Ben and the Dragon

Eleventh Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

May 28th, 2024

Today was my eleventh immunotherapy treatment and though there weren’t as many patients as usual, there was a decent amount of wait time involved in this trip. Everything went fine with the treatment, but the pharmacy was a little slow getting the medicine mixed up and ready for me. So, once my blood work labs were done, there was still about a 45 minute wait to get the IV going.

There was one thing out of the ordinary this time; they told me my potassium was low today so they gave me a dose of a potassium supplement and said they’d check on it again next visit. My potassium level in my labs today was 3.4, which is apparently considered low, and looking at my past lab results, it appears that it normally sits between 3.7 and 4.0. I guess I need to eat a banana now and then! 🙂

More Waiting on the Way Home

The trip home added even more wait time to the day. I jumped on the interstate entrance ramp to head home and immediately had to come to a dead stop. I sloooowly crawled through traffic at a pace that got me about a mile in one hour. While on that single lane ramp, a police car and an ambulance both came by on the tiny shoulder (after we all got out of their way enough for them to get through) so I can only guess there was a wreck further up the road.

After that hour of crawling I mentioned, I was finally up to the point where I could see what was going on, kind of. Two police cars had blocked off all lanes of the interstate and were trying to scrunch what amounted to about 5 lanes of traffic into a single lane exit ramp back off the interstate. Since I could not see anything on the road beyond them, I assume there was a nasty incident out of site somewhere in front of us and this exit ramp was the first available exit back from whatever had happened.

So after all that time waiting, I had to get back off the interstate then figure out how to get back on it again (if possible) before I could cross the river and get home. Fortunately, I recently got the built-in GPS on the new car fixed (it was disconnected for some reason) and so I was able to use the navigation system to get me back on track. At this point, it was dinner time and I had to stop somewhere to get some food… at least I didn’t have to wait for that! 😀

Health Update

Doctor Visit, Happy, Optimistic

The CT scan results have come back and as far as I can understand them, it looks like everything came back as “normal,” which is a relief for sure. For any of you who might like reading medical stuff, I’ll post the results as they came back to me:

Results (Chest)

Lungs and large airways	The central airways are clear without endobronchial lesions. No pulmonary nodule, mass or consolidation.
Pleura	No pleural effusion. No pneumothorax.
Mediastinum and Hila	Homogenous, somewhat triangular soft tissue density in the anterior mediastinum favors residual thymic tissue. No pathologically enlarged lymph nodes are identified.
Heart and Pericardium	The heart is normal in size. No significant pericardial effusion.
Vessels	The ascending aorta is nonaneurysmal. The main pulmonary artery is nondilated.
Chest Wall and Lower Neck	Thyroid gland appears normal. No enlarged supraclavicular or axillary lymph nodes.
Bones	No acute or aggressive bony lesions.

Results (Abdomen and Pelvis)

Liver	Liver demonstrates smooth margins. No focal liver lesions.
Gallbladder and biliary ducts	No calcified gallstone. No gallbladder wall thickening or pericholecystic fat stranding. No intrahepatic or extrahepatic biliary ductal dilatation.
Pancreas	The pancreas is homogenous. No main duct dilation.
Spleen	The spleen is normal in size. No focal lesion. Adrenal glands: No adrenal mass.
Kidneys and ureters	Symmetric cortical enhancement. No complex renal mass. No stone or hydroureteronephrosis.
Urinary bladder	No urinary bladder wall thickening.
Reproductive organs	No abnormality detected.
Bowel	The small and large bowel loops are normal in caliber and contour. No evidence of bowel obstruction.
Lymph nodes	No abdominopelvic lymphadenopathy by imaging criteria.
Peritoneum	No free air. No organized fluid collections. No ascites.
Vessels	Abdominal aorta is nonaneurysmal.
Abdominal wall	No hernia or mass.
Bones	No acute or aggressive bony lesions.

Scan Results Impression

No evidence of metastatic disease in the chest, abdomen, or pelvis.
Soft tissue density in the anterior mediastinum favors residual thymic tissue. Recommend attention on follow-up imaging.

Recommendation: Continued imaging surveillance as per oncology protocol.

