A Life Descending

Just one more immuno infusion. One years worth to the day. 18 bags of secret sauce, 5 PET scans, 2 MRI scans, 4 check ins with the surgeon, 6 little discussions with my oncologist and his NP. All the nurses at the Infuse-O-Dome know me, I can do the online check-in with my eyes closed, I've seen people receive treatments who have done well and I've sadly seen a couple who have declined. My ability to access Medicare and my wife's insistence on a quality (& expensive) supplemental insurance plan, has gotten me through with minimal financial hardship. I'm very fortunate in that regard.

Next Thursday, May 14th. The last one. Hopefully it's just PET scans every 3 months for awhile and then just a smooth ride until it's time.

11.06.2025 - Time flys. Went up to the Norton Owners annual Brit Bike Gathering at Hansen Dam (Burbank area of SoCal). Was kind of a thin crowd this year, but still some nice old bikes almost all of them ridden to the event. Various theories as to the low turnout include that a lot of the old guys with the old bikes have died. Yikes! Anyway, joined up with two friends that I enjoy conversation with and we had a good time anyway. Had lunch in Pasadena, discussed motorcycles and opined on ways to fix the world. Beers helped.

Cancer - I had a PET scan last Friday and another infusion yesterday. I think the Keytruda is catching up to me, as the cough I've been warned about has joined in the fun. It's not bad so far and I'm gonna try to avoid the steroid that usually gets prescribed to help with the cough. I'm more than half way through the treatments and I just don't want to add anything more if I don't absolutely have to. I haven't heard from my doc regarding the PET scan, so I'm guessing it's cool. I get copies of the report sent to me via My Chart, but I'm guessing a year and a half of community college 55 years ago doesn't qualify me to know what i'm looking at. All the bad keywords are missing, so good for me.

09.27.2025 - Life is good. Spent a week in Colorado visiting my daughter and attending a gathering of her friends and her husbands family in Colorado who didn't make it out here for their wedding. Was really nice. Met some good people and got to spend a bit of time with a high school friend of mine who lives nearby to my daughter. My sister and her husband drove back and made a vacation of it and she talked me into going to the western most Buc-ee's in Johnstown. I was not prepared. Too much of everything, I did enjoy counting the gas pumps though... 116 of them.

Got back this last Tuesday and had an immuno infusion Wednesday, that now just seem commonplace in my life. Nothing to get fussed about, just do it and move on.

Our weather here has cooled and the morning fog has become my favorite part of the day. I walk out back with my coffee and enjoy the quiet and the gentle mist. The hummingbirds sit on top of their feeders, occasionally buzzing my head (little bastards) and they wait for the sun to warm them up.

Nothing to complain about.

09.12.2025 - Fall kind of slides in quietly here along the SoCal coast. Early mornings get cooler by a few degrees and the days get a bit cooler by a few degrees and then It's few days back up around 80 degrees for a couple days just to mess with you. We've had early morning fog the last three days that burns off quickly to some nice sunshine. I like the foggy mornings, gets real quiet. Birds lay low, can't hear any traffic, just the fog horn in the harbor.

Had a good week. No doctors, no tests, no forms to fill out. Worked in my yard and listened to a lot of music. Heading to Colorado next week for my daughters second wedding reception for her husbands friends and family that couldn't make it out here. I have a close friend from high school that lives right in the area, so he'll be at the reception and we can talk about all the dumb shit we used to do... AGAIN.

Looking forward to it.

08.24.2025 - Car show in town today. Was a little bit warm, a little bit humid, a little crowded and a whole bunch of fun. Felt good to have some normality in my life.

My wife and I had a meeting with my oncologist Thursday.  Doc walked in, shook my hand and said “Congratulations”.  It’s official, the major part of the cancer crisis is over.  I will still complete 13 more immuno infusions and another PET scan in three months and another scan three months further down the road. Then periodic scans for an undetermined length of time.

