I have been feeling like a slug of late and find my attempt to diet impeded by my renewed interest in beer. I was "mostly" dry during treatment. Dry being alternatively used for being without alcoholic beverages and my mouth physically being a desert. Since my last treatment I have enjoyed a beer or two during the evening while watching my choice of sport. On top of that, during treatment, I lost my taste for diet sodas and increased my use of chocolate. Breaking both of those habits has proven to be difficult. Work is doing a pool for "biggest loser" and I joined it, so I now have financial motivation :)
I am doing fine. The trip to Puerto Rico is a couple of weeks away. Home life and kids are fine. Going through some transitions at work, but nothing too crazy. Other then a port flush a week ago, I haven't been back into the doctor's office. They are scheduling the PET scan for second week of April, so we are looking forward to that.
Quick observances now that treatment has ended:
- During the initial diagnosis and throughout treatment, I was extremely comforted by the fact that I got a good deal of life insurance (outside of work) when we had the girls. As a father to many now, I worried less about the financial impact of the worst case scenario. This could be one of the best decisions I have made. If I wanted to get life insurance now, I would assume that it would be pricey and difficult at the least. Take it for what it's worth, but young and healthy with young kids is probably a good time to purchase (at the least a 20yr term deal).
- The other running for the best decision I/we have ever made also is a insurance policy of sorts. My wife talked me into storing the cord blood from one of our triplets while she was pregnant with them. It didn't take much pleading and we got a little bit of a break in the upfront costs. The yearly costs seemed reasonable as well. We did so and Evan, our oldest by a minute, had the largest cord for harvesting. People read of stem cells in the news, and most of it is based on ideology. Most of it also talk about the cells originating from "pre-birth" donations, contributing to it's political question. Also, most of the focus is on all the things they "could" do in the future. However
stem cell transplants are used daily as last resort treatments for blood cancers. These can be "cleaned up" cells from the same host or a donation from a matching person. One of the linked blogs on this post is for "
Journal of a Prize Fighter" and he had one a few months back. It's a very neat process as it is the only transplant where the GRAFT rejects the HOST instead of vice-versus (i.e. the blood rejects you, not your body rejecting the blood). Anyways, to think that my son (who isn't exactly the most vocal dude out of the bunch) could have contributed to giving me, his mother or anyone of his siblings a possible option for future treatment is extraordinary. Made even more so by the fact that Hodgkin's is a cancer of the blood.
If the statements above mean anything it's that, in our case, we couldn't have scripted a better safety net for what I have went through recently if we had KNOWN it was going to happen years ago. I will credit my wife's persistence in getting this done for both cases.
I have made a bazzillion mistakes in my life, these would be in the small bucket of smart moves.
Marathon post over :)
