Speed Demons

9:57AM

Well into the Ritxumab now. Rituximab takes the longest time to administer, but I get the drug pumped in at a slightly higher rate each cycle since the body adjusts to it.

Also, finally got a picture of the treatment room that doesn't appear to violate HIPAA:

The hardwood floor makes a big difference.  Gives the room less of a "hospital" feel.

I will admit I was really not looking forward to today, but everything is going well so far.  I'm not even irritated enough to rant on anything at the moment, so...your loss.  Treatment is a really delicate time mentally.  I don't like being here at all.  I think I like it less each cycle.  It's tough to see other people in this situation, and everyone gives me that "oh dear he's very young" look.  Which I know, but the looks on their faces remind me of that fact more than I would like. 

I give a ton of credit to people who come here to sit with patients.  That just seems really boring.  At least I get a nice chair and the benefit of, you know, not dying from cancer.  But there aren't any benefits for the people who sit there and watched their friend or family member get chemo.  It's gotta be less than fun to watch, and most people are missing work or school to do it.  So, props to you, people who sit with chemo patients.

10:25AM

I pee way too much.  I drink a lot of fluids during chemo (and really, all the time.  Helps to flush the system and is just generally healthy).  Taking a leak during chemo is a really cumbersome process.  You have to have the nurse come over, pause and unplug your machine (since the chemo drugs are toxic and would presumably wreck the hardwood floor if they spilled or something), then drag the whole contraption into the restroom where you try to pee without hitting your IV tube that runs from the machine on your right to your left arm.

I guess it's some combination of the fluids and the drugs that lead to the frequent urination...but damn man.  I'm 25 and I'm pissing circles around the AARP in here. 

10:54AM

We are burning through this shit today.  Not literally, which is a real concern with the chemo drugs.  But today has gone very well so far. 

It's really amazing how much little things impact your psyche during treatment.  If things go well, you're really upbeat, positive about your treatment, happy about the situation.  If things don't go well - if nurses don't change drugs quickly, if you need to wait around for things - then it impacts your mental state. 

11:36AM

DAMMIT WE LOST THE NO HITTER IN THE 6TH INNING!  The Adriamycin was supposed to be "pushed" but apparently it was put into a bag so they had to whip up a new batch.  Slight delay, but things are moving along again

Two visitors so far.  Sister drove in from college to visit treatment room. Who wouldn't want this sweet smiling face staring at them during treatment?

We are pushing two drugs today: Oncovin and adriamycin.  It's always comforting when the nurse has to wear a smock to pump drugs into you.

Really happy with the way things are going today  Nearly done and its not even noon.  A sub 4 hour R-CHOP is a big deal.  Looks like we could hit that.

Mother asked the nurse what we can do with my used Neupogen needles.  Nurse says we can bring them to the hospital and they will take care of them.  Which seems better than my current strategy of hiding needles in random places all over the house. 

12:17PM

Done.  That's gotta be some type of record.  Maybe not but still...to get this all done in under 4 hours is awesome.  Every minute I don't have to spend in the treatment room is a good minute.  I think my pregame pep talked work.  Good execution across the board today. The rub: I'm now going to try to beat this time (3 hours, 53 minutes) in my future cycles.  Which will probably result in me pouring the drugs into a giant vat and trying to chug it during cycle 6. 

It's nice to know how I'm going to feel at certain times during the cycle, but then you just end up sitting around and waiting to feel terrible.  It's like walking around with a time bomb in you.  I try to load up on food when I get back from treatment because the anti-nausea drugs I get during treatment take a while to wear off. 

I'm trying a new strategy this time around to deal with the post-treatment nausea.  I will be taking my severe nausea medication (zofran) first as a sort of prophylactic (like that one, huh?) measure, and I'll follow it up with the mild nausea meds (compozine) after that.  It's a possibly futile attempt to head off the nausea I usually experience post treatment. 

But hey...cycle 3 is done and it went really well.  And that's a good first half of the day.  I'll see what I can do about the second half, but it may just come down to "tough it out, asshole."  Either way...I'm at least halfway (hopefully) through this business.  That's a good feeling. 