Health Update

Happy, Hopeful, Optimistic

Tenth Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

May 10th, 2024

Tuesday was my tenth immunotherapy treatment. I’m getting closer to the end of these treatments (the one year mark) or at least what I hope is the end. I was told I would need to be treated for a year, which would be about seventeen treatments, then they’ll reevaluate at that point. So, I had to leave a lot earlier this time. They had me scheduled to go in for an early morning CT scan before my regular treatment appointment. The scan was quick, but waiting for the special dye to absorb into me first took about an hour.

After the CT scan, the doctors I normally see for the immunotherapy treatment came by the treatment room. They let me know they had seen the immediate results of the scan, and didn’t see anything they were concerned about. However, the official “reviewed” scan report will not be available for several days. I guess I’m waiting for that final report to get confirmation of the initial analysis I was given.

Other Updates

I’ve finally officially registered my business and have filed all the required state and federal paperwork. Insurance, taxes, and accounting are now in order too. Yay! Now onward to the next objective — create the public facing portion of the business and get to work on selling what products I’ve already created. After that I’ll be working on creating more, and selling those too. That may sound simple when reduced to a few sentences, but there’s still a lot to do before I can actually start making any money from this endeavor. I’ll keep you posted. 🙂

Health Update, Life Update

Doctor Visit, Happy, Hopeful, Optimistic
Star Wars Day

Ben

May 4th, 2024

Uncategorized

Happy
Ninth Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

April 20th, 2024

Tuesday was my ninth immunotherapy treatment and the day went pretty much as planned. There was a lot of road construction on the highway this time, but thankfully it didn’t slow traffic enough to be a problem for me. There was no real wait time at the hospital this trip, so that was nice. They even had a treatment room already set up for me as soon as I was done with lab work, so I was able to get in and out of the hospital a little quicker than I have been able to in the past.

Solar Eclipse

I didn’t make a separate post about it, but my family and I were able to see the solar eclipse that occurred recently in our part of the world. It was pretty neat being able to experience totality this time around, and being able to be with my kids and see them experience it too. I had planned to try and use my telescope (with a filter of course) to take some close up pictures, but as it turns out, you need a special and very strong filter for use on a telescope.

A Stern Warning

While preparing to watch the eclipse, I put an extra pair of solar protective glasses over the telescope lens while working slowly (without looking through the telescope) to try and move the telescope around and find the sun. There was NO WAY I was going to be putting any part of my body in front of that telescope lens given what I’ve seen just a simple magnifying glass do when focusing the sun! However, I was hoping to be able to use the solar glasses as a protective layer for a camera lens.

The moment the sun came into the telescope’s view, the solar glasses I was using as a test filter had a hole in them. No smoke, no melting plastic, just an instant hole and a beam of light shooting through them. It was absolutely terrifying how strong that focused light was! The solar glasses were apparently entirely unable to stand up to that amount of energy for even a millisecond. It was basically a “sun laser” shooting through the telescope.

If anyone had been standing in front of that beam, it probably would have hurt them instantly and very badly, even through their clothes. So after the second or two it took me to recover from the shock of the incredible power I had just witnessed, I quickly knocked the telescope out of alignment with the sun to avoid any accidental harm to myself or anyone else around, then put the telescope away just for good measure. 🙂

Just to drive the point home for anyone who might consider a telescope for solar/solar eclipse viewing in the future, you MUST buy a special filter, solar glasses will not work for this!

Health Update, Life Update

Doctor Visit, Happy, Optimistic
Eighth Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

March 26th, 2024

Today was my eighth immunotherapy treatment and this time we decided to make good use of the travel time. My daughter got some of her required driving hours in and some good experience driving on the interstate. Thankfully, it was a nicer day than it has been for the last few trips and traffic on the interstate was not too crazy. I didn’t want to subject her to the big city traffic yet, so we switched out before we got into the city. She did a great job and while she did admit to being nervous, she didn’t overreact to any situations and didn’t give me any reason to fear for our lives! 😀

The nurses were apologizing for the wait time today, even though I didn’t really wait any longer than my average visit. Since I hadn’t waited all that long, I asked one of them if it had been a busy day for them. Apparently, before I arrived for my appointment today, the nurses were so overloaded with patients that some people had been waiting for a couple of hours from their initial appointment time before they got called back. I guess I arrived late enough in the day that they had already worked the queue back down to a pretty short wait time.

