Update on Nicholas

Nicholas is on a protocol that calls for him to get chemotherapy every three weeks for twenty-one weeks, and beginning week four, chemotherapy every week day for five weeks. Surgery to resect the tumor comes at week thirteen.

He has been through four rounds of chemo, and all of the radiation. The chemo is not as bad as you might think. It takes three days to infuse, so that means a little more than three days in the hospital every three weeks. Twice he’s had to have doxyrubicin (AKA “red-devil” or “the red”). The red takes twenty-four hours to infuse, and he has to have two of them each time. It makes him a little queasy, but not as sick as it seems to make other patients. And it made his hair fall out. Not all of his hair, mind you. He still has some wispy bits here and there that he won’t let us shave. The red is photo-sensitive, so you have to shield it from light. That makes it seem so sinister. Read more

June 26, 2008 | Filed Under Nick's Cancer | 1 Comment 

LibraryThing Top 106 Unread List

Below is the list of the top 106 books marked “unread” on LibraryThing as of May 21, 2008 at 4:30 pm CDT. The point of this exercise is to see how you compare to the masses on LT.

The rules:

Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list.

  1. * The ultimate hitchhiker’s guide by Douglas Adams (43)
  2. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (236)
  3. The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (19)
  4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (211)
  5. The illearth war by Stephen R. Donaldson (17)
  6. Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel (17)
  7. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (152)
  8. Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (176)
  9. One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (183)
  10. Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (115)
  11. * The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (155)

    12. Read more

    May 21, 2008 | Filed Under Books | 1 Comment 

    I Don’t Like to Say the “C” Word (Part 2)

    People were very helpful at this point, suggesting that it could be a ganglion cyst, or a “fatty tumor”, or even swelling due to repetitive motion (Nick is always on the computer).

    The MRI was inconclusive. Dr. Conklin referred us to Dr. Herrick Siegel at UAB Highlands for a needle biopsy.
    Dr Siegel is an orthopedic surgeon, but not a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. He was very good with Nicholas despite not specializing in pediatrics.

    Dr. Siegel took yet another x-ray (he had Dr. Conklin’s x-rays and the MRI–I’m not sure what he thought another x-ray would show), and decided that he needed a surgical biopsy instead.

    So we had to go, that day, and do pre-admission paperwork and blood work at the Kirklin Clinic. Two days later, March 20–Maundy Thursday, we were at the UAB North Pavilion at 5:00 AM for day surgery.

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    April 30, 2008 | Filed Under Nick's Cancer | 1 Comment 

    I Don’t Like to Say the “C” Word (Part 1)

    I was on my way to the University of Alabama with a couple of Upward Bound students to tour campus and my phone rang. It was a nurse from the UAB Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Clinic at Children’s Hospital. My nine-year-old son, Nicholas, had a synovial sarcoma. Cancer.

    It started with a lump. Well…it really started with a scream. Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last yeat, Nicholas and his sister were playing in his room, and as often happens, it got a little rough. Usually, someone ends up crying with their feelings hurt. Usually it is Katy. This time it was Nick screaming in pain and anger about Katy hurting his arm. A close look at Nicks arm showed a small knot on his right wrist. It looked like the kind of goseegg one might get when one bumps one’s head on a cabinet or something.

    Only it didn’t go away.

    Read more

    April 28, 2008 | Filed Under Nick's Cancer | Leave a Comment