My nurse is J. Walter Weatherman

Hi all. Treatment day today.  Blogging live from the treatment room at the Josephine Ford Cancer Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

A good start to the morning.  Bloodwork was fine and we started running the Benadryl at 8:24.  I was disappointed with our performance during cycle 2, so I watched a lot of film over the past two weeks to get ready for today.  Much better prepared.  We had a good week of practice so I'm optimistic that we'll be able to execute.

But first, a bit of bad news:

SONOFABITCH!

I actually requested this this time, and it was done with full disclosure that this will make my arm feel like the surface of the sun later.  To me, the momentary tape pain is preferable to having the catheter in my hand for six hours.  It's very uncomfortable and it's hard to type, and then I don't want to blog.  So that picture above, I DID IT FOR YOU!  YOU'RE WELCOME!

Some things to make your morning more fun even as mine gets progressively less fun:

1)  Joseph A. from Ann Arbor wins the mailbag contest with this gem:

Do you ever think that one of these days, at a chemo treatment, another patient's arm will fall off and you'll find out that this is an elaborate lesson that your dad is teaching you?  

If that doesn't make sense to you, this is all the help you're getting:

2) This piece by Mitch Albom gets torn to shreds by this piece over at deadspin.com.  It's good. An excerpt:

No one writes things like "Heck, as a kid..." unless they are sucking up to 90-year-olds in Clearfield, Pa., who read Parade magazine and might just have an orange-lipstick-stained tenspot they're willing to part with in order to read about the heartwarming tales of a large-chinned sweetheart who Understands American Values and once hung out with an old man a lot before brutally murdering him in an attempt to commit the "perfect crime." (That's what Tuesdays with Morrie is about, right? I've never read it.)

And like mystery writer of the "Real Mitch Albom" piece for this site, the folks at Deadspin have figured out the secret to Mitch's writing:

The [cliché]. A base runner's [cliché] as he [cliché]. A pitcher's [cliché]. The [cliché] of a [cliché] [cliché]ing a [cliché.] The [cliché] of a [cliché].

Elsewhere the author makes fun of Parade magazine readers and their day-by-day pill trays, which I laughed at for a second before I realized I have a day-by-day pill tray.  Anyway, read it.

3)  The good people at Henry Ford called me yesterday and wanted to know if "Nicole" needed any Xanax for "her" PET scan.  Wonderful.  Next up: The good people at Henry Ford call me to let me know that the PET scan revealed that my breast cancer is cured!

That's it for now.  More coming later depending on how I feel and if interesting stuff happens, which I hope will not be the case.  

Cycle the third: In which Nick invokes a power greater than Jesus

He cried for our sins.

I play a lot of sports.  Or at least I did, before I lost my hair.  I've played different sports at different times in my life.  I dabbled in soccer and basketball when I was younger.  Played hockey my entire life.  Played baseball up until the point where the beer leagues were the only option.  Played football throughout high school.

But once college rolls around, you're relegated to the Intramural leagues.  IM leagues are where washed-up high school athletes attempt to hold on to fading shreds of athletic glory.  Once you get to graduate school, that task gets even more difficult.  The injuries are more frequent.  The soreness increases.  That knee just isn't performing like it used to.  Your hip hurts, which is the ultimate you're-getting-old form of joint pain.  The clock is ticking.  Once graduation rolls around, good luck finding another athletic endeavor in which it's acceptable to be this intense about winning and losing.

But "intense" would be an understatement to describe just how serious we (and by "we" I mean me and most of my teammates) took IM sports.  Could you blame us?  First of all, you're so bored with and sick of law school by the third year, you will focus your energy on anything else.  Second, the IM leagues at Michigan are actually pretty competitive, and you form some pretty heated rivalries with the other grad schools (to the point where you taunt opponents with lines like, "How does it feel to be in the profession with the highest suicide rate?" when you play the Dental School or "It only takes two years to get an MBA? That's a cute degree." when you play the Business School). Third: Last year of grad school = last chance at glory.  The stakes could not be higher. 

Flag football is *the* IM sport at Michigan.  Played in the fall (and into December, with most of the games outside), flag football was our bread and butter.  We had pretty decent teams my first two years of law school, even taking home a championship in the co-ed division my 2L year.  But we had lost some good people to graduation.  A repeat would be difficult.  And our men's team disintegrated after my second year.  We entered our last year hoping for glory, but not having any of the parts to attain it.

