Post RFA

Howdy folks,

Just got home a couple hours ago and thought I would post some medical info for all you nerds out there. I was in the hospital from 11AM yesterday to 11Am today and most of those hours were spent sitting in bed trying to sleep, watching tv and thinking about life. As far as a medical procedure, the RFA was pretty light. They put me under but I was off nausea and pain pills by dinner last night and feel pretty good today. I just hope that it did the necessary job and that I may be on the downhill side of this thing. Here is a good link to the details of the procedure: http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=rfa

That is all for now.

RFA

Hello People,

Just giving a heads up. Heading in to get a percutaneous Radio Frequency Ablation at the UW today. Should be interesting to get that old familiar pincushion feeling back. I will update after just to let you know how it went.

C is for Cancer, D is for Dogs

Hey Folks,

I'm back again with an update on my latest efforts. Well, unfortunately the results of my latest PET scan came back positive for cancer in the liver. So it looks like, I'll be back on treatment in some combination of chemo and possibly a laproscopic radio frequency ablation (RFA) procedure. A laproscopic RFA is basically when the doc makes a small incision and inserts a probe directly to the cancer spot on the liver and tries to burn it to death. Now, I will find out soon whether or not this is in the cards, but hopefully whatever happens will happen soon. After spending the summer abroad and gearing up for the start of the school year, I am kind of ready to put this treatment stuff behind me and get started with my life again. Wishful thinking I suppose.

But it is not as though my life has been completely postponed. I was lucky to have some visitors at my home here in Seattle this past week. Jevan and Casey stopped by for a couple days and a night, before heading up to Vancouver. We got to see the premiere of Volcom's latest snowboard video and hob knob with a couple industry people as Jevan is working hard to get his latest venture with Homeschool snowboarding started. Basically, it is a Portland start up that produces snowboard and skiing outerwear. The company's founder, Danny, is cool cat from the islands of Hawaii, who has a great design aesthetic and an ideal of bringing snowboarding back to its roots before it became the honey pot of large corporations.

It was great to have them here because they brought their dog, Winston, with them. Winston is just a few months younger than Pirate and is some sort of Great Dane, possibly lab mix. Both he and Pirate became instant buds. While Jevan and Casey went to Vancouver, Winston and Pirate had the run of the house with me for the weekend. Here are some pics of our trips to the park.

Good times.

Hey folks,

Tis early Sunday morning and I wanted to share what an oddly interesting Friday I just had.

It began by starting the day without food and with orders to not engage in any physical activity whatsoever. The reason being the PET scan I was taking in the early afternoon. Not only was I on a 12-hour fast, I was on a 24-hour no carb fast. No breads or sugars. You see, sugar is the energy source for all of the cells in our body and when cells are splitting and growing rapidly, then they use lots of sugar. The PET scan shows where the sugar in my body is going. In order to learn this, the patient must lower their blood sugar before the scan. Then, also prior to the imaging, I was injected with a radioactive tracer that is encased (so to speak) in glucose. That tracer is what shows up on the image. When they give you the shot of radioactive goo, the doc retrieves a needle from a 2-inch thick, protective metal cylinder. He noted the time down to the nearest minute and then asked me to sit still, for an hour. And by sit still, they mean still. No reading, texting or talking even. Nothing that would take repetitive muscle motions. So you have time think. Close your eyes and rest and think.

On a side note, I often have trouble sitting still in a restaurant chair after a meal is finished. Ants in the pants just a little. Fortunately, I am pretty good at staying still when necessary, which is good because after sitting with the goo spreading throughout my body for an hour, I got to lie down in the machine and stay still for another hour while the technology did its thing.

Results will be out next week sometime.

That pretty much describes my Friday until about 5 o'clock. Because it was at five when I came out of sleep mode. As soon as I got home, I wolfed down a baguette w/apricot jam (thanks a lot France for getting me hooked on that). I then hit the highway for a high-speed burn down to Portland town. I was hesitant to go, but there were some people that were going to be there that I had to see. The occasion was a wedding reception for our good friends Sam and Meg. They eloped a short while back, but decided to throw a fabulous weekend celebration.

