“David Foster's Kicking Kidney Cancer’s Arse”

Busy, Busy, Busy. Yes, Will Have Another Hit

It has been interesting as all heck typing with a brain full of Percoset and Lords knows what else. But on the televion is a special on 1968,  so maybe today is just a special day for nostalgia. Damn if I know, but far out man.

So I have been run ragged through the medical world today, beginning with a CT at dawn (at dawn for civili

Quick Letter From the Hospital

So here I am, on my back waiting for one more MRI tomorrow and for the second pint of blood to drip out. They took some fluid out of the abdomen last night, but very disappointed at the volume. Yesterday's CAT Scan showed the "whatever" in the vena cava to be non-operable except through open heart surgery. Dr. Shlaer prefers we switch over to Torisel from Sutent and with the judicious use of blood thinners, try to work it out that way. He and several doctors in the hospital and other places are discussing this one. I feel so miserably special.

At any rate, this one is a conundrum, but hardly means a sudden set back. If it turns out the thorax surgery is the best way to go we will do that. They it sounds it much worse than it is.

Percoset is good stuff. Worth coming to teh hospital for every couple of years. As Sherry says it literally melts one into the bed as I am melted now. More tomorrow.

Not Fun and Just a Leeetle Bit Scary

(If you like, read the earlier post from  earlier today when I was in some anxiety over this doctor's visit. Will make this post make more sense. I think.)--DCF

So in I go and the doc is straight forward. He is going to put me into the hospital (University Augusta) for  two or three days. Wants to drain the fluids on my belly and give me blood thinners for a growth they can't exactly identify in the vena cava. Could be a tumor, could be a blood clot. Whatever. The issue is the blood thinners. Since I have brain tumors and blood thinners can cause the brain to bleed he wants this done under supervision, not out patient, so in I go.

Now, what if it is a tumor? Strategy undecided at this point. If it is a blood clot they are hoping the blood thinners will send it on its way. He tends not to  think it is a new tumor as vena cava issues normally show themselves on diagnosis, but the key word is normally.

My last post, written two hours ago was full of scanxiety, especially with the hurry call from the doctor's office. As you read that, you see a warrior propping himself up yet trying to be honest as well. Not easy duty, but I thought it might give other people a chance to at least glimpse what it is like.

Now that the consultation is over I feel, as I said then, that we can get one with whipping this thing. That it is not going to be death of Dave. Or even a debillitator. Just one more round in this awful war. As I said in the headline, "Not fun and just a leeetle bit scary." At least I get to take these damn Ted stockings off for a while. Yahoo!

As for deer camp, most likely get down to be with the boys come Thursday. That alone gives me a goal. A big goal. No better therapy in the world that being cooped in a little house with 12 other fellows, scratching our asses, speaking rudely of women and eating greasy food. Throw in a little good likker and you are in man heaven, or at least I am. And that is the only heaven I am planning to visit right now.

As is normal with anxiety, the spooks I was hearing two hours ago are gone  and now we just get down to business. If they have wireless in the hospital I will post if at all possible.

So there you go.

Doc Wants to See Me "Now;" Stat, Get A Move On

(The outcome of my visit with the doctor--see below--is the next post up.)--DCF

Gonna be two posts today. I had a CT scan Friday with plans to see Dr. Shlaer Wednesday. Over the weekend the swelling got a little worse, moving up into my stomach and crotch. So Shaler's office calls this morning and wants to see me at 10:45--today, not Wednesday. Ever since I have had RCC these are the kinds of calls I kinda dread. If it were life as usual he wouldn't be wanting to be seeing me two days earlier.

The positive side of me says this is most likely a minor thing, but one that needs to be taken care of post-haste. The more negative side says, well, it says, "Oh shit!" Except for the swelling, which is definitely getting worse, I feel just fine. So I can't help myself from contemplating. Does he want to take some of this fluid off with surgery of some sort? Are there new tumors in some vital area. Is my remaining kidney not working as it should? Hell of  an issue the week deer camp begins. Damn.

The positive side says don't worry about it. What is, is. And if it is less than good we will figure out a way to get through it. We are not done kicking cancer's arse yet. Then again, I might be fretting too much because until August my run against cancer had been somewhat crisis free. Since then i just figured I was fighting Decadron, which would not bring such a phone call as today.

One hour fifty-five minutes from now I will know the story. Oddly, my main thoughts are "How will I react to any bad news?" I know how I am going to react if he suggests putting me in the hospital for some reason or the other. "It's deer camp week, have you lost your mind?" Some things are just more important than cancer crises.