In Other News

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in this blog yet, but for the past several months I have been doing lot of research and sifting through all sorts of laws and legalese at the state and federal level. Why you ask? Well, I’ve been considering starting my own side business. I’m not planning anything too exciting, I’m just looking for a way to try and sell some of my digital creative work as a way to make a little extra money (I hope) to help us out with rising expenses and long term plans. Don’t worry, I’m not quitting my job or anything crazy like that. I’m just planning to try and create some extra income when I’m not at work.

I know you can sell things in person or online without creating a company, but a single member (me) Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a reasonably inexpensive way to be sure you can legally sell your product(s) and at the same time provides you with some legal protection, just in case something goes wrong. So, I think I’m just about ready to give this LLC idea a try. I’ll let you know if and when I do it, and if you happen to have been thinking of doing something similar, feel free to ask me about it. After all that research I now know a decent amount about the rules governing the formation and management of your own LLC, at least in this state, and I’d be happy to try and save you some research time if I can answer a question for you.

Health Update, Life Update

Doctor Visit, Happy, Hopeful, Optimistic
Seventh Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

March 6th, 2024

Well, yesterday was the seventh immunotherapy treatment and as before, I have no treatment related issues or side effects to report. However, I had a bit of a weird experience when they were prepping me for the infusion. The first vein they stuck the needle into didn’t bleed. Apparently that can happen, but it was strange to see the needle come out without even a drop of blood on the puncture wound. It is currently just a little pink bump, kind of like a mosquito bite that doesn’t itch.

This visit, the wait time in the lobby was a bit longer than normal and I overheard a lady and her daughter sitting near me discussing the immunotherapy treatment, what it might be like, and wondering aloud “does it always take this long to get in?” I decided to get their attention and talk to them for a few minutes since we were all waiting, and I let them know that the wait time was normally not this bad. The lady had recently had a biopsy of her melanoma on her leg, almost in the same spot as me, and she and her daughter were there for the first time to talk to the doctors about the immunotherapy treatment option.

I shared what I could with them about the treatments I’d had so far, the lack of side effects up to this point, and I let her know the doctor she/we were seeing was a very pleasant person and easy to talk to. I think I was able to calm their nerves a little bit, at least I hope so. 🙂

Dermatologist Visit

This morning before I went to work I had a follow-up visit with the dermatologist and I was given a good report. The doctor told me there are no new spots to be concerned about and my scar from surgery is healing up nicely. I’ll be going back for another visit in about three months.

Health Update

Doctor Visit, Happy, Optimistic
Sixth Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

March 2nd, 2024

Well, here I am again, sitting at the “tomorrow that almost never came.” I meant to post about this trip the day after it happened, but that was Valentine’s Day. I kept telling myself I’d write it up “tomorrow,” and now here I am at about two and a half week’s worth of tomorrows, finally getting around to writing this up. So, on February 13^th, I went in for my sixth immunotherapy treatment, which, thankfully, was pretty uneventful. The road trip is starting to become familiar and since the weather is beginning to get warmer, I’m looking forward to being able to drive with the windows down, or at least cracked, soon. I don’t know about anyone else, but I enjoy having the wind in the car.

For the past two to three weeks since my last visit, I had been a bit under the weather, so I was glad to be back to a standard healthy state by the 13^th because it’s no fun having to figure out how to safely blow your nose while driving, let alone at interstate speeds! 🙂 I was dealing with a lot of sinus drainage, which for me almost always ends up causing chest congestion and coughing that can last long after the drainage has stopped. However, as I said, on the day of the trip, everything finally seemed to clear up.

Valentine’s Day

My wife and I decided to take our daughter and her boyfriend out for Valentine’s Day at the end of that week. We went out to dinner and did some semi-competitive hatchet throwing. We had done this activity before and had a lot of fun, but this was new for the younger two. If you’ve never done this before, I recommend it because it can be a lot of fun. The local business that offers this activity teaches you how to do it and how to be safe while having fun.

You might be surprised to hear that it really doesn’t take a lot of arm strength to throw a hatchet at a target. In fact, it is actually harder to hit the target if you throw the hatchet too hard. If you think you might like to try this too, you can look up the details online or just ask one of us for more information.

