I have begun my fight against lung cancer and now have a blog setup to share it with you.

Here is a little bit of the background. Sorry if my grammar and structure is not up to academic rigours, but this is just a blog!

On Labor Day Weekend of 2005, Beth and I attended her friend Rachel and John's wedding just north of Bellingham, WA. The wedding was on a Friday evening and I remember being real tired. I wanted to dance with Beth and enjoy the reception, but just didn't have the energy for it. Beth didn't seem to think much of it and we ended up leaving a bit early. We stayed at a hotel in Bellingham. The next morning I woke up to a sore chest that felt like a cold was coming on. I didn't think much of it, when I got home, I started hitting the Vitamin C and Zinc tabs. Over the next couple of weeks, things went downhill. Just a couple weeks before, my dad and family friend, Viv, both had bouts with the flu and Viv even got hit with walking pneumonia. I was around both of them at the time and figured it caught up to me too. I tried to work through it as best I could, only taking a day here or there off sick. We were quite busy in the office and I had a series of deadlines to meet. I didn't try to be a hero or anything, I just felt like I could get through it, go home, and sleep it off. But it wasn't happening this time. Finally, after being barely able to breathe and not getting much sleep, I checked into Swedish Emergency Room in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle. They said they have had a few cases of the pneumonia come in over the past week and figured I had the same as well. They did a chest x-ray to confirm, but found my heart to be enlarged. I got a bit alarmed when the doctor asked if I had a history of heart problems. They followed up with an ultrasound of my heart and it revealed a large buildup of fluid in the sack that surrounds the heart. Next thing I know, I am wired up to heart monitoring machines, put on oxygen, and sent into the ICU or ER room to wait for an ambulance to take me over to the main Swedish Hospital on First Hill (aka Pill Hill). I was a bit freaked out, naturally, but with Beth coming down to meet me, I had to keep composure. I called her and told her they were shipping me over to Swedish and I needed her to get my truck and take it home.

So off we went to Swedish. That evening, Dr. John Olsen, my new cardiologist, stuck a large needled into my chest and tapped the heart sack. They medical team eventually drained off 1.7 liters of fluid from the sack. It was a pretty painful procedure once the sack came back into contact with my heart. I was under local anesthetics, but it wasn't doing quite the job. I recall being shown the two sacks of fluid they recovered, it appeared to look like either dark red cherry juice or maybe even coca cola. But the lights were low and I was a bit dazed and confused with this pain in my chest so it could have been anything at that point. I was sent back to my room where Beth was waiting for me. At that point, I just wanted to crawl into her arms to get away from that pain. Not long after, one of my several wonderful nurses came by with a morphine and percocet nightcap.

I awoke the next morning to a partially shaven chest and lingering chest pain. I became acutely aware of the incision point and the path it followed to my heart. Its amazing how you can feel every detail of that pathway. I was on an oxygen mask turned up to as high it could go. Suddenly, after weeks of labor intensive breathing, I could actually breath. But not quite on my own. Even with the oxygen turned up as high as it was, my blood O2 levels were barely at 90%. My lungs had taken a beating and it would be a few days before they could recover. In the meantime, it was time for the medical team to get started on finding out what happened, why it happened, and where to go from there. Chest x-rays weren't showing much, other than "some consolidation" in the right lung. A CT scan only showed swollen lymph nodes in my right arm pit. The pathology report on the lung fluid was inconclusive so that left doing a biopsy on the lymph nodes. An ultrasound on those lymph nodes didn't reveal much except for they were still a bit large to where Dr. Oh, my new surgeon, felt needed to come out for a better look. Dr. Oh pulled three of them from my right arm pit and sent them off to pathology. I was allowed to finally go home the next day after the biopsy surgery and after a week in there, I was running for the doors. A week later, Dr. Oh called me to come down to his office. Beth was still at work so I went by myself. Dr. Oh broke the news. I went pretty numb, physically and emotionally. I asked what the survival rate was and it wasn't very good. He said he had already consulted with a colleague, Dr. Li of the PolyClinic, an oncologist, and recommended I waste no time and get started on aggressive treatment. Dr. Oh said he could set up an appointment for me and asked how soon would I like to have the appointment. Since it was already Thursday, Sept 28th, I said first thing Monday. The appointment was made the afternoon on Monday.

So now I had a burden to have to share with my loved ones. First I had already had a follow up appointment with Dr. Olsen to do a another ultrasound on my heart to see if any more fluid was building up. His office is near Dr. Oh's so I walked over, still in shock and still quite numb. I checked in and sat in silence. I was called to meet the ultrasound tech and she got started. I just layed there in silence while she did her thing. Everything checked out and I went back to my truck to head home. On the drive home, the traffic sucked and so I thought I would call my mom and break the news. Once I got talking to her, the emotional numbness wore off enough to shed a tear. After 33 years, my mom and I cried together. I felt so bad to have to tell her and still I had to get home and tell Beth. For some reason, I felt less about myself and more about letting down key people in my life. Not that I was screwing up on them, just that now there is a possibility that I wouldn't be there in life for them, and I felt guilty for it.

So I got home and just told Beth straight up. By that time, I was emotionally numb again and just held her as she cried. We stayed that way for about an hour and after thinking about it, I was feeling I needed to go to California and see both sets of parents. Of all things, it was my dad's birthday the next day. Instead of calling him and breaking the news, Beth and I hopped into the car and headed down there. I prefered to see him and tell him the news, on his birthday. It was a long and somber road trip. We stayed the night on the road down, but didn't sleep. I was consumed in thought and so was Beth. They were the darkest thoughts of my life.

I won't go into detail on the trip to California, but I will say a couple of things. One was getting the time with my family helped with getting over the sadness, get a little perspective on life, get much needed support, and get focused. The other was to limit that sadness and despair to that weekend. We got back Sunday night, Monday morning I broke the news to the office and told them what was happening, and that afternoon, met with Dr. Li and got focused on a course of action.

As I have told a few close friends and family, when you are hit with the reality that not only do you have lung cancer, but that its late stage, stage 4 to be exact, you just don't have time to dwell on it. Its now or never and there is not time to waste. I think that helped keep my head in it and still in it. I had to move and move quick. I had to learn everything I could, consult with my doctors and healers in my life, and devise a course of action. Dr. Li ordered up a PET scan to determine the severity. Here it is in a nutshell, or my body shell if you will, my right lung is the source and its loaded with cancer, it is also in the lymph nodes in my chest, neck, and right armpit area, its on the bones in my spinal column, left shoulder blade, left hip, and a few ribs. My left lung looks to be completely clear, my brain is clear, as is my liver and heart. But this cancer moves quick and it could be just a matter of time before it reaches those areas, unless I beat it back right now.

More to come later...