The Two Koreas

I might be the first person in history to be happy to migrate from South Korea to North Korea.

I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma on July 30.  When I hung up the phone after speaking to my doctor, I didn't know what to think.  I couldn't think, really.  I didn't know what anything meant, didn't know one type of lymphoma from any other, didn't really know what chemotherapy was.  All I knew was that I had cancer, and cancer can be fatal.  And to go from where I was just over a week earlier to "you have a potentially fatal disease,"...I'm not even sure how you deal with that.  I'm not sure how I did. 

But there have been two points during this whole ordeal that have completely shifted my thinking.  The first was my first meeting with Dr. Anderson, when I found out that I probably wasn't going to die anytime soon.  That was five days after my diagnosis, and those five days were probably the most difficult five days of my life.  With cancer, uncertainty is hell, and I knew nothing.  Although my family was with me, I met with Dr. Anderson alone.  I didn't know what the prognosis would be, but I wanted to know first.  The prognosis wasn't terrible, and after that point, I was finally able to spread the news.  But the closest I have come to "breaking down" during this whole thing was during that meeting.

The second major moment: today when Dr. Anderson walked in the room and said, "the PET Scan looks good."

***

That was all I needed to hear, but in the interest of detail, I'll elaborate.  The cancer has responded well (well for me, poorly for the cancer) to treatment.  There have been significant reductions in size and intensity.  The phrase "95% destroyed" was mentioned at some point, although I'm not sure if that's a scientific percentage or a crude way of saying "it's almost gone."  My lymph nodes are greatly reduced in size, and the second area of activity - the "pectoral node" - is completely gone.  In terms of "staging," I'm probably stage 1-A.  We're not exactly on the deck of the USS Missouri at this point.  But the cancer has definitely been Hiroshima'd.  It can stagger around for a bit if it wants, perhaps wait around for its Nagasaki (which it metaphorically will receive, more on that later).  But it doesn't have much longer.  

Since I know many of you dislike words, here are some helpful pictures:

Dr. Anderson explaining things to mother while I sit back and take pictures.  Don't mind me.  This doesn't concern me. 

Images from my early-August PET Scan.  The black and white images on the left are images from the CT Scan (part of the PET Scan) and will show the size of structures.  I don't think you need the help of my yellow circle to figure out that something is not right with my left armpit.  The color images are from the PET Scan with the radioactive tracer.  In this scan, cancer cells light up.  If it wasn't apparent before that my left armpit needed medical attention, it is now.  

And a slightly blurry picture of my PET Scan from Tuesday.  I'm not really sure how to interpret these things, except 1) my left armpit is not the size of Rhode Island and 2) it's not on fire.  It helps when you look at the two images side by side:

Scan on the right is from early August.  Scan on left is from Tuesday.  It's good to know the hair loss was worth it.  

We also discussed the 4-cycle vs. 6-cycle thing, and I am leaning heavily toward 6 cycles.  I'll probably elaborate more on this in a separate post, but it really just comes down to a "why not?" sort of thing.  The chances of relapse will be reduced if I go through 6 cycles, and I'm tolerating each cycle pretty well.  And right now, my priorities line up like this:

1. NOT HAVING TO DEAL WITH THIS SHIT AGAIN
2. Everything else

So if that means 6-cycles, so be it.  Also, I will almost definitely undergo radiation after chemotherapy, which will take approximately a month.  This is because of the size of my original tumor.  I'm not sure how that necessitates radiation, but that's the deal.  In my mind, I have been planing to deal with this through the end of the year - there was never a point at which I said, "oh I'm almost done," because this stuff teaches you never to get ahead of yourself.  So I'm fully prepared to do what needs to be done.

And really, after today, it doesn't matter.  I know that the treatment we selected was the right course of treatment (there was some consideration given to a more intense form of chemo, and that would have been even less fun, and probably unnecessary).  I know that the treatment is working.  And if a treatment works, it works.  So let's give this thing a couple more R-CHOPs, microwave it, and get on with life.

I know things are slightly more complicated than that.  And trust me, I know things can happen.  But for the first time, I actually feel that there is an end in sight.  And that's a good feeling. 

Things that always made me angry make me more angry now that I have cancer 2

[Ed. Note:  Non-cancer rant ahead.  I'm getting on my high horse for a second.  You have been warned.]

