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.

Le premiere

Greetings people,

Dom here from SeaTac Airport, just updating Beyond Stanus for day 1 of my European Vacation. As you may have noticed the title of the blog has changed once again, I hope that isn't too much of a strain on your auto bookmarks. Anywho, look for an alternative perspective from Sally's wonderful blog. Thanks for all your well-wishes and check back soon.

La liberté du trou d'âne

June twenty-something, 2010

Halo,

Once again, time continues to pass. It's running, it's passing. Which of course means, that when we say, "we haven't been up to much and things are fine," much indeed has happened in actuality. Don't even get me started on current events.

In regards to my personal happenings, I am pleased to be bringing forth this, long overdue update. Basically for the last two months, I have been finishing out a 4-round cycle of treatment while continuing to substitute in Seattle. The end of the school year has been marked with lots of rain but I did get the chance to return to one of my past positions and revisit the super fun students I taught.

The chemo has been annoying, but at least it is keeping things in check. Since I got on it back in April, a couple "areas of interest" have shrunken and are now on surveillance. Just in time for my highly anticipated European adventure during the next several weeks.

In case you just joined us, I am going to Paris to meet up with my dearest, Sally, who has been covering some of Amazon.com's European business affaires since mid-May. It is indeed exciting, and while I have missed her a lot, I have been lucky to be at home with the Pirate, Benny and Goose and as much time to watch the NBA playoffs and World Cup action as I could wish for.

So to sum it all up, I have just been hanging with the animals,watching sports, working and tolerating chemo. But most recently I have been back in C.O. visiting my family and friends. From here it is on to Paris, the UK, Italy and beyond. I do plan to keep the blog updated with trip news and pics, so look for dual perspectives, when Beyond Stanus, becomes: La liberté du trou d'âne (dominicdally.blogspot.com) and joins Sal's blog, Mon Ete en Paris (sallyinparis.onsugar.com).

In the meantime, I have some photos for y'all the visually munch on.

Peace 5000 G,

Dominic

Here's me fire jumping outside of Bend.

Adam at Hoodoo (I raided his computer for the photos)

My hot wife and her dad.

Classic Central Oregon sunrise.

Benicio

6/9/10

Hey Folks,

Well, it has been a fair amount of time since my last blog update. I apologize to those of you out there whom having been missing the magnificent wit that spews forth from this brain, much like the stanus used to spew forth partially digested belly material. Again I apologize, this time for the mental image. I suppose I sometimes have slightly twisted sense of story telling, twisted like the many turns and folds of the small intestine.

Why it has taken me so long to post something is probably due to the fact that I am sick and tired of thinking about, and thus writing about, the goings on of my innards. Those of you that I see regularly, know that I almost always bring up pooping during a "how are you" conversation. For that I am sorry, but sometimes I just can't help it. In fact I was gonna be damned, if I was gonna mention anything about digestion in this here blog post and what have I done, exactly what I set out not to do. I suppose that is just the magnetic charm of the stanus. It doesn't seek out the spotlight, it was just made for stardom. And what a weird pink little star it was. Oh dear, there I go again. Well, I guess it could be worse, I could have followed Suzie's advice and shown a gore picture of the stanus back in the day and truly grossed you all out. By the way congrats to Suzie and her wedding to Jesse. Great guy and a great couple you two are. For those of you who would like to check in on Sooz, she has started her own post-wedding blog: thekruegers.onsugar.com

Speaking of blogs, I would like to give a shout out to Sally's Paris blog: sallyinparis.onsugar.com
She has been posting some great pics and sharing the highs and lows of being in a foreign land.

While I am giving shout outs, here is Happy Birthday shout out to my dad. Without you I wouldn't be here pops, and I mean that on several levels of course. I'll save the mushy stuff for the belated card I will be giving you later.

Okay, I need to sign off for now and get some sleep or else I will be a walking Zombie tomorrow at school and thus run the risk of eating too many brains. It is not that I don't like brains, it is just that they are a little hard on the digestive system ,but that is story for another time on Beyond Stanus...

Hubby and Bestie...coming to Paris!...

