My Week in Review - 11/12/10

I have been doing some reflecting on how the direction of this blog as I want you as the reader to get the best experience from it.  As I said before when I was giving updates on my progress as often as I was in the my "trial" blogs over the past year it felt to me more like I was whining than anything.  With this new direction I want to keep the bulk of the focus on reflection and lessons that I can impart on to everyone so that hopefully it will if anything just get you thinking about your own life and hopefully make some positive changes now.  So many people wait until a catastrophe strikes them to start making positive changes and often times it is too late and they have regrets in their lives.  I will still continue to give updates but I think I am going to try and do them only once a week unless of course their is a major update that I need to send to everyone.

So here is my week in review

Went to Lonestar on Tuesday night - Amy and I have a tradition of going out for dinner the tuesday night before I start my next chemo cycle.  We have done this for months now.  The main reason is once I start my cycle my counts drop a bit so we try not to eat out until well into the second week of the cycle for my safety's sake.  The last thing we want is a setback from us being careless.  We also do this because well we enjoy eating out and it is one freedom that we still have.  When you go through a cancer battle you are stripped of so many freedoms that the ones you can keep you have to be very diligent in keeping up with.  These give you the sense of normalcy and keep your spirits high.  Amy is very nice though, on the nights before my cycle starts it is always my choice of restaurant, which almost always ends up being Lonestar. I can't get enough of that places fajitas.  They are just so delicious.  On this tuesday Amy's parents, Mary and Louis, joined us to celebrate our recent engagement.

Started my Maintenance cycles - On Wednesday my mom and I trekked into PMH once again to start my next cycle of chemotherapy.  This week was a bit of a milestone because I officially have finished the intensification treatments and have graduated into maintenance.  Truth be told there is basically no different for the philadelpia postitive acute leukemia patients like myself.  A bit smalled dose of steroids but not by much.  They moved my "ass" chemo to Wednesday's now so I no longer get the home care nurse that I was building a friendship with.  By moving this chemo it meant I had two chemo injections on Wednesday. They both did this through IV but I found the second chemo really gave me some nausea so next time around I will be just getting the regular chemo injected IV and asking the nurse to poke my ass muscle with the other one.  Although it means I get poked more, it doesn't seem to have as much effect on me as usual.  My blood counts all looked great...My kidney enzymes have come back down into the normal range, I think they were high the past two times because I was not fully hydrated when the took my blood so that enzyme can be inflated.  My live enzymes were still high, but with all the poisoness drugs I take my liver has a hard go over the past year cleaning out my system.  My doctor isn't worried about it because it is normal for these enzymes to be high but I am supposed to go for an ultrasound of the liver as just a precautionary measure to make sure there is nothing wrong.

Got some clarification on my Transplant donors - After my meeting with the Transplant doctors we were left a little confused because the transplant team told me that the donor had no idea that they were a match.  This raised my worrying a bit because that would mean there would be a greater chance of them saying they weren't interested in performing the procedure anymore.  Finding out I had two took this anxiety down quite a bit.  This information was contradictory to everything we had heard so we left that meeting a little confused.  I clarified with Dr Schuh on Wednesday at my appointment and he informed me I wasn't given the whole truth.  The donors know that they have been a potential match to someone and One Match has reached out to them or else they wouldn't have given their blood for further testing.  This is how the doctors know both are 10/10 matches.  He told me that although some do back out at this point it is much less than before they give their blood.  They do have to pass a physical still but in principle agree to the procedure.  So this was a big relief to get this news.

Got some fantastic shots on Tuesday and Thursday - Tuesday after I spent the day walking around my area taking some photos on my camera.  I was trying out a bunch of different techniques that I have been learning, but managed to get some pretty nice shots.  Thursday I was up bright and early and was out at the marina in time for sunrise.  I got some fabulous shots of the sunrise and posted them yesterday.  I keep on the right hand side of my blog a box that shows my most recent photography posts.  If you click the post name it will link you to the site.  Go check the shots out as Aaron Offord Photography.

