Columbus and the Valley

Thank You, Carlton Motorcars, Inc.

Wednesday of last week was the day we got to go back home from our tiring initial appointments and diagnostic testing at the Duke Clinic in Durham, NC. The plan was to go up there and meet with Dr. Dan George and Dr. Mike Morse to be evaluated for HD-IL2 therapy. We were able to do what we went there to do and was pronounced healthy enough to be able to survive the therapy.

Needle sticks, a stress echo test and some high-anxiety meetings with the doctors made for a couple of tired travelers. We pulled out on Wednesday morning, excited about getting back home to our own bed and to our family and friends. We fired up the car and put it into the wind, thinking we might be heading into some possible rain that hurricane Isaac might be slinging around. The rain didn’t materialize, but something worse sure did.

Jill and I are not into chain restaurants when we’re in a new place. She did some research on the Yelp app on her iPhone and we picked The Bohemian Cafe in Greenville, SC, which is almost exactly half way home. We got to the restaurant at about 2 p.m. for a late lunch. After a great lunch, we shopped for a few minutes in a vintage vinyl record store which is conveniently accessed through the restaurant.

All that was left for us to do before we got back on the road for the last half of the trip was to gas up. Like I said in my last post, just as we were turning into the gas station, a couple of jolts that felt like the transmission was coming apart set me on edge. By then it was about 3 p.m. and I made a phone call to Carlton Motorcars, Inc., Greenville’s Mercedes dealership, which was thankfully only 2.8 miles up Laurens Road from the gas station.

I got David Knutti on the phone in the dealership’s service department. He very professionally gave me a couple of things that I could try that might reset the vehicle’s electrical system and make the problem go away, if it was only an issue that a reset could fix. I told him that we would try those, but that if that failed, we’d be up there to see him.

Sure enough, the quick fixes didn’t work, so we limped up the road, bumping and grinding all the way. Normally my trusty, 8-year-old Mercedes E500 is still so exciting to drive. She is heavy and solid, but is so nimble to the touch. She begs for speed and the faster you go, the more she seems to like it. But, whatever was ailing her made her listless and flat. I was sad about it in a way.

So we rolled into Carlton Motorcars service area, which is in a separate building from the sales end of things. I got out of the car and asked for David. A smart, thin, glasses-wearing man put out his hand to shake and I could see the “it is 3:25 on Wednesday before a holiday weekend and we’ve been slammed” look in his face. I mean, how could he help that? It was true! I filled out some paperwork and he palmed my smartkey and headed over to the car to get what he needed there.

As he got out of the car and turned back my way, the magic started to happen. He had the look of a man who wanted to do something nice for two tired travelers. He escorted us to the nicely appointed, very clean waiting area and offered us snacks and drinks. I eyed the big, stainless steel, high-tech looking coffee machine and walked over to check it out. There were two bean hoppers on top that would, on command, grind either caffeine-free or regular coffee beans. Then, you could select how large a cup you wanted. This is a perfect coffee situation. Since I like my coffee bold, I chose the smaller cup option and hit the button. Less than a minute later, I had a perfect cup of hot coffee. That is a cool machine (I use the word “cool” with permission from Jimmy Elder).

Twenty minutes later, David came back into the waiting area and told us two good things. We found out what was wrong with the car and that they had the part that could provide a fix. Not only did they get us out of there in less than a total of two hours, I got two phone calls on Friday to follow up on their work. One of the calls was from David Knutti. I told good friend, Bill Becker, about the experience that we had a Carlton Motorcars and he did such a Bill Becker kind of thing: He wrote an email to David Knutti and told him that he had served his good friends in a great time of need and the he appreciated how well we were treated.

Usually, when something great like this happens you tell a few friends. I decided to tell a few thousand friends via this blog post, on Facebook and Twitter. That is the kind of customer service that is so hard to find in this online internet world. David, I got the owner’s name from you in order to write her a letter. I decided to handle this in a different way. Please share this blog post with Heather Carlton and tell her you could use a raise in pay. You are a great ambassador for her business.

I’m packing right after I finish this blog post. We’ll be pulling out in the morning for another 8-hour drive to Durham. Some time on Monday afternoon, they’ll insert the picc line in which the drug aldesleukin will be dripped into my heart. Later, at 6 p.m., they’ll turn the switch for the 15-minute infusion of the drug that will likely turn me every which way but loose. Then, every 8 hours they’ll drip in some more until I physically can’t take it anymore. The goal is to take 14 doses, but with my diminished kidney function, it is fairly unlikely that I’ll make that number.

We’ll be in a step-down unit that functions like an intensive care room in terms of the ultra-high level of scrutiny I’ll have. Jill will be allowed to stay with me and unless the rapture happens, she’ll be constantly by my side. One of my best high school friends, Richard Barrett, has told me that he wants to come up to Duke from his home in Greenville and tag out with Jill to give her some respite. You might recall that he did this for us after my drug addled first radiation treatment at Emory back in December of 2010. I still don’t know what I said to him that afternoon.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t just let anyone see me in the sad shape that I’ll be in next week. But I’ve already babbled incoherently to Richard once, so we’ll appreciate his visit one day next week to give Jill a break (if she’ll take it). By the way, other than Richard, I do not want or expect any visitors while we’re going through this treatment. Even though I’m not a particularly vain guy, I will be at my lifelong worst next week, and I really don’t want to be seen as the amorphous, slobbering blob that I’ll likely be.

