First off, I want to thank Rich & Pattie Stump of Macon, GA for matchng my 'found money' for Gateway for Cancer Research. Thanks much and know it is much appreciated.

Now, here is the latest on my medical situation. It seems that I have somehow been revisited with colon cancer. I have a plum size tumor in my extreme lower intestine and it is constricting my bowel and has breached the colon wall. They believe that some of the surrounding tissue has been invaded but the CT scan showed no problems in my lungs, liver, etc. Now some of this isn't real good news but the doctor I met with yesterday said that surgery at this time would not be an option due to the size and location of the tumor. They plan to attack the tumor with radiation and I will be taking chemo too. I don't know if this will be at the same time or first one then the other. The doc did say we are talking several months of treatment. My last chemo lasted 7 months, so it's not news to me.

If the tumor is sufficiently shrunk, they will assess surgery at that time. They may or may not operate, but I think I might have something to say about that. I would just as soon have it out of there if it is at all possible. This remains to be seen. They took a biopsy today and we should have the results of it in 3-5 days. I'll let you know the official results when I get them. Until then, we are waiting and trying to figure out our next move.

This news was not quite what Valda & I expected after completing the most fantastic seven months of our lives. I am having difficulty understanding the timing of all of this and the irony of the situation is not lost on me. I can't help but think that there is something going on and I'm right in the middle of it. I can honestly say that right now I am at peace with whatever the outcome is (this may change later). Valda is having a little tougher time with it. We are going to forge ahead and do whatever it takes to get through this, and I do appreciate all the emails and blog comments giving us encouragement. Thanks also for your thoughts and prayers. We know they are helping.

Yesterday I spent a good deal of time at the VA Hospital in OKC, consulting with my Oncologist and having blood drawn for some more tests.  It was the fourth time I had visited the hospital and the fourth time I had to have an IV inserted.  I told my grandsons I felt like Pokemon...every time I go there someone pokes me with a needle. 

We are still waiting on the biopsy pathology report but the doctor I met yesterday said he knew enough from the CT scan and bloodwork that he could discuss some things with me.  I said in my previous blog that they wanted to do chemo and radiation first and then possibly surgery at a later date.  Apparently that may not be the case.  Dr. Q (the Oncologist) said he was going to meet with a surgeon and a radiologist surgeon and other doctors yesterday to discuss my treatment and that if they deemed surgery should be a priority then that would be the way to proceed.  I'm still waiting on a call from the doctor on this matter.  Also, they will probably schedule a Pet Scan and I am going to have some sort of Ultra Sound very soon. 

Dr. Q said that the tumor is about 3" in size (plum size) and that some lymph nodes in the localized area appear to have been invaded as well as a possible invasion on one of my pelvic bones (a small lesion has appeared on the bone).  This is all in the specific area of my re-section from my first surgery five years ago.  The Pet Scan should clear up the status of the pelvic bone and possibly the lymph nodes as well.  There is also a small lesion on one of my lungs, but Dr. Q said at this time it is very small and not a concern, but they will keep an eye on it.  The CT Scan of my chest showed no other activity.

Okay, so we are getting down to the nitty-gritty on treatment.  Perhaps as soon as next week I will be into it...I hope so.  It is very unsettling to know you have something growing inside you that doesn't belong and all you can do is sit at home and wait for a phone call.  Also, you throw in Veterans Day and Thanksgiving and people are off work and it is just another few days of waiting.  It can become demoralizing.

I had some sad new this morning that I want to share.  If you go to my blog titled 'A day of surprises' when we walked through Central Illinois, you will see a picture of Valda's cousin Ann Aut and husband Larry.  They drove up from Springfield, IL and had dinner with us at a Cracker Barrel.  We had a good visit and it was really nice to see them after a couple of years.  Larry died about a week ago of cancer.  He had a stage 4 small cell cancer (I don't know exactly what that is) and died about ten days after being diagnosed.  It was a shock to everyone in his family and to us as well.  Apparently he had no idea he was sick.  This is just another example of what this disease does to someone. 