Sadie will be here in one week and I am so excited to have someone to tool around the city with! We are also planning a little overnight getaway to Cassis. Yes, we go to the South of France for the weekend around here:)

Nick also got his tickets to Paris - June 27 to August 9. Can't wait can't wait!

I wonder how you say "yay" in French?

Bonne Chance Suzie and Jesse!

So, tomorrow's the big day - woo hoo! I am so sorry to miss it. I remember Nick and my wedding day like it was yesterday - it was pure joy. I know yours will be too! I wish you a lifetime of love and happiness and will be sending love from the City of Lights.

XOXOXO,

Sally

Elliot!

Hi all (this is Sally),

Sorry if this is repetitive for those of you on Facebook or my Paris blog, but I can't help but post a photo of Elliot. He is one week old today.

Love you, E!

Miss you Nick, friends and fur babies. Sending you love from Paris!

XOXO

5/9/10

Hello all and happy mother's day out there to all the moms, grandmas, great-grandmas, great-great grandmas, aunts, sisters, and wives. But really I should say happy mother's day to the earth. The earth, which has provided a great diversity of life where even flowers have a mother's touch. Her genetic imprint and her nurturing protection.

Congrats to Tracy, a new mom to Elliot Funk. Watch out for Unky Nick. Aunt Sally is gearing up to be the super fun aunt. Maybe Auntie Rebecca will have something to say about that. Also don't forget about wild aunt Sadie. Should be exciting to see how it all unfolds.

Another congratulations are in order to Andy Funk. Your genes have been passed on just as those of the flowers do. Which is why we'll be saying happy father's day to you in about a month.

Now, that I've said my well-wishing, I can give some news updates. The biology and flower references mentioned previously are side-effects of teaching 6th grade science. Other side-effects include headache, nausea, stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea. But those can be controlled with medicine fortunately. Work is good, keeping me busy.

This past week I've also settled into bachelor life, now that Sally has been in Denver and leaves from there to fly to Paris this evening. I am quite excited for her. As for my bachelor life, I was taken in by the Moch family last night for dinner, thank you very much. Spent a little time with LD, JH and Oscar. Mostly trying to get Pirate and myself exercise during the week. Cleaning a little less, hoarding a little more. Watching and playing a little basketball. Should be outside right now actually. It is just past noon here and an absolutely gorgeous spring Seattle day.

Well then, until next time, this is Dominikolaus signing off.

Nous allons à Paris

Hi friends and fam,

Some of you have already heard Nick and my summer plans so this post will bore you. But now that things are looking a little more certain, we thought we would make it official by posting on the blog...we're headed to Paris!

I am being temporarily transferred for work and will probably leave around May 9th. Nick will finish out the school year at Mercer and then he'll come out and meet me for July and maybe part of August as well.

There's no official "end date" but we will probably both be back home in August or September.

Needless to say, we're very excited and we can't wait to do some traveling while we're over there. And we welcome visitors so set your fare alerts!

Au revoire!

P.S. - I am starting a Paris only blog so that I can add girlie stuff like pictures of poodles and flower markets without boring the Beyond Stanus followers. If you want to follow, the address is sallyinparis.onsugar.com.

Splendidness

Sup,

It has been a while and we hope that you all are feeling splendid. As for us, things are going well. My work at Mercer Middle School here in Seattle has been keeping me quite busy. 6th graders as you can imagine, are well, sheesh. But, by golly, they sure can be fun.

You know what else is fun? A little raarr from Sam Jackson.



Yeah Sammy, RIP.

We all loved you, Samuel, but we have to get back to the fun. And speaking of fun, I get to start some more chemo on Friday! Jealous much. Okay so that kind of sucks but at least it is for a good reason, which is to not have any cancer cells grow back. Whaddya gonna do?

How about cheer up with this...




Aww, shameless.

But in all seriousness, the stars are aligning for what may be the best summer ever. I can't say much because our tickets are not punched yet, but there may be a fun little voyage.



Oh really? Yes really.

Voyages are great, just like when we made one to this little lunch spot out side of Black River, Jamaica.



And not much, beats riding on the back of 50cc through the streets of the DR.




How about a Lake Travis, Texas at sunrise?



Of course, the Orygun Coast is not just known for its salty dogs and bloody marys.




