September 1

What a week. On Monday I met with my Radiologist who was very pleased with my recovery. On Wednesday we met with my surgeon who was also pleased with my recovery and gave me the go ahead to get my port and start the next round of chemo.

Thursday we went to Claremont to officially drop Aaron off at college. It was a full day of orientation and unpacking... It was also a very emotional day for me. I gave him my final list of life lessons and told him we have a family tradition of calling home on Sundays to check in. More on that later.

Friday, I went in to have my port put in. In case anyone ever asks, I hate needles. And after they missed with the first IV try I was glued to the ceiling. Fortunately, the vascular surgeon was great and had a zanex close by. The procedure was a little rougher that I anticipated and as the Novocaine wore off I was glad we still had a couple of vicodins from the last surgery.

I recovered enough to be able to watch Jason's soccer tournament over the weekend, and I actually got called back into the coaching when we made it to the championship game Sunday afternoon and the trainer/coach had to go to a wedding.

Sunday evening we had planned to spend relaxing with friends from out of town (also dropping off children to college) over a casual barbecue. The evening was great until we got the Sunday night check in call from Aaron. Apparently on my life lessons sheet I typed up for him I did not put down that your first call home from college should not be from the local hospital emergency room. The short story was 6 stitches above the eye from a collision in ultimate frisbee, he is having a great time, and he is going to figure out his course schedule today when he registers. I can hear the apple far from the tree comments already.

As for me, I start chemo tomorrow. I will have 8 treatments every other week, so my plan is to be done with chemo December 9th. The surgeon said we would have time to do the second surgery prior to Christmas; that is now my goal. I would really like to start the new year off with just recovery on my mind, but I have been told not to count on any schedule since a cold, flu, dehydration or drop in white blood cells could delay everything.

I did make my goal of taking Aaron to college, fortunately or unfortunately, I was still recovering from the surgery so I could not lift anything over 5lbs. So now there is another group in this world who wonder what exactly I do and why I had Cynthia doing all the work.

This should be an interesting next few months in the chemo room with the election, I will keep posting on how the treatments are going and how I am feeling.

Thanks again for all the prayers, thoughts and help.

Bruce