Mike I hope the odds start to tilt in your favor soon. I started reading your blog. Great stuff. I should have read it earlier. I think I'll get to more of it soon. I'm off to bed though. Tired still from last week's regimen of temozolomide as I treat my grade 2/3 glioma (brain cancer). Temozolomide is more of a nuisance compared to what you've been hitting your body with. You are one bad mamma-jamma. Take care man. There are folks round the world pulling for you.
Mark told me a while back about your cancer Jeff. How is that going? Is it affecting neural functions? That's scary shit messing with your brain. I've got about 20 tumors throughout my chest and abdomen, and I think I'd rather have all those scattered around down there than have just one up in my skull! It's 4 am, I've been up all night, totally raging on the first half of chemo this afternoon. The other dose tomorrow. So far, this treatment isn't too bad, but I feel new and bad things happening inside of me right now, so I'm bracing for it...
Thanks for asking. Things are going well. My stuff was/is in the right anterior temporal lobe. Fortunately, not an area dedicated to one particular function, like language or hubski typinggggggggggg. Well, at least maybe not my sense of humor function. I was fortunate to have an excellent surgical outcome. Nothing visible is left in follow-up MRI's. So far, outside of the radiation+chemotherapy last summer plus twelve rounds of adjuvant chemotherapy side effects, my neurological functions are completely normal. During treatment week I basically get the feeling of a mild hangover all week long as I ingest my five days of poison pills. I can still work while on chemo. I just need to be careful to eat lots of protein, keep watch to make sure I'm getting the proper calories, sleep a ton extra, and then lay low for the weekend.
I'm stuck with my bad brain cells, but I don't know if I'd wanna trade it for your chemo treatment alone! It has been completely surprising to see how resilient the human brain is. I expect the rest of your body is at least as resilient.