4/22/2011

Yikes, it’s been well over a month since my last post.  The hit-tracker that you don’t get to see tells me that people (very few people…) still check out this page.

I have excuses for my lack of posting. The past month has been a bit hectic.  I hit the floor running as soon as I returned to work with an uninterrupted schedule.  I had deadlines to meet and work to make up.  I started working out on regular basis to get this worn down body back into shape–the bald head coupled with a concave bird chest is not the smoothest look.  I started studying again, too, which is proving very difficult.   My attention span for C and S Corp taxation is about as thin as Bernie Madoff’s moral fiber.  And more than anything, keeping an up-to-date page is hard work. Producing even semi-interesting content is difficult.  I suppose my ball(s) were interesting, but for the sake of my posterity I’m hoping they’re (it) never again a topic for discussion.

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I’m reading David Foster Wallace’s latest and unfinished novel The Pale King. If you aren’t familiar with the author or his work, do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with him.  And if you want to do yourself an even bigger favor, read something he’s written. He wrote The Broom of the System, which he penned as a college student and published when he was 24 years old (NO BIG DEAL) and wrote the epic, 1,100 page Infinite Jest (which I have not read, but plan to).  He also wrote a few books worth of short stories and ton of articles for magazines like Harper’s, Esquire, and The New Yorker.

DFW hung himself before he finished The Pale King.  Before he died his editor recalls him saying, “Writing this book is like trying to carry planks of balsa wood in a wind storm.”  (I did that quote from memory, so don’t quote me..on that quote….) In it he explores the complexities of  ordinary life and boredom. He follows the lives of IRS examiners in small town Peoria, IL. DFW, it seems, finds heroism in IRS examiners–people he, by implication at least, considers to have the most boring and least rewarding jobs/lives. A professor, on the last day of the main character’s Advance Tax Strategies class, leaves his students with this: “Welcome to the world of reality–there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth–actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.”  In other words, true valor is signing up to be a cog–a single bolt–in a complex machine.  Expect no one to notice or care about you, regardless of how vital you are.

Pretty dreadful, right?  Perhaps, if it weren’t that DFW is without peer in his ability make tedium and despair a wellspring of life and nuance.  I’m eager to see how it ends, considering there is no ending, and to continue my journey through the catacombs of obscurity.

Anyway, I gotta get back to studying for the tax section of the CPA exam.

3/13/2011

1.)  Here’s an argument I’ve been making for a long time: we need to pay teachers more.  In his op-ed, Nick Kristof argues that students’ lifetime earnings increase exponentially when they are exposed to better teachers.  For schools to get better teachers they need to attract them by offering more attractive salaries to the best and brightest.

For anyone who didn’t totally despise school, I think it’s safe to say we all had a handful of teachers who shaped us into the people we are today.  For me it was my 5th grade teacher, Ms. Neal, who taught me to balance a check book; my 9th grade geometry teacher, Mr. Farmer, who taught me to just do it; and Mr. Holden, my high school basketball coach, who made me realize that I wasn’t as cool as I thought I was.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

2.)  I typically don’t read the poetry in the New Yorker.  Even I find it a little over the top.  But for whatever reason I decided to read one of the poems this week and I really enjoyed this piece by Stephen Dunn, entitled “The Imagined.”

I get lucky every now and then but I am certainly no expert on love.  Unearthing the meaning or explaining the complexity of poems is, like most things, beyond my capabilities.  But take a quick read and see what you think.  You probably won’t want to talk about it…

http://poemhunter.blogspot.com/2011/03/imagined.html

(Editorial note:  The New Yorker has this poem locked, so only paying subscribers can read it on their website.  I’m linking here to a random person’s blog that has it posted.  I’m not sure of the legality of this, but it is clearly cited and attributed to the New Yorker magazine.)

3/12/2011

It seems as if just yesterday the nation was rapt by the images of a black man becoming the leader of the free world.  The promise of hope and a better tomorrow hung thick in the air that cold January morning two years ago.  But after the inauguration balls ended, the red carpets were rolled up, and the champagne bottles emptied, two devastatingly costly wars continued to rage, a lackluster health care bill passed, rich people got tax cuts, and the Middle East caught on fire.  And here we are again, less than a year away from campaign season.