It’s just so weird. Seven months of trying to not let this be the focal point of my life and now the scary part is over.  There’s still the same routine of infusions, scans and follow ups for awhile, but it’s all different now.  It went from being, in my mind, in life saving mode to an annoying maintenance issue.  Even the night before this doctor meeting, knowing the scan report came back good, I had the thought of it being “Everything looks good, but…”.  You know, that other shoe dropping.  Didn’t happen, I’m good. My family is truly relieved, I’m around for a few more years.  Now I need to get myself engaged in things, not just mentally waiting around.

08.19.2025 - CT/PET scan yesterday.  I wasn’t really anxious about it, just more that I wanted info and then know what my future was gonna be. Scan process at this hospital went smooth, really have a streamlined process compared to the scan I had previously at a different hospital.  Anyway, I sent my doc a note asking if he needed the disc they gave me and that I could drop it by today.  He replied that he had the info and I didn’t need to. Info: "1. Negative PET/CT study. No evidence for residual FDG avid malignancy”. So, I’m good or at least better?  Seems so.  I have a meeting with my doc Thursday to discuss findings.  From what I’ve read, the Keytruda infusions continue with the full course, if so, 13 more to go.  I’m sure another scan is in that mix and then it’s a five year watch with scans along the way (I think).  What a whiplash based on my last entry.  Last week I was feeling kinda low about all this and now, it’s a giant reset. 

My dad would sometimes look at me when I’d gotten myself into something and gotten myself out and say, “How can you fall into a barrel of shit and come out smelling like a rose?”  I don’t know, dad, I don’t know.

08.11.2025 - Had an immunotherapy infusion today, 13 more to go. I have a PET scan next Monday, hoping for good news. Was weird today. I've been doing okay with all this so far, but today it sorta got to me. I woke up at 3:45 in the morning and my mind immediately went to cancer and treatment and all the what if's. Got to the clinic and was just in a bit of a down mood. I'm sure being tired didn't help the situation, but when I sat down to get hooked up to the IV contraption and I was looking around and took stock of the folks there, the totality of what cancer does to people was overwhelming. A woman, completely bald. An older gentleman (older than me), frail and obviously with his caretaker. A middle aged couple there together, the wife bald, but smiling. A younger woman, curled up in her chair with a blanket, big bag of whatever dripping into her via a port. Me with my little bag of Keytruda and being on the non shit end of the stick, relatively speaking. Nurses moving around quickly, taking care of everything.

I don't know how everyone does it. The patients are there trying to stay alive. The nurses are assisting in the keeping them alive. The doctors formulating plans to keep people alive and then having to face them with bad news when they can't. I don't know how the staff faces that everyday. Everyday of chemo sick-cancer sick people and everyone trying to smile their way through it. I have so much respect for everyone involved.

On my way home I could feel my emotions start to come through. I'm really good at suppressing things, I have been all my life. I couldn't suppress this.

08.02.2025 - Time flies.  Since I last checked in…. I met with the surgeon who removed the melanoma tumor from my back.  I had that surgery on March 31st and I still get painful twinges from time to time. She looked at it, skin has healed nicely but the large "excavation” underneath, where the “meat’ was gathered together in what I imagine is a giant pleat, is still getting itself organized.  It’s when I reach to the right using my left arm that it hurts the worse. She said it’ll just take time.

Had immuno infusion number four the following Monday and the cumulative effect of them has happened.  I was okay the day of, but the following two days left me useless.  Just tired and unable to mentally or physically engage myself in anything.  I started to come back by Friday and was okay Saturday afternoon. Next dose is August 11th, then a PET scan the following week to see where we are.  Thirteen more infusions after that.  One foot in front of the other, it’ll all be okay.