It's not terribly easy to think of things that are much worse than cancer.  But I think I can come up with one:  Being sent to prison for a crime you did not commit.

Many of you know that I was involved with the Michigan Innocence Clinic (go there and become a fan, by the way) during my time at Michigan Law.  Simply put, the Michigan Innocence Clinic represents individuals who we believe are innocent of the crime for which they are incarcerated.  I, along with several other students, spent the last year of law school working on the case of Dwayne Provience.  I've mentioned Dwayne's case several times before on the blog.  If you're interested in the full story, click here.

As you can tell from my work, I am not particularly keen on keeping individuals imprisoned for crimes they have not committed.  Just a pet peeve of mine, I guess.  But there is a rule change currently being debated by the Michigan Supreme Court that would seem to significantly increase the chances that innocent people would remain in prison without legal recourse.

In general, the proposed rule change would allow prisoners only one year after their conviction to file a particular motion - a Motion for Relief from Judgment - to contest their conviction.  As my former Professor and Innocence Clinic Co-Founder David Moran wrote in the Free Press:

The proposal flatly bars any prisoner whose conviction has been final for more than a year from filing a claim based on new evidence of innocence, unless he or she could not have found the evidence before with "due diligence."

If you're really interested in this stuff, here is video of Clinic Co-Founder, Professor Bridget McCormack testifying in front of the Michigan Supreme Court on this issue.  

On its face, the proposal sounds somewhat reasonable.  If the evidence could have been discovered by a defendant's attorney at the time of trial, it cannot be presented in a motion more than one year after conviction.

In reality, this is an absolute turd sandwich, and no, there is no better phrase to describe this rule change.  Here is something that should not come as a surprise to all of you: there are many, many terrible attorneys out there.  Contrary to popular belief, the bar exam is not a guarantee of "competency" as an attorney any more than having a left foot.  

I was lucky that I was able to spend a year and a half with the Innocence Clinic.  During my time with the Clinic, I got to do things like write motions, respond to motions, interview witnesses, conduct investigations, prepare direct and cross examinations, present oral argument in court, and so on.  You know...things that lawyers do.

But do you know how much of that stuff is "required" at most American law schools?  Zero.  You can literally graduate from most law schools in this country without actually doing or even learning how to do any of those things.  You can spend over $100,000 on an education designed to make you a competent lawyer, then another $4,000 to take a test to certify you as "competent," and never learn how to do an effing thing.  It's a travesty.  It's a sham.  It's a mockery.  It's a traveshamockery.  It's the equivalent of getting a first-year resident in a hospital who has never examined a patient.  It's the equivalent of hiring a plumber who has read tons of stories and opinions on these things called "pipes," but has never actually seen one.  And then if said plumber destroys your toilet, you have one day to fix your toilet yourself or you're just SOL.  No toilet for you.

Oh and if you're familiar with the City of Detroit at all, just ask yourself this: How good do you think the indigent defense system is in the City of Detroit?  Yeah.  That's what I thought.

So in reality, really terrible (or overworked, or overwhelmed - I'm not saying all these attorneys are incompetent because they aren't, but it really doesn't matter to the defendant in the end) attorneys don't act with "due diligence" in investigating or defending cases.  And if they don't, the new rule would bar prisoners from presenting evidence of their innocence more than one year after their conviction.  Which is a very, very short time in the legal world.

Dwayne Provience was convicted of murder in 2000.  Nine years later, it took six law students and two professors over a year to extract him from that mess, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence and the Detroit Police Department's debilitating battle with "lost-file-itis."  As Professor Moran puts it:

If the proposal had been in effect last year, all of this evidence would have been barred because [Dwayne's] prior lawyers should have found it years ago. And how, exactly, would Michigan be better off if an innocent man remained in prison, barred from presenting evidence of his innocence that his prior lawyers never bothered to find?

Professor Moran isn't the only one opposing the rule change.  Jeff Gerritt of the Free Press weighed in on Thursday, and Judge Timothy Kenny - the Judge who presided over Dwayne Provience's trial in 2000 - wrote a letter to the Michigan Supreme Court opposing the rule change in July. 