With that said, I will close for now.  My good friend John Strauss of WIBC raido in Indianapolis will do another live interview with me this coming Sunday (23rd??) morning at 9:35 AM EST.  If you live in the Indy area, tune in.  If you live elsewhere, check their website and see if they have a live stream of their broadcasts.  John and his station have been very good friends of my walk and he told me he has received phone calls wondering how I was doing and how the walk went.  He will continue to follow me on this new journey.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Okay, here is the latest on my treatment. On Monday, Dec 1 I go to the VA complex in OKC and meet with the radiation oncologist who will explain what type of treatments I will get, how long, and everything else that pertains to it. This will be in the morning and then in the afternoon that same day, I will have a Pet Scan. I'll blog about it after I know the results. Hopefully I will start the chemo and radiation within the week after meeting with the oncologist. I will also meet with an oncology nurse educator on Thursday the 4th and will get more info on what is going to happen. I do know that the chemo will be oral, two pills a day for five days. I believe the radiation will be one time a day for five days. I assume these days will correspond. I have been told this will last for about six weeks. It appears that this is all for the intention of shrinking the tumor and making future surgery more fesible and perhaps easier. If the tumor shrinks sufficiently or disappears, then who knows. I do know that the tumor supposedly has breached the colon wall, so I don't know what will happen with that. I would think that surgery to repair that will be necessary.

There are other things going on too, but they are for just getting me set up with a primary care provider and doing other things to get me further into the system. I have an ultra sound sometime but I'm not sure when. The pathology report is back but I haven't heard what stage the cancer is in. We're hoping for a stage 2 or lower.

The Oklahoma VA in OKC is affiliated with the U. of Oklahoma Med. Center and is in fact located right across the street from the OU Med complex. The two doctors I have met were wearing OU lab coats so I believe they work in both places. More when I know something.

For those of you who live in the Indianapolis area, you may have heard about the man who was electrocuted while putting up Christmas lights at his home. Brian Davis was married to my niece Ronda and they have four children. Please remember Ronda and her family during these trying times that she is facing.

After a fairly exhausting day at the OU Med Center I have a little more information to relate. Early yesterday morning we got up and drove the 75 miles to OKC for me to have an Endorectal Ultrasound. Now I had an ultrasound several years ago to check the status of some gall stones and it was a rather simple procedure, so I figured this should be a snap. Wrong. If you look at the name of the procedure and put your mind to work, you might get an idea of what I was facing. Let me just say that it involved equipment that consisted of a tube with an ultrasound capable head on the end that examined the tumor both inside the colon and (being ultrasound), outside the colon walls. This allowed the doctors to look at lymph nodes and other tissue in the surrounding area. I was awake and aware during this entire procedure. All you women out there who have had ultrasounds to check the status of unborn children know that the ultrasound allows the doctor to see the fetus while moving the ultrasound around the abdomen area on the outside of the body. This was no different except the positioning of the ultrasound equipment itself. So, after a grueling hour and a half which included a thirty minute computer break down, I was able to get up and go have a small breakfast.

The ultrasound doctor said that the ultrasound did indeed show some lymph node invasion and basically backed up the information from the CT scan. He did not go into much detail with me and I understand this will probably be shared with me on Thursday. After breakfast we had a couple of hours to kill until our meeting with the radiation doctors. They explained to me the concept of radiation and the scheduling of the treatments: 20 minutes a day, 1 time a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks. I start this on Monday Dec. 8. I will take an oral chemo at the same time. The doctors explained why they were doing this (shrink the tumor), the side effects (not many good ones), and risks involved. They said that if the shrinkage is sufficient and surgery is viable after the 6 weeks and an extra month, then that would happen and another chemo regimen would follow that. More radiation at that time is probably not an option. So, this takes us up to somewhere around the first of March an it looks like a nice warm Winter in South Texas or Florida will not happen. The radiation doctors were very knowledgeable, informative, and helpful. We talked with them for nearly two hours and got the next six weeks pretty much nailed down.

Okay, now I had only one more procedure to endure and this day would be over. I had to go two medical buildings to the west and have a Pet Scan. I had the CT Scan a couple of weeks ago and figured this would be similar and it was except for the prep. I kept my streak alive and had another needle poked into my vein for the Pet Scan prep. I also had to drink a pint of some sort of radioactive water and then rest under a heated blanket for an hour. Then, it was on my back and into a tube for a twenty minute scan. Nothing bad about that except for the lying still for twenty minutes. The Pet Scan was of my body from my neck down to my pelvis area. It is more specific than the CT and was looking for any spread of the cancer cells in other parts of my body. The CT Scan showd a small lesion on my lung and a pelvic bone and the Pet Scan should give more info on these. After this procedure, my day was finally over and it was on to IHOP for a nice dinner of omletts and pancakes.

This picture is the OK VA center in Oklahoma City.

I have an addendum to add to the blog just below this one. About three hours ago I got a phone call from one of my radiation oncologists with the results of the PET Scan that I had yesterday. He said the scan showed absolutely no 'hot spots' anywhere else in my body. I had a small lesion on a lung and he said it showed up as cold and was of no concern. He said it was probably a nodule and that a large number of people over age 40 have them. The lesion on my pelvic bone in the tumor area was also cold and of no concern. The only hot spots was the tumor and a few lymph nodes outside the wall of the colon near the tumor.

