I knew I got off relatively easy last time and that Chemo gradually wears you down.

I spent Saturday in the recliner mostly snoozing. I'd been feeling rather poisoned all day. It's an odd feeling; I don't have the vocabulary for it. Finally, about 1600, it started morphing into honest nausea. I dumped down another anti-nausea pill, and got some relief.

I still had the Neulesta thingus on my arm. It hadn't delivered its dose. They glue this thing on your arm the last day of Chemo. 27 hours later, it is supposed to inject you with a drug that puts your bone marrow into high gear. It was going on 2 hours past-due when I went to bed. It finally must have fired off after I went to sleep.

Last night was a hot steaming pile of it. I was fine until I had to get up to pee. That was an adventure. It felt like the floor was heaving. As long as I kept my head on the pillow, life was fairly good.

0400 arrived and I managed to get to the kitchen, brew a cup, and make it back to the office.

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your weekend.....
Seriously I hope that you are feeling bit better..
Best regards.

I continue to pray that this works for you bud.

I pray that you continue to improve physically - your spirit is already self-actualized by letting us glimpse into some of reality that you are going through. Sharing this would be hard for many people. Thanks for letting us into a very personal part of your life.

GET WELL SOON!

Hope you recover quickly.
Praying for you.

This is something that many have given serious thought to.
It's good news to anyone regardless of their health.

May our Lord give you strength good friend.

Hang in there Shaman, you have the right mindset.

You end up gauging things in strange ways.

Yesterday, I had to drag a kitchen chair over to brew my coffee, because the floor was heaving.

This AM, I only had to hold onto the cabinets.

I think I've turned the corner.

Keep fighting Shaman

We're pulling for Sir,
Thanks for the updates.

MY Prayers are with you
Hank

Well Shaman, you have week 2 in the books and you are still walking and talking. A lot to be said for that.

The rubber legs syndrome is starting to show and maybe a walker with a seat is in order.

Take it easy and eat well you will need your strength going forward.

More Prayers for you kind sir.

Prayers for a complete recovery for you.

Keep fighting Shaman!

Prayers continued

First off, I seem to have gotten past the worst of the poisoning effects.

I awoke before 0300 this AM. That is usually a sure sign that my body is tired of resting and wants to get moving. That has been sorrowfully lacking for the past week or so.

The balance issues were mostly due to the anti-nausea drug. I was able to lay off that as the day wore on yesterday. I'm still weak, but at least the floor is not heaving.

What I find interesting is what my head is doing in all this. The biggest problem, once I get past a certain point of recovery, is that boredom sets in. Boredom is a good sign; it means I'm healthy enough that my head wants stimulation, and watching Youtubes all day is no longer cutting it. However, when you mix boredom with anti-nausea pills, the results are somewhat odd.

Yesterday, I became a bit obsessed with solving a deer rifle conundrum that I really had settled intellectually 20 years ago. It's a long story, but I became fascinated with the utility of 44-somethings for short-range deer hunting. It took quite a bit of research and some trial and error for me to figure out that 30-somethings and 35-somethings were getting the job I wanted done better with less recoil. The whole issue came up again a few years ago, when I inherited my buddy's Model 44 Carbine. Yes, it did a nice job on a deer. However, I realized that, as I matured, I had fallen into the smaller/faster camp and away from the heavy/slow side of the spectrum.

However, in the semi-dreamlike state I've been in for 5 days, that all became very real again, and yesterday I had Ken Watters, P.O. Ackley, John Barsness, et all scattered about me, and I was furiously going through Gunbroker entries looking for just the right 44-something.

Once I had that dead horse thoroughly whipped, I then embarked on an equally futile internet search for my most recent obsession, 7mm-08. I have no idea why, but I had to reconvince myself that a 139 grain Hornady IL SP was the right bullet.

Oh, and before y'all start trying to argue the point (please don't), I'm back to where I was: a nice 308 WIN, 7mm-08, or 300 Savage does as good or better than a 44 Mag or 444 Marlin inside 100 yards with a lot less muss and fuss, and gives you the bonus of being able to reach out further should the need arise. Furthermore, if you want to start arguing the whole fast/slow thing, remember that before I started chemo, I was working on getting my new Brown Bess (.75 cal) ready for fall.

BTW: I scored a cheap ball mill on EBAY yesterday. That was the last big piece in my make-your-own black powder project. I'm salting away all the fixins for what real men dream of when they hear "renewable energy."


Today, I venture back to the hospital for more tests and a carboy of saline. They want to give my kidneys some help flushing the poison out and also see what became of my blood. I doubt they're going to find any.

Best wishes, and prayers sent (yet again).
Best wishes and prayers also, for kyhillchick - it's tough to be the caregiver in these situations.
Give her our best, please.