The paucity of serious GOP candidates readying to take on President Obama is, in equal parts, ironic and unsettling.  The president receives a daily salvo of attacks from detractors on both the right and the left.  To republicans, he’s a socialist pig, hell-bent on bankrupting the country and “spreading the wealth around.”  To liberals, he’s a diffident jellyfish—too spineless to stand up for the progressive agenda and too timid to play hardball with the right.  Perhaps the weight of the presidential crown is causing it to fall over his ears.

It is interesting, then, that the field for potential GOP presidential candidates is so wide open.  During the latest CPAC convention—a mindless, yet prominent, conservative talking point filled hoedown, teeming with some of the most ignorant rhetoric you can imagine—Ron Paul won the straw poll with 30% of the votes.  The only other household names that garnished votes were Mitt Romney at 23% and Newt Gingrich at 5%.  The problem with these men, however, is that they are unelectable in a national race.  Ron Paul, despite his good intentions and genuine intellect, is too much of a strict constructionist and calls for draconian cuts to the government.  This will not bode well with the general electorate.  In his home state of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney drew the blueprint for what became known to the right as “Obamacare.”  Any indication of support for the health care bill is anathema to republicans.  And as for Newt, well, he’s just an angry and hateful old man.

This lack of leadership within the GOP has created an environment were the issues are shaping the candidate rather than one where a candidate shapes the issues.  Since President Obama’s inauguration, the default position for republicans is the opposite side of whatever position he takes.  But when the right developed this strategy, they failed to discount the fact that Obama is exceedingly moderate and pragmatic.

When the president called for a thoughtful discussion to fix the ailing healthcare system, republicans attacked him for overreaching and for being, among other nonsensical things, the spawn of Hitler.  The system that left 44 million people uninsured and allowed insurance companies to drop their customers when they became ill suddenly was just.  Now, the default republican position is to NOT be serious about solving the healthcare problem. When Obama considered allowing the tax break to expire for the top two percent of wage earners, republicans cast him as a socialist aiming to hurt small businesses.   So despite their ongoing rhetoric, the default republican position is to NOT be serious about deficit reduction.  Obama was met with recalcitrance when in 2008 he continued the bailouts and initiated the Recovery Act.  True to form, republicans had to oppose, so the default republican position is to NOT be serious about boosting our economy.  When Obama supported federal funding of stem cell research and called for a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, republicans nearly took to the streets in opposition.  The default republican position is to NOT be serious about tackling pressing social issues.

When a political party chooses to not take serious positions on serious issues, they are left with unserious candidates.  This is the quagmire the GOP finds itself in.  The few serious republican officials, mostly the ones no one has ever heard of, dare not step foot in this poisonous field.  With luck, these few serious republicans will emerge and give voice to sensible opposition.  The easier route, however, may be to wait until 2016 when an amicable and smart, albeit embattled, incumbent is not up for reelection.

I imagine that President Obama is sleeping well these days, for he is a serious man.  Queue Donald Trump.

3/5/2011

And just like that, it’s over.

This day two months ago I was preparing for what could have been my darkest hour—a pending surgery, the prospect of chemo, and a long drawn out battle with cancer. This day two months ago I was diffident and sulky, wondering what I had done to deserve this.

To be sure, the road to today hasn’t been without its bumps, twists, and turns. Losing a ball, the taste of alkaline metals seeping into your mouth, and having to judge food not by how good it tastes but my how bad it may taste coming up can whither the strongest will.  I found, however, that these adversities may have temporarily weakened my spirit, but forever strengthened my resolve.

On February 7^th I started my one cycle of chemotherapy. That day I joined the denizens of the infusion ward at the Holy Cross Cancer Center and watched Sportscenter reruns and read as the nurses fed me intravenous chemo. For all but one of my seven sessions my mom sat next to me for hours, seemingly content reading cooking magazines, playing me (and winning) in Words With Friends, and at times doing nothing but sitting and waiting. I’d always say I was fine and that she should take off and go run errands or something. She never took me up on the offer.