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is championing the rule change, and I guess I'm not entirely unsympathetic to her point of view.  In short, Ms. Worthy thinks that "justice requires reasonable finality," and that there are other adequate conviction reviews.  Which, I sorta get.

Except sometimes "finality" and "justice" conflict.  And there are "adequate reviews" in theory, but not in practice. And we're not arguing about these issues in magical justice fantasy world.  We're arguing about them in this world.  So I don't think her argument stands up in the face of reality.

Even more so, I'm just plain concerned that prosecutors have sacrificed their commitment to "justice" in the name of getting convictions or just plain "winning."  Yes, those are drastically different concepts.  What do I mean by this?  Well take an excerpt from the State Attorney General debate last Friday.  Said candidate David Leyton about his opponent Bill Schuette:

"You, sitting on the appellate bench, have been a soft-on-crime judge," said Leyton, the Democratic Genesee County Prosecutor.  "You have continuously ruled for murderers and rapists and child sexual predators, throwing out their convictions, vacating their sentences and throwing out confessions on technicalities." 

And he's the effing DEMOCRAT.  A Democratic prosecutor accused a Republican Court of Appeals Judge of being "soft-on-crime" and "[ruling] for murderers and rapists and child sexual predators."  As if the Judge sat there on the bench, looked at a rapist on one side, looked at a rape victim on the other side, and said, "Nice skirt.  You were asking for it.  Judgment for Defendant!"

I don't care if there's an election. I don't care how badly this guy wants to win.  I find that comment so deranged, so inaccurate, and so divorced from reality that it would be an absolute tragedy if this guy was elected.  And the real kicker comes when Leyton brags about his "95 percent conviction rate for the 20,000 cases he has handled."  As if a conviction rate is the sole measure of value as a prosecutor. 

I don't mean to impute Mr. Leyton's absurd statement to Ms. Worthy.  But I do think they are borne out of the same dangerous "prosecutor mentality."  It's all about "winning."  Admittedly, I'm all about winning too.  But that's on the field, on the ice, or in the treatment room.  If I win a game, no big deal.  And nobody's going to care about cancer's "rights."  But when a prosecutor "wins," she better be right.  Prosecutors deal with a ton of sick, depraved, and twisted individuals who deserve their fate and probably worse.  But sometimes they don't.  And anybody who is going to be in that position had better be able to recognize the difference between the two.

And while this is just my personal view, I will say this: I find it a little disturbing that the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office is pushing for this rule change after more than a year of getting smacked in the mouth repeatedly in multiple media outlets for horribly botching a couple prosecutions that eventually led to innocent prisoners being released.  In cases that never would have been able to make it into court in the first place had this rule been amended.

Nick Cheolas, Proud Progressive

Most of you know I like politics.  But most of you would probably have trouble pinning down my exact political leanings (at least based on my writing here).  Hell, I was a member of both the ACLU and the Federalist Society in law school.  That's how I prefer things.  Keeps it interesting.  If you want to label me, just call me "politically amorphous" or something.

But in Ann Arbor, I was a conservative.  I was the Tea Party over there before the Tea Party even existed.  When I told people I wasn't going to Obama's commencement address, some people reacted like I had punted their beloved puppy into their beloved grandmother's face.  During election night 2008 at a jubilant Ann Arbor bar, a friend leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, "Don't tell anybody this, but I voted to McCain."  She felt comfortable telling me this secret.  That's how hardcore I was.

Of course, my politics have always been largely the same, but like cancer, it's all relative.  And Ann Arbor is a "progressive" (don't call them liberal!) town.  And since I have never been able to figure out what "progressive" means, I was the odd man out. 

As far as I can tell - and after several years of careful study - you only need to do three things to be a progressive:

1. Put the word "social" in front of any noun, then ascribe any meaning you want to that term. (For example, "Social Justice," "Social Contract," "Social Responsibility,")
2. Describe any problem in American society using the terms "privilege," "resources" and "access."  (For example, "Due to a lack of privilege, immigrants do not have access to the same educational resources as other Americans" or "Because of their access to resources, privileged Americans have been able to exploit the poor for economic gain.") 
3. Instead of getting mad at foreigners who come here and take our jobs, get mad at foreigners who don't come here and take our jobs. 