And then there was broomball.  For those of you not in the know, broomball is essentially hockey, on ice, with shoes, a ball, and a broom-like object.  Broomball was our Waterloo.  It was the one that got away again, again, and again.  That damn sport came closer to killing me than cancer ever will.

It was the Fall of 2007.  We had made it to the finals.  We had made it through overtime.  We had made it to a shootout.  And we won the shootout.  We celebrated.  We were collecting our championship t-shirts.  And then - in God's first act of provocation against me after which it should have been completely clear that I was going to get cancer at some point in the near future - the referees decided that we had not won.  One of our players - who had not participated in the game - did not participate in the shootout.  T-shirts revoked, celebration undone, shootout resumed.  Two rounds later, the ball goes in the wrong net.  We lose.  Strike 1.

It was the Spring of 2007.  Second championship game.  We only had four players available.  One of them had like six bouts of pneumonia that Winter, but came out and played the full game.  Scoreless tie, 42 seconds left.  Their goalie flipped the ball high in the air.  Their really fat forward catches the ball.  And he holds it.  And he holds it.  And he runs with it.  And he runs over one of our defenders.  And he drops the ball in front of the net, slipping it past the goaltender.  Our sticks go flying into the boards.  We protest, to no avail.  Time expires.  Strike 2.

It was the Fall of 2008.  Third championship game.  We hadn't given up a goal all season.  So we decided we would be nice guys and help out the other team.  We put three goals in the net that game.  Unfortunately, two of them ended up in our own net.  Two deflections - one a shot from center ice that ricocheted off the hand of one of our defensemen, and the game winner that caromed off my own stick.  We lose, 2-1.  Strike 3.

It was with that history that we entered the 2009-2010 season.  Broomball was up first.  And we were not messing around.  We assembled a powerful squad.  We had size, speed, playmaking ability, and chemistry - we all played on the same hockey team.  We rolled through the regular season.  We demolished teams in the playoffs, often putting up double digits.  We beat a team of roller hockey ninjas (seriously, I think they were ninjas.  They were all Asian and had some of the best moves I have ever seen on ice.  Also I think they played with 5 guys but they were so stealthy the refs couldn't see them).  We demolished a team that had their own jerseys.  We rolled into the final against our archnemesis, the Dental School. 

And we lost.  In overtime.  With seven seconds left on the clock.  We completed the full Buffalo Bills with two kids on our team from Buffalo, as if the universe had not already adequately demonstrated its malice. 

And so I wallowed, on the eve of men's football season, wondering if we would ever see glory.  Wondering if all our suffering, our practice, our planning would be in vain.  Wondering if the sick and twisted universe was just toying with us.

But then I made a decision.  I don't know how the words came to me.  Perhaps it was divine intervention.  Perhaps it was an immaculate conception.  Either way, I knew Jesus Christ himself was involved.  And so I typed.  In an e-mail to my teammates, I apologized.  And then I made a promise: 

Gentlemen:

To those of you who have already heard of our tragic Broomball misfortune, and to those of you who are just hearing about it now: I am sorry.  Extremely sorry.  We were hoping for an undefeated IM sports season.  That was my goal; something that we've never done here. 

But I promise you one thing: a lot of good will come from this.  You will never see another player in IM sports play as hard as I will this season .  You will never see someone push the rest of this team as hard as I will this season.  And you will never see a team play harder than this team will this season. 

God Bless.

We did not lose another game, in any sport, for the rest of our time at Michigan.

Our men's flag football team won every game, including a game in which we played 5 on 7 with a quarterback who had a cracked rib, a special ed student at wide receiver, and "the second biggest douchebag in flag football," as one opponent complained.  We took every game in the playoffs by mercy rule: 

Our co-ed flag football team outscored our opponents 228-8, dishing out beatings so severe that U-M made us take a course on violence against women:

And our broomball team rolled through the regular season, stormed through the playoffs, made it to the championship game...and won:

  
I am told that the University of Florida was so inspired by my e-mail that they have inscribed my words on a plaque and placed it outside the football building on campus.  While I am touched by their gesture, I am disappointed that they misquoted, misattributed and misdated my words. 