For the most part, the chemotherapy was uneventful. Like I’ve said, I only had one cycle, so the side effects proved very minimal. A curbed appetite, a little irritability because of the steroid they’d prep me with, and, just one night, a case of the fever and chills. It wasn’t until this last Wednesday when my hair fell out that anyone would have known I was getting treatments. According to the girls at work my bald head is sexy, so I’m rocking it with as much confidence as I can muster. But lets just say I’m looking forward to the day the old follicles decide to sprout hair again. The bald head really only works for two types of guys: guys with money and NBA players. I’m a poor accountant.

A common question people ask me is whether this is “scary”. I always find this a tough question to answer. Is it scary, as in, did I ever think I was going to die? Absolutely not. Is it scary to think about what it will be like to live as someone who had cancer? Yes, and for a number of reasons. Similar to what I read on other people’s blogs, I always wake up with the creeping sensation that today just might be the day the cancer comes back.  Secondly, I’m indebted to all those who stood by me and had a genuine concern for my wellbeing—I could not ask for more supportive family members, friends, and co-workers. I also carry the burden of having to live up to the promises I made with the world in return for tomorrow being a better day.

Lastly, what’s most humbling about this experience is how prosaic and, unfortunately, typical it is. It is near impossible to feel sorry for myself when nearly every person I meet has a story involving themselves or a loved one who faced a similar challenge, but to an exponential degree. The world is a big place with a lot of people facing a ton of shit. Cancer is a hell of a disease, and one where a lot of people aren’t as fortunate to have an outcome like mine. But like my boy Dave Matthews says in his song Little Red Bird, “It adds comfort to count the battles won even if the war is lost.”

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Two things: 1) I’m still knocking on this wooden desk after writing that first line. 2) I’m probably not going to post about this cancer crap anymore, so expect subsequent posts similar to those made around November. Yes.

2/17/2010

Don’t worry, I’m not dead.  I just figured I’d save posting until AFTER the chemo.  One more treatment on Monday, Feb 21.  ‘Til then.

Side note:  if you have a little spare time check out last week’s New Yorker and read the profile on Paul Haggis, a prominent Scientology defector.  It’s a fairly jarring account of the “religion” and is sure to make you glad you aren’t a celebrity.  Also, it’s freakin’ long and you’ll feel great about yourself after you read a nearly thirty page magazine article.  Try to get a print copy, or else your retinas will detach trying to read this on a computer screen.  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright

2/4/2011

So just a quick update.  I’m starting my treatment on Monday, February 7th.  And I am to report to the infusion center at 10am sharp!  I have a consultation tomorrow (technically today) at 9am to ask any final questions and to get a schedule for the next few weeks.  Seems as though it will be four hours on Monday through Friday then two hours the following two Mondays.  Piece of cake if you ask me.

Also, something cool happened today that I’d like to share.  I “follow” a few celebrities, athletes, and news anchors on Twitter and today Tom Green tweeted me back after I tweeted him.  My tweet to him was this: http://twitter.com/tab3321/status/33234423470104576.  A few minutes later he replied with this: http://twitter.com/tomgreenlive/status/33238710820536320.  Pretty nifty if you ask me.  I’m basically a celebrity now.

1/29/2011

So I’m officially calling this “oncology week”.  This past Tuesday and Thursday I met with cancer doctors—oncologists—and got a pretty good idea of what lies ahead.  On Tuesday I met with a doctor and he performed a tumor marker test and looked over my CT and bone scan results.  He explained to my parents and me that there are three possible treatment methods:  observation, surgery, and adjuvant chemotherapy.  Considering the type and aggressiveness of my cancer, he suggested I follow the chemo path.

This was basically all we got out of him.  The doctor seemed very pleasant and I don’t question his acumen.  But I feel, and I know my parents are on the same page as me on this one, that we want to deal with someone more professional and forthcoming.  The waiting room’s pea-green paint job and oscillating wall-mounted fan, the doctor’s dress shirt that could have been buttoned up one more button, and his general casualness didn’t bode well with us.

On Thursday, however, I think we met our man. This doctor works in a cancer center and his waiting room is replete with couches, tables, good magazines, and a “patient library”.  This doctor read my test results and took the CDs (the CDs of my scans) to look them over himself, ensuring the accuracy of the radiologist’s work.  He sat down with us, drew diagrams, and fielded all the questions we could conjure up– a perfect stew of professionalism and light-heartedness.