But today, my friends, I am happy to say that I am a progressive.  Or at least on the same page as one of your overlords:

Nick Cheolas, September 28th:

This stuff isn't difficult. Wal-mart is no farmer's market, but you can walk in there and get fruits and vegetables pretty cheap....And you can pretty easily change the way you eat at home.  I mean, I guess it's difficult to eat up to the standard of some of my friends - the free-range, organic, hormone-free, no antibiotics, no steroids, vegan whatnot that I don't particularly understand.  There's nothing wrong with doing that and it's admirable and probably pretty healthy.  But I don't think it's terribly necessary.  And that's not stuff that everybody can do.  It's just not that difficult to go to the store and get a freaking cantaloupe instead of a bag of chips.

Matthew Yglesias, September 28th:

I sometimes feel like California-based foodies have produced some kind of mass hallucination around the subject of fresh vegetables. But if you poke around your local supermarket, you’ll find that they have tons and tons of big freezer full of little conveniently portioned bags of vegetables. Just like pizza or egg rolls. But healthier. Is it 100 percent as tasty as farm-fresh locally grown in-season produce? No. But it’s convenient as heck and very very inexpensive.

READERS, BOW TO YOUR NEW PROGRESSIVE LEADER!  I'm going to run with this.  Next thing you know I'll be re-tweeing everything Roger Ebert says like it's effing scripture.

Kidding aside, Yglesias (and Megan McArdle here) highlight the type of relatively minor dietary changes that I have been making/will continue to make.  It's nice to see others share my "it's really not that difficult" approach, especially since I think this is one cancer-related life change that I will make permanent.

I just lost a buck...TO MYSELF!!

Remember this girl (Emily) from the other day?  Well if she cares half as much about her students as she does about this burrito (and I know she does), the parents of kindergartners at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Virignia are in for a real treat, because Miss Emily just got a job!

As for me (since this is my blog), I really didn't know how I was going to feel about Emily not being around for the rest of my treatment, but after hearing the news, I honestly could not be happier and more excited.  And I wasn't feeling well enough to do anniversary dinner last week, so I figured a celebratory blog post would make up for that.

And in reality, this a huge boost.  Makes me want to finish this shit off and get on with things more than ever.

So congratulations Emily!  That's one huge bit of good news this week.  Hopefully I can keep the streak going.

Medical decisions based on post-procedure meals

Got the PET Scanned today, and all went well.  Was actually less irritating than I remembered it to be the first time.

Henry Ford gave me a choice of which hospital to attend, and I chose West Bloomfield over Sterling Heights and Dearborn.  I did this for a couple reasons.  First, Henry Ford West Bloomfield is absolutely beautiful and relatively new, and I went there for my first PET Scan, so I knew the whole setup and procedure.  Second, as I am no longer a student at U-M after 7 years, I am suffering through Jew withdrawals. Going to West Bloomfield helps alleviate that.  Third, related to point #2, West Bloomfield has some very good delis (I don't write the stereotypes, kids), so I'm trying to sample some of them (I've made it to Steve's Deli and Stage Deli so far.  Both have been very good).  This is a big deal when I'm finishing over 24 hours of a stupid, pre-PET Scan quasi-fast.  I guess I could have gone out to Dearborn and picked up some fine shawarma and hummus, but I'm out in Dearborn all the time.  Although it would have been nice to hit the Tuesday prime rib lunch buffet at the Pantheon Club (don't Google it) in Dearborn, even though my dad warned me that "the prime rib is not very good."  Perhaps someday Henry Ford will merge the Dearborn and West Bloomfield hospitals.  That seems like it would go over quite well. 

Anyway, enough with the completely kosher (ha!) banter that will make some way-too-sensitive pansies uneasy ("OMG he said 'Jew' on a blog!").  Everything went well today.  I already detailed the PET Scan procedure in a previous post, so I wont get into the details of the whole experience.  I did take some pictures though.  So basically, here is what happens:

You walk into a small room with very comforting signs tacked all over the place:

And you drink a cup of barium which looks like milk but is most definitely not milk:

While you get a needle shoved into your arm:

Which allows a bag of radioactive glucose to drain into you and flow throughout your body:

  

And then you hop on in this machine for a little over a half hour and you're done:

If you can tell, the machine is actually two machines - I think one does the PET Scanning and one does a couple short CT scans.  It's really a quite simple process.  In short, the "glucose" part of the radioactive glucose bonds to the cancer cells.  All cells require glucose to survive, but cancer cells are more glucose-thirsty than others.  So the glucose seeks them out first.  The "radioactive" part of that essentially makes them "light up" on the PET scan.  The contrast stuff I have in me - the barium I ingest and the radioactive isotope stuff injected into me during one of the tests - helps highlight certain structures in the body. I have no idea how much of that is exactly correct, but it's my understanding based on my incessant questioning of all the techs.  And it's probably pretty close.

