(Giving "The Machine" its due - a picture of the "Da Vinci" Robot - the same type that was used during the removal of my left kidney)


Time flies by, doesn’t it? I has been almost already a week ago, when I had my surgery done. Well, I’m still wearing might hospital gown. I love that thing, it’s extremely practical plus it just adds on perfectly to the whole image of a suffering patient. Hehehe, I know, I’m evil and sinister. We had actually some snow yesterday but it seems to melt away...

(Photo of my abdomen with the stitches after the surgery)

Last night I was in terrible pain for a about 30 minutes. But surprisingly, it wasn’t the abdomen that caused me such tremendous discomfort, but my right shoulder. I’ve been picking my brain since why on earth my shoulder and not my back, for instance. Because after all, most of time I’m sitting on my butt on rather cushiony stuff. That can get to your back after a while, but the shoulder? But I just received a call from my brot...

(has been waiting patiently for me to returnn from the hospital: Puppy Troy)


Pretty much exactly 72 hours ago, the anesthesiologists brought me into the operating room for my surgery. Ann and I talked about that very moment yesterday. She had tears in her eyes when they came to get me. I remember that - as nervous as it was for me– I was so relieved that it was me having the procedure done and not her. For selfish reasons, because I wouldn’t have been able to deal with my worries if it had...

Since last night I’ve been passing blood with my urine again. All I did was a little bit of super light clean up around the house during the day. But I felt the aggravation immediately inside my left abdominal area. Today it’s even worse. It’s not painful, just annoying and kind of scary. Now I also understand why my first doctor asked me several times if I wanted to have the stent removed. I can see how the discomfort could potentially turn into pain at some point. Coincidentally, I re...

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! What can I say: the sun is shining again today. Not literally, but you know what I mean. I got a call from the hospital yesterday, briefing me on the logistics for my upcoming surgery on Monday next week. We got to get there by 5:30am. This makes me believe that they must get to operate on me quite early. That’s great! The only problem: I had hoped to get in touch with my surgeon before the surgery, because I wanted to double check with him that he’s going t...

Today is one of these days. Everything is grey. The sky, the bank-account, the remaining credit-card limit and the even the cancer. I’m not trying to be a ‘pity-me’ cry-baby, but I just woke up that way. There’s this little sting in my chest and right thigh. It’s probably nothing, but in the overbearing grand scheme of cancer, you can’t help but to think that this must be little metastases forming up. Of course, I know it’s irrational, but on a day like today, I would even refus...

Okay, I wanted to do this for a while now. Attached is a snippet of my wife’s list of supplements she takes everyday. I think it’s a total of 60 pills, quite a load to swallow. The explanation of each supplement is my own one and might deviate from the manufacturers’. Please note: it is absolutely necessary that you work with a Health Care Professional if you decide to take supplements. He will be able to work out a plan for your individual situation. This is not something you shouldn�...

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a student of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He came across my websites and blogs  - this one here and my other one dedicated to my wife’s breast cancer. He’s writing a long piece for his master's project - kind of a long essay, a la the New Yorker - on the way that the online world has transformed the way we deal with death and disease, with particular interested in blogs and bloggers who take on this challenge. I agreed to help him...

I think I’m slowly emerging from the down I was going through for the past few days. Sue being a constant reminder of the positive and Gods grace, me learning to accept the fact that there are things beyond my control, plus a few little cheer-ups of all sorts and kinds  - for instance, look at the picture atop of this post: that’s my nice Hannah, she can light up a room instantaneously  - yes, I think I’m slowly getting back on track.

One of the most profoundly import things in life,...

This is going to be a very personal posting. I did something very embarrassing and stupid which I’m truly ashamed of. A few months ago my wife bought concert tickets to a Miley Cyrus show for last Sunday. Well, I’m born in ’72 and a die-hard Blues and Rock-Fan, so my interest in Miley’s work is rather limited, however, my wife wanted to give our two girls something exciting they would look forward to. Our younger one, Britney, didn’t really care about the concert. But Jenny got more...

Good Times – Bad Times

First, let me apologize to Sue, Kim and Ashley who had previously left comments on some of my posts. I am still relatively new to website building and all that, so I must have messed something up with the commenting feature. I spent several hours trying to fix it, with limited success. I ended up having the comments manually added back to the respective posts under my alias. Again, I’m sorry for that! I hope that from now on everything will work smoothly.

When Ann got diagnosed with her breast-cancer, we consciously decided to let our two daughters (I’m their step-dad) Jenny and Britney (15, 13) know what happened. As we went on to see doctors and go for treatments, etc. we certainly did not share all details with them all the time. Further to that, we tried to keep our fear and worries away from them.
And when I was diagnosed just a few weeks ago with kidney cancer, we told them right away, too.
We received a lot of criticism for deciding to ...

Last week we saw Ann’s new gynecologist. He is an incredible wealth of knowledge, especially with regard to biochemistry. I wish I could share more details with you, but that would be hard for me, because I wouldn’t even know what I'd be talking about. But Dr. Warshowsky has a unique talent to explain complex biological sequences in plain English. We learned that Ann is highly allergic to dairy and eggs, plus her liver seems to have difficulties to detoxify and how all that realtes back t...

I can’t complain. My kidney-cancer diagnosis was on October 1^st. I had a CAT-Scan, a Cystoscopy and PET Scan done, and I will probably have my surgery – called a simple nephrectomy, the removal of the entire organ – done within the next two weeks. Given what other cancer patients have to endure often over the course of many years, it seems that I will get away fairly easily.

My Kidney-Cancer situation kind of took over everything else here. I just had my Cystoscopy done two days ago and now I am waiting to get my PET Scan done next week. I hope that comes back clear. Anyway, if you're interested, you can follow my Kidney-Cancer story here:

http://www.mykidneycancer.com/my-kindey-cancer-blog.php

Ann also wants to get a PET Scan done and an MRI. She feels great and she looks great. She's now going for once a week drips at the Schachter center which will certainly h...

Ann woke up at around 4:00 AM with a headache. She suspects that she inadvertently received 3 vials rather than 2 when they administered her drips yesterday. 3 is the right - or recommended - dose, actually. But she thought they only gave her 2 for some reason, and therefore she took a little bit more (a pill) later that afternoon. And that (probably) pushed her over and caused her headache.

One thing if you opt for alternative breast cancer treatments: you will probably drown by the flood...

This will be my first blog entry EVER and also the continuation of our breast cancer story.

Alright, I can't sleep. We saw Dr. Simone today, an "open minded" Oncologist, who supports the concept of alternative treatment options. We have to digest all the information he gave us. But most importantly, we are on the same page, no fundamental disagreements.
I will post more details tomorrow.
BTW: It's not easy building a website. It will take a while to get the content up there. Anyway, I will keep...