***

Why did I just spend 1,200 words on the eve of cycle 3 yapping about taking IM sports way too seriously?  I'm not entirely sure.  I think it's because I see a lot of parallels between my current situation and my athletic career.  Obviously, the two differ in terms of consequences and severity.  But I'll be damned if this isn't a situation where I need to fight and claw and will my way to victory over a hated opponent.  And I definitely feel that I have a team with me in this struggle.

Take running, for example.  There are times when you hurt.  When you just want to stop, give up, go home, get off the treadmill.  Times when you want to do anything in the world besides what you are doing at that given moment.  Or how about football practice.  If chemotherapy knocked up the bar exam, their love child would be football practice.  You're hurt.  You're uncomfortable.  You're miserable.  And you're wondering why the hell you're doing what you're doing.  God I hope there's a point to all this, you wonder.  But for whatever reason, you endure.  You suck it up, you deal with your pain, and you push through.

And that's pretty much what I go through on a daily basis.  The stakes may be higher but the process is still the same.  I don't want to get stuck with another freaking needle.  I would like to keep my blood in my body and not have you put it in another vial to go run tests on it, thank you very much.  I liked my hair; what did you do to it?  I was doing just fine without taking six pills a day.  And you can keep your liter of poison because I don't think I should put that poison in my body and last time I did it made me want to throw up and made my hair fall out. 

You do it once and it's sort of interesting and not that bad.  You do it twice and now you're getting the hang of it but you really don't want to make a habit of this.  Now I'm staring down number three and it's just like, can I tap out or something?  I've really had enough of this.  Plus, they tell me it's going to get worse.  And then I react like Clark Griswold when his wife, Ellen, tells him all the guests should leave the Christmas party before things get any worse.  "Worse?  How can things get any worse?  Take a look around here! We're at the threshold of hell!"

But I'm a competitive person.  I've played sports for 20 years, and I plan to be back on the field or the ice soon enough.  So that's how I deal with this sort of stuff.  Like it's a game.  I know it's not really a game.  But like Herman Boone, I'm a winner.  I'm going to win.  I don't see any other option.

And that's how I think about a lot of this.  Every shot is just another drill.  Every pill is another rep.  I don't look forward to treatment, but I know it's making me better.  I know there's a flip side to all this.  And when I'm down, I think of all the times I've felt like hell on the ice or on the field before and found the energy for one more push, one more play, one more shot.  I've put a hell of a lot of effort into struggles far less important than this one.  I don't have any concern about the effort I'll put forth now.

Because that's the toughest part at this point.  The daily grind.  The "novelty" of the whole thing wears off, and you're just left with the day-to-day reality.  You're not going to feel well.  Some days, you're going to feel worse than others.  You don't feel like yourself and you probably won't for a while.  I know there's an end to all this and I always keep that in mind.  But it's absolutely impossible for me to see the end of the tunnel without looking through the tunnel and seeing what I'll have to endure to get there. 

***

The thing that made Tim Tebow's "promise" prophetic was the fact that he backed it up, and his team backed him up.  There are a lot of people who have cancer...so many people.  The number of people who have told me about individuals close to them who have battled cancer, the number of people I know who have battled cancer, and the number of people I see every day in the waiting room and in the treatment defies explanation.  It's just staggering.

That said, each case is unique.  And I think I'm more unique than most, if that makes any sense.  While lymphoma patients in their 20s are not as uncommon as you might think, we're not exactly packing oncology waiting rooms.  The number of 25-year-old cancer patients who share their experience is even smaller.  And I don't think there's more than a handful of 25-year-old cancer patients who share every detail of the experience as much as I do with an audience that now numbers in the thousands. 

And so while I know that there's only so much "fighting" I can do, I really think I can fight harder than most.  I want to fight harder than most.  That's nothing against anybody else dealing with cancer, it's just that I'm competitive.  I want to win.  I have a ton of people on my team, and I know they are there for me.  And I want to win not only in the most obvious sense - beating this thing - but I want to be a winner in the way I handle this.  I want the W, but I want style points as well.  I want to win when I'm done with treatment, but I want to win each and every day as well.  I get pissed off when I don't feel well on any given day.  I never want to let this thing beat me.  I want the championship...but I want to outscore my opponents by 220 points as well.  I have no use for sportsmanship right now.  This damn thing couldn't even wait until the bar exam was over to show up.  Screw it.  I don't just want to beat it; I don't want to let it score even a single point.  I'm Ali. The cancer is Liston.   

