Part Sixteen – A Port in Any Storm

Welcome! Trying to brighten up the mood of the blog a bit. So, to make the Blogspot a little more warm and fuzzy, here are some kittens.

Feel better? Me too! Last week I had my second infusion treatment of the miracle drug Avastin. At that time, my nurses up on the 4^th floor decided that the new treatment would be helped along greatly if I would get a “port” implanted in my chest to dispense the drug directly into my bloodstream. This port is installed under the skin in my chest, then connects to a short tube (it’s called a “catheter,” but that word still gives me nightmares), and finally to a large vein in my heart. This makes it nice and easy for the nurses to plug me in for my bi-weekly chemo sessions instead of having to poke around for a vein that’s not wrecked already. It also can be used to take blood samples, inject contrast dye for MRI's, and other handy uses I haven’t heard about yet.

Of course, nobody mentioned that this port makes the nurses’ jobs a lot easier also. I was given what looked like a Hollywood-produced video to sell me on the idea. Wondering if I can dispense some scotch or bourbon via this device? Perhaps that idea is just waiting for the right genius to make some medical history!

So, last Friday I go down to UNM Hospital again to get fitted with my new gear. After the usual hurry up and wait, I’m finally wheeled in to get prepped for surgery. (Goodbye, chest hair.) I’m supposed to be awake for the surgery, but that plan is scrapped as soon as they start pumping happy gas into my breathing apparatus, and I’m off on my best nap in months. I’m woken in time (about 90 min, or so I’m told) for the doctor to show me his handiwork, then I’m wheeled off to the recovery room. After a while a nurse shows up, everything is disconnected, clothes back on and I’m good to go.

Pam is waiting for me with one of her oldest friends. I’m still a little woozy but I’m starved (no food or drink allowed since last night), so we all head out for something to eat. We enjoy a nice lunch, then we drop Joan off at her car to head up to Santa Fe, and we head on home. I’m home an hour or so when the drugs wear off and I am suddenly and rudely reminded that my shoulder was cut open a few hours ago. Something from my stash of pain meds washed down with a little Jameson’s helps a bit, but the recliner is where I’ll be sleeping tonight.

The next day I feel better, tho the pain meds are still my best friends. In a week I will be back at the UNM Cancer Center taking my newly implanted apparatus on its maiden voyage for another infusion treatment. Here’s hoping the Avastin does its job and we will many more visits here in the Blogspot.

As they say, hope springs eternal . . . which of course reminds me that Opening Day is on Monday! As Cubs fans, we have little more than hope, but what the hell . . . it’s baseball!

GOODBYE AMIGOS!  SEE YOU SOON!  HAHA!!

Part Fifteen - A New Path

This week, I got more familiar with the roller-coaster ride that all victims of the heinous Big C eventually get to know. In my last blog, I was all upbeat with the news from my latest scans, announcing that the scare from the MRI’s was nothing but what my doctors tagged “pseudo-progression.” Meeting with them this week, however, their tune had changed to more somber notes.

Before I continue, please allow a detour for another tidbit of Steve Bliss health news. On a Friday a couple of weeks ago, I started to notice what felt like an itchy rash on the left side of my face. By Monday, my puss was an ugly landscape of bumps and blotches and my left eye was almost swollen shut. By some miracle, I managed to get in to see my GP, who took one look at this mess, asked a few questions, and immediately pronounced: Shingles!

Thus began the latest course in my post-grad education about heath calamities that affect old-timers, of one whom I did not realize I had suddenly become. Seems most of us have chicken pox when we’re kids, and we were all led to believe that’s the end of it. Unfortunately, the virus that causes chicken pox takes up vacation residence in your system forever, and certain things – say, an immune system compromised by a bombardment of chemo drugs, among other things – can cause it to re-emerge in the form of the shingles virus. This long-forgotten family member moves back in for weeks and you can’t get rid of him. In my case, the real hideous stuff on my face subsided after a week, but I still have throbbing pain around my left eye and in the whole left side of my head. The doc gave me some anti-virals and a mild painkiller (Hydrocodone) but after a week of me bugging him for something more effective, he finally forked over a script for something called Gabapentin, a drug more commonly used to treat the effects of shingles. Unfortunately, the tiny 100mg dose he prescribed was pretty useless, but bumping that up to three or four at a pop seemed to do the trick.