Prayer sent, and wishes for a full and speedy recovery of your health.

Shamon, I can't begin to imagine what you're going through.

I missed a bullet; I had a nasty looking mole behind my ear my doctor spotted that benign unless it turns worse.

More Prayers for you, and your wife.

As many times I have poked at you over the years Shaman.
Hang in their old dude you can beat this and get some more years.
Like about 10 or more out of this stuff your going thru now.

Besides who else is gonna give ya thumbs down on your website to look forward too in the future but me???
👍👍👍😁😁😁

Many valuable lessons can be learned through what you share here - your attitude and fortitude as well as the way you share your experiences in the battle. You have my appreciation and admiration and, above all, my ongoing prayers for complete healing. Bless all pf those who are supporting you there. You can win this fight.

Continued best wishes!

Hang tough and keep the faith. Anyone fighting that battle, especially with such a great attitude, has my respect and admiration. I've seen firsthand what it entails.

Blessings upon you and yours.

Prayers for your recovery

I was draggin' ass, but I made it down to Chemo Camp-- dragged myself in and threw myself in the recliner.

They got me hooked up right away with a big carboy of saline. That's to help flush all the crap out.

They ran blood work-- everything is fairly normal.

So why am I feeling like worm slag?

Simple answer: You're having Chemo, dummy.

The guy next to me was a 4 bagger-- four bags hung on a double pole. He asked me what I was in for. I then made the mistake of asking why he was in-- Stage 4 esophageal that's already got into his brain. He was given 18 months 18 months ago. Yikes. That kills a conversation in a hurry.

One thing that is for-sure in this Chemo gig: there is no such thing as same-old/same-old.

Every day is a new discovery. Saturday, I was lying about in the recliner when my back seized up. The next 12 hours were simple agony. Mind you this was nothing a dose or two of Ibuprofen wouldn't have handled, but I'm off all that good stuff due to the blood thinners. NSAIDs would make me start bleeding at the pores. The only thing that worked was Oxycodone. The only thing I can think of was the spasms were caused by the fact I've been laid up in that damn recliner since 15 March for one reason or the other. I had my last dose of the OXY at midnight Sunday and spent all of yesterday slowly coming out of the fog.

I'm now on my last week of rest before starting Round 3 of Chemo Camp.

Hang tough, Shaman. We're pulling for you.

When I went through it in my early 40's,the drag-ass'n wasn't so bad.
What got me was the nausea. I spewed like a hot beer. Good luck Shaman.
I've felt your pain.

Cancer fuuuucking sucks.

Hang in their Shaman.
Beat this crap and get another decade at least.
👍👍👍

More Prayers.

Shaman, you have what they call, "Guts".

I'm not so sure I'd call it that. In some ways, I'd call it basic laziness. That is, I'm trying to get rid of the cancer with the least muss and fuss possible. This particular cancer has a tendency to attack kidneys and lungs next, and both are horrible ways to go.

The French had a term for battlefield grit: cran. Cran was what the French soldier had in excess of all other armies. Cran was was what would win the day. A belief in cran was probably the single biggest killer in WWI-- that and dysentery. In the end, they have the same basic components.

From the guy on the inside, I can tell you that I spend every day of Chemo Camp staring at people with gray faces under masks. In some cases, there is nothing under the mask. Some are coming in with walkers, some with wheelchairs. I don't see the bed-ridden ones. They're off in the main hospital. I come cake-walking in and say hello to nurses and take my recliner near the Pit of Oblivion, and I know that I'm probably in the safest chair in the world for me right now. I'm in the catbird seat.

On the other hand, there have only been a very few places which have evoked a gut-wrenching existential reappraisal in my life. One was the holding tank at the Hamilton County Jail. Another was realizing I was going to be flooded in under Fischer Ridge and might end up feeding the cave crickets. A third was the night I agreed to party with the Freshman Mortuary College students. Sitting your butt down in that recliner does have the same sort of ring to it.

BTW: Just in case you're wondering, the arresting officers and several other parties went to bat for me, and I got sprung from the lockup in just a few hours. I spent the latter part of the evening at La Normandie drinking scotch and eating onion soup. However, I still have this vivid memory of my fellow inmates in the holding pen. One was a hyperactive skinny white kid that had been busted on possession and the other was a mid-twenties black fellow with a serious attack of the 'Noids. He had found a corner of the pen and pulled his hoody around his head and drawn his knees up. He was the quintessential caged animal.

The teen kept up this constant drivel about how he had been picked up. It was insufferable. He finally got to jonesing on what was going to happen to him.

"So. . .like. . . when do they let you out, huh?"

The sullen black fellow who had been completely silent for an hour responded, "They don't."

That shut the white kid up, and we just sat on our concrete benches and waited.