So the end result is a 3D image of my body with cancerous cells illuminated.  Compare that to PET Scan #1 and you have a pretty good idea of how things are progressing on the cancer treatment front.  So, hopefully we'll know the results in a few days.

Couple other interesting things: I was chatting with the PET techs before my scan, while taking some pictures, and I mentioned that I was keeping a blog to keep people updated and also to share the rare experience of being a young cancer patient.

"You would be surprised," one of the techs said.  "About 20% of the lymphoma patients we have coming through here are around your age."

That was pretty shocking.  I'm not sure what that actual number would be, but still.  The gist of the conversation was that there were a lot more young people rolling through HFHS Oncology than I thought.  Which...shit man.  That's not cool.

The other tech mentioned that the youngest patient he ever scanned was a 7-year-old girl.  "Lymphoma?" I asked.  "No," he said.  "Something a little more serious."  I don't know what to say, really.  If there's a God out there who wants to play that game, I'm taking my ball and going home. 

But enough sad stuff.  PET Scan completed, and I hope to know more very soon.  I'm certainly hoping for the best, but I really don't even know what the "best" is.  I just have no real idea of how much "progress" we should be seeing so far or what that "progress" would even look like.  The PET Scan was sort of randomly scheduled after cycle 3 instead of cycle 4, so I'm not sure what this would reveal now that might not be there in two weeks, or what we'll know now that we wouldn't have known in two weeks or any of that stuff.  So I'll let the people who know these things sort them out.

The hope and the expectation is that things will be going well, but then again, the hope and the expectation a few months ago was that I wouldn't have an 8-cm protruberence bust out of my left armpit four days before the bar exam.  I'm not big on odds or expectations anymore.  So I'll the cards fall where they may and play the ones I'm dealt.  Just like I've been doing for the past two months. 

Mailbag Deuce: Nick searches for the host monkey at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market

Second installment in the quasi "mailbag" series.  I'm actually having a lot of fun with some of these.  So keep 'em coming.  As always, you can e-mail me at ncheolas@gmail.com, or just throw a question down in the comment section.  Two somewhat-related questions today: 

Do you ever give any thought as to what caused your lymphoma?

You mean beyond the poll I posted?  No, not really.  The whole exercise is pretty futile.  Watch your local evening news and you'll learn about all sorts of things that could cause cancer.  Chocolate, deodorant, your cell phone, your laptop, crappy food, "healthy food," too much alcohol, not enough alcohol.  I don't pay attention to that stuff.  A cell mutated and reproduced, that process repeated, and then my arm got lumpy.  I don't really see the need to launch a 9/11 commission to assign blame.

Plus, as far as "risk factors" go, I'm pretty far down the list.  I'm not the world's healthiest guy, but I mean I had a decent diet, I was relatively active, had no prior health problems, physicals had always checked out fine, and so on.  If you come down with something at 72, then I guess you can look back to the asbestos you worked with for a couple decades or a 40-year pack-a-day habit and point to those as significant risk factors.  But at 25, you can't really look back at a Twinkie you ate when you were 10 and say, "You son of a bitch Twinkie.  You gave me cancer."  It doesn't work that way.

I will admit that I was only half-joking about the 436 S. Division thing in the poll.  For those of you not fortunate enough to have entered 436 back in the day, 436 S. Division was the house I lived in Ann Arbor from 2004-2007.  When I moved in back in 2004, my roommates were a year older than me.  They graduated in 2006, and 5 new guys moved in.  As a result, I lived in the house for a year longer than any of my roommates. In a medical study, this fact would make me a unique case, and would probably put me in the "high risk" category.