Well, I missed the dinner, but I heard that the food was spicy and the whiskey was sweet. The dinner party was then moved to a warehouse used for various events and productions. It was a concrete loading dock with a DJ, who played only cassette tapes, with a couple kegs, and a perfect 4-foot half pipe for skating. Yes, not only did I get to see and catch up with some great old friends from back in the day, but I also got to get down and funky to some late 80s/early 90s R&B, Pop and Hip Hop, and I got to skate the ramp while enjoying a frosty brew. As you can imagine, my Friday night blended into Saturday morning and the day that started off only 20 hours earlier felt like a distant memory.

Lastly, thanks to Jevan and Casey for providing a musty old basement to sleep in. Also thanks to Sam and Meg for having me. It was great to catch up with the rest of you there. And another hello and sorry I missed you to Shannon and Logan Mac.

Slam!

Oh, I just dropped another post on y'all. Except this one has no purpose but to ask if any of you out there, remember that song called, Slam by Onyx and Biohazard. O the good ole days.

Update

Yes, I am sorry to those out there that are disappointed in the lack of stahnooz posts lately. But ship man, what the fudge do you expect from a mothertrucker who just spent a summer traveling. Thanks to Sally I have been extremely fortunate to see a bit of Europe, but now that is all over and the memories will endure.

It is time for me to get back to the original purpose of this blog, which was to inform rather than to entertain. However, information from my perspective may be the entertainment of your perspective. Therefore, I will not fret about the intrinsic m0tivation of yours to read this blog, I will simply do my best to appreciate your readership.

C'est vrai. Also, I recently had a CT scan, which showed no change from my previous CT scan in June. That is good news, yet it is not definitive and I now have a subsequent PET Scan. The PET scan provides a different perspective for the docs to diagnose cancer. PET scans basically show metabolic activity in cells much like the Predator's vision shows heat tracers. CT scans show images of detailed anatomy in black and white. So, when my doc sees a couple little areas of interest on the CT scan that may be cancer, but not for sure, then he wants to see a PET scan that shows how much glucose the cells are consuming. If a cell is consuming lots of sugar, then it is likely fast growing and replicating, which is what a cancer cell does. The PET is tomorrow and I'll let you know what's up after.

Hasta madames et monsieurs

Le Retourne

Hey folks,

Just got back from Paris...and boy are my arms tired!

Many of you may remember our old friend, Stanus? You know, the foul, bowel-mouthed character who kind of saved my life (eye roll). The one who was tragically cut down in a knife fight by a man in a green mask (still at large). Well, now he is referred to as Stahnooz and he is excited to be home in Seattle. Hopefully many of you followed our exploits at Mon Ete a Paris, if not, then it's not too late.

It was a trip that gave me a lot of time to get lost, get found, reflect, envision, and get back to feeling normal both mentally and physically. As of today, my physical health is in a great place, although I did put on a few pounds of bread, cheese and wine. On a side-note, I did truly fall in love with the prosciutto and canatloupe dish.

Now it's back to eating Taco Bell, aka: Toxic Hell, or Jack in a Box, aka: Crap in Box, or Wendy's, aka: shmendy's. JK, I don't eat there, exept Taco Smells of course on road trips. That is probably something that will never change about me. No seriously, being back in Seattle I get to eat some of the best food in the world. You name it, we got it. I enjoyed dinner at an El Salvadoran restaurant called Los Tropicos Breeze with my Pop the other night. We got to a late afternoon screening of "The Other Guys," starring Will Farrel and Marky Mark and followed with Los Tropicos. Good to see him.

I'd also like to give a shout out to Sal's Paw, Denny Mack. Check out what he and Kimry did for Pirate this summer: Dog Blog. Thanks again you two. And to the rest, thanks for reading.