Bulldozer00's Blog

As my astonishingly stunning, six-year, cancer-versary approaches, I decided to whip up a simple timeline of what has happened over those joyously wonderful, but radically different, years.

To underemphasize the long gone past and emphasize recent events, there’s a huge, non-linear compression of time on the boring left side of the X-axis. The segment in the timeline after the “I’m Very Scared” admission to the “Now” declaration has taken place over the last 4 -6 weeks.

My previous post described in detail what made me start feeling very (feckin’) scared. It was the Emperor’s formidable power to insidiously inject ominous thoughts into my consciousness whenever he wants. I often fancied I was on final descent and destined for a world of pain in the near future. The steroids then kicked in and a quantum leap in my mental/physical health magically occurred. Hallelujer!

The cherry on top of my Lazarus-like experience was the MRI scan follow up with my neurosurgeon, which happened today. Good News: There are no new growths and no progression of existing tumors. Bad news: Those pesky, relentless, chronic, hemorrhaging, lesions are still working their asses off for the Emperor Of All Maladies.

Something doesn’t feel right. A familiar group of brain-tumor-sourced symptoms have joined hands, synchronized with one another, and ganged up on me yet again as expected when you have a terminal cancer diagnosis. My DHS (Daily Health Score) has been a big “goose egg” for 4 days in a row and I haven’t taken a shower in the last 3 of those low motion days. Whenever I get up and start walking, my entire right leg tightens, gets fatigued, crampy, numb, and vibrationally “hot”. In addition to the leg symptoms, my ears are “popping” often, I’m “woozy” all the time, and the ringing in my head has stepped up its volume. Yes, it feels like all those things are happening at the same time.

Because of the well-known cancer woes I just whined about above, I sent this S.O.S. message to my neurosurgeon’s office:

I will update this post when I hear back from the doctor’s office. In the meantime, I have my 46th Opdivo immunotherapy infusion today at 2. My goal for today is to take a shower today before going to the infusion. Quite a lofty goal, no?

UPDATE Jan 27, 2022: I started the steroid regimen and my MRI has been moved up a week. 👍

I was diagnosed with terminal stage 4 cancer in 2016. Since then, I’ve lost a cousin the same age as me, my father, two cats, and now, just this morning, our beloved son, Morrie. Morrie was diagnosed in February with tumors in his lungs and prostate put there by the fucking Emperor Of All Maladies. Until about a week ago, his health was gradually declining. The Emperor then abruptly decided to speed up the process and take him away from us. That FUCKING FUCKER!

Here is the last picture I took of our sweet, sweet, labradoodle, Morrie.

We were at the vet’s this morning waiting for the doctor to come in and start the gut-wrenching farewell process when our dear Morrie gently put his paw on Mary’s forearm. Upon seeing this, a deeply disturbing shiver ran up my spine and I popped up to take the last picture of the greatest joy in our lives. Then, I spontaneously lost it and started crying my eyes out at the impending reality of losing the loving companionship from such a beautiful creature.

I’m humbled and forever grateful to have been gifted our beautiful boy. RIP, dear, dear, dear, dear, Morrie.

I had my tri-monthly brain MRI scan last week. I scored 2 “goods” to the Emperor’s 1 “bad“.

The words “chronic hemorrhage” sound disturbingly like my death is imminent, courtesy of the sword of Damocles. The saving grace is that it’s not the first time those morbid words have appeared in one of my MRI reports. The initial shock and fear have worn off. Instead of shitting my pants, I now just say “meh” whenever I see those dastardly zingers, which is always, because they seem to appear in every MRI report. According to those reports the hemorrhaging never stops. But it must stop sometime, no? Wouldn’t my brain suffocate in a pool of blood? I guess not, because I’m still here.

At least the hemorrhaging is only chronic, not acute, and it’s only localized to each radioactive tumor site. It’s not a diffuse, “intracranial” hemorrhage, which I think would render me tits up in no time flat. It seems like there’s a never-ending, bloody war of attrition being waged at each of the tumor battle sites between cancer cells, radioactive cells, Opdivo, and healthy cells. The hemorrhaging blood is a byproduct of this nasty, multi-party, conflict taking place inside of my thick skull.

Since how I physically feel changes frequently (sometimes even intra-daily), the ebbing and flowing “war of attrition” metaphor could be the reason for the large swings. Right now, at the moment of writing this post, I’m feeling an elevated sense of “global wooziness“. It’s not like dizzy, it’s not lightheadedness, it’s somewhere in between. It’s not like drunk, it’s not like stoned, it’s somewhere in between. When I turn my head fast, it feels like there’s a time delay between the physical head turn and when my attention catches up to where my head gets finally positioned. They’re out of synch, lol.

Along with the global wooziness infiltrating my consciousness, there’s an increased level of ringing in my ears; and my feet and calves are so numb that I can feel them vibrating through my socks. The good thing is that the vibrations are masking the peripheral nerve pain in my feet that coexists with the numbness.

All or some of these side effects from the war of attrition going on in my head can subside or escalate at any time. Sustained physical activity that increases my heart rate, like walking or vigorous stretching, magnifies the symptoms at least temporarily. It is what it is and I’m dealing with it delightfully.

Happy thanksgiving. Gobble gobble!