Now, this is great news to me and after hearing it I went out and walked for about a half mile. This is the first good news I have heard from any hospital in the last five weeks. This means the radiation can remain in the localized area and they don't have to worry about giving me doses of it in other places. It also means the cancer has not metastasized.

The radiation oncologist did not give me a stage of the cancer but the doctor that performed the ultrasound staged the tumor at T 3 and the lymph nodes at N 2. Now I've done some research and come up with some further technical info. The staging system is the TNM stystem which means Tumor, Nodes, Metastasis. The tumor is graded from T 0 to Tis to T 1-4. The T 3 means the tumor invades through muscularis propria into the subserosa. The lymph nodes are graded from N 0-3. The N 2 means there has been metastasis in four or more regional lymph nodes. Now that the PET Scan has shown no further metastasis, the Metastasis part should be M 0 or no distant metastasis. I would guess (and this is my guess, not a doctor's report) that the overall stage number would be a 3 and this is based on info I have and the research I've done. I was hoping for a 2 or lower but a 3 has a pretty good recovery rate, especially if no distant metastasis has occurred. So, we are more hopeful today.

Now I've just got one more thing to say and then I'll quit. I told the doctors yesterday that the CEA test that I've been faithfully having for the last 5 years was a large disappointment to me. I can't understand why the only way I have to monitor my cancer did not work for me. I researched the CEA tumor marker today too. It seems the test is just plain unreliable in a great number of people and apparently it is the best screen test they have. It stands for carcinoembryonic antigen and is a glycoprotein involved in cell adhesion. It has been around for a number of years and for some reason hasn't evolved much. I think it is time it evolved. There is research going on right now involving DNA and they hope that each individual will have a personal tumor marker based on his own DNA. Work is ongoing on this concept.

Now I walked 3200 miles and collected money for cancer research. It never occurred to me that something like my CEA tumor marker could use an overhaul. Just another aspect of medical research that your dontated dollars go to fund. Wouldn't it be nice if Gateway would announce a funded study in some new type of tumor marker research such as the DNA? Now in all fairness, I did not check their website or call up there and ask if they had something like this going on right now but maybe I will. Just know that your dollars matter and the $11000-$12000 we are going to end up collecting for them might someday help find an effective tumor marker if not an outright cure. In my case, an effective tumor marker would have been just like a cure.

Well, I am now into my third day of treatment, both chemo and radiation. I'm not too sure how the double whammy of both treatments will affect me but I guess to get rid of the tumor it will be worth it. Valda & I are in Oklahoma City and staying in a motel. The VA and OU Med complex is about 3 miles south of our motel and we have to drive around the state capitol to get there. The OK state capitol building looks a good deal like the nation's capitol in D.C. I will take pictues when we get our camera. One unusual thing about the capitol grounds is that there are working oil wells in several places.

I am taking the radiation at the OU Med Center about two blocks south of the VA Center. The VA is providing the chemo. The chemo consists of my taking 6 powerful pills a day, 3 with breakfast and 3 with dinner. I also take a nausea pill with each dose. These pills are so toxic that I'm the only one who can handle them. If Valda has to be around them, she is supposed to wear latex gloves. That doesn't make it too comforting knowing I'm putting 6 of these a day into my body.

The radiation is interesting. They fitted my legs into a bean bag tray of sorts and then vacuumed the air out of it, forming it around my legs and feet. This tray then fits onto the bed of the radiation machine placing me in the same position every time. They put three freckle size tattoos on my body, one on each side and one just below my navel to line up the X-ray radiation machine. The machine has lasers that use the tattoos as targets and when they all line up and the technicians are satisfied, then they proceed with the radiation. This allows the head of the machine (about the size of a galvanized wash tub that our mother's used to use) to zap me with the proper dose of radiation at the exact same spot as the day before. This is all controlled by the techs in another room and monitored by closed circuit TV. I imagine the machine is controlled by computers and they punch in the dose, elapsed time, and position and it does the rest.

There is no pain or other sensation, no beam of light or anything any different than having a chest X-ray. The first four or five minutes are spent getting me into position and aligment and taking a series of pictures by the machine. Then the actual radiation begins and takes about 15 minutes. This routine so far hasn't varied, but I've only had two sessions.

The waiting is the hardest part. I have a lot of time on my hands and do plan on getting started on a book about my walk. Today my radiation treatment isn't until 4:50 PM and that makes for a long day.

