Offspring....A Joyful Noise!

As we prepare for the trip to Boston and commencement, anyone who knows me would understand conversations and correspondence related to planning. And I quote:

"I certainly don't need a fancy dinner anywhere.. GET ME TO FENWAY! BP, infield, walking around... I want all of it."

That's from the youngest...not the son who put up with weird knuckleballs and bad one-hoppers at his knees, and not the daughter who could keep an official scorebook during MLB play-off games. Apparently, we Chambers children have tiny baseballs in our capillaries, rather than blood cells. I'll spare you the eBay details, but on May 19, there will be a bunch of us watching the World Champions tear down the Kansas City Royals...

When the kids ask why we didn't have a lot of fancy vacations to Hawaii, or trips to foreign lands, I say things like "how many people were in the Coliseum when Roger Clemens dropped an F-bomb on the umpire and got tossed in the play-offs?..." Or "What was it like to take your Grandpa Kingston to his only Dodger World Series Game?" "Get me to FENWAY" may become a new battlecry, just like the many we enjoy on the golf course.

Medically, life isn't quite as much fun. The new drug, Erbitux, is pestering my face and upper body with sores and pimples. My voice is still weak, little Caleb Shira calls it my "quiet voice" and thinks I do well to sound like Mickey Mouse. My generally positive attitude has taken some hits lately, because I can't listen to the Fubarian Brothers pester me on the phone and yap back at them, call the people I love the most, or spend time conversing with clients and their challenges at work. At the same time, I'm getting up every morning, following doctors' orders, and seeing that the whole support team suits up every day...none of us is giving up or calling in sick....Cal Ripken, Jr. would be proud of the whole team. I know I am.

We live in a gracious world...people have been so kind. Cards, letters, prayers...and so much focus on Mark. At the same time, friends and relatives endure surgeries, their own personal challenges, and employment issues that would generally take precedence over anything I have going on. So thanks, to all of you, for putting up with my selfish behavior and approach to this Journey. I enjoy hearing how your world is affected by those around you, and love knowing that we are all survivors.

GET ME TO FENWAY!

....w h i s p e r....

I'll avoid the whining that goes with this voice thing. Suffice it to say that improvement is slow, sporadic, and inconsistent. Drives me nuts at work, where people are accustomed to hearing me laugh, ask dumb questions, challenge their answers...and give answers to others. It has been about six weeks now, they tell me it could be another two months of this stuff. If I could kick the cough, I might notice marked improvement, because I feel like I have two things going on...the cough/breathing and the larynx.

Anyway, Monday was the first day of the new regimen. I'll be in for a substantial period, normally five or six hours, every three weeks....when I take two of the chemotherapy cocktails. On the intervening weeks, I'll only be there 90 minutes, absorbing just one of them. The good news is that I feel incredibly better on "day three" this go 'round than I did on the others, and will continue to be better through the week. The bad news is that I get to do it weekly, rather than alternate. I'm going to try and work most of the day on the Mondays, go in for the infusions, and then rest on Tuesday and part of Weds...to see how that will work.

For awhile I thought that this was going to be a six week regimen, but Dr. Chang suggests I should be prepared to go through June, at least. I'll likely lose my hair--why not, I'd rather have a voice than hair--and he warned me that I might get nauseous. That has not happened, thank goodness. I'm also likely to get pimply again, like November, just not as badly. I'll keep you posted on that front. At least I'll get that really smooth skin out of the deal.

The office is holding together without me quite well. Got my new business cards for the promotion, which is fun, and people have tons of questions when I get there. I miss the social interactions that go with phone calls, and the interesting questions I get from doctors when I'm in the office more. We have some significant targets, but the busy time of the year is not yet upon us, let's hope that I get better when we really need me to.

I hope your April is off to a bang...let's remember to sing Happy Birthday to Nate on the 11th...!