Some days I just don’t know why I have a good cry. I mean, I suspect the chemo in my system has a lot to do with it — I’m always more emotionally “available” after an infusion, which translates into a rapid response to whatever I am reading, listening to, or seeing. My switches flip readily, often without the usual filters I keep in place having any effect. Usually, I will have a tip off that a trigger is going to fire, but on days like this one I am often caught off-guard completely by something I would normally call a throw-away, an off-hand comment I’ve read before, perhaps, or a quote hidden deep in a piece of reporting. And then I find myself weeping, my head in my hands, just feeling the release of whatever emotions have been mixing it up biochemically with any lagging fears, doubts, or anxieties I haven’t otherwise already worked out.
It is on days like this that I really just want to focus on:
Fun Facts about my Unique Chemotherapy Experience!
December 2014 marked the beginning of my chemotherapy, and two full years are now complete. This already puts me well beyond the “statistical expectation” for continuing to kick around, allowing me to enjoy another holiday season with my family and, for better or worse, getting me closer to my goal of actually going back to work full-time at some point in the (hopefully not too distant) future. A third year on chemotherapy may have seemed like a remote option at one point, something that was a distant hope not to be taken for granted, but now is an accepted part of my ongoing plan, the “new normal” that has been often talked about, what I have simply become quite used to in my daily existence.
Me walking around Disneyland with pneumonia while celebrating the results of my most recent CT scan.
So I take a moment to sit in my gratitude for what modern medical science has afforded me. As I write this, I am one day past my infusion, feeling only moderately tired because I woke at 3:30am and was unable to get back to sleep due to the way my steroids get my brain spinning in the night. Ironically, that same effect does not seem to occur during the day, when my mental capacities tend more toward fatigue and fog as the hours progress. Chalk that incongruity up to sleep deprivation, I suppose. The good news is that the steroids will have mostly worn off by tonight and, with any luck, I’ll be back to sleeping — or at least being able to go back to sleep — mostly through the night.
And yes, I went on plenty of rides. Can’t get me enough of those perilous romps through neon storybooks.
A month or two ago, I had a discussion with my oncologist about how I felt fewer side effects from the chemo, as though it had become progressively easier for me to tolerate over the past year, and especially over recent months. It gave him pause because, he informed me, the body does not generally “learn” to process the chemotherapy drugs more efficiently and patients do not build up a tolerance to the chemicals. If that were happening, for whatever reason, it might indicate that the drugs would no longer work due to being processed out of the system too rapidly. My most recent scan, taken last month, clearly indicated that the chemotherapy is still working the same that it had been — so obviously the infusions are effective at doing what they are supposed to be doing. The observation that I am left with, then, is that most likely I am simply used to dealing with the symptoms to a greater degree. Drilling down a bit more, however, there have been a few changes made in my routine after the infusion, specifically trying to be more active even on my more difficult days. My oncologist confirmed that this approach was most likely responsible for how I am “recovering more quickly” than I had been earlier in my treatment. Continue reading The Chemo Diaries: Year 3 Begins!→
It’s hard these days to get away from the media barrage about all the perks a patient or caregiver gets out of a cancer diagnosis. Heck, with all the promised government handouts, it seems like everyone is going to want to get in on the action. But it is important to realize, in spite of all the hype to the contrary, that there is, in fact, a downside to cancer.
Why You May Want To Avoid Cancer
It’s true that easy access to handicapped parking can make life a lot easier, and a significant progression of disease is a sure-fire way to qualify for fancy license plates or those special passes you can hang from your rearview mirror. Some cancer diagnoses are practically like getting free money thanks to liberal disability benefits. But did you know that to take advantage of these special opportunities, a patient is required to spend literally hours of his or her personal time filling out paperwork? As if it weren’t bad enough dealing with the required documents and dancing through flimsy strands of red tape, the patient must also keep payroll records, IRS forms, and proof of the medical condition. Warning: if you hate paperwork and record-keeping, cancer may not be for you!
