Columbus and the Valley

Oprah Would Be Proud

Because of the precarious condition of my back, I declined a generous offer to fill a spot yesterday in one of the rafts that navigated the newly-created whitewater course on the Chattahoochee. Jill made the trip and I stood on the sidelines and watched. I knew that I had made the right decision at exactly the instant I saw her leave the rubber rail of the raft and sail up and into the boiling cauldron that is the hole named “Cut Bait.”

After a few anxious moments I saw her head pop up and I knew someone would scoop her up and bring her safely back to me. Jill and Oprah Winfrey have something in common. Neither of them particularly likes to get their hair wet. Oprah would have been proud. Jill came out of the Hooch looking like a drowned rat and she will have stories to tell for the rest of her life about the day she ran the Chattahoochee at 9,000 cubic feet per second. Folks, that is some big ass water!

We pull out in the morning to begin the eight-hour drive to Durham, NC to begin the next chapter of my journey with cancer. My itinerary includes meetings with medical oncologist, Dr. Dan George and Dr. Michael Morse, who runs Duke’s high-dose interleukin-2 program. I’m fortunate that they’re going to be able to use all the recent scans from M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. To supplement those scans, I’ll have some lab work and pulmonary function testing (stress echo) to determine my ability to withstand the difficult HD-IL2 treatment regimen.

The first doctor visit is on Monday and the stress test and the visit with Dr. Morse are scheduled for Tuesday. We should be able to hit the road to come back home on Wednesday morning. If HD-IL2 will work for me, we’ll turn back around and head back up there to begin the treatment on either Labor Day or the day after. After seven days in intensive care, we’ll make the difficult trek back home for two weeks for me to try to bounce back from the therapy. Then we’ll do it all again. That is one round. Depending on how I fare and how I respond, I’ll have to do multiple rounds of this nasty therapy. Four rounds could take up to a year from start to finish. But, this is the only therapy that can offer me a cure. And, only in a very small percentage of cases.

Jill and I appreciate the continued good wishes and all the love we’ve received from our family, our friends and this remarkable community. If you add all the readers of this blog around the world, we aren’t tackling this difficult therapy alone. There is a veritable army that will go with us. I am going to attempt to blog my way through this entire treatment. With the very strong likelihood that there will some portion of the next few weeks when I’ll be physically or mentally unable to write. Because I want to capture all of this to be able to leave more breadcrumbs for those behind me to follow, I’ll ask Jill to either video some things or to type for me. Regardless of what happens, this is going to be a difficult, but interesting time in our lives.

I hope you’ll allow me a shameless plug for our business here. We have, at considerable expense, launched free iOS, Android and web versions of both Columbus and the Valley and Valley Parent magazines. As we begin to offer free, interesting local content in these digital editions as a value-added complement to our 21-year-old print magazines, we will be an even better value to our advertisers. When one of our account executives makes contact with you, please say “yes, I want to reach our potential customers regardless of where they are. At the beach, at home or in the carpool line.”

Here’s how to access all those magazine versions. Please download them, share them with your friends and let us know what you think.

Columbus and the Valley

Web: http://content.yudu.com/A1xfua/CVMAug12/

iOS App: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/columbus-valley-magazine/id548657943?mt=8

Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.yudu.ReaderAIR3180494&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImFpci5jb20ueXVkdS5SZWFkZXJBSVIzMTgwNDk0Il0.

Valley Parent

Web: http://content.yudu.com/A1xs58/VPAug12/

iOS: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/valley-parent-magazine/id548646604?mt=8

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.yudu.ReaderAIR3240394&feature=more_from_developer#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwiYWlyLmNvbS55dWR1LlJlYWRlckFJUjMyNDAzOTQiXQ..

 

Belgian Bike Race

At the moment that Dr. Andrew Pippas, morphed from being my friend to becoming my medical oncologist, I already knew several things about him. I first met him in his cramped little office across the street from Doctors Hospital, well in advance of the construction of the John B. Amos Cancer Center.

I was there to welcome him to town. Our conversation drifted to men’s clothing. I recommended Chancellor’s as a good place to go. We talked about his family and that he had just arrived here from Lakeland, Fla. I found him to be quick-witted, very intelligent and he seemed to always order his thoughts before he opened his mouth to speak. Over the years I’ve know him, he’d occasionally disappear from the small space his body occupies and appears to be lost in thought, pondering some angle, some formula or another way to get at something on which he’s been working. Like a well-dressed mad scientist in a bow tie, he leaves no stone unturned in his quest to heal those of us sick people who are glad to be in his care.

These few days since my last posting on this blog have found me on a soul-wrenching journey. Our lives have gone on: doctor visits, dinners with family and friends, quiet conversations with family, the business of running two print magazines while launching three digital versions of both of them, church (although I skipped today to have some quiet time just for myself), board work, tractor time, an event with my parents — all against the ever present backdrop of cancer and a big decision that needs to be made.

As you know, Jill and I just returned from an 11-day journey out to Houston, Tex. to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Out there we found out a couple of things we already knew and one thing we were surprised to hear. The cancer that has invaded my body is trying to kill me, but thankfully it has brought a slingshot to the gun fight. But instead of the one tumor that we knew I had on my left adrenal gland, we found out that I have two more small ones in the upper pole of Strainer, my right and only kidney.

