Start of Round 3

OK lets get right to it, I have several updates for you.
First I lost my little assistant Dr. that was doing the fellowship at MUSC. Dr. Sharai has completed his two year program in this study and is moving on to another assignment. He is still at MUSC and still in the Cancer center, but not working with my case anymore. However he said he would be around and checking in on me periodically, and if I needed anything I could contact him. So it is just me and Dr. O’Brien for now. I do not know if he will be getting another understudy or not, at some point I am sure he will, but there is no telling when.

I went in Friday the 20th for my checkup and we decided to continue the Chemo treatments on schedule for probably 2 more months before doing a scan. At $750 after insurance, my cost, we do not want to hear that the results are unclear or unable to tell if there is a difference in the scans. The farther apart they are timed, the better the chance of getting readable, comparable results in the scan, whether good or bad, but at least it is not just a waste of money. So today (Monday the 30th of July) is my first treatment in round 3 of Chemo. One more to go after this.
During the visit I talked to him about my severely swollen feet. I look like Violet Bouregaurd from the shins down, this is the girl in Willy Wonka that turned into a blueberry. Except I am not blue. It is crazy, I can press down in the middle of my foot and leave an inch deep crater. Then it fills back in. It is like working with a balloon filled with play dough.

Anyway, he said that one of my blood levels, Albumin or something like that, is low and will make me experience the symptoms of diabetes.

Great!! I don’t have enough going on. So my body is laying the symptoms of diabetes on me for now. How fun. Do you think we can pile on some Crabs and Shingles too? I am just a little too comfortable, lets see if we can’t get some Scarlet Fever symptoms and maybe a slight touch of the Plague. I hear Scurvy is very popular this time of year.

I am getting a new shot today along with the 5 bags of whatever the hell they are pumping into me during these chemo treatments. It is a red cell booster shot. It works like the Nuelesta white cell booster they give me on Sunday mornings at the crack of dawn after a week of treatment, but this one is for red blood cells instead of white. This is the first time we are doing this. I did not think the red count was a problem, but it must have been a concern too.

This week I am having people from my office go with me for the treatments. Cindy starts her new position at work and is completely booked until Thursday. She will come Thursday and Friday with me and then spend the first part of next week being my nurse all day during the recovery session. So thanks to her new supervisor for giving her 2 half days and 2 full days off during her first 5 days in the department. She is really looking forward to moving to this new department after 10 years. She again has opportunity to learn new stuff and further her career. In her old job, she had risen about as far as possible, so this is a new ladder to climb.
I will be dead to the world next week so I will try to get another update out late this week to let you know how its going.

Thanks to all of you helping with the Google boycott. If they have a service you like and don’t know of an alternative let me know. I will direct you to someone who has the same or superior service they offer for free so you do not have to use them.

Closing thought: Money cannot buy class.

Love to all (except the bastards at Novartis and Google).
Greg

Screwed by Google

You are not going to believe this one.

Wondering where the Google ads went at the top of the page? So am I!

Google disabled my advertisement account saying I was cheating on the ads, because of the high percentages of people who were clicking on them. I am appealing it to explain that my target audience is very small and all have interest in the types of ads that appeared. If they deny the appeal, they will ban me from ever using their ads again. I have done nothing wrong, just have great supporters. They do not understand that. So we will see. I never received a dime from them, and never will if they do not approve the appeal. So all your ad clicks will have been a waste of time.


I think I will have to sue them. If anything for the wasted time my visitors spent on the ads. I can see them terminating the account, but they should have to pay out what was accumulated before they terminated the account. Maybe I will take them to small claims court.

A few mins later......
Of course as expected I get a form letter back saying that my appeal has been denied. Someone has investigated what they are calling "invalid clicks" and the decision to ban the account has held up. If you believe that a human read my mail and used reason to look at the history on my account and came to that decision, raise your hand. I now have some beach front property in Kansas for sale at a real bargain for you.

There is no evidence of any wrong doing and they cannot explain what these "Invalid Clicks" are. They just are using a statistical model that raises exception at a high percentage of users clicking on the ads. They are not looking at the fact that there are only 30 visitors a day. It is easy to hit 90% click through rate with 30 visitors, if that happened with 3000 visitors then something would be fishy. There are no invalid clicks, the site is just not statistically typical.