I know this is a crisis of some sort  because he had the nurse call. Were it something fairly minor he would have called himself, suggesting I come on down for a look-see.

So I'm gonna get a shower now, grease up the legs and wait for Sherry to come pick me up. One hour and twenty minutes from now I will know the story. If it is something minor, I might just hit the sumbitch. But if it is something major then I gotta find one more strategy to kick cancer's arse.

They did give me several options for time of appointment, but I took an early one. You see, this gives scanxiety a whole new meaning. For me. For many of you other folks this is just business as usual. So I look upon it as a mystery. One I want solved quickly as well. Intuition says it might be something serious, but we can beat it, No feelings of dread there. Life experience says Intuition might just be in denial this time around.

I will post soon as possible to let you know what is going on. It is times like these when being a Warrior defines itself in the sharpest of terms. Now we might really find out just how a good a warrior I am.

Kicking Cancer Arse Means Getting Kicked Yourself

There just ain't no easy ride through cancer. And no matter how good your attitude, you are going to feel like you are losing some battles, when in fact you may not. Take these sore legs. A side effect of coming off Decadron, a powerful steroid intended to keep brain edemas a bay. It did its job, but now my body is used to it and wants it back, saying so with all kinds of miserable little side effects. We have gone from 12 mg a day down to 2 every other day. The doctor said I was going to feel worse before I feel better. He pegged that one.  But you know folks, that's why we call it a war, this business with cancer. And my encounter with Decadron is just another battle.

A fellow warrior wrote me a week or so ago asking how I maintain "such a positive attitude" while experiencing such awful side effects. He said his side effects sometimes made him wonder which was better: Letting the cancer have its way and enjoying life to the end, or to continue suffering through the se's, but sometimes wondering to what end?

David Foster has had the same thoughts. Most, if not all, advanced cancer patients have. Why fight for life when life can be so damnably miserable at times? Not all the time, please, but certainly some of them. And it is especially depressing when I take the morning meds and have to wait half hour or more wondering if I am going to toss them. Or when I take a walk around the block and dead tired by the time I get back to the house. What kind of life is that?

It is the life we live to get to NED. And in my mind, more than worth it. I relearned that yesterday when my sisters came to visit. Just being around all the family conversation, listening to the gossip, playing with sister Kathy's new dog Pompeii was worth living through the side effects. As is seeing Alex grow in her horsey sport and thinking of having a better relationship with my grandchildren at some point in the future--oh and seeing Sadie make her first point--all of that makes se's worthwhile, no matter how debilitating at any particular moment.

But no matter your perceived attitude or the face you show your loved ones and friends, cancer is going to kick your arse from time to time. But try to think of those times as battles in a war. That's all, just battles.  When  U.S. Grant took one of his worst beatings at the  hands of  Confederate forces his army thought he would retreat to Washington, in fact, some of his pack trains were already headed north. Instead he flanked the Rebels and laid seige to Richmond. When asked later he explained that Cold Harbor was just a battle, an expensive battle for sure, but his job was to win the war. So is ours, even when we have our own Cold Harbors.

When my first daughter, Rebecca, was born, "natural childbirth" was still a very new phenomenon. In the delivery room they had a sign for the new mother tacked on the far wall. It said: "Push." I have a mental sign tacked on my far wall as well. It says "WIN." It reminds me that this war is for a viable future, not to simply find better ways to live with this se or the other. And damn sure not to feel sorry for yourself. So when I am feeling the most miserable, for whatever reason, I take a good long long look at that one word. WIN. Yeah, that's what its all about. WIN. So we just fight on through it. I don't know about you, but I have no desire to go to heaven as a loser. And I am not going to. Oh, the cancer might one day kill me, but it will know it has killed a winner.

You can safely bet on that one.

Back Up, On Line and Doing Kinda Fine

(Thank you for all the very nice notes during my unwilling week "off." It humbles me that so many of you are interested in my bumbles and stumbles. Except for the legs I am doing just fine, just really ready to get done with coming off Decadron and get some regular legs back. The physical therapy has been a huge help. I can now stand up straight out of a chair without  pushing on an arm. Big victory.  As for feeling a little down,  it is tough on the  psyche when you literally can't pick yourself up. But  that problem is close to being history.)--DCF