LESSON: If you’re over 50, run out and get a shingles vaccination! It is fairly new, so of course check with your doc first, but I recommend it highly. Unless Halloween is coming up and you’re planning to go as The Elephant Man.

Shingles!

Thanks for your indulgence in that little sidebar. Back to our headline story, in my oncologist’s office. Dr. Lee is not his usual chipper self as he hands me copies of my latest scans in a very businesslike manner. Unlike in our meeting four weeks ago, the news is decidedly not good today. I look at scan after scan showing the ominous blob progressing forward from the back of my skull. A 180-degree turnaround from our last meeting, but before I can open my mouth to ask a question about what these new scans mean, Dr. Lee tells me I have an appointment upstairs with the infusion specialist, darts out of the room and is not seen again.

A few words about my oncologist, whose name is Dr. Fa-Chyi Lee. He is from Taiwan, has degrees from St. Louis U and UCLA and all the cred you would want. He is a squirrelly little fellow, friendly enough, speaks very rapidly, but not exactly the warm and fuzzy Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) from TV’s House type. This is not the kind of guy I expect to hold my hand and comfort me after telling me the creature coming to murder me is making expansion plans in his penthouse apartment in my head. I don’t think a minute or two to provide a few details to my wife and me after delivering fairly devastating news is not too much to expect, do you? Dr. Lee and I may be due for a little chat. Or perhaps an email to his boss is in order. You may recall I am in direct correspondence with the director of the entire UNM Cancer Center, following my less-than-ideal intro to the facility several months ago.

Back at the Cancer Center, I finally figure out where to go next after being abruptly abandoned by Dr. Lee. It’s up to the fourth floor to begin the next episode in the battle with Moloch the Destroyer. Goodbye Temodar, hello Avastin. I included some info about Avastin a few blogs ago but I have repeated the link again below. Avastin works by cutting off the blood supply of tumors. This may slow the growth and spread of tumors. It is a new treatment which has seen some good results.

AVASTIN (click for more info)

Upstairs, I settle into a comfy recliner with a glorious view of the Sandia mountains in front of me. I’m hooked up to an IV with a saline drip for about a half hour, to prep my veins and make sure my system won’t have a problem with whatever they’re going to pump into me. Then the treatment begins, which lasts about 45 minutes. I have to be back for this every two weeks. The list of side effects from Avastin reads like one of those erectile dysfunction ads on TV, but so far, so good on that stuff.

Sitting here in my comfy hospital recliner, gazing at the Sandias, I have time to ponder what it all means. Have I just made the next step in an inexorable progress towards an inevitable destination at which all but 5% of people who begin this journey arrive? If I have, I guess there ain’t really much I can do about it. I am thankful for wonderful friends who provide mucho love and support. Some of these friends have gone so far as to urge the help of mystic “healers” who have promised to wipe out the cancer by thinking about it from 1000 miles away. Well, people believe what they gotta believe, and it all comes from love, which hopefully everyone believes in. I am happy for anyone who is upheld by some kind of faith, even if embracing that faith does not come easily to me. I believe in the power of love, and I feel that in abundance.

GOODBYE AMIGOS! SEE YOU SOON! HAHA!!

2.04.04 Top = Front

3.04.04 Top = Front

2.04.04 Front from Rear

3.04.04 Front from Rear

Part Fourteen - Oscars etc.

Happy Almost Fat Tuesday! We try to celebrate every year by dining out at one of the few restaurants in ABQ featuring this fab cuisine, popping something from my modest collection of Cajun/zydeco music into the CD player, and/or finding a good New Orleans-themed movie to watch. (The Big Easy is the obvious choice, but there are others we like.) Laissez les bons temps rouler!

I’m obliged to drop in a few words about the stuff in the title of this blog. If you read the last entry, you know I received encouraging news at my last MRI scan. My mind was at least temporarily put at ease when what my doctors believed might be cancer growth turned out to be “pseudo-progression.” So that lightened the mood somewhat, tho it goes back into suspense theater again with new MRI’s on Fat Tuesday of the upcoming week.