What I do have is a small audience of people who are very interested in the content of the ads they see displayed. I think that is what the advertisers would want. No one that is not interested in cancer research would have any reason to be coming to my site. So they have 100% matching target audience. And that is really the only kind of ads that I ever saw up on the site, because of the content related tool Google uses to select the ads that appear.

Small audience with very specific interest that matches the only ads that ever displayed = high percentage click through rate. No crime on my part, and I do not feel I should be punished by having my account disabled for your great support.

They have essentially accused me of cheating but cannot prove anything or even provide one single example of any wrong doing or "invalid click". One of their definitions of "invalid clicks" a program that automatically goes to your site and clicks on the ads automatically to artificially drive up revenues. Do you think if I wrote such a program I might set it for 3 million visits a day rather than my sites, earth shattering 30 visitors a day? It is total crap, and I have been screwed out of every dime that was generated. The advertisers still got the visitors, but Google says that all of your visits were lies. You did not really go click that or go there. I must have been cheating.

Well join me in boycotting all Google sites, tools, and utilities. Every time you use their search engine they make a profit from it. See the sponsored links in the right hand column after you "Google" something? They get paid from each of those sponsors in advertising dollars for the sites even appearing on your screen whether you click on them or not.

In the end the little guy loses again. It is even worse given the reason for this site to exist in the first place and the conditions that surround this particular case. Talk about kicking a guy when he is down. What bastards. There must be a special level of hell reserved for these kind of people, I know one place card there certainly says "Google".

Be better to each other than big business is to me another faceless, powerless victim.
Love,
Greg

Chemo Round 2 update

We only did 4 days of treatments this time as it was 4th of July and for some reason the infusion center closes on holidays. Never would have imagined that, but I guess you aren’t supposed to be sick on a holiday.
It was actually better for me this way I think since I had such a bad time with the first round. The Doctors were not at all upset that we would only do 4 days and see how my system took it.
The last time I had a big problem with my white blood cell count due to the treatment. Did not get a chance to write about it here, but long story short: 7 days after chemo had ended my white blood count was what they considered “critical”. This was not even tested until the 7 day mark, who knows what it actually got down to when I was REALLY feeling bad several days prior to that. They scared us pretty good with the test results and what needed to be done, or could happen.
Anyway we took a more conservative route this time and only did the 4 days, which I could not have done 5 if I wanted since the holiday was there. Also this Sunday they had me come back in at 7:30 in the morning to get a “Nuelesta” shot, which is a white cell booster.
Did not know that was even an option previously. Many of the things they do with me seem to be reactionary rather than proactive. Not real happy about that. It seems like we get just little pieces of new information each session. Nobody ever tells you the complete story. You just have to piece together what information you can. I feel like I need to write a pamphlet when this is over for new patients to really let them know the whole story and what to expect.
So as far as how it is going now. Had a really tough night last night, just brutal. (None of my postings would be complete without the Bitch session right) My stomach has been giving me hell, causing me to not be able to lay horizontal. I have to sit up to get relief, and hunch over. So then my back hurts. This prevents me from being able to get comfortable enough to get to sleep despite being completely exhausted, even with a sleeping pill. This is saying a lot. These pills are powerful! I do not take them regularly, but only when all other options have been exhausted.
Fatigue is by far the biggest problem right now, as we saw during the last session. But hopefully the white cell booster shot will help with this; at least it might make the problem last a whole week like last time. I do feel like the fatigue was worse last Monday than this one (comparing the sessions). For instance there would have been no way I could have done this posting last time.
Speaking of, I do not want to overdo it, so I am signing off. I just wanted to get some kind of progress report up, since I have not updated anyone since the treatments ended Friday.
Stay safe. Enjoy every day. Appreciate the blessings you have.
Love,
Greg

