Getting Closer

I know that it's been a little while since my last post. I have been putting stuff right after I get my treatments and I'm a little late. The reason for this is that, quite simply, I'm tired of writing about cancer. I'm tired of my life and my blog revolving around it. And I'm sure that anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis is probably tired of reading about it.

A good example of the reason that I'm tired of writing about it is happening right now as I type. It's a sunny Saturday afternoon and I'm sitting on the couch resting my legs while my wife is outside mowing the grass and hauling wheelbarrow loads of mowed grass back into the woods behind our house. She would never say anything, but I know that she's got to be getting tired of doing the work of two people around the house and yard.

So, just a couple quick things in the way of an update. I had my sixth treatment on Tuesday, which means only two more to go. My legs have been giving me a lot of trouble lately, just from being so weak, so they changed my treatment a little bit. They eliminated one of the chemo drugs that I get and fortunately for me it's also the one that causes the cold sensitivity in my hands and mouth. The doctor thought that that particular part of the treatment might be messing with the nerves in my legs so he stopped it at least for the next two weeks so we can see of there's any improvement.

So enough about that. On to some stuff that's more fun to talk about it. We recently celebrated Shane's graduation and open house last Sunday. It went very well. There were lots of people at the open house and everyone seemed to have a good time. Despite mine and Kelly's skepticism regarding the jerky bar that Shane wanted, it went over extremely well. Lots of people were up there sampling all the different kinds that we had and everyone seemed to like it. We also had an ice cream bar that didn't go over quite as well. We probably have 50 small containers of vanilla and chocolate ice cream in our freezer. So if you'd like a bite of ice cream or two, come see us. We might even throw in some chocolate or caramel topping. Shane also did well at the graduation. One of the benefits of a small school ceremony like that is that you get to hear some more about an individual graduate than simply his or her name as they walk across the stage. One of the things that Brimley does is announce all the scholarships won by the seniors. Shane did pretty well here, laying claim to five of them. They came all at once, so it seemed like he was just walking off the stage with one in his hand and walking right back around to the entry stairs to head up and claim another one.

Callie finished her softball season off with quite a bang. In their final game of the season, she came up to bat with runners on first and second while trailing 7-5. She hit a double, driving in both runners to tie the game. After going to third on a pass ball, she scored by stealing home on another pass ball. For those of you who know Callie, you understand what a big deal it was for her to take off for home and slide to score the winning run.

Andrew has got himself a job at a new restaurant in town and will start on June 10 or 11^th. He is pretty excited about it and I am too. It will be a big challenge for him because it's a lot of stuff that he's never had to do before. It will be his first real step towards real responsibility and I hope he rises to the occasion.

Sydney has officially moved in with her grandparents in Clare and is working at the Doherty Hotel. She is planning on taking a statistics class that will allow her to attend Saginaw Valley in the fall and continue to pursue her nursing career.

This leaves us with Abbie Church. She is very disappointed that all her brothers and sisters are now done with school and she still has to go for another week. It is a very unfair and unjust world that we live in in her point of view. She got to go to an indoor water park in Mackinaw City the other day and had a great time. We went to the VFW Hall for a fish fry and Kelly, Abbie and I had a great time eating and laughing together.

These are the life events that I'd like to keep people up to date on and not stupid cancer or chemotherapy. In another month, I'll be able to do that. I have maintained all along that I'm going to beat this thing and continue to live my life. I am close to accomplishing that goal and being able to truly enjoy the things that are important to me. Twenty-four more days, two more treatments, and one victory.