There is a surgical option that should be exercised after a period of systemic treatment. I have always been told by Dr. Pippas and other medical oncologists whose opinions we’ve sought: “Treat a local problem with a local treatment. Treat a systemic problem with systemic therapy.” We’ve got a systemic situation now, and although surgery is still on the table, we need to blast my system with cancer-killing therapy to beat down what is there and destroy any cells that may be trying to get a toe hold someplace else.

TKIs and anti-angoiogenic drugs are the chosen systemic route these days for clear cell kidney cancer because they can shrink tumors and lessen a patient’s tumor burden in advance of surgery. I believe there are 7 of them: sunitinib (Sutent), pazopanib (Votrient), everolimus (Affinitor), axitinib (Inlyta), sorafinib (Nexavar), temsirolimus (Torisel) and bevasizumab (Avastin). These drugs have two things in common: their toxicities are legendary and they cannot cure kidney cancer. The 8th approved therapy is called Aldesleukin (IL-2). It has one thing in common with the other seven: its toxicities are legendary. AND, +/- 7% to 10% of the time, it can also cure (provide a durable, lasting remission from) kidney cancer.

If you search HDIL-2 on this blog, I’m sure you’ll find a double handful of references and the discussion that if this cancer forces me to a systemic therapy, high-dose interleukin-2 will be the one I choose. I know that I’ll be walking unarmed and naked into a wall of flames, but I’ll be walking toward the only thing that can give me my life back and provide a tiny hope for my greatest wishes: to live to be old with Jill Tigner, to see our sons happily married and to hold a lapful of grandchildren.

Andy Pippas called me this afternoon and we talked about things. The bottom line: I am not going to dick around with a drug that has not got a chance to cure me. Not now, anyway. I may have to take one of these 7 drugs some day in advance of another surgery. But, I may be one of the 7 percenters, who can get enough remaining life out of HDIL-2 to ether be done with this shit or to live long enough for something more profound to come along.

So, I sent Dr. Dan George an email today and asked him to make a place for us at Duke University Hospital in his world-class HDIL-2 treatment program. My hair is on fire, my eyes are red, I’m locked and loaded and I’m going in. Unless something in my scans or labs makes me ineligible for this treatment, we’re choosing to ride the only horse that can take us all the way to the finish line.

This decision had been difficult to make and has taken days of discussion with Jill and many emails with the doctors who are involved with my case. I am tired of thinking about it now. We know what we’re going to do and we’re ready to get about it. Here is some information on Aldesleukin if you need some specific things to pray for on our behalf. This is going to be worse than 100 miles of cobblestones in a Belgian bike race. But, with enough people cheering us on, we’ll get through it.

I’ll post here when I hear from Dr. George. Please keep us in your prayers.

Silent Story Passed at Rotary Table

This blog entry (slightly modified) was my column in the May 2009 issue of Valley Parent magazine. It is one of the most anticipated issues of Valley Parent because it contains the winners of the 2009/2010 class of our Fresh Faces Cover Contest. Hundreds and hundreds of families have entered their freshest face and thousands of grandparents and parents have been waiting on the information they got on page five.
Even though people see a page in one of our magazines that they really like, they won’t deface the magazine by cutting it out. That is one of the things that makes magazines so neat. You won’t cut out a coupon from a magazine. No, you just won’t do it. It looks too nice to cut up. But you will haul it to the dance school, or the beach for spring break or to the waiting room at the doctor’s office. And, if you like it, you’ll give it a place on the table or the shelf until it is covered with dust. I like dusty magazines. I also like them when they’re dog-eared. They’re treasures to me, but I’m kind of partial.
I like to talk. Those of you who know me know this. I especially like the people who sit around my Wednesday Rotary table, because they like to talk, too. These folks are not just talkers. They’re storytellers, and there’s a big distance between the two. Talk is just talk, but a story can send you back in time and can tug on the fabric of what makes you who you are. Stories incite passion. Stories are ageless and timeless and depending on the kind of story, they might even grow more powerful as they age.
One of the best things about life to me is being able to make an emotional connection with someone over a good story. I had one of those serendipitous moments yesterday at my Rotary table. I told my story first: We had a new couple to visit our church this past Sunday. They’re moving in down the road from us! He’s the Command Sergeant Major of the entire 3rd Army. He likes to fish, hunt and play golf and it was just like when I was child and a cool new kid moved onto the block. I’ve been excited about this since Sunday and they’ll arrive here after his retirement sometime later this year! (This is an extremely shortened version of my story, by the way.)
Geoff Love was sitting next to me and for the record, he is not usually at our table, so I don’t know him well. Geoff is a securities broker, a former banker and seems to be someone I’d like to get to know better. With a story, he let me in. He told of when his family moved into a new home in Mobile, Ala. He was standing in their new front yard with his small son and they were watching a group of neighbor kids playing in a front yard across the street. “God, please let them ask my son to play,” Geoff prayed. They did.
He looked at me, suddenly too emotionally moved to talk as he remembered that powerful memory, still raw after so many years, still producing tears. I will never forget Geoff Love. I am grateful for the gift he gave me yesterday at a Rotary table surrounded by six other people who never saw what transpired between Geoff and me.
Go today, and make a story with your children. It’ll be with you for the rest of your life. Isn’t life wonderful?