Second Half of Recovery Week

Reinforcements in the take care of Greg campaign arrived at 3pm Tuesday. Mom and Gene were coming in to replace Tondi. So they arrived and we all said our hellos.
Gene had a nice surprise for me. I had shaved my head to the 1/8 inch level. Well he, out of an act of solidarity had gotten the same haircut, to support me. He said if Greg can do it so can I. So that was real nice to not have to be the only one waking around like a marine recruit on day one at Paris Island.
I had a little more strength that day and I actually stayed awake (still locked on the couch no doubt) and talked most of the afternoon with all of them. Tondi ended up staying another full day to visit with all of us.
Mom was of course the eager beaver to help in any way she could. Constantly getting me a wet rag for my forehead and chasing me around with pillows to try to fluff behind me. One of my most comfortable positions is actually leaning forward with my head in my hands, elbows propped on knees. This releases all the stomach muscle tension and relaxes everything that can be relaxed in there. Even in this position she was determined to find a way to get a pillow involved to help me out. There is really no where for the pillow to go so I just asked her to keep it on hold for when I needed to lay back. This seemed to be enough to make her happy with the pillow patrol.
Gene kept himself busy by doing daily walks through the neighborhood and going out to buy a paper to read each morning. He normally had the paper done by the time anybody else was awake. He is a real early riser and likes to attack the day. He wanted in the worst way to go mow the lawn for us, but I told him that we had someone coming to do it in the next few days. It was all I could do to restrain him from doing it anyway. He has this crazy desire to cut grass, and saw the need. In must have been driving him batty, like an itch you can’t scratch.
Mom was able to entertain herself most of the time by keeping up with all her email buddies despite telling them not to send her any mail during the time she was going to be here, so that it did not stack up upon her return. But she is like a drug addict with the computer and got on just to check how far she was getting behind in mails and just had to take care of them.
Here she is talking to herself in the office, about all these mails that she should not be getting. But actually has a great time responding to.
Ricky and a toy are keeping her company.

There is nothing like a mothers touch when you don’t feel good. So it was a real joy having her come to take care of me (and Gene too of course). I have my moods, and probably take them out more on her than anyone else, but she understands and continues to provide great support. This is probably due to do some emotional release of having the person you trust the most in life there to take your guard down, some big maternal Freudian thing with reverting back to a child hood stage especially heightened during sickness, fear and pain. (Sounds like I looked that up or something, but it is just my lame shot at psycho analysis.) So I have to apoligize for any such outbursts or behavior in that vein. Nothing was intended to hurt my mother. I Love her dearly, as she does me.
She was constantly asking what she can get for me and was on call 24 hours a day, food, drink, medicine, another pillow, more wet rags. I really lost the weight this week, and we were all trying to get as much food in as possible. I just had no desire to eat.
She kept bringing me little dishes of fresh fruit despite my rejection of the offer of food. Gene would sneak out in the mornings and buy fresh fruit during his paper run. I was unable to refuse the fruit once it was sitting there in front of me. So that helped. I had a constant fruit flow most of the days.
Actual meals were a much harder thing to get me interested in. Between not feeling good, no appetite, and all the mouth and taste bud side effects, a sandwich or pasta or anything with any girth to it, just looked impossible to eat.
We did venture out to the grocery store on Wednesday, I needed about 4 things which we quickly got, and I thought this is easy I am home free. Then we got to the checkout counter. Complete log jam. How in the world at 2 in the afternoon are there 30 people in the grocery store, much less all 30 of those people waiting at the 2 checkout lanes that are open. So I was pretty tired from walking trough the store, but the line was gonna kill me. Luckily we had grabbed a cart on the way in, so I had something to lean on. Now I had not been on my feet for more than 3 mins since Saturday, so after 15 mins in line to ring up my cream of mushroom soup, red grapes, box of cereal and cottage cheese, I was friggin whipped. I was asleep before we got out of the parking lot, with my face pushed up against the window glass. So much for my assimilation back into functioning society.
When we got home from the grocery store all was going well, Tondi was still with us. I took a nap or something then got up and had a real bad pain spell. I do not think any of them had seen one up close before from me and had only heard me talk about this. Well it aint pretty and I think it scared the hell out of them.
It was mostly gas pain related, which sounds like no big deal, but when you consider that I have a rewired stomach and tubes that used to go out, go in, and tubes that used to go up go down, and some tubes don’t go anywhere at all. Gas can become a major problem. It had me on my knees in the middle of the floor crying. It is times like this that you consider actually getting a knife and cutting your stomach to get the air out for relief. I feel like I am literally going to explode from the rib cage down. It passed after a short while that felt like an eternity. But it comes back in waves until it gets evacuated either up or down, or medicated in some way.
This happened a few times and after these sessions of rolling on the floor swearing a blue streak they began to accept that there was nothing they could do to help. Just be supportive and get me medicines I ask for and such. It must be a helpless feeling to see someone writhing like that and not be able to do a thing about it. I know it sure sucks from my end.