But for those of you who did live with me/hang out with us/visit 436 during those years, is there any doubt that something in that place might have had cancer-causing properties?  Hell, I think the people who lived there had cancer-causing properties.  The only thing that makes me think that 436 did not cause my cancer was the fact that I have a common, widely recognized form of lymphoma, and not some unknown, never-seen-before form of cancer that doctors couldn't identify.  That seems like the form of cancer 436 would have produced.

I actually had an idea when I was in Ann Arbor a couple weeks ago.  I was with a couple friends who had lived with me in 436.  We hypothesized that if 436 had indeed caused my cancer, logic would dictate that 436 could cure my cancer.  Makes sense, right?  If the damn house mutated my shit in the first place, it could un-mutate it as well.  Or at least that's what the movie "Outbreak" tells me, and movies never lie:  

If you see this monkey roaming around 436 S. Division, e-mail me.  Don't call that phone number.  It's not mine.

So if any of you feel up to it, I'm going to launch a raid on 436 in an attempt to find that which caused my cancer, kill it, extract some fluid from it, and inject it into my armpit.  Nick 1, Cancer 0.   

Have you changed any of your habits since your diagnosis?

Related question, so I put it here.  Short answer, not really.  I'll work this into a longer post down the road, once I figure out what I'm going to change permanently and what changes are just temporary. 

But there is one thing that I will definitely focus on now more than I have before: diet.  It's one major thing that you can control that can have a major impact on your health now and in the long term.  That said, I'm not about to go all granola-vegetarian here, or start getting militant about the difference between "free range" and "cage free."  (Tangent time: I lived in Ann Arbor for 7 years.  I love the place.  But there is no doubt that there are things or types of people that are more prevalent in Ann Arbor than anywhere else within a 700 mile radius.  The prevalence of people who like things like yoga, sushi, farmer's markets, smoking hookah, running marathons, vegetarianism, and Portland is much greater in Ann Arbor.  Basically, I agree with the premise of Stuff White People Like and that's why that site was so damn successful - because it was true.  I dabble in some of these things.  I even like some of them.  But if you know me, you know these things are not "me."  I'm more comfortable in Wal-Mart than Whole Foods.  Which is why I get e-mails that tell me, "I would give up all of my possessions to see you do yoga."  So when I poke fun at people or certain things or make up phrases like "granola-vegetarian," don't take it personally.  It's all in jest). 

Anyway, I was going somewhere with this.  Obviously, anybody is going to take a closer look at their diet after a major health episode like this.  But there's another reason I'm going to focus more on my diet, and that is because the substantial amount of time I now spend in hospitals and around medical professionals has opened my eyes to just how terrible so many people treat their bodies.  And I don't mean people who use butter instead of margarine or eat regular apples instead of organic apples.  I'm talking about people who treat their bodies like complete and utter shit.  There's a huge difference.  Check out Michelle Obama for a second:

But what I am asking is that you consider reformulating your menu in pragmatic and incremental ways to create healthier versions of the foods that we all love.  That could mean substituting wheat pasta for white pasta in your regular recipes, or taking out an existing -- taking an existing dish and cutting the amount of butter or cream -- not enough to sacrifice flavor -- we all like flavor -- but just enough to make a meaningful difference in the amount of calories and fat.

This is probably good advice.  I get what the First Lady is doing and I don't have any problem with it (so long as we don't start crossing the line into legislating this sort of stuff). And she was talking to restaurant owners, not consumers, so there's a difference in message there. 

But for the love of god, I think the ginormous blobs who smoke five cigarettes as they ride their rascal to the local KFC to get a Double Down and follow it up with a trip to the liquor store to wash it down with some Mickey's Ice have bigger nutritional concerns than the battle between white and wheat pasta.  And a significant number of people I see down at the hospital every day fall into this category.  They eat complete garbage on a regular basis, they don't exercise, they smoke, they drink, they do drugs.  Doctors have told me this.  Nurses have commented on how my nice my veins are because they don't have track marks.  X-ray techs have told me, "I'm glad you're not 300 pounds like most of my patients."  And I can see it with my own eyes. 