So what exactly is happening?  Well, as I mentioned above, there are three treatment options.  And all three options have an ultimate cure rate of 98%.  The first treatment option is observation.  As its name implies, one observes their health for the foreseeable future.  This entails having CT scans and tumor marker readings every two months, and keeping your fingers crossed nothing pops up.  This option carries a 20% chance that the cancer will come back. The most common place for the cancer to reoccur is in the lymph nodes or the lungs. The second option is surgery, or more specifically, a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (RPLND).  Testicular cancer typically spreads through the lymph nodes located behind the major organs in the belly (the retroperitoneal lymph nodes) and spreads upward toward the lungs and brain.  This surgery removes these lymph nodes, making it virtually impossible for it to spread.  The crux, however, is that this surgery is highly delicate and requires serious expertise.  There are countless nerves surrounding this part of your body and if the surgeon isn’t careful, the effects are consequential.  Among them: retrograde ejaculation.  This is where one ejaculates and the sperm ends up in the bladder.  If having one ball weren’t enough, this would certainly kill my chances of making it big in the porn industry.  Lastly, there’s adjuvant chemotherapy.   The idea behind adjuvant chemotherapy is that the chemo drugs are more effective after the primary tumor is removed.  And as I mentioned in previous posts, the primary tumor (the cancerous testicle) has been removed.  Chemotherapy reduces the chances of a reoccurrence to roughly 3%.

Chemotherapy regimens are referred to in acronym form.  The type of chemo cocktail I will have is BEP: Bleomycin, Etoposide, and Cisplatin (which contains platinum complexes, hence the “P” in BEP).   I will need one or two cycles.  A cycle consists of one week of treatment (Monday through Friday, roughly 4 hours a day), then a treatment session the following two Mondays.  So seven total treatments in a three-week period.

Anyway, I feel this post has been too wonky so I dare not be a bore any longer.  I’ll post more later…

1/26/2011

Boredom.  I can’t even draw stick figures.

1/19/2011

Fear no longer! My absence may have led some (read: no one, really) to believe I met my demise two Thursdays ago.  But the opposite is, in fact, true.  The anesthetic was measured, the nurses were attentive, and the doctor’s hand proved steady.  I’m back on my feet, back at work, and hanging out.  The way I see it, the sack is half full.

Anyway, let me not get too ahead of myself.  I’ll try to detail the events of the past two weeks, starting with being wheeled into the operating room…

So there I was, lying on a gurney in the operating room with nothing but socks (fully equipped with the cool rubber traction strips), a backless robe, and a shower cap.  A few young looking doctors/interns shuffled in and out of the room and each shifted around medical instruments, calling out names like holding forceps, clamp, and, most unsettling, blade.

To break the ice I looked at one of the shaggy, longhaired doctors and inquired, “So what CD will you guys be listening to today?”  He gave me a quick look, smiled and said, “What do you want to hear?”  I quipped, “You look like an Eagles greatest hits dude.”  Then without much notice, and most likely to shut me up, a mask covered my face and after three big inhales I was out.

Anesthesia is a time warp, a free pass to another spot on the time continuum.  It is the fast-forward in life you wish you could summon at will.  It is the reprieve that makes modern medicine possible. It is one of science’s greatest achievements.

A moment later I woke up in the recovery room having been shaven, cut open, sutured, re-clothed (I’m still trying to figure out how they got that jock strap on me), and numb.  A few moments after that my parents walked in.  My mom says I looked dispirited and contemplative.  I was really just trying to act composed, trying hard to maintain my stoical façade.

The doctor informed me that the surgery went well and that the testicle didn’t have observable lesions and didn’t appear overly metastatic.  When I received the pathology report the following Monday I received good and bad news.  The good news:  the cancer had not spread to the epidiymis or the cord.  The bad news:  it was a bad form of cancer called nonsemenoma mixed germ cell.  I needed scans, and lots of them.  And, in a few weeks, I may need chemotherapy.

After a day of bed rest and a few others filled with nothing but reading and watching movies, my parents granted me medial leave.  I was freed from my confine and allowed to meet the insalubrious world that inhabited all space beyond the walls of my makeshift infirmary.  During my first trip out of the house I went down to the sneaker store with my mom.  I bought myself a pair of new Nikes.  Behind the register hung a black Livestrong shirt, the yellow circle emblem staring at me.  Very appropriate placement, I thought.