By the end of the week I felt strong enough to sit outside a while and stayed awake pretty all day each day of the weekend. We spent some fun time out on the deck listening to music and brushing the dogs. Even did some light chores to try to get ready for Cindy’s return. I hate to have her come home to any mess.
Early Sunday I enticed Gene to take me to McDonalds to get some breakfast. Mom was not up yet, so the boys went out by themselves. I normally would not eat here and neither would he, but I turned him onto their hotcake plate. For under 2 bucks you get 3 pancakes butter and syrup, and though you can tell they are pre-made, (not poured from batter this morning) they are pretty good. So we rushed home with them and stuffed our faces with pancakes that I could almost taste some of (taste buds slowly returning to life).
We had one more excursion adventure that week. I wanted to do the simple task of getting some fresh cut flowers for Cindy coming home after her 7 day trip. Sounds easy enough. So Gene drives, I ride shotgun and mom in the back, we head off to the nearest Super store which has got to have flowers, right. Wrong. Long story short, 5 stops to get flowers, the ones we got ended up looking crappy and not only that, they rang up for $2 more than they should have. We were out of time and I was more than out of energy and patience, so we took our crappy little bouquet paid the extra $2 and went home just in time to beat her plane in. So thanks to them for carting me around all of creation on my ridiculous fool’s errand of trying to get a simple thing like flowers on a Sunday afternoon in Charleston.
They stayed until just after Cindy got home, enough time to say hi then head back home to more comfortable surroundings. I know they were anxious to get home and get their puppies sprung from doggie jail.
Huge thanks to both Mom and Gene for the sacrifice of spending all that time down here taking care of me and the dogs. Once again I could not have done it without them. It was good for them to see how bad the recovery actually was so they do not have to imagine. Sometimes your imagination can be much worse than reality. So they know what to expect and do not need to be afraid of the unknown and what I am going through.
If they come again they know what to expect, if they don’t, they know what they are missing. A rip roaring good time.
Actually we did have a good time during my little pockets of relief that come later in the day, caught up on some movies, stayed up later than we should have talking, played with the dogs a little. Just having someone there to help let the dogs in and out all day is a great relief, also having someone to chase them back in the house when they are out barking at walkers or landscapers or anybody is great.
Thanks again for all the Love from Mom, Gene and Tondi for looking out for me during that first recovery week.
That’s all I can muster up the energy to write about now.
More stories of fun and frivolity at the Hill house to come soon!

First Half of Recovery Week

So let me drill down a little bit on the details of the recovery week as it was a real monster.Cindy left for the airport at 9 AM Sunday and it killed her to do it. I was not doing good at all, but she had to go and we had Tondi arranged to come and be with me later that day, so it was OK.Tondi is my youngest sister and lives just north of Charlotte, so it is about a 4 to 5 hour drive for her to get here. She arrived sometime in the afternoon, and I had been sleeping all day, I just got up when she got here.I do not know at what level she expected me to be at when she was coming to take care of me, but I think it surprised her how weak and depleted I was. She played nurse pretty much for thefirst couple of days.

So let me introduce my closest aged sibling. She stopped aging at 29 some years ago, and I kept going, but we are still the closest in age. My happy go lucky, ever smiling sister. Tondi Campbell. Pictured above. She would love it if you would notice her, Stanley Cup Winners, Carolina Hurricanes T-Shirt, which she is proudly displaying. (Stock Photo.) Her husband Jeff (who is a hell of a nice guy too), and her, run their ownconstruction company, Check out their website here: www.campbellscarpentry.com/



She made me great food, and pretty much just left me alone to sleep, which was perfect. She learned what to do to take care of the dogs right away on the first pass. Knew how to keep them quiet and out of my hair. (They normally are when I am not feeling good, but the excitement of having a visitor staying there kind of made them more antsy than normal, they wanted to play with her constantly.)



She learned where everything in the kitchen was by herself, she would bring me stuff that I knew required a special tool for instance and I asked her how she knew where to find it, and she said that the kitchen was laid out just like she would have done it. I did not even know we owned some of that stuff, but she found it and put it to use.



