summary of medical condition for new people to the blog

Since there may be a lot of people out there who have not been to the site before or it's been a long time, this first one will be a recap of what happened since that fateful day on February 2, 2009. It all started at my office on Monday morning when I started getting some numbness in my left hand and started dropping instruments, which isn't a good thing when your a dentist. Within an hour of that I started walking into things, like walls and desks. I ended up at the hospital, where they took some scans of my head and found three masses, the largest was a size of a golf ball which was just under the skull, and a medium and a small one deeper within the brain. I had surgery on February 6, to remove the mass just under the skull, which went very well, but unfortunately, conventional surgery could not reach the other two without causing severe brain damage, which probably no one would know the difference based on me being me. Also the diagnosis could not have been worse, it is the most deadliest brain cancer and was at the most advanced stages. The surgeon gave me 12 to 18 months, but my response was bull shit, you can't get rid of made that easy. He obviously didn't know who he was dealing with. The guy was an excellent surgeon, but never gave me any hope, which is why I nicknamed him Dr. Doom and have not seen him since, because he could suck the energy out of your body with his comments.

I was still able to walk after getting out of hospital but my left arm was little weak, but you couldn't tell that anything was wrong. In March and April, I had chemotherapy and radiation therapy which actually did not help at all, in fact the two deeper tumors got larger. In the meantime I was in constant contact with a hospital in Cleveland that had a new study on a surgical procedure that could get to the deeper tumors in my brain, but I had to meet certain qualifications. When I finally met the qualifications, I found out that the study was closed. I thought I got a good break when they called me back and said someone backed out so so I was in. This was supposed to be a very safe procedure with little side effects, but of course I screwed that up by becoming totally paralyzed on my left side even though it was less than a 5% chance of anything like this happening. They are still not sure what happened, but the surgeon thought that everything would come back within two months, obviously he was wrong.

I was going through physical therapy and occupational therapy until the end of October, but they have stopped that because they said there was no progress. So as far as I go, I do what I can to stay strong on my own with my own exercise program and aqua therapy. I try to walk as often as possible with the aid of a cane, since I'm not a big fan of sitting in a wheelchair, even though it is a pretty comfy chair.

As far as the cancer goes, it has been stable since April, which according to the radiation oncologist is extremely rare for the type of cancer I have and the stage it was in. He said if you can get by three months without any growth that that is pretty good, and I've gone nine months and that's without any chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Just relying on willpower, diet and vitamins.

As usual, I'm always in good spirits, and personality wise, and sense of humor have not changed a bit, it is just a temporary lifestyle change.

So this is the first of my weekly blogs for 2010, look for the next one within seven days. If you want more details and stories, please check the archives, and if you have any comments, I'd like to hear them or in this case, read them.

pogo