This Tuesday is my next treatment day and the day after that I have a follow-up appointment with the dermatologist. I’ll be getting checked over again for any external signs of returning melanoma. I don’t expect any bad news this time around, but either way, I will let you know how things go, and I promise the next post will be more punctual! 🙂

Health Update, Life Update

Doctor Visit, Happy
Fifth Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

January 25th, 2024

Tuesday was the fifth immunotherapy treatment and everything went pretty well. However, I would like to note that driving two hours (both ways) on the interstate, in pretty thick fog, is not exactly my idea of fun… especially after it gets dark and visibility goes down to about 50ft. But, I did manage to make it there and back safe and sound regardless of the weather! 🙂

Whoops!

Due to an absolutely ridiculous accident (my own fault) I actually ended up giving a bit more blood than intended this time around. When I got to the hospital I decided to use the restroom before checking in. As I left the restroom, I hit my hand pretty hard on the latch of the door (the plunger/tongue/”springy thingy”) and yelped, but when I took a look at the damage, it just looked like a deep crease in my finger, so I went on to the desk to check in. When I got there, the lady asked me if I wanted a band aid for my finger and when I looked, my finger had apparently been damaged a little bit more than I realized. Such a dumb way to hurt myself huh? LOL. 🙂

Scan & Result

After checking in, they sent me to radiology to get the ultrasound scan that I mentioned in my last post. After checking in over there, I waited for about 30 minutes before going back to their check in desk to ask if I needed to contact the people that normally do my injection. In another 30 minutes I would be late to that next appointment. Apparently, radiology didn’t realize that things were scheduled so tightly for me, so they got me back right away after they found out. The scan only took a few minutes, may be 10 at most. They took some images of the lymph notes they were interested in and then they got me on my way to my regular appointment.

Once I was back in the part of the hospital where I normally receive the immunotherapy treatments, they did my regular lab blood tests and then sent me on to the treatment room. While I was waiting, one of the doctors came in and told me that the ultrasound scan had not yet been fully reviewed by all of the involved doctors, but they themselves had taken a look already and didn’t see anything concerning. So, it sounds like so far I’m still clear of any cancer in the lymph nodes. That’s welcome news for sure! 🙂

Health Update

Doctor Visit, Happy, Hopeful, Optimistic
New Year’s & Fourth Immunotherapy Treatment

Ben

January 5th, 2024
New Year’s

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and safe New Year’s. Michelle and the kids went to a friend’s house for a bit on New Year’s eve. I stayed home and worked on figuring out which over-the-air TV station would be showing the “ball drop” for us all to watch together later on when the family got back. I put the TV on “channel scan” (since we don’t normally use over the air channels) and when the process completed, I found out that somewhere in the last several years since TV went digital, we can now pickup over 35 channels with bunny ears!

Wow! I remember when I was younger there were only four, maybe five, channels available to us over the air, so this seems crazy! While I was flipping through these new channels, I found a fun channel that was playing old episodes of “The Twilight Zone” and I ended up watching those for a few hours until the family came home to finish out the last hour of the year with me. 🙂

Medical

Tuesday was my fourth immunotherapy treatment and everything about the process went pretty much as I’ve come to expect now:
- I arrive at the hospital.
- I wait for an indeterminate amount of time.
- I get called back to the lab to get stabbed and give them some blood.
- I get stabbed again to get the IV ready.
- I wait yet again, sometimes for quite a while.
- Someone comes in and hooks up the medicine to my IV and I sit there for about 30 minutes while it trickles into my arm.
- And finally, after they detach me from the equipment, I get to head home! 🙂
It would appear I was mistaken about the scan I mentioned in my last post. Apparently they are going to scan me next time I’m in. They told me they are not very concerned about recurrence at this point in time, so they are going to do an ultrasound scan rather than the more extensive PET/CT scan they had me go in for back in September
Health Update, Life Update

Doctor Visit, Happy, Optimistic

More Waiting on the Way Home

Results (Chest)

Results (Abdomen and Pelvis)

Scan Results Impression

Other Updates

Solar Eclipse

A Stern Warning

In Other News

Dermatologist Visit

Valentine’s Day

Whoops!

Scan & Result

New Year’s

Medical