It’s funny, depending on the day or the hour you catch me my answer as to how I’m doing or how things are going will be vastly different. The last month has been a whirlwind–at some points a whirlwind of nothingness and at other points a whirlwind of excessive catch up. Let me start off with the tough stuff and end with the goodies…

• Back pain is a pretty normal thing for me (duh). It usually comes and goes, gets bad for a short period of time and then goes away. But the back pain that flared up about a month ago did seem to want to go away. Instead it slowly grew worse causing sharp pains in my back and abdomen. It got so bad that anything that created pressure (coughing, sneezing, laughing, etc.) would cause such intense pain it would occasionally bring me to tears. Needless to say it sucked. We tried Oxycodone, Vicodin, alcohol (just kidding) but nothing worked. The only thing that brought reprieve was laying down in bed.
• Right as the back pain got to its worst it was time for a new round of chemo. I started that round on a Tuesday night and by Thursday I started feeling the effects.
• Lastly I’ve been fighting a gnarly little infection in one of my toes. Simultaneously as I started chemo the infection took a turn for the worst and the doctors saw fit to give me some iv antibiotics and two other pill form antibiotics. What was most miserable about these antibiotics was that they made my stomach incredibly sick. So between taking two different antibiotics four times daily and taking chemo pills once daily I was pretty much constantly taking a medicine that was making my stomach sick. No fun.
• As I’m fighting all this crap and sleeping eighteen hours a day Christmas was barreling down upon us and I was no help! Jess was frantically trying to take care of me, take care of the kids, work, AND get ready for the holidays. It was an intense time and we weren’t making much headway.

So that’s all the tough stuff. Let me now share with you some of the good stuff!

• After being into the ER twice I was finally able to meet with both my oncologist and my naturopath on Wednesday afternoon a few days before Christmas. Between those two visits and the stuff they did to/gave me by Thursday morning I was a new person. The back pain was completely gone (turns out it wasn’t back pain but actual nerve pain from my tumor pressing on my spinal cord) and I was up and moving again…just in time to get ready for Christmas!
• We were able to spend a whole day with my dad’s side of the family out in beautiful Yamhill County. It was amazing. We hung out, cut down a tree, sang carols, and drank tea. Many of the family skimped on gifts for themselves in order to show more generosity to my family. They showered us with notes and letters and written down scriptures of hope. Like I said, it was amazing.
• Christmas this year was going to be at our house…but if you didn’t already put two and two together our house wasn’t all that clean at the time. One of the greatest Christmas presents we received this year was my mother-in-law and sister-in-law coming to our house and cleaning it top to bottom. This gift allowed us to focus our pre-Christmas time on being together as a family, making snowflakes together, Christmas shopping, etc. It was a wonderful gift that truly allowed us to enjoy the Christmas season.

Man, I could go on and on concerning the generosity we’ve experienced in the last month. People have flooded us with meals, thoughtful notes, and more. Our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning times were calm and fun and memorable. Since that Thursday (when I started feeling better) I still have not left the house much because it’s been a time for our family to be together. I’ve missed seeing many of you but am glad to miss out on seeing y’all if it means that I get to be with my wife and kids more.

I know this update was a bit scattered but it’s been an intense month (an intense year!!) of changes, of really really good times and of really really rough times…that’s life though I guess!

Well I keep typing and erasing and typing and erasing and just don’t have much to say right now (aside from everything that’s been typed and then erased…which would eventually add up to quite a bit of mishmash I’m sure!)

Let me just give you a brief update with regard to where things are at in our lives today.

I’m writing this on Friday, and after today I will have ONE more radiation treatment (on Monday) and three more chemo treatments (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday). While both the chemo and radiation take a progressive toll on my body this week has been a better one with regard to energy. The two primary negatives as this point with regard to health are…

1. Swelling in my spine (due to radiation) caused what is most likely temporary nerve damage across my belly and sides that hurt pretty intensely for a day or two. To compensate they put me back on steroids to reduce inflammation.
2. Starting on Monday of this week the amount of radiation hitting my esophagus started to cause pain and swelling thus leading me to a soft/liquid diet for the next few days.

The good news far exceeds the bad! Here are some of the great things that we’re seeing or hearing these days…

1. My vitals are through the roof (in a good way). Ranging from my yeastiness, to my iron level, to the amount of blood my body is producing my body is doing “better than it should in amazing ways” (according to my oncologist).
2. We’ve been waiting over a month to receive a report back from a Cambridge research lab in order to get more info about my tumor. The exceedingly long wait was starting to make us question…but as it turns out the researcher in charge of my sample was gone on vacation for the last month. I’ll take that as good news!

Regarding what’s next in life for us here’s what we anticipate…

1. Somewhere around one month from my last radiation treatment I will go in for a fun session of head to tailbone MRI’s. They wait approximately a month because they want to assure that your body has time to recover, to break down the (hopefully) dead tumor, and to accurately reflect your bodies new cancer free reality.
2. On October 12th the monthly “tumor board” will gather around my scans. The tumor board is a neat gathering of oncologists, radiologists, neurologists, surgeons, etc who all meet monthly to talk about the coolest tumors in town. On October 12th they’ll look at my stuff and assess what’s next for me. Later that day I’ll meet with my oncologist who will let me know the results and future proceedings.
3. Medically what is most likely is that the cancer in my spine will be gone and there will be no other cancerous spots in my body. I will then have MRI scans every two months because (medically) the assumption is that the cancer will come back. The difference between my original diagnosis and my current one is that previously there was little (medical) hope of getting rid of the cancer at all whereas now the hope is to get rid of it each time it returns.

Things have been rough for the month of August as I’ve spent it sleeping and my wife’s spent it being a single parent (all of you single parents deserve so many more hugs than you receive!!!). My hope (and anticipation) is to view September as a time where we can slowly reenter into life, work, and continuing our downtown Vancouver work. While things may have been rough this month it would have been absolute hell without all of you. Over the last three months (surgery was on May 31st) we have had nearly fifty different people provide food in some capacity, we had nearly 100 of you visit us in the hospital, we were blessed by the amazing fund raiser at Pop Culture (that continues to linger around some downtown Vancouver restaurants/stores), we’ve had an amazing team of people help us with mowing the lawn, doing dishes, sweeping, and watering our struggling garden, and finally there have been literally thousands of people praying for us from all over the world. You all have been amazing. Thank you.*

*this isn’t a “thank you and you’re done”. Oh no! We’re not done with you yet! Please keep praying for us and please keep caring for my wife who has lots of recovery to do (my physical recovery is nothing compared with the depth of what she’s poured out of herself over the last three months). We are so incredibly still just in the middle of all this…and thanks to you we’ve made it thus far in such away that causes our doctors to use such words as “miraculous”. We love you all. Peace.