She would bring me plates of food at just the right time without me even asking for anything. It just seemed like I did not know I was hungry for anything and she would walk over to me and plunk down something on the table, I would wake up and open my eyes and there would be not only great food, but exactly what I wanted, even though I did not know I was hungry, or that I wanted it. One huge drawback to having someone there who can cook during this process is that the first thing to be effected by the chemo medicine is your mouth. At least it was in my case. I had mouth sores, all around my cheeks and the inside of my lips. Had a sore throat. My tongue felt like it had been scalded by hot soup or tea, and was just numb for well over a week. My tongue had some really enlarged taste buds, like ten or so, the size of sesame seeds scattered over the surface. They were very sore and irritable, (just like the rest of me). So I really got cheated out of the great food I was eating. I could barely taste anything.



On Wednesday I stepped way out of the norm and had an IBC root beer, which I love. It just tasted like carbonated water. I got no root beer flavor at all out of it. How frustrating.



One day she made me a Peggy Special, which is one of my all time favorite dishes. If you are a member of the family you know exactly what this is, for those of you that are not, allow me to let you in on the secret. Our family (other than Tondi) has not historically been known for their culinary skills. It was a joke growing up that our mom could burn cold cereal. Peggy is my grandmother’s name. She used to make a simple scrambled egg and cheese sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise, and she called it a “Peggy Special”. It was her specialty. Such was our limited exposure to the culinary arts that this sandwich just impressed the hell out of all us kids. So we asked for it by name every time we went to visit our grandmother.



Anyway, long story short Tondi made me one of these, which is quite the rare treat for me since Cindy will not allow an egg to even be in the house under her watch. (Dietary, my digestion challenges, and attempt at transition to Vegan living being the reasons.) It was fantastic of course.



To give you an example of cooking in our family, I was the only kid on the playground with a cream cheese and olive sandwich for lunch. This is exactly what it sounds like. Cream cheese on bread with about 6 olives jammed in equidistant from each other. Never seemed weird to me until I got older and realized nobody other than us had ever heard of or could possibly imagine such a thing as a cream cheese and olive sandwich.



Enough of that craziness, back to the “meat” (pardon the pun) of the story, the medical stuff. I was so weak, that in the mornings I would get dressed in new PJ’s from the night before and then have to rest for 20 mins in bed from the exertion of getting dressed. Then I would come downstairs to collapse on the couch for the day. It would literally take me about 4 mins to get down the stairs. (Glad it was down and not up.) I would take each stair one leg at a time then bring the next leg down to the same step. Having to rest leaning my full weight on the banister between the monumental task of taking on the next step. I was moving like a 120 year old man. The weakness was unbelievable it really was difficult to stand at all. I had dizziness, terrible headaches, spots before my eyes, and of course elevated above normal abdominal and chest pain. Just another day in paradise.



I ran a fever each day and was taking Advil and Oxycontin like it was going out of style. I pretty much slept 20 hours a day. Not as if I had any choice. I did not have the energy to keep my eyes open. If Tondi had not been there forcing me to drink, keeping me hydrated and making me eat, I do not know what would have happened. To add to the excitement, through all this I still had diarrhea. So my waking moments were spent just dealing with getting food and water in and other stuff out, of my body, in whatever manner I could. There were long periods of time during Sunday, Monday and Tuesday that I literally did not have the energy to lift my head off the pillow.



There was very little talk going on with Tondi and I feel like a terrible host. She must have had the most boring time. She just sat on the other couch for days and watched TV while I slept, waiting to do something for me. It must have been miserable for her.



But I can’t thank her enough for all her help. It was very much appreciated and needed. She stayed until Thursday, overlapping a day with my Mom and Gene.



Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were by far my worst days, in a long time; probably bordering on my later recovery days at John Hopkins after my original huge surgery 4 years ago. Wednesday I could at least walk around the house a little bit we even ventured out to the grocery store for a few mins. I was going stir crazy and needed a change of scenery.



But I will have to leave that for the next installment. We are getting into the Mom and Gene chapter and that deserves its own posting.

THANKS TONDI, YOU WERE WONDERFUL and I LOVE YOU.