Huzzah, huzzah, hip, hip and hooray, back on line and kicking cancer arse, What a week. First Sadie had her way with the power cord on the computer. And finding a Mac power cord is not as easy as ordering a hamburger at Mickey D's. So I am out of contact with the world for a week, which also upsets the daily routine. I do not like having my daily routine upset any more than a I like Sutent upsetting most everything. Went to Shaler on Wednesday and pretty much walk out with nothing new. Keep the feet up, stay on the diuretic. Over at the Physical Therapy joint, nobody cares about my poor little ballooning issues. It's just lift this leg, squeeze that one one, put those butt cheeks together until you feeeeeel it. So I limp hone and check the messages. One from the Doc's office. CT scan Friday afternoon. I am about to panic until I remember Sherry asking if we could get the scans out of the way now, help on the deductible. MRI next week, same reason. So from simple paranoia with the hurting and swollen feet and legs I zip into scan anxiety--pains here, pains there, could that mean tumors, tumors everywhere. Always my first reaction to the coming a new scan.  But at least I wasn't thinking about my legs for a while.

That's what I like so much about cancer....it is so consistent. 

But there is some great news, at least for me. My sisters (three) made a special trip to see the poor old warrior today, all from more than three hundred miles away. How sweet. And Alex came home to make the family complete. So everybody asked how I felt, said that I looked good, suggested two or three different creams for my dry skin and felt my rock hard legs and said, something like, "Goodness, those are hard." By dinner time, everyone was concerned about where I wanted to go eat. I didn't want to go eat. Oh, well that's not exactly true. I was hungry, but knew that just the smell of a restaurant would ruin me. While they were enjoying their fillet or whatever, I would be hurling. Not much of a deal. (Note: The dogs love for me to go out to eat because they know when I come home the doggie bag will come with me. They're getting down right snooty about food.) So I stayed home, drank a protein shake and spent an hour on the porch pointing out to Sadie--again and again and again--what she can not eat, from pipe cleaners to the new power cord box to some material I am sure I would have recognized immediately before she chewed it up.

So I am happily not having to stare at a plate of food while my sisters and  Sherry--I am pretty sure--are comparing notes about how he (me) really looks or how he really feels or whatever. I hope the prognosis is good. As if it mattered.

And so the week comes to a close. My legs hurt, but they say that is much soreness from the workouts than anything else. They are also swollen. I got a lecture from a lady this week on swollen legs. As in "you are a man, you don't know swollen legs from nothing." The CT scan was something of a surprise, but hell, you gotta know what you gotta know, perhaps the most important part of kicking cancer's arse. Actually, I am more concerned about the MRI. I don't need any more surprises in the thinker region. Not so much because of the potential tumors, but the need to go back on Decadron. Enough is enough.

I still feel I am a man on the mend, but mending ain't been much fun lately. However, the computer is back, up and working. Hell, that's half the battle. I did not enjoy being out of touch for near seven days. And one time I said I would never have a computer. Now they would have to do surgery to seperate me from it. Sound familiar?

Fighting Back..Pretty Damn Good, Too

Greetings fr0m my daughter Alex one-time bedroom and her PC, which I hate. I haven't posted for a few days simply because, well, let me list the reasons: Saturday, spent most of the day at the plantations freezing what little buns I have while wondering exactly when global warming is going to kick in. Sunday, up at Camden S.C. for the Palmetto Finals. Alex and Harley came in third. She just got too nervous before the final test and blew her strides. But obviously by not as much as s0me thirty other riders blew theirs. Monday, found that Sadie had somehow gotten to my Mac's power cord. Waiting for a new one, hence trying to type on this thing. Still waiting, however, for global warming. Can't wait in fact. If my escape from cold means Wall Street is deluged, fine by me. They shed no tears every time my 401K takes a hit.

Went in the doc today. Sherry demanded it. Made the appointment herself. Not much point to it, though. I am feeling better (except for the sore muscles from physical therapy) and coming off the Decdron nicely and, well, dealing with Sutent as is always the case. In other words, he was glad to see my feet and legs were no longer swollen. "Ted" stockings brought them down over the weekend and also kept my legs warm at night. But Shlaer told me to keep wearing them and I am happy to.

Oh, no prescription or anything. Just go t0 a medical supply store and ask for Tee stockings  by name. Then while you buzz ar0und in the demonstrator motor-powered wheel chair, they will get them for you. Damn those chairs are fun. I thought about getting one for recreational use, make my house something of an ATV course without the cold, mud and bad attitude of law enforcement officials. Whatever, the stockings really help the swollen legs and feet. You might try them.

Otherwise all is good at the Foster household. The Tree goes up tonight and my new power cord will be in about Thursday, which means no posts until arrives as it has taken me forever to type this little message on the PC. A man needs his own quill, if you know what I mean. And some warm weather, but I am about to give up on that.

Peace to all...and may the war continue with the warriors winning every battle.