I Will Win

Five down, three to go

On Tuesday, I had the fifth of my eight treatments and this one has been the hardest so far. Of course, I guess that should be expected as I was warned early on that the effects of this would be cumulative. I went to bed last night (Wednesday) at about 11:30 pm and slept until roughly 1:30 pm on Thursday afternoon. I made my way upstairs and sat down on the couch and promptly fell back asleep until 3 pm. The cold thing is also getting a little harder to manage. Kelly and I went to Shane's baseball game in Alanson on Wednesday afternoon and although I was ok at first, by the beginning of the second game, I was headed to the car for another sweatshirt and some gloves. I ended up watching the last couple innings from the car with the heater on. So of course, our weather forecast for the next couple days is low 40s with the possibility of some snow mixed in with the rain.

Even though I'm a little bummed about the effects worsening, I'm also a little excited that the number of treatments left is down to three. I can't explain why, but that number seems so much closer to the finish line than four did.

I got the pump off just about an hour ago, and that makes me feel better too. It's always a relief to get that thing off me. It doesn't really limit what I can do, but it makes it a lot harder to do it. I can't even tell you how many times that the tubing has gotten caught on stuff and jerks on that needle in my chest.

It's been a little bit since I've posted anything as I've been sticking to putting stuff up shortly after treatment days. Since my last post, my step-daughter Sydney has graduated from Ancilla College and has settled in at her grandparents house in Clare. She has a job and is going to be taking a statistics class so that she can enroll at Saginaw Valley State to finish her nursing education. Very proud of her. When Kelly went down to graduation, I had to stay home because I couldn't get the time off work. I had something funny happen while Kelly was gone, although I promise you, I didn't think it was funny at the time.

I always let the dogs out before I go to bed or get ready for work. When I let them in, I'm usually in my underwear because Bear (St. Bernard) likes to get hair all over my work clothes when he comes in. This night was no exception. I went to the door to let them in and I was wearing a t-shirt, underwear and a pair of slippers. Joey came right in and I waited a second for the big boy to make his way to the door. I knew there was going to be trouble when I heard him barking up by the back deck. He had gotten himself wrapped around the base of a small shrub. We put him out on a cord connected to a stake in the back yard because he thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants while he's out there, including visiting all the neighbors while suddenly becoming deaf to all calls of “get back here.”

So he has the cord wrapped around the shrub and it's cold and rainy outside. I stomp up to the back deck which means I have to go up a muddy hill to get there. I see that he's not just wrapped up once or twice, but about six times. I get him to go around it backwards twice to get a little slack in the cord, but then he's done. My legs are not at full strength right now and that makes dealing with Bear that much more difficult. So, I'm thinking I'm just going to unhook him and keep ahold of his collar and we'll just go right up the steps of the back deck and in that door. Not ideal because of the mud that's going to get in the kitchen and dining room, but better than trying to bully him back down to the basement door where we both came out of.

While I'm reaching to unhook him, our neighbor's dog barks. This is bad news for me because Rex is a Golden Retriever who Bear goes over to play with now and then. Bear loves to go over there and whenever the dogs are outside at the same time, there is a huge barkfest that goes on as the dogs try to get a look at each other. Bear barks once and then bolts in Rex's direction. I look down and realize that my foot is in a loop in the cord. I know that I'm going to get jerked off my feet and that I'll never be able to get my foot out of that loop in time. Sure enough, I feel the cord bite into my leg and the next thing I know, I'm laying in the mud in my t-shirt and underwear. Meanwhile, Bear is pulling on the cord which is causing my foot to try and separate from my leg. I created new swear words that night and I'm glad that my mom and grandma weren't around because I called that dog every curse word I've ever heard in my life. I finally got him under control enough to get my foot out of the cord and then I realized I was going to have to unhook him in order to unwrap the cord from the shrub. I let him off the cord and he bolts for the neighbor's house. I finally convinced him to come back about 5 minutes later. I had to change my under clothes and get in the shower again. The worst part of the whole thing was that I got pretty cold rolling around in the mud and my hands were so cold that night that I couldn't button my shirt or tie my shoes so I drove out to work with my hands in front of the heater. By the time I got out to the prison, I was able to get things buttoned and tied.