The weather has been mild here on the Southern California coast, but August is here and the next two months are when the heat/humidity happens. I shouldn't even mention the humidity, as I know it's nothing compared to what happens in the east and south. Summer is half over, I always look forward to the change in seasons even though it's a pretty subtle change here. I grew up in the Pasadena area and we did actually have winter up there. One of the things I miss the most about the fall/winter in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains is the winter Santa Ana winds coming down the canyons and bringing the smell of the sage that grows there. The air is cold and dry and it's a smell that I've only experienced there and then. We do have the winter sea air here and I do look forward to it equally. We've got a trip to Colorado planned for late September, so we will get a fall mountain experience in addition to the usual SoCal stuff.

07.12.2025 - Easy week. Weather has been good, although we had a thick marine layer today. Met with my oncologist mid-week, bloodwork looks good. Two more immunotherapy infusions, then a PET scan and then a decision as to how to proceed from there. I've decided to deal with this mostly in the moment. I think about cancer when I'm at an appointment or interacting with doctors, otherwise I don't have cancer and I just do life. I will say, when I'm at the Infuse-O-Dome, I take stock of my situation and put it in perspective. I have it easy. Immunotherapy is nothing compared to what I see of the people dealing with hardcore chemo. I have respect for them. I have an appointment with the doctor who did the initial surgery on Monday, just to look at my scar I suppose, then nothing for a full week and then another infusion.

I'm at peace with everything at the moment.

07.06.2025 - Been a really good couple of weeks. My daughter got married last weekend in a nice small ceremony. She only had 16 people at the actual marriage ceremony and then around 90 at the reception. She wanted the most important people in her and her now husband's life at the marriage ceremony and she got them. The wedding and reception took place at a historic Mexican restaurant in the old town part of San Juan Capistrano. There is a nice "chapel" in the patio area and the reception hall has a roof that rolls back to the sky. They were married by a friend of her now husband and she had a childhood friend do a reading to drop a little religiosity on the proceeding. Food was good. Drinks were good. Friends and family were good.

When my daughter graduated high school, she was asked to have her father (me) write something to commemorate the occasion. It was to be sealed in an envelope and held by her school. I don't know why. I sat at my computer and thought about her going away to college and I just wrote what I was feeling. This is what I wrote on December 13, 2006:

"The Audrey Experience

How does a father explain what his only daughter/child means to him? I’ll try.

Audrey is a trip!  She has a wicked sense of humor and unquenchable thirst for what the world has to offer.  Both qualities that were handed down through her father’s DNA.  She can be extremely compassionate and painfully obnoxious all within the span of five minutes.  She’ll spend hours at her church organizing functions in fine detail, but can’t find her car keys.  She will go to a car show with me on Saturday morning and a play with her mother later that night.  She does a great job on her homework, but always waits until the last minute.  She is independent, able to deal with problems and helpless.  Her ability to find some common ground with almost everyone she meets, speaks of her open minded nature.  She is also one of the most stubborn people I know.  She frustrates me and fills me with joy.

She means everything to me.  She is the essence of what her mother has given her, what I have given her and what her life experiences have given her, passed through the blender that is Audrey.  She taught me the biggest life lesson of all, what unconditional love really is.  I hear people say what a good kid she is and the sense of pride I have is overwhelming.  The sense that I helped to make her the quality person she is fills me with happiness.  She is what I will leave the world when I’m gone.  She is my greatest accomplishment.  She is my legacy.  Audrey leaves for college this summer and I’m gonna miss my daughter, my friend.

How do you explain to someone what your daughter means to you, without tears?  It can’t be done."

I felt these exact emotions as I watched her wedding ring placed on her finger.

I love that kid.

06.21.2025 - The shit you see in DP. While town has become fairly gentrified the last five years, stuff like this still shows up. I particularly like the Buck Rogers spaceship addition to the top. I was told it was on some kind of Dodge truck chassis with a modern diesel in it.

Good week. Had a quick check in with my oncologist office, so far, so good. Most of the week was spent preparing for the onslaught of friends and family arriving for my daughter's wedding next Saturday. About 70% of the folks coming are from out of state and a lot of her friends are from Colorado, where she lives. Surprisingly, there are a couple of younger people who have never seen the Pacific Ocean, so we organized some whale watching tickets for them. I'm actually looking forward to showing people around and spending time with the future inlaws.

