Rick’s Corner     

I arrived at MD Anderson around noon and had a fruit smoothie for lunch. I went up to second floor to get a blood draw. When I finished there I went back to first floor to buy a paper to read while I waited for my 2:00 appointment with Dr. Duvic. As I sat down to read, I realized I had lost my cell phone.

I trudged back up to second floor to retrace my steps and hopefully find my phone. The tech who had done the blood draw was still there and when I asked her if she had found my cell phone. She said, “Yes. Just go to the front desk.”

I went to the front desk. I told the receptionist that she had my cell phone. She said she didn’t. We went back and forth until I could convince her to go back to the room where I had had my blood drawn. I triumphantly approached the tech and asked her to tell the receptionist that she had sent my cell phone to the front desk. The tech said she never found my cell phone – she thought I had come back to ask to use a phone to make a call.

After about 15 minutes of retracing my steps, I finally gave up and decided to leave my name at the main reception area on the first floor. I walked up to the desk and . . . there was my phone.

After having used up all my spare time, I went up to the dermatology department on the ninth floor. After waiting a few minutes, I overheard one of Dr. Duvic’s nurses say that Duvic was really behind in her appointments. I went up to her to tell her I had a 4:00 radiation appointment that I couldn’t miss, but I also very much needed to speak to Dr. Duvic. She said she would see what she could do, but Dr. Duvic was leaving Tuesday afternoon for the rest of the week. She said to touch base with her before my radiation appointment if she hadn’t gotten back to me.

At 3:30 I went back to talk to her. At 3:35 I had an exam room. One of the nurses came in to get a list of my current meds. As I gave him the list I realized . . . I had lost my cell phone. I excused myself and said I would be right back. I found my phone wedged between two chairs in the waiting area. I went back to my exam room, but no one was there. I decided to save some time and changed into a gown.

And then I waited. At 3:55 I got dressed again, went into the hallway and said I had to go to my radiation appointment. The nurse said to wait a second and ducked into another exam room. She came right back out and said Dr. Duvic would be with me in 10 minutes. I said that wouldn’t work, but I did very much want to see Dr. Duvic and would someone please call me on my cell phone and let me know what was going on.

I set off for radiation. For anyone who has been down here, I was on 9th floor rose zone and needed to get to first floor green zone. My feet have been hurting me for about the past two weeks and I had three minutes to get there. And me without my red cape and red and yellow “S” on my chest.

Incredibly, I was only five minutes late. I sat in the waiting room of the precise, runs -like-clock-work radiation department for 25 minutes . When they came to get me, I quickly changed into my yellow paper gowns and laid down on the table for my eye treatment. The tech put the deadening drops in each of my eyes and then asked me to wait.

I waited on the table for about 15 minutes. During that time, the tech would occasionally come on the intercom and tell me it would be just a few more minutes because they were having problems with the computer that controlled the radiation machine.

After someone finally realized that the computer wasn’t going to cooperate, the tech came in and said we would do a Tue/Wed appointment now and she would call me and let me know when my Wed. appointment would be. I gave her my cell phone number and then got dressed.

After I got dressed, I started out towards the waiting room when I realized . . . I didn’t have my cell phone. I went back to my seat in the waiting room where I found the phone. A young man on the other side of the waiting room said, “Sir , I saw your phone there as soon as you left. Wasn’t nobody going to take it.”

Apparently he thought I didn’t hear him or wasn’t reacting appropriately, so he spoke much louder. “Sir. Sir, over here. I was saying, nobody was going to boost your phone. I stayed here to make sure of that.” He did everything except hold out his hand for a tip.

I told him thank you very much and exaggerated my limp as I left down the hallway.

No one ever called me on my cell phone. Maybe they thought it was lost.

Personally, I feel this is worth a face-to-face with Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Rick
6/13/05

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I met with Dr. Donato today. She is my transplant doctor.

One of the first things she said to me was, “You look like you feel really miserable.” I had been thinking prior to that comment that I was feeling relatively good today. It still hurt to walk, but otherwise . . . Oh well. My personal take on that is that it had something to do with my bald head.

Here are a couple of tidbits you might find interesting. My three weeks prep time prior to transplant probably will include two weeks of lying in a hospital bed trying to recuperate from the damage of the radiation. If the damage is particularly bad, I may spend one of those weeks at the apartment. The third week I will get five chemo treatments (still in the hospital) to begin killing my bone marrow. I will then begin transplant.

The transplant will be a lot like a transfusion. The bone marrow will be in a big plastic bag and will enter through one of my veins. As the marrow enters, it will attach itself inside my bones and immediately begin boosting my immune system.

I found out that my donor – Dr. Donato calls him my dream donor – is not the same blood type as me. That surprised me. I thought one of the requirements was for the donor and receiver to be the same blood type, but Donato insisted it doesn’t matter. She then told me that my donor’s blood is type A and I am type B positive. But, she added, when the transplant is all done, my blood will no longer be B positive ever again. I will become type A forever and ever.

To perhaps emphasize a point, Donato said, “Just think – you’re going to have all that YOUNG 23 year old blood inside you.” I think she said ‘dream donor’ again.

It’s not like I haven’t thought of that several times. Frankly, it stresses me out. I don’t care for the taste of Mountain Dew, I don’t have an X-box, and for the life of me I have no clue who Lindsey Lohan is or why I should care. What WILL I do?

Nonetheless, I will continue to try and make those little concessions that reflect my younger, inner age.

Peace out.

