Settled In....

I planted an apple tree in my backyard when I first bought the place and it seems the squirrels in the neighborhood are fattening up for the winter from it's fruit!

Well, I think I'm finally settled into my house. I added the final pieces today finding a dining table and chairs at the Salvation Army to go along with my other stuff I've collected over the years and have been keeping at my Mom's place. It's really nice to be back in my old crib! It's really nice to have Chili back too and I think she likes it here. We went across the street to this huge park, took her off the leash and she was running around like crazy :D Everything is pretty much the same around here except my neighborhood seems to have gotten younger. When I first bought the place, there were quite a few elderly people on the street. Now it seems like they've been replaced by mostly gen x folks like myself and maybe even some of the gen y crowd.


Chili seems pretty comfortable in my new (old) digs in Fashionable Ferndale.


I picked up the the kitchen table and chairs at the resale shop today. I bought this house 12-13 years ago and with a lot of work and help (mostly from my stepfather Rich) completely gutted and remodeled it from the inside out. Something to be proud of I guess...


My buddy Rob and I built the maple kitchen cabinet doors down in his basement in Dearborn. The counter top on the right I built over my washer and dryer (the cabinet lifts up and they're underneath) as there's no basement in the house.

Now that I've gotten most of my projects taken care of like changing faucets, toilet seats etc. I can concentrate on enjoying some golf and getting to work on my Bimmer. I found some nice replacement leather Recaro seats at this guys shop down in the hood. I wanted to take some pictures of this street where this guy has his shop but unfortunately I forgot my camera. If you looked at one picture of this street and another picture taken from a street in war torn Iraq or Afghanistan you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. There are piles of broken concrete where there used to be a house, another completely burned down house with just the shell left and vacant lots overrun with tall weeds and wild trees. There was one house however that was still standing and there were actually people living there, actually quite a few people the last time I went (I've been over there twice). It was funny, the day I went to pick up the seats, the people that lived at the house had a homemade karoake machine setup on their front lawn except instead of singing songs, they had a beat in the background and were making up their own raps. It was like 2 in the afternoon on a Friday and everyone was drinking 40's and cutting loose. I asked the guy that owns the shop (Louie) if he ever has any trouble and he said (to my suprise) "never". He's been collecting old BMW parts at this shop for 23 years... He also has this big ass Rottweiler that lives outside where all the old cars are parked and think he may have something to do with nobody messing with the place.

As far as that hindrance I deal with called Hodgkins Disease or Lymphoma, I wanted to document something I noticed a few days ago and slightly concerned about. I took another look at my last PET scan and noticed a section that didn't get discussed at my last visit to New York. According to the Radiologists report, there is a new area of activity in my neck that is less than a centimeter but registered an SUV (radioactive sugar uptake) of 7.2 which in my experience is significant. I took a look at my last scan and it mentioned the spot as well but made no mention of uptake except that it may be suspicious. So, I called Dr. O'Connors office and spoke to Ellen (one of his assistants). I asked her why they didn't bring up the node the last time I was in and she said because of it's size (less than one cm). My question to her is why wouldn't you tell me about this, especially when the SUV level has gone up since my last scan?
She said that they don't consider the lymph node to be necessarily cancerous if it's under 1cm. "It could be a number of things including infection". I don't really know what to believe to be honest. Does this Dr. want me to stay on his trial just so he can have better data #S on his trial (for length or duration of response)? Or, is it nothing to be concerned with and possibly an infection like Ellen said. I think this warrants a little research on my part and plan to talk to my other doctor asap. The last thing I want to do is stay on this drug too long, have my disease progress and possibly miss out on a new trial that has an opening here in Detroit, RAD001. So I go on Wednesday for an MRI on my spine and plan to speak to Oncologist here at Karmanos to see what he thinks.

This stuff is never easy, ugh...