arrived at the Cancer Institute shortly after 8:00 AM. One of the advantages of getting there early was the short wait before the phlebotomist drew four or five tubes of my blood for testing. Since my appointment wasn't until 11:20, we grabbed a quick breakfast in the cafeteria, then met with the Post Bone Marrow Transplant Coordinator to get some paperwork out of the way. We were back at the Cancer Institute about 9:30 with nearly a two hour wait ahead of us. Finally a nurse led us to an exam room where she took my vital signs and updated my medication list. Everything looked good.

My oncologist walked into the room a short time later and greeted us warmly. He really seems to like me; I'm not sure why. He's told me that I'm one of the most treatment-compliant patients he has. Maybe that's the reason.

Checkups follow a routine that's very familiar to me after all this time. Dr. C. listens to my heart and lungs, and checks my lymph nodes for signs of enlargement. He shines a light around inside my mouth to see if I have any painful mouth sores that bone marrow transplant patients are prone to. I've never had any, but he checks every time just the same. He has me lie on my back while he taps on my abdomen in various places. I don't know what he's checking for, but as far as I know he hasn't found anything yet. He asks me if I've had any symptoms of Graft vs. Host Disease. GVHD is a kind of transplant rejection in reverse, where your donor's cells see your cells as intruders and attack them. He asks me if my mouth has been dry, and so on. I won't go into all the details.

The last thing Dr. C. did on Monday was check my lab results. Everything looked reasonably good except that my immunities were too low again. Now I'll have to be careful. People with low immunities have died because their bodies couldn't fight off an infection. But it could be worse. There have been times when I've had almost no immune system and I've survived. The annoying precautions will be the worst part. I'll have to wear a surgical mask everywhere I go outside of our apartment. People will stare at me and some will look anxious. I'll have to wash my hands so often that the skin will get dry and irritated. Large groups of people and anyone who is sick will have to be avoided. I've been through this so many times that it's now tedious instead of frightening.

Dr. C. is confident that I will get over this immunity problem. He decides to lower the dosage of my anti-rejection medication. This should make my immune system stronger. I hope so. We'll have to wait and see.

Earlier I wrote that our trip to Hershey was well worth the effort. Here is the reason why. My local nephrologist (kidney specialist) told me that an ultrasound showed a cyst or mass in my kidney. I was worried because a mass is often cancerous. When I was at my checkup in Hershey on Monday I asked Dr. C. if the mass could be cancer. He told me that the ultrasound showed no mass in my kidney and, furthermore, two other tests ruled out the possibility of kidney cancer. He told me, "You don't have kidney cancer. Go home and enjoy life." Krissy and I were thrilled.

I can't tell you how relieved we are that I don't have to deal with a third cancer. The first two were more than enough. This was my second cancer near miss in the past year. Krissy and I are very grateful to all of you who prayed for and supported us during the past two years of our cancer ordeal. We believe you played a large part in the positive outcome of my treatment. Thank you all!

to the cancer clinic

2007-10-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

Once again it's time for an all-too-frequent road trip to Hershey Medical Center's Cancer Institute. On Monday I have a post-bone-marrow-transplant checkup with my hematologist/oncologist. I need to be there two hours early for blood tests so that the lab can have the results ready for Dr. Claxton on time. Since Hershey is a two-hour drive away, rather than leaving before sunrise on Monday Krissy and I will drive down on Sunday and stay overnight at Hope Lodge, the American Cancer Society's group residence for cancer patients and their caregivers where all of us can stay while in treatment at Hershey. I'll be away from the computer on Sunday and Monday so I won't be posting any journal entries on these days. I didn't want you to wonder if I had lost interest in my journal.

These checkups aren't too bad as long as they don't do a bone marrow biopsy. I had a spinal tap once; bone marrow biopsies are worse. But at least I'm making progress. With my last appointment in Hershey I broke the four-week barrier. For a long time Dr. Claxton scheduled my checkups four weeks apart. Then he extended them to every six weeks, but each time I would have some sort of complication which would force me to go back after no more than four weeks. This past August 30 marked the first time I stayed healthy long enough to keep my scheduled six week checkup. There was no fanfare, but it was a relief nonetheless.

Another good thing about staying healthy is that I can drive us to Hershey myself. This eliminates an often lengthy search for someone who has a free day to drive us there. A number of times we have had to travel by bus.

Several Hershey nurses have told us that they can make the same trip that we do in little more than an hour. They must be aspiring NASCAR drivers. I keep to the speed limit for the practical reason that I can't afford to pay a fine. The whole way down and back other vehicles are passing us like we are riding in an oxcart. Few things make a leadfoot angrier than a speed-limit driver in a No Passing Zone. I'll be glad when we're home again.

I'll see all of you on Tuesday. This journaling is addictive. I told Krissy that I might get five comments; I want to thank all of you for proving me wrong.

Thanks, Sugar, for the graphic.

room to breathe

2007-10-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

Having our own place again feels good.

My wife Krissy and I had to move out of our old apartment at the end of July. We found ourselves staying at her parents' house for at least two months. It could have been longer; I'm not sure. Strange things can happen to your time sense when you worry that you might be seen as the houseguest who just won't go away. But Krissy's parents are good people: kind and generous. They knew we were in a tough spot and we had no one else to turn to. We owe them a lot of gratitude.

We finally moved into our new apartment almost two weeks ago. This place is great! It's large and cheerful, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The second bedroom is my emergency shelter for when I have little or no immune system. Here we followed my doctor's advice. Our old apartment had one bedroom in the rear, which we used for storage. The front room served as our living room/bedroom/kitchen. It was like living in an efficiency with a very large closet. Our new place gives us room to breathe.

I took a photo of my bathroom the other night; as you can see, like our apartment, the bathroom is large. Just before we moved in Krissy got me some dolphin shower curtains. She knows I like dolphins because they're so intelligent, playful, and acrobatic. I love the curtains. They take the bathroom from cheerful to exotic. They also match the blue and brown color theme of the apartment.

Michael (our Maine Coon cat) loves his new home. It makes me happy to see him run and play for the first time in years. He acts like a kitten even though he's nine years old. He seems relaxed and completely at ease here, except when girls walk by the window carrying umbrellas. This happened yesterday. When Michael saw her he panicked, bolted to the second bedroom, and hid under the bed for half an hour. I think the term "scaredy-cat" applies.

Not everyone has dolphins in the bathroom, a cat who resembles a raccoon, and a wife who stands by you through years of cancer treatment. This apartment is already taking on our personalities, and I think it will be a good home.

Tags: houseguest, apartment, dolphins, Maine Coon cat

Of DJs and Ginger Beer

2007-10-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

Me and my non-alcoholic Ginger Beer

My name is John. My wife Krissy writes the journal Sometimes I Think. You may have heard about me from reading her journal. I'm the guy who spent most of 2006 in the hospital recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

I've included a picture of myself. We have just moved into a new apartment and we haven't finished unpacking yet. Here I'm taking a break to drink my favorite soda, Ginger Beer (the English variety, not the Jamaican kind).

If you haven't seen a picture of me before, it might be like when you hear a DJ on the radio and form a mental image of him. Then one day you see him and he looks nothing like you expected. So . . . do I look like you thought I would?