cancer

If you look real close you will see me standing behind the photographer. I'm at Axiom off 84 and Meridian road yesterday afternoon, when I remembered to call my doctor to get this tumor on my back checked.  Well I was working on my back when the tumor reminded me it needed some attention...

After waiting around for over 5 hours at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and great big bunch of buildings, it was finally time to meet Dr. Pagel. Dr. Pagel specializes in treating patients with leukemia and lymphoma and according to many sources is the best in the world...

I had arrived at 11:23 Pacific time to the Seattle Cancer Alliance, a huge complex that has everything you could possibly think of for curing, studying even probably causing cancer. At 4:45 in the "friggin" afternoon I was finally called in for my 2 PM appointment...

As I waited five hours for my two in the afternoon appointment, I did what I normally do....talk to people.  Archie and Maggie were an older couple. Archie had just turned 99 a week earlier, they had been married 77 years.  Maggie was quick to tell me she was only 15 when they were married, but it was OK back then...

When doctors want something they are relentless, especially when it comes to money and insurance.  OK, maybe not the doctors themselves so much as the administration of the hospital  My refusing Chemo was costing the hospital anywhere from twenty to one hundred thousand dollars, it's big business...

The protocol for treating Lymphoma is Chemo, stem cell transplants, radiation and of course surgery.  So I knew they would be pushing the other three since I'd already gone through the Surgery part.  Since I had gone through the various scans, they knew exactly where the tumors were, there was no mistaking it...

I was in Ryan's (Dr. Cole) office when we found out the results of the test from the Pentagon....Nope not it.  I was deflated.  I had 5 tumors and they weren't an infection. In the immortal words of Captain Jack Sparrow,  AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGG...

(Sunset from my front porch) After the operations I was in kind of a limbo state waiting for results.  I remember Dr. Burr saying to his blushing assistant, "send those to Cole."  Little did I know Dr. Cole would become an important part of my life and a buddy...

Almost three years would pass before I would notice some more bumps.  Sure enough it was back.  I knew the routine by then, so I got with Dr. Burr and this time there weren't any "Uh-Oh's." (see My Life With Cancer,  "Uh-Oh'  Part 3)  There was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life though...

When you receive radiation they tell you aside from some redness (burning skin), there shouldn't be any side effects.  Yeah bu!!. I got radiation, like 18 weeks of it, Monday through Friday, right on the tumor that was going down into my spine right at the base of my neck...