This stuff isn't difficult. Wal-mart is no farmer's market, but you can walk in there and get fruits and vegetables pretty cheap.  You can go to Subway instead of McDonald's, or order (relative) healthier things from the McDonald's menu, or go to Wendy's once a week instead of three times.  And you can pretty easily change the way you eat at home.  I mean, I guess it's difficult to eat up to the standard of some of my friends - the free-range, organic, hormone-free, no antibiotics, no steroids, vegan whatnot that I don't particularly understand.  There's nothing wrong with doing that and it's admirable and probably pretty healthy.  But I don't think it's terribly necessary.  And that's not stuff that everybody can do.  It's just not that difficult to go to the store and get a freaking cantaloupe instead of a bag of chips. And if you repeat that enough times over the course of your life, it just might make a difference.

And then again, it might not. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people who take care of themselves, eat right, exercise, and do all the right things.  Sometimes, this stuff just happens.  There's no real explanation for it and we don't really have control over it.  So that's why I don't spend much time obsessing over what "caused" all this.  It's probably nothing I did and there's probably no good answer.

The Hierarchy: Free Ice Cream > Chemotherapy > Panchero's

[Ed Note:  Added some stuff to the site again.  On the top, I now have "About Me"and "Important Dates" pages.  Those should be self explanatory.  On the right sidebar, I added a "This Week" box - in which I will list my weekly appointments, tests, or treatments.  A little below that, I added a "Popular Posts" box, which provides links to the most "popular" posts on the site.  So if you're new to the site, or passing this blog along to somebody new, these are the places to look first.

Also, I realize I went 3 days without posting anything, which is fine because most of you are not paying money for my services here.  But I did get a lot of stuff written over the weekend, and the next couple weeks should be pretty eventful.  So tell your kids, tell your wife, and tell your husband, because I'm gonna be blogging everything up in here.]

So my revamped anti-nausea pill strategy worked about as well as Michigan's defense.  In particular, the part where nobody does anything that even resembles trying to stop the opponent.  In this case, the opponent was nausea.  And the meds repeatedly let the nausea embark on 83-yard, 8-minute TD drives.  They're going to hear about it during practice this week.  Their jobs are in jeopardy. 

And I'm also sorry to announce that my vomit-free streak ended Thursday night.  However, I'm not as upset about this as I otherwise would be.  First, I immediately felt better after throwing up, and I've felt progressively better ever since, so that was a bonus.  If that's all it takes to remedy the nausea, I might just look into inducing vomiting.

Second, while the episode ended my streak that began on St. Patty's day 2009, this experience was far more pleasant than the Panchero's-induced St. Patty's Day Massacre, which I don't think will ever be surpassed as the worst vomiting episode of my life.  Contrary to popular belief, the St. Patty's day vomitathon was NOT alcohol induced.  This was not an "I-drank-too much" vomiting spell. This was a "oh-my-god-it's-eating-its-way-out-of-my-stomach-from-the-inside-call-a-priest" type of illness.  Threw up like 8 times. Plus, multiple members of our party were battling illness that night, including Emily and I, which led to the horrible scenario of one person vomiting in the bathroom while the other person fumbled around in the dark looking for the trash can but occasionally missing and throwing up on our vomit-colored floor (seriously, the carpet in my apartment my 2L year was vomit colored.  You know what happens when you throw up on vomit colored carpet in the dark?  Neither do I because I never found the vomit).  We were dead the entire next day.  Finally, Panchero's has a reputation for giving out free food poisoning to Ann Arbor residents, and particularly law students.

The cause of the St. Patty's Day Massacre.  Makes sense, doesn't it?

So, why do I describe previous vomiting episodes in such detail?  In part because it amuses me and in part because I really wanted to use the above picture.  But also because, like everything else in cancer-land, it's all relative.  That stupid burrito destroyed me for a full 24 hours.  The post-chemo hell lasted for less than that.  And I knew it was coming.

And really, 8 hours of pretty bad nausea every two weeks?  Small price to pay.  Some people really, really struggle with chemo.  I don't consider a half day of nausea, a few hours of fatigue, and a day or so of bone pain "really struggling."  Of course, I never feel quite right.  I'm never really hungry, I don't have the energy that I used to, I'm sore or just "run down" a good portion of the time.  But you get used to that, that becomes the new normal, and then you just focus on the times you feel worse than "normal."

So onward I march.  And I'm at least (hopefully) about halfway through hell.