Well I am definitely no marathoner - While I was out shooting yesterday morning I finished up my shots at the marina and pier and wanted to get to a nearby park for some shots, so I decided to run there so as to not miss much of the sunrise.  Well let me tell you, it damn near killed me.  I only had to run maybe a kilometer but it might have well be 10.  I felt like I had run a 10 km cross country race when I was done.  This is something I want to build up strength again in because the first round of hospital chemo took all that strength away.  I was surprised at how hard it was considering I have done a number of full hour spinning classes without too much difficulty.  I guess this just goes to prove yet again, that running is the toughest workout. 

Finally making progress on my saviours - Once I found out that I had a bone marrow transplant match I have set one priority for myself above all others, and that is to kill the plantar warts.  I call them my saviours because without them who knows how long the leukemia would have gotten worse before I caught it.  I could have easily died without them.  But they have overstayed their welcome.  The induction therapy killed my immune system so they were able to really back dug into my system.  I don't want them when I go through transplant because I will be on immune suppresants for quite sometime and won't be able to get rid of them.  So I figured I would attack them with all my might right now while I do have some immune system.  I go to the doctor every week to get them burnt with Liquid Nitrogen and this week was my 10th appt.  We are finally starting to see some progress and they have gotten much smaller which made me so happy.  It probably isn't the best to do this treatment while undergoing the cancer treatments because the extra pain mentally wears you down.  But these have been the bane of my existence for so long that I don't care.  Truthfully they bother me more than the cancer.  So I can't wait until the day they are gone.  I will update you more on them once there is another breakthough.

Well that is pretty much it for my week in review.  Hope you liked it and would love to hear your thoughts.  Have a great weekend!
Aaron


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The Cancer Ward's Two Types of People

When you walk into the oncology ward of any hospital you will see one of two people.  The person who is kicking the cancer's ass or the person who is getting their ass kicked by cancer.  It is very black and white because there is no in between person.  Have you ever wondered why some people can beat cancer and others can't?  Sure the type of cancer and how aggressive it is place a part.  But you hear thousands of stories of people with the most grim of circumstances and little hope of recovery beating the cancer.  On the reverse side you hear thousands of stories of people with beatable types of cancer that succumb to the disease.  So you can't really say the prognosis is what gives you one of the two people. So what could it be?

I believe it is actually defined by same very thing that has allowed humans to evolve and survive for millions of years; our "Fight or Flight" mechanism.  See I think that some people when presented with the life shattering news of having cancer take the mindset that they are going to fight it.  If you read Lance Armstrong's book he talks about how he would have conversations with his cancer and he would tell it that it chose the wrong body because he was going to kick its ass.  Other people unfortunately choose the flight mechanism.  The unfortunate thing for people who choose this method is there is no way to physically run from it so they mentally flee and give up. 

So next time a personal tragedy comes knocking on your door remember those two types of people.  Our minds and bodies are capable of amazing things when we choose the fighting mechanism.

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Personal Tragedies...I Thought Those Were a Secret

A few weeks ago I was reflecting on this blog.  As you may remember I hadn't posted too much to it in the last few months.  The real reason being is it had become "work" to me and I didn't enjoy it anymore.  It wasn't that I didn't enjoy posting, it was more I had nothing to write about and so forcing yourself to say som

During my reflection I realized that it wasn't that I didn't have anything to say but that the direction of my blog was wrong.  I had built the blog with the purpose of updating everyone on my journey and random reflections.  The problem was that you the cycles kept repeating themselves and so I felt like I was repeating myself in 3 week cycles.  Truthfully I felt like it was sounding like I was complaining and therefore no really adding much value to you the reader.  It was because of this I decided to put it on the back burner for a little bit while I reflected on how I could make it better.

While going through this retooling process I realized that the bulk of the readers are not personally going through cancer and therefore don't get a great deal of value from the very specific posts.  But I did realize there was a lot of valuable posts that I could write about; living through and learning from personal tragedies.  I realized that my battle with cancer was giving me a great insights/lessons into living my life.  I also realized that many people don't apply these lessons until they personally go through a personal tragedy.  And that is where the light bulb went off.  I could begin writing about the lessons and reflections I have gained from this experience so that everyone else can learn from them too.  Why wait until it is too late to make changes when you could do it today.  I tried out as a test a few posts last week on this topic to see what the feedback has been and it has been resoundingly positive and so my writing fire was reignited and we have today's blog; a mix of updates on my journey and reflections we can all learn from. 