In about two hours, I'll have the first week of radiation and chemo therapy behind me. It's not been too bad considering what the implications are but I'm not too sure the side effects have hit yet. I have been having some discomfort but I've had discomfort for the last 3 months so I'm not sure if it can be attributed to the therapy. We've gotten into a routine of sorts and just bide our time watchng TV and being on the computer. We try to get outside when the weather is good and yesterday we walked for about a half mile or so. On the way back to the motel, we walked around a parking lot for a nightclub and Valda & I found $0.49. We've started another change bottle. I guess I just can't walk without looking down for money.

We came to OKC in a bit of haphazard way. Valda had a terrible bout with the flu last weekend and our daughter Syndi accompanied me on Monday. On Tuesday afternoon Trace brought Valda down and she's been here ever since. She's developed a chest cold now and so we make a good pair; I'm taking radiation and muddling along and my care giver is hacking all over the place. It's got to get better doesn't it?

We forgot our camera last week and do plan to bring it this coming week. The techs at the radiation therapy center said we could take pictures and we will do so and post them on my blog next week. Hopefully an ice storm that is supposed to be here next week will bypass us and go elsewhere. It is nice to be in a motel room so close to the med center, but for anyone who has stayed in a motel room for any length of time knows, it can get boring, tedious and much like a jail cell (I'm guessing).

Just a short blog to chronicle how I'm feeling.  I decided I wanted to keep a tab on how I felt during the treatments and what better way than the blog.  Today I'm feeling pretty good.  I actually started taking the decals off the RV today and got about half of them off before the weather started to change.  It was about 75 degrees when I started and at 1:45 a front came through and I'd estimate the weather dropped about ten degrees in a two minute span.  After that happened, the decals started to break when I pulled on them so I quit.  I was tired anyway.

Saturday was a rough day for me.  I didn't do much and napped a lot but I could not get comfortable and just had a blah feeling most of the day.  I have been tired all week but I know that goes with the territory.  I felt progressively weaker each day last week and was really hoping the weekend would be different.  But, I'll take one day on the weekend to feel good. 

I haven't slept too good this past week.  As I said, it is hard to get comfortable in bed.  I've lost so much weight that my hips are boney and that makes it hard to lay in one spot for any length of time.  I can only sleep when I'm on my back, and I hate sleeping on my back.  But, I get about 6-7 hours a night and I probably doze some of the other time.  It's not a problem yet.  My appetite is good still and I can still tase the food.  The last time I took chemo, I didn't want to eat for 7 months and food had no taste.  I am still limiting my intake until the tumor shrinks and blockage is still something I'm dealing with.

So far, I haven't had any discomfort from the radiation.  No rashes or sensitive skin and it hasn't made me sick yet.  I keep thinking that I'm going to wake up and have one of those days where I'm heaving all day, but so far that hasn't happened.  Hopefully it won't.  The tiredness has been the hardest part to deal with.  I've been used to walking 18-20 miles a day and since I ended the walk, I probably haven't walked 5 miles.  I just can't get too far away from a bathroom.  I'm waiting for that to ease up.  I miss the walking. 

I just weighed and it is 176 pounds.  It was 172 at the OU Med Center about ten days ago so I may have gained a little.  The oncologist said he didn't want me to lose more than 12 pounds during the whole process, so I think I'm okay. 

Valda & I are getting ready to go to our grandson's Christmas program at their church.  Nic has a solo (Silent Night) and Jude is a sheep.  It should be quite good and it will be nice to feel like being there to see it.  More later.

I just read an email from a friend of ours who suggested that Valda & I must be at loose ends during this period in our lives, not knowing what is going to happen and just doing the same thing day in and day out. I thought she hit that nail right on the head. It is difficult sitting here everyday, waiting on my radiation therapy time to get here. We had thought that we would be somewhere warm, perhaps doing some speaking and at the least I would have gone back to work. Strange how life throws curves.

I have some pictures that I took today. They show the radiation machine and a picture of two of my therapists Shannez (Sha-nay) and Maggie. I hope you never have to see one of these machines up close so here is the next best thing. The big round part at the top is the part that does the zapping.

Not much else going on. I'm beginning to feel the accumulation of the chemo and radiation. I'm not sleeping well and dozing here and there. I'm uncomfortable and in some pain but the Tylenol and prune juice helps. It is cold here as it is in most of this part of the country and that doesn't help my overall disposition. But, next week is a short week for my treatments and we will have a four day break. Nothing much planned, just Christmas with the Rowe's. It will be nice being with them during the holidays.

Everyone have a great holiday season and enjoy your family, friends, health and be thankful for everything good in your lives. There are so many that have so much less. Thanks to everyone for the continued emails, snail mail cards, and comments on the blog. I appreciate each and everyone of them and most of the time they make me pretty emotional. I wish I could be with you all.