I'm glad you're all there as spectators and as my teammates.  And in a way, I'm sorry you all have to be there.  Extremely sorry.  I was hoping to make it my entire life without getting cancer.  That was my goal, something many Americans never do. 

But I promise you one thing: a lot of good will come from this.  You will never see another individual fight cancer as hard as I will.  You will never see someone endure treatment the way I will for the rest of my cycles.  And you will never see anybody beat cancer quite like I will this year.

God bless.

The Cancer Experience

[Ed. Note: Two new things today: new poll (which I will soon turn into a post! See if you can correctly guess what I hate the most!) and new "Important Dates" page.  Here I will keep an updated list of treatments, appointments, doctor visits and whatnot.  It will help you better plan your lives around my cycles.]

If there's one thing I've learned in the past couple months, it is this: There is an awful lot of cancer in this world.  I can't count the number of messages I've received from people who mention that somebody close to them has battled cancer.  What has been even more surprising is the number of stories I've heard about young people who have dealt with cancer - particularly lymphoma.  And I've received tons of offers from people to get me in touch with cancer survivors.  And I appreciate those offers.

But I have not contacted anybody to discuss my disease, and I have no plans to contact anybody to discuss my disease.  I swore off the entire "cancer" wing of the internet after about five minutes.  I avoid support groups, hotlines, "cancer mentors," survivor networks, fundraisers, telethons, cancer walks and runs, and so on.  I don't pick up pamphlets on my condition.  I don't talk to anybody else in the waiting room or the treatment room.  In short, while I'm immersed in the cancer-fighting world, I do everything in my power to avoid it.

This is deliberate.  Everyone handles this experience differently.  Everyone has their own unique way of coping.  The one key is to find what works for you.  That sounds cliche, but if you spend time trying to force yourself to do things that help other people cope, you may find that they do not help you in the same way or actually have the opposite effect.  You can't force things here.  Some people desperately need somebody to talk to about their diagnosis.  Some people want to talk to somebody on the phone.  Some people want to join support groups or have a cancer mentor.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  It's just not the way I have decided to handle my disease. 

There is one main reason for this: I'm doing just fine right now.  I wrote a post earlier entitled "Equilibrium."  The gist of the post was that after a period of shock about my diagnosis, I had reached a stage where I was comfortable with where I was at and what I was going through.  I have found that talking to other people or consulting other sources about my disease upsets that equilibrium.  When I hear things like "you know it's not guaranteed that you're going to lose you hair," I think, "Yeah, but it's pretty damn likely that I will."  But when I hear things like, "My cousin Vinny got a really nasty abscess while going through chemo," I think "Wow that might happen to me and why the hell are you telling me that."  Not saying anybody has actually said something like that, but the point is that when I tend to dismiss the good anecdotes and overthink the bad ones.

Besides, cancer is just too personal.  I'm starting to object more and more to the use of the word "cancer."  It really tells you very little.  First of all, the type of cancer you have makes all the difference in the world.  And then the type within the type, particularly for lymphoma.  And then the staging, the location of the tumor, the proliferation index, etc.  There are about 80-100 different chemotherapy drugs, and each cancer gets a different combination of drugs.  Those drugs, in turn, have different side effects, and often have different rates of effectiveness (for example, some drugs can actively kill cancer while others just slow the growth).  Then you have to account for the age, health, and physical condition of the individual going through chemotherapy.  My experience will not be your grandfather's.  If I was 75, I would probably not be able to handle 14-day cycles.

So the word "cancer" is somewhat of a misnomer.  I understand why it's used.  And it certainly means something to people who don't have cancer - if you hear "Nick has cancer," you know it's a pretty serious thing and he's probably going to go bald and get chemo, radiation, or surgery.  But to me, my experience is night and day from a 68 year old dealing with lung cancer.  So while both I and the 68 year old are dealing with "cancer," I won't find a discussion with that 68 year old very helpful.

