Oh my! Where has all the time gone?

Yes, my dear friends, it has been a while since I've let you all in on my condition. Yes, this blog was specifically set up for just that purpose. Yes, I even had internet access while in the hospital. I'm just a bad friend is all.

Last you heard, I was going to be in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Well, let me tell you something; that did not really go as planned. Turns out that all the vomitting I was doing may not have been just a reaction to my chemo. The doctors took some pictures and checked the jam-cam in my colon and found a blockage. After some non-invasive attempts to relieve the blockage didn't work, it was time to call in the surgeon. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but it bears repeating; my surgeon totally rocks!!! I think if he had gone to Bethany, or any of the other fine institutions of higher learning which I attended, we may have hung out and gotten drunk together. My surgeon said that since they were going to open me up to remove the blockage he might as well go ahead and take out all the cancery stuff. And that's what he did. He removed what was left of the tumor, (quick side note, after only two treatments of the new chemo, that tumor had already shrunk in half) lymph nodes, some intestine, and some other areas that they suspected some cancer cells might be. All my margins came back clean. All of this means that there are no obvious signs of cancer in my abdomen at this time. Now, before you go all jump-for-joy on me, just know that it doesn't mean I'm in remission. There may still be some cells swimming around somewhere, which has been the case before. Only a pet scan will show for sure. That's coming up soon. Also, if you've been following along you already know that I'll never really get rid of the cancer, but will be able to live with it in check. That should have been it, I should have been out of the hospital by the end of January, but of course my body has to be difficult.

Right around the day I was supposed to go home, I started spiking fevers and feeling generally run down. Turns out I developed an infection in the surgical sites. This has happened before, so now my surgeon says "this is just how your body deals with it", it's an inevitability. This meant another surgery, to clean it out, and a few more weeks in the hospital, which works out to be about 150 more hours of the food network. I can't really eat right now, but I have a million recipes I want to try out.

February came and went while I was flat on my back in the post-surge ward. I finally made it out of there on the 27th. I'm at my dad's right now, recovering. I still have open wounds from the last surgery and I have to take iv antibiotics about 4 times a day. I'm also pretty weak and probably under 200 pounds. Two months in the hospital will do that to ya. I'm getting a little better every day, and should be back to some sense of normalcy in two or three weeks, which is cool since I have a birthday coming up right around that time.

That's the long and short of it my friends. My last two months in a nutshell. There is some work to be done. I need to get my strength back and still have to go back for some chemo, but the year is looking up. I am going to try and hit Europe in the spring, there's a couple of weddings this summer, and maybe a trip to San Fran in the fall. I've had my beat down mental days, but as always I have a slightly skewed optimism. I love all of you, and thanks for all the cards/flowers/balloons/candy/phone calls/text messages/emails!!! I'll hit ya with some more cancer tainted wisdom soon.