I just got a call from Sea-Daddy Neal Pope. A sea-daddy is an affectionate term for an older Marine that takes a younger man under his wing to show him the ropes. Despite the glorious performances Neal has delivered in a courtroom, he also knows medical adversity the likes of which are not known by many. Here’s what he told me: “Son, the stadium is full and they just handed you the football. It is all on you now.” Tomorrow, we go. Monday evening is when I and the drugs will be darting through the defending roadblocks caused by the cancer cells that want to bring me down. Your prayers are appreciated as we begin this difficult journey.

I also want to send out a tribute to an old friend, Terry Thomas, who is facing difficult days with melanoma. He has been a warrior for our country and he is facing an enemy he can’t see right now. Please join me and pray for him, too, as well as all the others who are living with cancer.

Fred Was Wearing a Hoodie

Let me give you a great piece of advice right here at the top: If you get stricken with a serious illness that is going to require you to see a bunch of doctors AND accurately recount the dates and times of stuff you’ve had done medically for you and to you over the years, start out from the day of your diagnosis and WRITE IT ALL DOWN!

We reported today at 9:00 a.m. for my 9:30 appointment on the 7th floor at elevator U in the Mays Clinic of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. We finally saw the doctor at 2 p.m. For some reason it was comforting to know that even a world-class, mega-cancer center is too busy to stay on schedule for appointments. But first, let me back up a bit.

Last night after a gloriously authentic Tex-Mex dinner at El Tiempo Cantina, we were gassing up the car and my phone rang. I looked down at the screen and saw my card playing buddy, Fred Morgan’s, name. I refused the call, cause I still think if you answer a cellphone while gassing up your car you could end up in flames like a freebasing Richard Pryor. Since I am really not in shape to run down the street, regardless of whether or not I happen to be in flames, I decided to call Fred back.

Then it hit me. I had planned to call Fred and Susan (he’s just getting over cancer surgery our here at M. D. A.) and see if there was anything we could bring them from the homeland. I could pack my pockets full of Krystal hamburgers, Country’s BBQ or a Dinglewood scrambled dog. But NO, I was caught up in my own little world, I didn’t think to call them until we were four hours out of Houston. What was I going to do then? “Hey Fred, can I bring you a Lone Star beer?”

So, I called him back and was apologetic about not thinking to call them earlier and we discovered that we were both due at the same waiting room within 15 minutes of the other the next morning and decided to meet up this morning. Standing next to me, Fred looks like a very skinny version of the Unibomber. Here I am, dressed all in black trying to look svelte and he strolls up with that freshly surgerized swagger in a hoodie. If I was a neighborhood watch director, like my friend, Rick McKnight, I might of put a cap in Fred, all hoodied up like that. Once I checked his ID and knew him not to be an innocent, young black man who might be out to do me harm, we had a nice visit over a cup of Joe and moseyed up to our appointment.

After we checked in, we were handed an itinerary and assigned another waiting room. They triaged me (checked my BP, temperature and pulse) and we waited again. We were called back to an exam room at around 11:45. A young M. D. Anderson Fellow, Dr. Kwang, spent about an hour with us going over my history. Why I didn’t think to grab my iPad and call up that March, 2012 blog post that chronicled my history from diagnosis until today is beyond me! I stumbled over dates and times and treatments. It was like a reenactment of one of Basset and Becker Alzheimers poker games, where Fred Morgan, Bill Becker, Jack Basset, Bobby Smith, John Kelly, Ted Short and Berry Henderson and I sit around without a single shred of ability to remember what game we’re playing, who has bet or even what day it is.

We stressed the importance to Dr. Kwang that we are traveling from afar and that we would like to move things along quickly and that if surgery is required, we’d like Dr. Christopher Wood to do it and preferably now. Once he gave us a thorough going over, he came back with Dr. Lance Pagliaro. Not that it matters, I was surprised to see Dr. Pagliaro, roll into the exam room in a wheel chair. He greeted us and went over his discussions with Dr. Kwang and their review of my extensive file and all the scans we had brought with us.

Here is his conclusion: “Mr. Venable, the cancer you have seems to not be an agressive cancer. It appears that you have only one site of metastasis and it definitely can be managed surgically. We’d like to do our own CT scans, a brain MRI, a bone scan,  a chest x-ray and blood work. We’ll schedule them quickly over the next couple of days and I concur with your request to have Dr. Chris Wood do your surgery if surgery is required,” he said.

If he was the olympic wordsmith that I claim to be, he would have busted out the word “indolent” this morning. Indolent has become one of my very favorite words. It has, thankfully, been used on numerous occasions to describe my slowly progressing cancer. So, we’re here for the week. I have a brain MRI and a bone scan tomorrow. We hope to meet with Dr. Chris Wood on Wednesday for a surgical consultation. The CT scan and x-ray are scheduled for Thursday. That is all we have on the agenda for now.

Dr. Pagliaro went on to say that, “considering the passive nature of your disease, you could live for a long time by addressing these single mets surgically. You could always go on one of the many other therapies available to you that are FDA approved and then after that there are always clinical trials.” I recall what Dr. Dan George at Duke University Hospital told us when he said, “I have thousands of patients who would trade places with you in a heartbeat.” We appear to have been dealt something of a tentative inside straight. Not the straight flush we had wanted, but definitely better than that 7-high hand that so many of the people we have been among on this day have in their pockets. We are blessed.

As we know more, we’ll share it. Unless we go to a movie or shopping or something, We’ve got a lots of free time.