Splendid indeed. Hope you all have a wonderful evening, morning, day and so on.

What's in the sack?

March Madness

G'Day Mateys,

Long time no blog and lots of happy haps to tell y'all about. So far we've had a pleasant early spring that has included a bit of travel and a few house guests, plus some good news on the cancer front.

First, my last visit with my oncologist revealed that my CEA (tumor marker) numbers have been holding steady at normal levels for the last several months indicating that I am cancer free as well as can be determined. Therefore the plan is to undergo a few rounds of maintenance chemo in an attempt to obliterate microscopic cancer cells if they are in there. Research indicates that this type of plan following surgery has fairly high remission rates, so yay.

In more interesting news Sally and I recently hosted about 25 of our close family and friends in town for the Mercer Island Rotary Club 5K, 10K and half-marathon benefiting colon cancer awareness. Over the long weekend we had a big ol' spaghetti feed, a night of fine dining and group karaoke, the run and a pizza party. Here are some pics of the run for you all to enjoy. Thanks to all who came out and made it a blast.



Our half-marathon runners. Sads and Sal pulled Ty along, who decided to run it just the night before without having done a single training run. Yowsers.

Team members including TorKat, who both finished 3rd overall in the men's and women's 10k respectively.

Apparently, the marked course was still confusing for these two directionally challenged run/walkers.
D-swizzle showing the hops and the steeze.
J-Lau and Sammy, we see you too.
The Keyes with our youngest team member, Penelope Clover.


Hope that you all enjoyed those fine photos. The next few are from Sal's and my trip to Denver for the Funk baby shower. Another grand time mingling with the laid back country folk, where the gorgeous old west comes to life in blaze of sepia toned glory that is Denver. It was super fun to hang with Dave, Rebecca, Jonas, Eric, Sadie, Jevan, Casey, the Funks and our other Denver pals.

My special lady friend.

If more baby showers turned into parties with Sads and Sal rocking the shades, then count me in.
What what.


Rebecca, Dave, Eric y Jonas.

Tracy looking great at 8 months with Elliot (not pictured?), Rebecca and Sadie.


Well that is all for now. Stay tuned for exciting future updates, including new plants in the yard and more with Pirate, Benny and Goose. Later Skaters.

NYC Pictures

Hi friends,

I just got back from a work trip to NYC. Managed to have a little fun while we were there! Here are some pictures...

Here's a view from my hotel room (you could see the Empire State Building and the Hudson River but I wasn't a good enough photographer to get it all). We stayed at The Standard, btw, and I would highly recommend it...

Drew and Cece XOXO...

Momofuku ramen...oh yum...(and sat next to Tom Douglas randomly!)...

Work friends, Grace, Karina and Garland at The Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village...

Grace and me with the host of the Comedy Cellar show that night...

Grace H.O.V.A.! Jay Z, Madison Square Garden!

Jay Z on stage...

The boys.

Sup,

As you might imagine when battling cancer, one tends to go through a range of thoughts and emotions. I am no different in this as I've spent my time recovering from surgery contemplating new thoughts on life and feeling a bit more emotional than usual. While I know that I am on a journey that will inevitably provide many twists and turns, I have just recently decided to amp up my tough-as-nails, bad ass, tough guy, fire-eating, "crappin bigger than Billy Crystal" Jack Palance persona. And the first thing is to post this picture of my homies, Benny and Pirate.



Yeah, yeah. In yo face. What? I didn't think so sucka!

Just a short update.

Hola amigos,

Dom here with a short update for our intrepid followers. First, I want to say thanks again to all the well-wishers. Just knowing that you are following along with the events and updates makes both Sally and I feel good. And feeling good is my current goal for the near future. 2 weeks post-surgery and I am feeling rather weak. Sally has to keep reminding me to stand up straight when I am up and about, which lately has been less than the amount of time I've been spending resting on the couch. When I first got home from the hospital, I was riding a wave of euphoria from pain meds that made me feel like being active doing some house and yard work. But since I've come off the meds my energy level has seemed to dip as well. That is to be expected I suppose, but I am definitely looking forward to feeling stronger. It will be another week until the staples come out of my stomach and then I imagine an additional two weeks or so until the the open wounds close over. I've got two slits that I have to keep open so they can heal from the inside without getting infected. Perhaps I'll try and get a couple of close-ups for you gore mongers out there. Other than the wounds, the other lame issue I have is the neuropathy side effect in my fingers and toes. It is due to the chemo and is basically just a general numbness in my fingers, which makes typing this update about twice as long as it would normally take.