Of the many things that I don't like about having cancer, is hearing about everyone else that has it. I know how that sounds, but that's not how I mean it. It's bad enough that anyone has it, but then you start hearing about so many other people that have it or have had it and the numbers can quickly get staggering. I have heard countless tales from people or about people since I was diagnosed and it makes me wonder if everyone is destined to get it at some point? I mean, just in the last two weeks, I know someone who has died from cancer, someone who was diagnosed and had emergency surgery to remove it on the same day, someone who's family thought their father was clear of it and instead found out it had spread, and someone who is worrying like hell waiting on the results of a biopsy. I have been thinking about all of them over the past few days and hoping for the best for each of them and their families.

But where does it end? Will we ever discover a cure? We've been to the moon, we have vaccinations for diseases that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the middle ages. Why is this particular one so elusive in terms of a cure or a preventative measure? I'm tired of dealing with cancer and its effects, and I'm tired of hearing about cancer touching the lives of people I know.

I Will Win

Halfway Home

Tuesday was sort of a milestone day in terms of the chemotherapy treatments I’ve been getting. It was treatment number 4 which means I’m halfway done. Four more to go, one more surgery after that, and then it’s done. All done.

Things are still going ok as far as the side effects go. My hands are definitely more sensitive to the cold than they were when I started and grabbing something cold is about the same as getting a low level electrical shock. That’s definitely the worst part of it right now. The nausea comes and goes, but I’ve got medication I can take for that and for the most part, it hasn’t given me any trouble. The effects last for 2-4 days after I get the pump unhooked and then it’s been fine after that. That could change as the treatments progress, but I hope not. I can’t even tell you the number of times already that I’ve forgotten that I’m not supposed to touch cold stuff and end up throwing down whatever thing I’ve just picked up. Some good examples include a boot full of snow, a can of frozen apple juice, a ball for our trailer hitch, and a cold can of pop.

I did something a couple days ago that I hadn’t done since before the surgery. The snow has been receding in the driveway and that cleared off the basketball court enough for me to get a ball and shoot a few times. Nothing outside the range of about five feet, but enough to remind me that it’s fun and I’d like to get back to the point where I can do it on a regular basis. When I was in my early 20s, and maybe even in my late teens, that’s all I did was play basketball. Softball too, but basketball was my favorite. Bob Gulick and I played together when we started. Neither of my brothers was old enough to play in a league at the time, so it was just Bob and I. I had previously played for my uncle’s team and was ready for a change just because there were a lot of guys on that team and Bob and I wanted to be somewhere where we could play together.

This meant signing on to play with the Hen House out of St. Helen at first. They were a good group of guys, but we weren’t a very good basketball team. Bob and I were of the mind that since we were probably the two best players on the team, that we should be on the floor the majority of the time. The other guys didn’t see it that way. Hell, I’m not even sure that they agreed with our assessment that we were the two best players on the team. Actually, I’m sure that most of them did not share that view. Our time there did not last long.

One thing that I need to mention at this point in my story is that there is no person that I enjoyed playing with more than Bob. The reason is simple. I like to shoot the ball. I make no secret about it and I do not apologize for it. Bob knew this about me and still enjoyed playing with me. I have played with a lot of other guards over my years, and I have never had a backcourt mate more in tune with where and when I wanted the ball. We played together enough that he was just able see the play unfold the same way I did and he just knew where I was going to go and when to make the pass. Of course, every shooter needs a conscience, and while I didn’t have one of my own, I had Bob. He would pull me aside from time to time and tell me to get so and so the ball, or tell me that someone needs a touch down low. I knew that if Bob was telling me this, I had better listen just because he had a better sense of that stuff than I did.

And please don’t think that I’m saying that I’m some kind of all-star. I loved playing and I was pretty good, but I have played with and against a ton of guys way better than me.

One thing that I had going for me as a player was the fact that I was overweight and people took one look at me and decided that I wasn’t going to be any good, so I always got the worst defender that the other team had to offer until they figured out that fat didn’t necessarily mean slow and terrible.