THE REST OF MY WEEKEND: Was not terrible.  I'm a little more "down" on a day-to-day basis, but that's natural and it's really not that big of a deal.  As long as I don't actively feel terrible, I'm fine. 

The most unfortunate part of my weekend was not being able to make it to Pittsburgh for a wedding.  Would have been a good time, but I made the right decision.  Just didn't have the drive-wedding-drive sequence in me two days after treatment.  But congrats to Mr. and Mrs. Kra...I mean Coatney. 

And props to a couple of my friends for picking me up with a pre-wedding, 6-mile morning run. 

That's Katie on the left, who, you may remember, is running in the Walt Disney World Half Marathon to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  She is keeping a blog on her progress here, and if you would like to make a donation to her cause (and my cause, really), click here.  On the far right is Ellen, who has spent time on this site extolling the virtues of Madison, Wisconsin, the "white cultured paradise."  In the middle is some drifter couple they picked up in Pittsburgh. 

THIS WEEK: Sort of potentially interesting or big-news week?  I get my PET Scanned on Tuesday and meet with Dr. Anderson on Thursday, so I suppose we'll know a good deal more about how treatment is progressing by the end of this week.  I'm not sure we'll have any firm decisions on how to proceed by the end of this week, but we're definitely moving toward that point.

I'm not sure what we're going to do going forward.  We might consult with Dr. Al-Katib again once we get the results of the PET Scan, and we might consult with a third doctor to break the "tie" so to speak. Although it's not really a "tie," as both Dr. Anderson and Dr. Al-Katib were flexible on the duration of treatment.  And it might come down to something as simple as, "you tolerated the first four cycles pretty well, so why not do six?"  Which would not be just for fun, but because the risks of cycles 5 and 6 would seem to be lower if I was not seriously struggling with cycles 1-4.

Also, I have some other content coming along, even some non-cancer stuff.  If you don't want to read it, you don't have to.  But what else are you going to do? Work?  Didn't think so.

FINALLY:  This just bugged the hell out of me, so I'm going to toss it in here.  Stephen Colbert - a comedian and host of "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central - testified before Congress last week on some immigration issues.  He testified "in character."  It is glorious.  Watch it:

Also, the dude in the glasses sitting behind Colbert:  I really believe I would enjoy punching him. 

Fortunately, Congresscritters and congressional "journalists" had enough of a sense of humor to laugh this off.  Or at least enough of a sense of reality to not declare this the moment at which Congress became a "mockery."  Or...wait, what?

Despite the fact that countless Washington reporters couldn't help but watch Stephen Colbert's Capitol Hill testimony Friday, not all were enthralled by the Comedy Central star's performance, as they expressed on Twitter.

"REALLY not sure this is funny," wrote ABC News' Rick Klein.

"Colbert is making a mockery of this hearing," said Mother Jones' David Corn.

"Colbert's testimony made a mockery of Congress," said the Washington Post's Aaron Blake.

The Hill's Mike O'Brien said, "This might be the most amazing public stunt before Congress."

National Review's Kathryn Lopez wrote that "a congressional chairman made a joke of her committee today."

House leaders also chimed in, calling the testimony an "embarrassment."

The committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., asked Colbert to leave the room at the beginning of the hearing because the comedian had no expertise in farm labor issues or immigration policy.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told "Fox News Sunday" he thought the episode was more of an embarrassment to Colbert than to the House.  But, he added, "I think it was inappropriate" that he testified. 

Are you kidding me?  If you are a member of Congress, or you cover Congress for a living, and you believe that this is the moment - Stephen Colbert's testimony - that Congress became an "embarrassment" and a "mockery," well...I don't know what to tell you.  If this doesn't say everything there is to say about the world in which these people exist - it ain't yours or mine - then I don't know what does.

And Sweet Baby Jesus in a high chair, John Conyers, do you know who else has "no expertise in farm labor issues or immigration policy?"  PRETTY MUCH EVERY DAMN MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 

A note:  "The Hill's Mike O'Brien" is a good friend of mine, and I'm pretty sure - at least I hope - that he is not a member of the "OMG this is an embarrassment to Congress!!!!" crowd.  I know he's probably none to happy to be quoted on Politico.com or to be called "Mike."  So he should probably be spared the fate of being lumped in with the rest of these assclowns until further notice.