I barely had time to celebrate the good news when I started to feel weird last weekend. I was feeling pain around my left eye and in my left ear, and had developed what looked like a hideous giant zit on my left nostril. By Monday everything was worse, and I was miraculously able to get an appointment with my GP. He took one look at me, asked about the symptoms and nailed it on the spot: Shingles! I knew nothing about shingles, but my simple explanation is this: You get chicken pox when you’re a kid, it goes away but the virus stays with you forever. It’s not all that uncommon to have some kind of re-emergence in the form of shingles, but it generally occurs in only 1-3 people per 1000 under the age of 65. Certain things can bump up your odds of getting it if you’re younger than this – such as a compromised immune system caused by carrying little dark passengers like mine around with you.

Shingles takes the form of an ugly, nasty rash around the midsection in most people. A smaller percentage gets it all over your face – excuse me, all over one side of your face, which is weird. By Tuesday night I looked like the arch-villain Two-Face from the Batman series. It got worse than the photo I’ve included, with my left eye completely closed and blisters on my face making it look like the worst case of pizza-face acne ever. At the time of this writing I’ve had it about a week. I can see out of my left eye again and much of the rash has subsided, tho the big ugly nose zit is still there and the pain emanating outward from my left eye won’t go away. Got some anti-virals and some hydrocodone from the doc, but my stash of oxy left over from surgery is also coming in handy. There is an effective vaccination which is, unfortunately, useless once you already got it. I urge all of you to get the shingles vaccination today!

I didn’t really want to use up all my blog time on this, but this blog was started to communicate news about MBFGC and related health issues, so I feel obliged to keep you informed about it, and I am always gratified by your interest and concern. I hope you can indulge me a few comments about the Oscars tomorrow night.

I’ve been into movies big time since I was a kid. Everyone in my family was. On weekends we would “go to the show,” and everyone who grew up in Chicago is familiar with that phrase. It mattered little what movie was playing, nor even what time the movie started. We would just go to the movie and watch the next showing until “the part where we came in,” and if we liked the film, we’d watch that second viewing all the way to the end.

I became more seriously interested in movies after high school. I found the most interesting part of my initial semester of college to be the film society on campus, where I was exposed to foreign language films. Blowing off college after one semester, I headed out to Berkeley CA and spent about a year immersed in the big candy store of all the college film societies and revival/repertory theaters, soaking up all the international, experimental, and classic American cinema I could find. I came back to Chicago for the usual stupid reasons (little head leading the big head), but continued to mine the same kinds of venues in Chicago to enthusiastically continue my cinema education. I eventually made my way back to school, working my way thru several institutions before earning a useless BA from the Radio/TV/Film division of Northwestern’s School of Speech (now Communications).

Sorry for the biography; will attempt to fast-forward thru the boring stuff. I spent over 25 years in marketing and sales in motion picture distribution, cable TV, and the home video industry. Left the home video industry in the face of changing technology and diminishing opportunities, but had the impeccable timing of attempting to launch some new media ventures in the teeth of the 2008 recession, so the last five years have found my fortunes plummeting into survival mode. An unexpected visitor last year has helped to further stall my career progression.

In any event, my point is that I have loved the cinema from an early age and have been fortunate enough to find employment in related positions for much of my adulthood. Though I feel fortunate to have long ago discovered the world of international cinema, I am no film snob. I still consider American cinema to be the innovative leader that has historically been the most influential in shaping the art form. However, as we have watched American industry begin to lose sight of the principles and objectives that made it a world leader, the same afflictions have affected the American cinema. It has always held a unique position between art and commerce, but it seems that in recent years artistic decisions are influenced by commercial considerations more than ever. This is evident nowhere more than in the annual Academy Awards show, a grotesque orgy of shallow emotions and phony sentiment by which nobody but the most cynical can avoid being nauseated.

In recent years I have been spared the most horrific moments of this kitsch-fest by the magic of TiVo, but I don’t even have enough interest to bother setting the DVR this year. I can find out all I need to know without gagging in two minutes on the internet. In the meantime, there are so many great films emerging on international screens. Just recently I watched an amazing film called Wadjda, which is not only the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, but the first film made by a female Saudi director. It is funny and emotionally satisfying and easily superior to any of the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Many of these films can be viewed easily via the many video streaming services available, but most people are not aware of these treasures hidden in plain sight. I’m going to start recommending a few of these in future blogs. Perhaps some of you will find something to enjoy in these suggestions. I am certainly interested in new films that any of you can recommend.

GOODBYE AMIGOS!  SEE YOU SOON!  HAHA!!