But it's a different story when I'm with my doctors and nurses.  I don't shut up.  I ask a ton of questions.  And I'll ask the ones that I know will have tough answers - what am I going to feel, when am I going to feel it, when is my hair going to fall out.  I want to know that stuff.  But I really don't want to speculate.  I ask everybody questions about virtually everything they do. Why do they drip some drugs and push others?  What is a "gravity drip" as opposed to a "pump?"  When were these drugs developed?  I ask a ton of questions during my checkups, and I e-mail my doctor rather frequently.  Part of it is because I really want to know everything about my situation, and part of it is just because I'm naturally curious and like to know things about stuff.  But I don't want to play guessing games.  I don't want to hear chemo anecdotes, because they are invariably terrible.  I don't want extraneous information.  I want to know things about my condition and my experience from my doctors.  I don't want anything to upset that equilibrium.  

I suppose people who have dealt with lymphoma at my age are relevant sources of information, and I have given some thought to speaking with some of these people.  But I decided now is not the time.  I really don't have any questions that I feel have gone unanswered by my doctors and nurses.  I don't feel that these discussions could add anything to my current situation, so why bother at this point?  I might and probably will feel differently as I approach the end of treatment, but as of now, I'm comfortable with my decision.

I will tell you, though, that simply hearing stories of others who have gone through what I'm going through and come out ok is extremely helpful.  You hear the word "cancer" and you think the worse, and while it's all pretty terrible, there are varying degrees.  Knowing that people have come through something like this and moved on with their lives gives me a lot of motivation and comfort. 

Cancer saps a lot of control from you.  It's a scary thing.  And it's very easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of information out there.  But I think you can maintain some degree of control over you situation if you limit your exposure to that sort of stuff.  So that's what I do.  I type my thoughts in here, I communicate with my doctors and nurses, and that's about it.  That's the way I'm going to handle it, and that's what works for me.

You have questions, I have a series of rambling tangents

First things first: I have added an "About Me" tab at the top of the page.  It appears readership around here has grown, and since not everybody has been around for the entire time, "About Me" should give you a brief overview of how we got here.  Plus there's some background info on me, and some more detailed info on my diagnosis and treatment.  Check it out. 

As for this post: This is the first in a series of posts in which I answer questions I've been asked. Some of them were asked verbally.  Some of them were slurred at me by various individuals at the bar when everybody gets a little drunk and question-y.  And some of them came in via e-mail.  Most are paraphrased, because I often get several versions of the same question.  But I've been asked some good questions that, obviously, somebody wanted to know the answer to.  I figure I'll handle a couple questions at at a time.  As always, if you have something you think would make for a good discussion, e-mail me at ncheolas@gmail.com.

We'll start with the most important cancer question of all:

When are you getting engaged?

Oh I'm sorry.  This question has nothing to do with cancer at all.  And yet it is asked of me as much as most cancer-related questions, which is odd because I have much more experience with cancer than I do with engagement.  And the recent flurry of law school engagements has really not helped things.

Most of you know my girlfriend, Emily.  For those of you who don't, here is a picture of us:

LOOK AT MY POCKET SQUARE! LOOK AT IT! IT IS SO GOOD!

That's Emily on the left.  It is also the best picture we have managed to take during our 5-year (on September 24, and now it's on the internet so I can always go back and check the date) relationship.  So good that I broke my "no couple picture on Facebook" rule that has stood since 2004.  I screw up an incredible amount of pictures just for my own amusement.  But I passed on this one and it turned out really well.

Anyway, the engagement thing:  I will get engaged sometime between the time I no longer have cancer and the day of my wedding.  Please do not ask me until then.  I promise I will send you a text message or something if my status changes.

How is it living at home?  Is there a difference between staying there before you move to DC and staying there while you recover from cancer?

I liked this question.  I actually think it's a little easier for me to tolerate living at home with the cancer than it otherwise would have been.  Which is nothing against my parents - they're great people and it's wonderful to have meals cooked, a clean house, laundry done, etc.  I really do get along with them.  But I've been out of here for seven years, and it's just a pretty big deal to move back in with the 'rents after seven years away.  I know I'm part of the boomerang generation at all, but "25-year-old law school grad returns to parents' basement" is not the type of headline I wanted to make.  (I stay in my room.  My parents don't actually make me stay in the basement). 

That said, given my current cancer-y situation, being able to live at home has been a godsend.  I don't have to worry about every meal.  I don't have to live in housing that probably gave me the cancer in the first place.  I don't have to worry about work or school.  I cut food, alcohol, and housing out of my budget - my cost of living is near zero right now (minus, you know, the $$$ it takes to keep me alive). 