That's it, mood is good!

06.13.2025 - Boom! I've had a mental energy breakthrough. I got so much shit done this week, that I think I don't have any shit to do next week. I think watching Trump's goon squad fucking over people all over the country and here in California has just got me so pissed off that I had to get busy to work off my anger. I'm attending a "No Kings" rally tomorrow at noon here in town and I'm certain I'll be with some like minded energy. I don't know why I did this, but I had my passport in my pocket yesterday, with it in mind to jack with the local cops (OC Sheriffs). They aren't involved with the round ups, but they do block off streets and do crowd control when the ICE agents are doing their shit. Anyway, a cop was next to me at a light and just took my passport and put it up against the passenger window. It took him a couple seconds to understand what I was doing and he just shook his head and drove away. I genuinely distrust law enforcement more than I have at any time in my life. All good, I'll vent at tomorrow's deal and I'll wave my fist in the air and it'll be 1969 and I'll be 18 again. I took it to the streets with my friends during the Viet Nam war, this feels almost the same.

06.06.2025 - The above is how I'm feeling. Just jiggling the handle on the toilet of life. This has not been a good week. I don’t know what’s going on with me.  I made a list of things I absolutely was gonna make myself do, just to try and jumpstart myself.  Putting gas in my car and going to the local hardware store feels like a major accomplishment.  I get up at 7, go down stairs and get some coffee going and then watch at least two hours of YouTube.  I think I’ve begun to equate watching other people accomplish things with me actually accomplishing things. Today I cut my viewing short and cleaned the shower and then “ran my errands”.  Came home and turned on the TV again.  I haven’t been sleeping through the night at all.  I get up somewhere between 3 and 4am, if it’s closer to 4, I don’t go back to sleep.  Maybe I’m just tired. I’ll cut back on the liquids tonight and see if I don’t wake up.

Had an immunotherapy infusion Wednesday, no issues with it. Came home and rested and then we all (wife, daughter and me) went and got some food.  Just chilled the rest of the evening. My daughter being here for a few days prepping for her wedding end of this month, takes my mind off the old age/infirmity portion of my life. She was born when I was 38 years old and she was the bridge between my prolonged adolescence and still squirrely middle years, until now. I do enjoy our conversations, as she is in a technology driven business and I like hearing about it.

Oh, well. It's Friday and I have a bottle of 14 year old irish whiskey downstairs. It's time to say fuck it.

05.31.2025 - Turned 74 last Sunday. We had lemon meringue pie. Met with the physicians assistant to my oncologist this last Thursday to discuss my upcoming infusion and go over any side effects I may have had from the last one, there were none. Not much else to report on that front. Just day by day. As of now, with the exception of an occasional doctor intrusion, it's like nothing is happening. It's just something out of the loop I get involved with and then jump back in the loop.

05.23.2025 - Super calm week. No calls to or from doctors. No My Chart messages. No appointments. The way it should be.

I got a blue suit organized for my daughters wedding... I rented one. The wedding is getting close, end of June. She and her mother have everything pretty well nailed down at this point, only a couple of things left to handle. She's almost 36, but she's still my kid. I think we've communicated everyday since forever. When she left for college, there were a lot of video conversations and a lot of texts. I think my favorite was my phone buzzing at 12:45 am on a Saturday morning. "Hey dad, what does alcohol poisoning look like?" Everything in the text was spelled right, so I knew she wasn't the one in trouble. I got the info and my advice was to take her friend to the emergency room, as "you don't want to be the one who killed her". We still communicate just about daily.

The rest of the week was just normal. Took a walk around our local marina, straightened up my garage, fixed the pump in my little fish pond and this weekend is Monaco Formula 1 and Moto GP at Silverstone, England. I watch it all. Every practice session, qualifying and the races. Indy 500 is also this weekend, but I've never been into the roundy-roundy races. I'll watch the start and come back for a few laps at the end.