Life comes at you fast. I went down to the hospital to visit my new Primary Care Physician. She's cool. She laughs a lot. I'm switching for a bunch of reasons, but the most ostensible one is that this doc specializes in treating the families of cancer patients. I did not know there was such a specialty. However, she's in the same office as my oncologist. I got out of there about 1000 and went home to my recliner.

Surprise! At 1300 I got one of those breathless emergency calls. The blood work I'd had that AM had come back. My platelets were dangerously low and I needed to come back in immediately. My red cells ain't doing so hot either, so I was tottering about. Like last time, they hung a bag of what looked like chicken soup along with a bag of saline and pushed them in over about an hour. I was back in my own recliner by 1600.

Is it true that what does not kill you makes you stronger? If anyone can answer that one it would be you...

Brought to mind some parallels with John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. If you haven’t read this classic Shaman, I would recommend it.

Hang in tough!

Right now, I'd say that the premise is laughable. I have so few red blood cells that going down the hall to the bathroom has me completely gassed. I feel great, just lazing about in the recliner, anything else is a major effort.

I got weighed yesterday. I'm down to 281 from 312 less than a month ago. You can chalk most of that up to loss of appetite. Nothing sounds good, but luckily most things still taste good. My stomach is still in good form, I had a plate of lamb curry from the local Nepalese restaurant.

That’s a helluva way to lose weight. Hang in there.

Prayers for a complete recovery. Hang in there.

Google translates "cran" as Guts, Grit, Spunk or Pluck, in descending order.
"Guts" is entirely apropos in this case....amiright?

All the best to you, Shaman. You're a credit to all us old fahts.

Good to hear that they were able to get you back into range Sha!
Keep up the positives!

I remember getting a panicked call once from my Dr's office regarding my blood work.

The lady started the convo with
"I have some bad news about your blood work"

As my knees were buckling she proceeded:
"we lost your blood, can you come back to have more drawn"

I mentioned how she approached this with the Doc., he was none to happy.

If you haven't already done so and the Docs are comfortable with your kidneys and extra protein, try one of the various protein shakes. Pure Protein, Muscle Milk, Ensure makes one. Your lamb meal was an excellent protein source. If you feel like you want anything...form ice cream to broccoli, to potato chips and all in-between try it.
You are in my prayers...

Google translates "cran" as Guts, Grit, Spunk or Pluck, in descending order.
"Guts" is entirely apropos in this case....amiright?

All the best to you, Shaman. You're a credit to all us old fahts.[/quote]

Look, let me give you a practical example. Let's say you have a particularly heavy dinner and go to bed. In the middle of the night you wake up in distress. Flatulence has taken over both ends and consumed your very being. You hit the medicine cupboard and try some antacids, but to no avail. Hour after hour, you belch and fart.

What drives you to keep going? What motivates you to carry on? In the wee dawn, when the cramps and deadly vapors begin to recede, what part of your being do you credit for making it through?

Just to let you gauge this properly, better than 90% of what I've experienced to date is nothing compared to a case of bad flatulence. If you've ever weathered a hangover, this is paltry by comparison. Even some of the deadlier consequences have not had that much in the way of pain or discomfort. That trip out of the office chair back in April as an example-- no muss, no fuss. Luckily the clot went through my heart and kept going and the outage was momentary. However, I came damn close to joining Roy, Elvis, and JOC and never felt a thing.

I've been struggling to come to terms with all this. I went into this a fellow who was comfortable with his own mortality, so that really wasn't a problem. However, I find myself chafing at the various plaudits. From here on the inside, this is not something that seems to be heroic or plucky or in the least bit laudable. From the outside, if it appears this way to you guys, I only want y'all to know this is not my intention.

I also have to look back over the past year, from that first sleepless night in August, where I realized my nut was bugging me, and realize that this has been a monumental trial of spirit. However, except for one brief moment, it's all been a simple slog of putting one foot in front of the other.

I had been wheeled down from pre-op to the surgical theatre and they had got me off the gurney and onto the table. I was drugged to the gills, but had already put the dozen or so folks there in stitches and chanting "It's the left nut!" It was time to lie down, and something in me balked. I turned to the surgeon's chief assistant and told him I had a real urge to break and run. He told me that they had that covered. That's when I realized that the pre-op drugs had robbed me of all feeling in my legs.

Perhaps somewhere in all this is the correct message I really want to communicate. I don't think I've met a man on here that could not have done what I have done so far-- well maybe a few. If this is heroic, then I feel that I am in the company of good men that are all heroes or potential heroes. You all may have doubts. You may all have heard yourself whimper, "Why me?" However, there is within us a color sergeant that answers "Because we're here."

Just keep sloggin' on, shaman!
Best wishes for you both - from here.