Over the past month I also realized is that cancer is one of many personal tragedies we can go through.  It could be a near fatal injury, a death of someone very close to us, a severe sickness, etc.  I look at a personal tragedy as anything that has fundamentally changed the way we look at life, or as I like to call it "Bursting our bubble".  Until something makes us realize our mortality we often live in a bubble of naivete and when the truth of our mortality is thrust in front of us the bubble bursts and we often get very overwhelmed.  But collectively as a group we can help each other but adapting the lessons we have learnt from our own personal tragedies to make our lives better.  Although the tragedy can take on many different forms the lessons it imparts to us are often very similar.  So don't wait until a tragedy to make changes in your life, learn from the experiences of others and make them now so that when the tragedy comes all you are thinking about is getting past it so you can get back to your great life ;)  I will continue to post the lessons I am learning from my experience but would love to hear from all of you the lessons you have learnt so that I can pass them along to the group as well; collectively we can all become stronger from each other.  So please if anyone has gone through a personal tragedy and has a lesson to impart email me at aaronofford@gmail.com.

I also added a feature to the blog that will show the most recent posts made to my photography site.  This way if you like looking at my pictures you only have to check the site when there is new posts.  It is located on the right hand side of the blog.  Just click the post name and you will be redirected to the pictures.  I hope you enjoy :)

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She said Yes

Acute Leukemia, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Bone marrow transplant, Self improvement, Personal Growth, Daily Inspiration, ph all, philadelphia chromosome,Acute Leukemia, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Bone marrow transplant, Self improvement, Personal Growth, Daily Inspiration, ph all, philadelphia chromosome

This past weekend Amy and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary.  Our celebration was a couple days after our anniversary but we wanted to do it this weekend for a couple reasons.

- First, it was the last weekend of my chemo cycle, so my counts would be at their highest and I would be least susceptible to getting sick.
- Second, this was the final weekend of my final intensification cycles. This coming week I will begin my maintenance cycles
- Third, we just found out earlier this week that I have two different 10/10 unrelated matches for my bone marrow transplant.

With all of these reasons coming together in one week, this was the perfect weekend for us to have a celebration.

Little did Amy know but I had a few more surprises up my sleeve for our celebrations.  We decided that the best place to celebrate our anniversary was in Niagara Falls.  Our relationship has a lot of  history there, so it was a perfect place to celebrate.

I booked us a room at the Sheraton Fallsview, but kept the location a secret from Amy.  The big surprise with the hotel was I got us a Two Storey Loft Suite that overlooked the falls.  It was the nicest hotel room I have ever stayed in, and had an absolutely breathtaking view of the falls.  To make it even more beautiful, when we arrived in Niagara there was a rainbow over top of the falls. 

I managed to keep the room a surprise from Amy right up until we walked through the front door.  Her reaction to the room was priceless.  I think her jaw almost hit the floor. 

Once we settled a little I gave Amy her first present, which was a picture book from Picaboo.  I selected photos of us over the past three years and set it too the First Corithians verse of Love Is.

When she was done reading the book I explained to her why I wanted to celebrate on this particular weekend, the reasons I stated earlier.  I then gave her her final gift, which was a diamond ring, and asked her to marry me.  She said yes, so we are officially engaged. 

Later that evening we went for a beautiful dinner at The Keg overllooking the falls.  I had a delicious 16oz rib eye.  It wasn't quite the 70oz from my Bucket List, but I am in training ;)  From there we went to the casino to spend the rest of our night.  We had a perfect evening.  It almost got even better because just as we were leaving the casino I tried on last slot machine and was a half inch of a spin away from winning us $10,000.  That would have just been the icing on the cake. :)  Nonetheless, we had a wonderful weekend of celebration and have added yet another Niagara Falls memory to our Relationship.

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