I think this is all part of the "great timing, cancer" thing.  Minus the whole "taking the bar exam with cancer" thing, the timing has been pretty good.  I will not have another 4 month window with nothing to do and the ability to live at home again.  But I think these things have been so critical to my ability to handle everything so far.  I know I joke a lot about the whole "fighting cancer" bit, but this really does consume you, and being able to focus on this full-time really helps.  I have the ability to eat several small meals throughout the day, whenever I want. I don't have to worry about a lot of things that I otherwise would have.  I don't have to schedule appointments around work or school. 

And the Henry Ford system helps a lot.  If I need something done, I can go downtown, or head out to Dearborn, or swing by Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe, or head out to West Bloomfield if need be.  This has been really important with a tough-to-diagnose disease like Lymphoma, which requires a lot of appointments (bone marrow, PET Scan, biopsies, pathology work).

That's not to say there aren't frustrating moments.  It's difficult to not have the freedom I enjoyed for the last 7 years.  Sometimes it's awkward when my mother reads my blog posts while sitting four feet away from me and asks me questions and makes verbal comments like it's an interactive website or something.  And she's a mother, so she asks a lot of questions, and sometimes I don't want to answer.  But she recognizes this, and often times she'll withdraw the question if it's met with a derisive stare on my end.  I try to cut my parents a lot of slack too.  I know it's difficult for them to watch their son go through all this.  So I try to be as tolerant as possible.  

Moving home would have been a difficult adjustment either way.  If I hadn't been bit by the cancer bug, I might be out of here already, or at least pretty soon.  But that's the way things happened.  And given that things did happen this way, being at home has been great.

Are you worried about the Bar Exam?

First of all, thank you for giving me another chance to rant about the bar exam!

Honestly, not in the slightest.  I really couldn't care less about that right now.  I mean, of course I care.  But I honestly do not even think about it.  I have more serious things to deal with at the moment.

That's not to say that I have no concerns about the exam.  The exam itself is pretty unique in that it tests absolutely nothing that has any impact on your aptitude or effectiveness as an attorney.  It is strictly a test to see who can cram enough junk into their head over the course of two months and then regurgitate it over the course of two days.  It's particularly useless for me given that 1) I have no plans to ever live or practice in the State of Maryland and 2) I will be practicing in an area of law that is not tested on any bar exam in the country.

So, in short, it's not a test that caters to my strengths: reading, writing, analysis, etc.  You know, the things that make a good attorney.  It's formulaic rule regurgitation.  And your performance depends primarily on whether or not you happen to remember the particular rules being tested in your fact pattern.  For example, let's say there are 100 rules to remember for a particular area of law, and everybody in the room remembers 80 of them.  Each person remembers a different collection of 80 rules, but since everyone remembers 80 rules out of 100, everybody in the room is more or less equally competent.  Now let's say the question tests rules 7, 24, 32, and 63.  Well guess who's going to pass?  The people who happen to remember rules 7, 24, 32, and 63.  Repeat this process 11 times and you have a giant lottery.  Or a critical exam that will significantly impact your legal career.  Same difference. 

Fortunately for me, the State of Maryland assures applicants that "The examination will not be designed primarily to test...memory."  Which is true, except that it's completely false.

Oh and I took the exam with a cancerous tumor bulging out of my left armpit.  Forgot about that.  I lost three days of studying right before the exam because I was siting in various hospitals getting examined, scanned, poked, prodded, and sliced.  And I didn't feel well the week of the exam.  I couldn't eat, wasn't really all there mentally, and it was tough not to be able to talk to anybody about what was going on.  I didn't want to burden anybody else with my own business.  Plus, what was I going to say?  "Hey feel my lump.  It might be cancer."  I definitely had a few of those, "Shit, I knew that last week" moments during the exam.  Perhaps this was all exam-induced, but everything continued after the exam.  I could barely drink after the exam.  That's when I really began to think something might be seriously wrong with me. 

All that said, I'm pretty confident that I passed the bar.  Nobody walks out of the bar exam feeling good, but at no point have I seriously thought, "wow, I think I failed that thing."  I mean, maybe I did.  Who knows.  But I would be pretty stunned if that happened.  So that's my official position on how I feel about the bar exam.