Of course there is usually a silver lining to everything and this recovery is no different. I have dropped about 10 pounds of fat off my body, which means that I am starting to look nice and model-skinny for my application to the 2012 "Colander" http://www.colonclub.com/colondar.html
Check it out if you get a chance and see if you think I can make the grade. That is all I have for now. TTFN.

New Development

My judgment may be slightly impaired by the pain meds, but I thought that everyone should know that I had a close to normal bowel movement this morning. Although it has been about nine months, defecating is just like riding a a bike.

Thanks for checking in folks and I'll be sure to continue bringing you the important news and events of the day.

Stay classy San Diego.

Post-Surgery

Well, I am home from the hospital and damn it feels good. I may have 17 staples in my stomach and a steady flow of diarrhea, not too mention the occasional stab of sharp pain, but I feel better than I have for quite a while.

I'd like to say thanks to all of you for your thoughts and well wishes, and it is nice to know that I have a lot of genuinely caring people in my life.

Most of you probably noticed that the title of this blog has changed. Not only did it make sense, but I hope to show you all that both Sally and I are more than just our digestive tracts, but we also have pretty cool neural, cardiovascular, muscular/skeletal, lymphatic and reproductive systems as well. As to how much we choose to delve into those specific area remains to be seen, but don't worry we'll more than likely leave the reproductive system to the good people of the porn industry. But I digress.

I've got a fair amount of surgery recovery ahead of me and hope to get in good enough shape to be a model for the 2012 Colon Club calendar or the 2012 "Colander."

Other than that, we'll continue to post pics and updates of our exciting adventures. Thanks again and take care.

Dom

Warning: Graphic Pictures

Hello,

Just a quick update to let everyone know that Nick's still doing great. He's now eating clear liquids (it's better than nothing!) and he's been cruising the halls and harrassing the nurses.

We also got to see his latest battle wound - there's a semi-gory picture below...

Goodbye Stanus!

Nick is out of surgery and everything went really well - - he's doing great! His surgeon removed 4 lesions, a lymph node and his gall bladder for good measure (there was no gall bladder involvement but if he were to have issues with it in the future, it could be hard to get to because of previous surgeries).

And...Stanus is history! Goodbye, so long, farewell...

Nick is resting right now but his doctors expect him to start standing and walking almost immediately. Keep your fingers crossed that he tolerates food quickly so he can bust out of the hospital sometime early next week.

Nick will post an update when he feels up to it. Meantime, he'll probably be up for visitors this weekend. Just give me a call and I can tell you where he is!

Love,

Sally

5:30 a.m. - wow that's early!

Hello,

Nick got his check-in time for surgery tomorrow. He checks in at 5:30 a.m. so we're thinking surgery around 7:00? That means he should be out by noon but don't get worried if you don't hear from us...in my experience, things always take longer than anticipated.

Not sure if he'll be up for visitors tomorrow - Saturday might be better if you are planning to come by the hospital. But feel free to call my cell if you want to stop by and I can let you know if it's a good time.

Lots of love and more updates to come.

Sally

Okay...another change...

Nick and I met with Dr. Yeung today (the surgeon) and they have decided to push the surgery back one week so they can get some tests done beforehand. No change in strategy or anything - just moving back a week.

We also learned a little more about what to expect:

- Surgery should last between 3-5 hours
- He'll spend around 5 days in the hospital
- Recovery takes around 6 weeks total but he should be feeling fairly normal after 2 weeks

That's the latest for now but we'll keep the updates coming.

Love,

Sally

Mellow Shredding the Rad

Adam is up in Seattle as part of his Feb. snowboard roadtrip and we spent the day in the foothills of Mt. Rainier at Crystal Mountain.
Bluebird and corduroy.

D-Swizzle getting ready to launch.

Launched.

A-Haynes, aka Method Man

Just like eating a Klondike Bar.