Settling in for a long winter’s nap.
While we are on the topic of busy work, it is probably important to mention other ways in which cancer can suck your time away. Treatment is time-consuming. While this well-kept secret is the shame of the medical community, it is undeniable that doctors, clinics and pharmaceutical companies have conspired to generate lots and lots of billable hours in the form of repeated scans, surgeries that require lengthy hospital stays, and infusions that can take up to ten hours at a time — and then have to be repeated over and over again. This doesn’t even touch on going in for biopsies, radiotherapy or any of the ancillary tests that might be required to “ensure a complete understanding” of a patient’s condition. Warning: if you have other things you’d rather do with your time, cancer may not be for you!Continue reading The Downside to Cancer→
This is an excerpt of my podcast, The Deep Breath. To hear the full 24 glorious minutes, including the explanation for my especially raspy voice (hint, it isn’t because of the cancer), please follow this link to my Patreon Page that hosts the podcasts. In celebration of Thanksgiving and the upcoming completion of 24 months of chemotherapy (there does seem to be a theme to the numbers here), this episode is completely free to listen to even if you are not yet one of my subscribers and patrons of this site.
http://jeffreypoehlmann.rocks Feel free to share this image as much as you’d like!
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It’s been over a week now since I spoke at the First Annual Breathe Free Walk to End Lung Cancer, which gave me a unique opportunity to connect with a few caregivers and fellow patients. I was honored to be able to offer some (non-medical) advice and reassurance, as well as to hear the heartfelt stories that I was lucky enough to have shared with me. Although I previously posted the transcript of my short speech, I’m including a video of it below, along with the opening remarks provided by the event’s beneficiaries, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society.
I am speaking at the First Annual Breathe Free Walk to End Lung Cancer sponsored by the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society. The walk is designed to raise awareness of Lung Cancer and funding for research. Following is a transcript of my brief comments to take place before the walk.
November 6, 2016 : Opening Remarks for the Breathe Free Walk to End Lung Cancer, Fort Mill, South Carolina
I’m pretty darn happy to be here. Two years ago today, I was diagnosed with inoperable metastatic adenocarcinoma, more commonly referred to under the umbrella term of Stage IV Lung Cancer. As a relatively young non-smoker who ate healthy food and led an active lifestyle, took my vitamins and got plenty of sleep, you might imagine that this diagnosis was a bit of a surprise. But if you’ve followed my story on my blog, as I know some of you have, then you also know that when I started this journey I did so with a substantial amount of faith. That same faith is shared by the organizations sponsoring this event, and by proxy, it is shared by you who have come here today. And that is faith in modern medical science.
We all have faith in lots of things. And there are different types of faith, to be certain. Spiritual faith often plays a key role in the emotional health of patients, perhaps making it possible for them to endure difficult treatments or to remind them that there is something greater of which they are an important part. Faith in our friends and family can be essential as we worry about things we may not be able to take care of on our own, even for those of us who have a hard time leaning on others. These expressions of faith, they allow us to trust in some kind of a safety net that will be there in the event that we are pushed or slip or even jump headlong. And undergoing treatment can feel any of those ways. Continue reading The Breathe Free Walk to End Lung Cancer→
After the interview with Olivia of CN2 News in South Carolina.
I was fortunate enough this morning to have reasonably good hair and a beautiful background for a quickly set-up interview in support of this weekend’s Breathe Free Walk to End Lung Cancer. The walk is taking place this Sunday afternoon, the “first annual” fundraising event co-sponsored by the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society.