And, quite frankly, after the test results I received on July 30, I find it hard to think of the results I'll receive in November as "life altering."  Most people think of the bar exam as the most important test they will take in their life.  And most people are probably justified in thinking that.  But for me, the bar is like the 5th most important test I've taken in the last two months.  And I'll take a couple more important tests before I get my results.  PET scans and pathology reports take precedence right now.

It's still a really important test and I might get a little more nervous as November draws near.  But damn, perspective man.  As of now, my potential cycle 6 falls on the exact day I'm scheduled to get my bar exam results.  I can tell you that my focus right now is on one of those things and not the other.

Weekend Update has Huge Marbles

Credit where credit is due:  To Mark Dantonio, who damn near killed himself to win a football game:

Marbles, man.  You got 'em.

The Michigan State-Notre Dame game itself was entertaining as hell - it usually is - but the ending really outdid itself.  Props to the Spartans.  Hopefully both Michigan and MSU can keep it going until October 9th.

And about the clock thing: While I am familiar with the work of Spartan Bob, I don't think you can blame the refs on this one.  The clock seemed to run down a fraction of a second before the snap; I'm not sure if a play that close is ever blown dead.  Here is a video that breaks down the clock issue pretty well, and the overly-dramatic music really adds to the effect.

Of course, none of this matters if you are a Notre Dame fan, whose literally tripped over itself (seriously, Notre Dame defenders tripped over each other on Denard Robinson's 87-yard run last week and the fake field goal on Saturday.  Watch the replays.) to lose two consecutive heartbreakers.  I'm just glad all this stuff didn't happen last year, because I'm not sure I could handle roommate suicide watch on top of all the cancer-fighting duties. 

If you don't know or care what I'm talking about, just smile, nod, and move to the next section.

I forgot how much I wanted to murder people in the student section: I made it to the Michigan game this weekend thanks to the generosity of a friend, and it damn near killed me.  The game was bad enough.  But I forgot how much other people bother me sometimes.  And Michigan Stadium was filled with people.  Most of you know how I am - for example, a friend told me "you are now one year closer to the point where your crotchetiness is justified by your age" on my birthday this year, and another friend used the made-up word "old man-ish" when asked to describe me with adjectives.  So, yeah.  I have a little bit of get-off-my-lawn in me. 

But the cancer and sobriety have added to that, particularly in situations where I am surrounded by drunk idiots.  And one of those situations would be the student section at a college football game.  I also know enough about football to know that most of the things people say about football are exceptionally dumb.  So, frustrating time for me.  Combine that with the fact that Michigan's defense had the collective squirts the whole game and all of this led to me, Emily, and a couple friends heading to B-Dubs (we're at bdubs) at halftime.  This was far preferable to being at the Stadium, and also allowed me to continue my quest to become the first HFHS Oncology patient to gain weight over the course of chemotherapy*. 

*Of course I have no idea if any of this is true.  But it seems like it's not a common thing and I like making little challenges for myself.  I'm set to become the first Oncology patient to undergo two R-CHOP treatments in 13 days in October!

Recovery week over; Treatment week begins: And treatment weeks are significantly less fun.  Well, the days before treatment are relatively fun, since I feel pretty good and I have recovered from the previous treatment.  But there's always the sense of, "this is going to end very soon."

I'm really not looking forward to treatment on Thursday.  Not really sure why.  Probably because it's "chemotherapy" and not something fun.  I wouldn't say I'm afraid or worried about this one.  It seems more irritating than anything else.  As in, "I was having a very pleasant week.  Why do we have to ruin it?"  And then you realize that your week will be ruined so the cancer doesn't ruin you, and you shut up and tolerate it. 

It's a little bit easier now that I've gone through two full cycles. I know how treatment is going to go, I know roughly how I'm going to feel every day of each cycle.  But I also know that each cycle is supposed to get increasingly difficult (even though 2 seemed easier than 1, I'm not expecting that trend to continue.  If it did, cycle 5 would be a 14 day massage and I do not think cycle 5 is going to feel like a 14 day massage). 

So, content-wise, I should have a decent amount of stuff up this week.  I know I had a lull last week, but the more I have to write on, the more I'll write.  The next few weeks should be pretty interesting as I get deep into chemo and we sort out the 4 vs. 6 cycle issue.