Last week I completed the series of scans.  Tuesday I had the bone scan and on Wednesday the CT scans of my brain, chest, abdomen, and pelvis.  Over the two days I had barium sulfate, iodine, and radionuclide flood my veins and Gama rays pierce my body, all aiding in the search for malignant growths.  Now, these diagnostic centers prepare written reports and send the results to the doctor.  But they also provide the patient with a CD of the study.  So, naturally, I popped it in my computer to take a look.  From experience, I warn all who get one of these CDs to never do what I did.  I googled “bone scan + cancer” and “CT Scan + cancer” and browsed the images.  After three minutes of training I declared myself a board certified radiologist.  Certain my impressions were nothing but accurate, I began preparing a mental will, for I clearly had advanced stages of lung, thyroid, and pancreatic cancer.  Red Foxx knows how I felt—this was the big one.  (By the way, Sis, I’m leaving you everything.  The Xbox isn’t technically mine, but the guy I borrowed it from is never going to ask for it back.)

Fortunately my predictions proved wrong.  Yesterday I found out that all my scans came back negative.  No lung, thyroid, or pancreatic cancer.  But just because these tests came back negative does not mean I’m in the clear.  There is no evidence of definitive tumors, but there may be a few lose, radical cells floating around in my body, waiting to grab hold of the nearest tissue.  I have appointments to see a number of oncologists next week.    If I need chemotherapy it will, most likely, be tailored to prevent a reoccurrence rather than to cure.  I will spend a majority of my free time over the next week learning about this type of treatment and readying myself to ask the doctors all the appropriate questions.

I wrote in an earlier post that this road would be long and that I’d be on it for a while.  Well, here comes another turn.

1/4/2011 – Happy New Year

To my anonymous two hits a day, Happy New Year.  I thought I’d take a moment to give an update.

Today I visited my dad’s urologist for a second opinion.  I brought along the results from my ultra-sound, MRI, and tumor-marker blood tests.  He read the reports, did a quick physical examination, and listened to my story.

He assured me that I have been properly guided, and that up to this point I have followed the proper protocol.  This Thursday, January 6^th, I will have a left inguinal orchiectomy.

I am very ready to have this procedure.  Now that is probably a weird thing to hear and, trust me, it’s a weird thing to say.  But every single day that thing is in me, the stronger and more metastasized the cancer becomes.  Every single day the chances increase that the cancer is spreading to my lymph nodes, abdomen, and lungs.

As much as I would never wish this upon anyone, I’m comforted to know that I will not be alone in my one-ballness.  As one can imagine, I have tirelessly researched this sort of cancer.  Although Lance Armstrong may be the most famous, perhaps infamous, one baller, there are many kindred spirits out there:  comedian Tom Green; baseball players Mike Lowell and Jon Kruck; and football player, and namesake of park near my parent’s house in Pembroke Pines, Brian Picollo.  Also, though not due to cancer, it is believed that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tupac have/had one ball.  But I’m sure Maria Shriver’s lips are sealed and I’m not about to unearth Tupac’s corpse.

I am also indescribably pleased with the sincere support I’ve received from everyone I’ve told.  I’ve been surprisingly unembarrassed by this and have found that talking about it with people makes the situation much more bearable.  The casualness about the surgery stems from the fact that the effects are, in almost all cases, very minimal.  As my boss put it, “That’s why you got a spare!”  The true fright and uneasiness comes from what lies ahead.  When I receive the pathology report next week  I’ll know the severity of the cancer and the likeliness that it has spread.  I’ll then undergo a number of scans and tests to pinpoint where it has, or, more optimistically, has not spread.

When I find myself fretting too much or when I have a fleeting moment of self pity, I force my self to put my situation into perspective.  And the angles of perspective are countless.  I may think to myself, Wow, this is bad.  But what’s worse?  I could have been one of those forty-five people blown up by grenades last week in that Pakistani marketplace.  If I find that too existential, then I can answer the same question with:  well, it’d be worse if I didn’t have the unwavering support of my parents.

Anyway, I will post again after my surgery.  With luck I’ll get some good meds and won’t be able to form a cohesive sentence until early next week.

This, too, shall pass.