Rick
6/8/05

(For those of you who haven’t been here for a while, it would help to scroll down and read The Bike: The Prologue, then read Tracy’s offering, then read this. Also, if you haven’t seen the video ‘Lance Armstrong: Bike Shorts Don’t Make The Man’, you might want to consider looking at that first.)

When I was in Houston last February, I was in Barnes & Noble looking at several books and kept coming back to one entitled ‘Ask And It Is Given’. The first couple of times I thought, ‘Interesting, but I prefer my books to be grounded a little more in reality.’

I ended up buying the book and as I read it, started doing the exercises to help me connect to source energy. Things began to happen, small changes for the most part, and I began to pay attention.

One of the exercises -one that I was uncomfortable doing because it seemed too materialistic – was to cut out pictures of things I wanted and put them in a box. On top of the box, I wrote (as directed), “Whatever is in this box, is.” One of the pictures I cut out was of a trail bike. The letter to Men’s Journal and winning the bike happened after.

At this point, if my father were still alive, I can see him rolling his eyes and insisting that the bike happened because I wrote a letter that impressed the editors and not because of some silly picture in some silly box.

Perhaps. Truth is, I’m really not doing this to convince others of anything. I’m still working on convincing me. After Men’s Journal contacted me about the letter, I told Tracy about the book I had read , the box with the pictures and the possibility of winning a trail bike. I told her, “As much as I would like to have such a nice bike, I’m more excited about winning because of what it may suggest about the philosophy of this book.

Hence, the title: It’s Not About The Bike.

And BTW, I have seen a a healthy life in front of me. I know in my heart this procedure will be a tremendous success. And, as I have told a few others, if this is nothing, if it’s all meaningless, then the worst that can be said of me is that I died an optimist.

Except for the dying part, that’s not such a bad thing. You can call me an optimist anytime.

Rick
6/8/05

A few months ago, Rick came across a book titled, Ask and It is Givenabout manifesting one’s desires by focusing positive energy toward goals. It changed his attitude about his disease and life in general. He, as best he can – even now when in pain – focuses his attention on positive goals and envisions achievement of them. (There’s obviously a lot more to it than that but I’m not trying to reprise the book here.) One focus was on a series of adventures written about in Men’s Journal,. He cut out those he was planning in the future and posted them, by year he planned them, on a poster. He also wrote a letter to the magazine letting them know they had inspired him in his quest to look forward. Yesterday the June issue of the magazine was published – including Rick’s letter! Not only did they publish his letter, they are sending him a new Trek Fuel EX7 mountain bike for his contribution (one of the adventures was a bike tour through Provence).

As most of you know, my brother John has written a novel called A Dedication. He is in Omaha this weekend to promote the book. He will be at The Bookworm this Saturday (87th & Pacific) from 1-3 pm. I would greatly appreciate it if all my Omaha friends and family could stop by for a few minutes to say hello.

Thanks.

Rick

Whenever I’ve been confronted with something I deem monumental, I have a tendency, I think, to fall back on that question. I remember when Tracy was pregnant with Zach and was wondering how we would measure up as parents. My response was that millions of babies are born every year and we were certainly as capable as most of those other parents. We would provide a loving home. We would be caring parents.

How hard could it be?

What a foolish thing to ask. As anyone who has been a parent knows, raising a child is very hard. There is no minimizing it. Certainly the lesson learned here is not to say such a foolish thing.

And yet here I am facing a bone marrow transplant and asking the same ‘How hard could it be?’ as I whistle past the proverbial graveyard. Lots of other people have BMT and come through cancer free. I can accomplish what they accomplish.

How hard could it be?

It’s my means of getting through frightening descriptions by the doctor of what is in my future. But when those frightening descriptions become real, grasping at ‘How hard could it be?’ just doesn’t seem to work all that well.

After two weeks of treatment I am confronted with ailments that I thought would be several weeks away yet. My skin pain is probably not any worse than I’ve dealt with previously, but it is definitely noticeable. The toughest part right now is that my feet and ankles are badly swollen and it is painful to walk.

I had an unscheduled meeting with my radiation doctor today and the best he could offer is that all of this indicates the treatment is working. Oh, and BTW, things are going to get much worse than they are now.

I guess this has been a convoluted way for me to whine and I apologize for doing it. I promise not to bore you all with this type of thing again. For now we can just chalk this up to my needing an outlet to talk about this (the check out girl at Randalls is just not that great a listener).

A very special thanks to those of you who have e-mailed me and offered words of encouragement.

Rick

Hello, friends and family,

I’ve posted the links to the calendar and a contact form by which you can volunteer your time if you choose. The links are at the veeeerrrrrry top of the page on the left, next to Rick’s Corner. Or, you can just look here:

Calendar
Contact Form

Thank you very much for your love and support!

Zachary (that clever boy!) posted a calendar for when people will be down there. Since then, Melissa has made plans to be there June 21 – 30. If you want to join in the fun, he will get a form up soon.

Rick’s doing great. I think he looks good with his head shaved…for an owm (see me for translation!) Sometimes it’s easy to feel anxious when contemplating the road ahead – so, for Rick and really, all of us, I’m sending this quote from Thomas McDermitt on Daily Survival Kit for Serious Illness:

“Just for today, maybe I can give healing ‘the benefit of the doubt.’ The drugs are powerful; the natural healing capacity of my body is powerful. And who know, perhaps there is healing power in my will to struggle, and in the collective love and will of others.”

“Just for today, let me remind myself that I am a worthwhile person, worth loving, despite my faults and limits. I deserve the efforts of others to help me through my illness.”

My love and thanks to all who are joining us on this road.

. . . as promised