Out to San Fran...

I'm going to San Francisco for about a week. Here's a picture of me and my new neighbor. (She's actually my lovely sister too.)

auctions, circles, fishing, and pictures...

It's become apparent that the only way people can stalk me is through my blog.  This is even though I usually leave my blinds open and if you're lucky I'll dance for you.  Alas, even the guy above me has complained that I don't keep this thing up to date enough.  So, here we go.

I am in Chicago now and will likely do anything with anybody at anytime unless I'm doing something else with someone else at that same time.  Or I just don't want to, that'll prolly give you a thumbs down too.

I've been in West Virginia for a significant portion of September enjoying my family and the general fall weather.  We went up to visit Allegheny College in Pennsylvania to visit my brother.  I hadn't ever been there nor have I met his girlfriend who he's been going out with for a while.  In four years I felt I ought to go up there and meet someone once.  Call that a success.

On the point of side-trips, I had the intention of taking a trip south to western (not west) Virginia.  The Research Farm for the American Chestnut Tree, in which I have the upmost interest, is located about 5 hours south of our house.  And (insert Tina Fey) gosh darn it-pshew pshew, I wanted to see it.  So I put together a trip where I'd do some fly fishing, some birding, and take a tour of their research farm.  Well it turns out my one to two hours of fly fishing was so enticing it took all day.  By the time I got finished with that, there wasn't any time for anything else.  But if you want to do any fly fishing in southern West Virginia, I highly recommend Second Creek in Monroe Co.  Anyhow, fly fishing worked, bird and trees didn't.  No, I still didn't catch any of those gosh darn trout.  I felt like pshewing them, but I guess that wouldn't have been fair, not like those meese.

Back in Scott Depot, there's a really cruddy piece of property and house near where I grew up.  And I use the term "cruddy" kindly.  The previous owners defaulted on the loan and thus the bank owned it and wanted to auction it off.  So, a couple of our neighbors (including my folks) wanted to buy the property, let the fire department burn the house down for practice (apparently there aren't enough legit fires), and they wanted to build a neighborhood park.  I was more excited about the burning down the house, and perhaps the destruction of the foundation afterwards.  That would be awesome.  A smile comes across my face at the thought of it.  But alas, some dang flipper came in and bought it out from under us.  Or over us.  Well she paid more than our group could.  Phthtbtbthtb... no fire.

I'll leave the circles a mystery for right now.  They're keeping me from being bored when I have to stay in the apartment, don't feel good, or just want to stay here.  Confused yet?  Yeah, I usually am too when it comes the circles.  What can I say?  It's a mystery.  If you can figure out what the heck I'm talking about, I'll give you a prize.  A good prize.

As for the pictures... I have two for the blog that I took today.  Both are from Scoville Park.

Well... apparently only one will load.  I'll try the other one another time.  It's cool.  It's got bees.  Seriously.  Bees.

Well there ya go!  I finally got the thing to work.  The bees on the right are heading to a nest under the bush to the left.  This was actually hard to get.

That's all... thanks for stalking.  Oh, and props to my most distant stalker in Uganda right now, Justin List!  Stalk him here.

Mike

talk about nothin'

Well... I got back from a long trip to WV, which was fun and all that.  Really... I haven't a whole lot to say.

Other than... "Hello Mrs. O'Sullivan!"

I pretty much explained the whole way I feel, why I feel it, how I feel it in the last blog.  I swear once I come up with something interesting to say, it'll be right up here.  Anyhow, GO SOX!

Food for neuroradiologists...

Or anybody else that needs proof that I do, in fact, have a brain in my head.  Albeit an interesting brain, but a brain nonetheless.

What follows is a series of MRI's that kindof demonstrate why I had the symptoms, then the lack of symptoms, then the recurrence of symptoms, and now on Avastin they're starting to get better.

This first image was taken on 6/9/08, which was prior to the second neurosurgery and radiosurgery.  I believe I actually posted this previously.  Remember that the white part is the veins/arteries surrounding the tumor.  That's what feeds the tumor and the cystic part, and that's bad.  The large gray part is the cystic part, which causes a large amount of pressure in my head.  The cystic part was squashing the ventricles, causing what we call "mass effect," and of course my symptoms.  We decided to do they radiosurgery to kill the tumor and the neurosurgery to drain the cyst.  Afterwards, if you've been following the blog, I felt great after all that was done.

This was my next MRI a little less than two months later.  My symptoms had returned and I was frustrated because the drain they put in didn't work anymore.  As anybody can see... there was a huge growth outside in the vasculature (arteries and veins) on the tumor itself.  The doctors didn't know whether that was a result of the tumor becoming more aggressive or an inflammatory reaction to the radiosurgery.  They hit it with a high dose of radiation and that can cause an awful lot of inflammation and swelling.  So, they didn't and I sure as heck didn't know.  So they started avastin which promised to clamp down on that vasculature either way.

Here's my latest scan, on 8/26/08 after two treatments with Avastin.  Clearly it looks better.  The white part is smaller and less defined, the cystic part is smaller, and the ventricles are looking far better, meaning there's less mass effect and my symptoms are better.

Definitely good news.

As an aside, I've been going birding, picture taking, and geocaching with my time recently.  I'll write a more light-hearted blog about that later.  In the interim, here are some pictures of some red-tailed hawks in the park east of Loyola.

All the best,

m

Lucy... you got some 'splainin' to do!

I suppose I owe you an explanation as to exactly why I went on the new drug, Avastin (bevacizumab [whatever you want to call it]).  So here's the explanation... and it's really not as exciting as you might think.

After my latest surgery I felt excellent.  They were able to put in an ommaya (type of drain), in which I could go in every week and have the pressure taken off.  I wasn't on chemotherapy.  I wasn't on steroids, I felt good, I was working out regularly, I was bored out of my mind, and things were looking good.  Hell, they were looking great.

Then, the ommaya stopped working because the drain tip (inside my brain) had become lodged in my brain itself.  They decided I didn't need my brain sucked out, so they stopped doing the drainage.  We made the decision that if my symptoms returned, they'd go back in and replace the ommaya.  Yikes... but I can deal with that.

A few weeks later the symptoms (inability to find words, bad handwriting... errr worse handwriting) returned with a vengeance.  True to form, they scheduled surgery and got an MRI.

However, the MRI didn't show the amount of swelling in the cystic part as one might think.  They discussed it in their little powwow they hold each week and thought surgery was a bad idea.  They felt that the swelling and inflammation was likely either due to the tumor itself acting up or simple inflammation from the radiosurgery they'd done a month or so earlier.  (My brain reacts slowly to radiosurgery... and everything else.)  Either way, surgery was off and they needed something to kill large numbers of blood vessels that feed the tumor and control the swelling.

Tadadedaaaa... there's just a drug for that!  It's Avastin.  Avastin is an angiogenesis inhibitor which will shrink the blood vessels.  Indeed, I just got a call from my neurosurgeon who looked at a new MRI and he said it shrank the blood vessels.  Furthermore, my symptoms have largely gone away.  Ain't science cool.

I take Avastin every 2 weeks by IV.  Again, I was most worried about nausea but fortunately that hasn't been a problem.  I don't feel great, but such is life with brain cancer.

The plan is to keep going with this until the end of October.  Then we'll take our best guess as to a) continue the avastin b) stop the avastin or c) stop the avastin and take another shot at the ommaya.  Who knows?  

Hmmm... I think that's it.

Mike