Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Back Home!



(Getting ready to drive under a rainbow into a massive rain shower!)



(Jackie and I in front of a large geyser in Yellowstone!)



("Where the Buffalo Roam", Wyoming)



(Me in front of "Ole Faithful" at Yellowstone Park, my mellon was in the way!)



(Wyoming is beautiful!)



(Badlands National Park South Dakota)

Well, it was a much more condensed version of my previous road trip (6 days instead of a month+) but it was fun! I'm still pretty tired from driving and unpacking today so I'll keep this brief. I'm still feeling pretty good overall except for my usual back issues. Looks like I'll be getting started on the SGN-35 trial around July 20th. I still need a bone marrow biopsy done (scheduled this Friday) and to have an independent third party pathologist re-analyze my biopsied lymph nodes taken from under my arm last summer. I had to bring my doc slides I had kept from last year as the sample that was sent from Univ. of Wash. didn't have any cancer cells in it! Interestingly, this isn't uncommon in Hodgkins. If you look at a slice of a cancerous lymph node under a microscope, you'll see that there are very few cancer cells (Reed Sternberg cells) in the slice. The reason the tumors grow is your body is sending so many killer cells to kill the few cancer cells the inflammation gets out of control. My goal right now is to keep this "inflammation" to a minimum or get it to go the other way. For this reason, I've really been trying to focus on an anti-inflammatory diet. Here's a good resource for the "Wellness" diet that I'm trying to follow http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART02012/anti-inflammatory-diet. Hopefully the SGN-35 will do the heavy lifting though...

I'll try and update again when I have some more energy! Totally zonked right now...

Cheers! Chris :)

2 comments:

Rob said...

Chris,
Great to have you and Jackie back in the "D". We need to hook up soon, call me when you have a chance (get some rest first).
Rob

B. said...

The pictures are beautiful, Chris. I owe you a phone call. So glad you were able to enjoy one more trip before treatment starts. I'll be sure to give you a ring before your first treatment -- or don't hesitate to call yourself.

Have fun at the upcoming wedding!
Thinking of you, beautiful

Bekah