A really good story about this happened when I was in my mid-30s. I was playing in a charity game at the high school in Sault Ste. Marie and I had invited my youngest brother Clay up to play with us. He came and we had a great time playing together. After the game, we were sitting on the bottom row of the bleachers changing our shoes and putting on sweats and such and getting ready to go. An older man and his wife were making their way down the bleachers and stopped in front of Clay and I and started talking to us.

“You are proof positive that you can’t judge a book by its cover,” the woman said. “You sure don’t look fast, but there you were, dribbling the ball all over the place and you looked pretty fast doing that.” I said thank-you and they went on their way. A few minutes later, when Clay could draw breath again, he managed to sputter “the fat guy can play. That’s what they just said, the fat guy can play.” Someday, I may forgive Clay for laughing as hard as he did over that, but not just yet.

Truth be told, it was pretty funny.

But my glory days as a basketball player definitely came in the Houghton Lake Men’s League. When Graham was old enough to play, we (me, Graham, and Bob) started putting our own team in the league with guys that we picked ourselves. And I have to be honest, I can’t even remember who was on that team, so if you read this and were on that team, please let me know. If you were on it, you should have a horrific looking purple t-shirt with a gold number on it. From there, Glen’s sponsored us for a few years and we began to pick up some of our core players. I’m going to rattle off some names that I remember playing with us, and I know that I’m going to forget some of them. If you played with us and I didn’t mention you, please message me so that I can edit this post and add you.

I know that Josh Arleth and Erick Haight played with us pretty much from the very beginning and I’m pretty sure Matt Brunt did too. Matt was a lot of fun to play with and he fit our style really well. We were the mouthiest team in the league for a period of about 8 years. Matt was very talkative on the court, but I don’t ever remember him getting teed up. A little later, we added Scott Szotko, who was an extremely good basketball player. He also fit our “talkative” style very well, especially in getting under the other team’s skin. When Clay was old enough to play, that added a whole new pool of players to our fold. The bruise brothers, Dave Jones and Jeff Mallets were lots of fun to have around and were just a brawl waiting to happen, and Craig Lavigne was another guy who came with Clay. He was a good player, but was quiet. I think he and Josh Arleth were the two quietest guys to ever play on our team.

We also had a guy named Doug Ryckman for a year, and what a year it was. We beat the perennial league champion that year with him and in that game was one of my favorite moments ever in that league. Matt Brunt gets the ball and takes a turn-around jump shot from the right elbow. Even before the ball is halfway there, he turns to the guy guarding him and says in this sing-song voice, “Eat it.” We laughed so hard over that after the game that our stomachs all hurt. That quote will live on for as long as I do.

We were the second-worst behaved team in that league for all our years in it, second to the Limberlost. The reason I say that is because we limited our behavior to verbal outbursts, and it was usually directed at the officials, not other players, although this was not always the case. The Limberlost group was maybe the dirtiest team I’ve ever played against in any league I’ve ever been in. The usual rule is that you respect the fact that guys have to get up the next day and go to their job and you don’t do anything that would jeopardize that. Not so with these guys. It wasn’t all of them, but there were definitely two or three of them that were more than a little crazy. If you were driving in for a layup, you wanted to have a good idea as to where they were in relation to your path to the basket. And if you knew you were playing the Limberlost on a given day, you made sure that your insurance premiums were paid up.

We were a way different team than that. We were cocky, arrogant, and to be honest, pretty damned good. Other teams didn’t necessarily like us, but it wasn’t because they were scared of us. We just had a good time playing together and had fun out there.

I still keep in contact with a good number of guys who played on our basketball team and would like to hear from you if I didn’t mention you in this blog.

I could go on for pages and pages about our team and our exploits in that league, but I will leave out the Graham Church abuse of the garbage cans in the hallway and some of my own tantrums that would be embarrassing to mention.

I Will Win