If you check back on Sunday, I’ll be posting the speech that will lead off the walk. There is a chance that the local news will be back to cover it, and maybe they will end up airing a bit more of the interview we did today. Below is the one-minute clip that aired during the newscast.
https://vimeo.com/190312571
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
I look forward to leading off the First Annual Breathe Free Walk To End Lung Cancer in Fort Mill, South Carolina. It is exciting to be a part of a new awareness campaign, and I’m especially proud that my mother has organized this walk. She brought the concept to the co-sponsors earlier this year and worked with them, as well as local organizations to get the walk set up in time for Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
Join the Breathe Free Walk to End Lung Cancer
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I take the commitment of a Halloween costume seriously. When I was a kid playing with stage makeup, I made myself look like I had been beaten so badly one Halloween that people forgot I was in costume and wanted to take me to the hospital. This year, I contemplated going as my cancer diagnosis. It seemed appropriate, after all, because I had the serendipity of getting my infusion on Halloween day this year. Just seemed perfect. But then I was thinking about it and, quite frankly, cancer just isn’t as scary as it used to be.
Because nothing delivers the scares like a guy in an orange shirt.
So I went with the most frightening costume I could come up with: a candy fiend. After all, little is as horrifying as someone coming off of a sugar binge. And my paunch is perfectly highlighted by the tight-fitting shirt that I have now worn for somewhere in the range of 6 to 10 Halloweens. (What can I say, some things are simply classically insidious.)
While a few years ago the idea of a giant tumor might have been amusing to me, and the notion of cancer in general seemed like a properly frightful subject, the story around these has changed for me. Hollywood, of course, still relies on cancer as it’s go-to meme for unsettling disease requirements, but then Hollywood is creatively lazy and uses the most basic shorthand it has for easy emotional manipulation.
Staring at my budget with blurred eyes and a brain addled by a host of fun chemicals, I have to pinch myself and remind myself there are reasons that I chose the long game; there are reasons I passed over GoFundMe or GiveForward or any of the other single-goal fundraising websites my friends have used wisely to bridge specific financial gaps. I’ve seen those sites work super effectively, raising $3,000 or more in less than a week while targeting figures high enough to cover a host of potential costs ahead. For those friends, who would be “out of the woods” in a few months or so, where all their resources will be expended in a concentrated time, I think the outreach and the community reciprocity is amazing and a great testament to compassion within our social groups. But I’m not hard-wired that way, and my condition is not so neatly tied up in a closed time-frame.
Longer stretch, earning smaller frequent support goals
At this point, though it could change, I am on this merry-go-round every three weeks until I die — preferably quite a few years from now. And while I am still riding my chosen horse (a big, jet-black unicorn with a dangerously sharp silver horn, if you must know), I have a lot that I want to accomplish. I can’t manage a job for more than an hour or two most mornings, so I haven’t been traditionally employed for over two years. And yet, I have so much work to do! Like my book on living well with advanced cancer, getting on with life in spite of new limitations and finding the very best of ourselves along theway. Continue reading Support My Site in September and get My Book Free!→
Since I began chemotherapy, I’ve been maintaining a casual log of my symptoms. It’s one of those things that I will generally spare my readers, not only because it is occasionally gross, but because it really isn’t relevant. There are so many potential little side-effects, ranging from the innocuous to the downright ludicrous and back to the mildly irritable that one person’s experience will never directly relate to another’s. Certainly, there are the big ugly days that speckle themselves in there, but my log focuses on the annoyances.
Here’s why: it is a reminder of how little these things actually matter in the big picture. It also gives me a touchstone for meetings with my oncologist. We need something to talk about, after all, and then I need some reason to feel like an idiot for bitching about the balls of my feet feeling puffy or my nose being dry. Because, at the end of the day, it’s actually worse to have the flu. And I mean that, in a very practical sense, because I often compare my symptoms to being on the verge of getting the stomach flu. It can be unpleasant, but it could be much more unpleasant. Now, I will say this was not always the case. The first three months arguably had weeks peppered in that were worse than the flu I suffered through as a kid. But after my first six rounds of hardcore chemo, the veil of doom was lifted and I entered Walk in the Park Land.
