I have to drive about 80 miles to work in the morning, so this is going to be a quick post. I am WAY overdue.
First, we moved to Cordova, a suburb of Memphis, which is why I'm driving 80 miles to work. I can telecommute 2 or 3 days a week, so that will work out okay, I hope.
I have met more neighbors in this partial week we've been here than I've met in my entire adult life (except at Rose Creek Village, of course). Tonight, I met the parents of an 8-year-old girl named Julia Cobb, who underwent a stem cell transplant (SCT) about 45 days ago. She doesn't have a blood cancer, like most SCT recipients. She has a type of "sarcoma." See Julia's story because I don't really know what that is except a solid tumor that started on her shoulder blade, was treated, relapsed, and then came back in several spots in her body.
I was so excited to meet them, and I really hope we get a chance to be a help to them. The father is a cancer survivor, too. His mother-in-law had exactly the same cancer, an intestinal cancer near as dangerous as pancreatic cancer, which is deadly. They went through treatment at the same hospital at the same time. He made it, and his mother-in-law didn't. Later his mother also died of cancer.
Nonetheless they were jovial. It was such a thrill to meet them, and to find out God put us three doors down from them!
Ok, real rapid update on me.
My treatment for my acute GVH, which worked pretty well, was to sun my lower legs and forearms, two or the worst rash areas, for 5 to 10 minutes per day. I have had almost no rash, rather than usually having rash an all my lower legs, half my thighs, a third of my trunk and on most of both arms.
Nonetheless, on Friday my NP--the wonderful and beautiful nurse Catherine--just about went into shock when I told her what I'd been doing. She hid it well, but she was horrified. She casually got the doctor as normal.
Dr. Savani came in saying, "We understand Dr. Pavao has prescribed a treatment, but we don't know this Dr. Pavao, and we don't think he is approved. So we are going to use the Catherine and Dr. Savani treatment. Haven't we warned you from day one not to be in the sun? Did we forget to tell you over and over to stay out of the sun?"
Seems I do remember that, but ...
He wasn't interested in "but." (I suspect he wanted to say "butthead.")
He explained that the danger is that I would move on to chronic GVH, and specifically a form of GVH rash called "sclerosis," in which my skin would harden like dry leather, restricting movement and being impossible to treat.
His lecture went on for a little while, and I sheepishly agreed to stop Dr. Pavao's treatment.
When we were leaving, my wife said, "It's possible they know some things about GVH and the sunshine that we don't know about."
I howled with laughter. Yeah, okay. I admit that eight years of medical school and years of daily experience with transplant recipients might give them a slightly better idea about sunshine and GVH than I have.
Otherwise, he said my blood counts are normal for a guy taking the medication I'm taking. He said I'm doing "100%"! (That should be pronounced with an Indian accent to get the effect.)
I don't get to drop my Prednisone (steroid) this time because of my sunshine treatment. Bad boy!
He also said, "No one can ever say 100%, but you are very unlikely to relapse."
So, I'm embarrassed but alive and apparently likely to continue to live ... if I stay out of the sun.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
Alternative and Natural Medicine Rant
After reading one more attack on the medical system from someone praising a good idea (eating nutritionally) and wishful thinking (that herbs cure cancer), I have to say something.
Admittedly, drug companies are out for profit. Despite this Ida-Rubicin, Vincristin, Cytarabine, Methatextrate, tacrolimus, prednisone, and other drugs saved my life. Zofran, Prilosec, and other medications made the treatment I required bearable. Those all came from pharmaceutical companies.
The reason that corrupt, money-hungry drug manufacturers save lives is because there is a scientific method and there are laws and agencies requiring the medical establishment to make every effort to follow the scientific method. It has its shortcomings, but because hospitals, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies have to report their results publicly, they are scrutinized, and we learn.
The result? A few years ago a guy with BPDCN-like leukemia, like me, was guaranteed dead in two years, probably less, and that only if he went through chemotherapy. Diagnosis to death for aggressive leukemias killed in an average of 6 weeks in the 1960's.
Because of a lot of research, we now know you can save BPDCN patients by giving them a bone marrow transplant. Only five or six years ago, such a transplant killed 30% of the recipients. This year, however, it is down to 5%.
FIVE PERCENT! People ought to be cheering them, not attacking them.
How did they do it? By expensive drugs? Partially. They always had the expensive drugs. They dropped the death rate from 30% to 5% by assigning only a few patients to one nurse practitioner. The NP diligently tracks the patient's health and gives advice, including nutritional, attitude, and lifestyle advice. The NP learns the patients, sees them often, and notices if a problem arises.
So let's compare that to alternative, natural medicine. I hope it's no surprise to you that I researched the dozen or so natural therapies that well-meaning friends recommended to me. What did I find?
Nothing. No records. No people that could be contacted. First names and user names with comments on web site. Absolutely nothing verifiable. I was insulted by one "camp" that promises turned around health in three weeks because I asked them if they had any references to prove their method worked.
Gerson Therapy has recently started releasing their records. Kudos to them. The results are not very impressive, but they do have results. Gerson Therapy, according to the Gerson Therapy web site, doesn't do anything for acute leukemia, so I quite researching them once I found out.
Everyone else? Nice claims. Wishful thinking. No evidence.
I once looked up the claims that a company called Lose Your Back Pain (I think) was making for an enzyme that you could take by mouth. They said it would relax your muscles, relieve pain, and help your back.
I looked up the enzyme on the PubMed database. It was there! Only one study, but the study concluded that the enzyme relieved pain and inflammation as well as ibuprofen.
The problem is, very few alternative medicine claims pan out like that. And when they do, the herbs or enzymes are sold almost as expensively as pharmaceuticals. A small dose of the enzymes costs $60/month.
People make excuses. "No one will study these herbs because they can't make money on them."
That is just not true. The last time I checked there were three ongoing studies on the efficacy of Pomegranate juice for preventing prostate cancer. It's hard to find a natural food claim that hasn't been studied.
I want to make it clear that I agree with the importance of good health. We could greatly reduce cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other diseases by eating more healthy and exercising.
However, it is ridiculous to claim that doctors don't know and don't promote healthy eating and exercise.
Miracle health, from drinking Acai juice, doing Pilates, or taking colloidal silver, is a fantasy. Colloidal silver, by the way, can permanently turn your skin gray if you drink too much of it. Oh, yeah, the medical establishment has studied colloidal silver, too.
It makes me angry that people with no evidence to back up their claims, and who have no intention of keeping track of the success of their claims, fire salvos at a medical establishment that has a lot of problems, but which has almost doubled our expected life span over the last century.
Admittedly, drug companies are out for profit. Despite this Ida-Rubicin, Vincristin, Cytarabine, Methatextrate, tacrolimus, prednisone, and other drugs saved my life. Zofran, Prilosec, and other medications made the treatment I required bearable. Those all came from pharmaceutical companies.
The reason that corrupt, money-hungry drug manufacturers save lives is because there is a scientific method and there are laws and agencies requiring the medical establishment to make every effort to follow the scientific method. It has its shortcomings, but because hospitals, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies have to report their results publicly, they are scrutinized, and we learn.
The result? A few years ago a guy with BPDCN-like leukemia, like me, was guaranteed dead in two years, probably less, and that only if he went through chemotherapy. Diagnosis to death for aggressive leukemias killed in an average of 6 weeks in the 1960's.
Because of a lot of research, we now know you can save BPDCN patients by giving them a bone marrow transplant. Only five or six years ago, such a transplant killed 30% of the recipients. This year, however, it is down to 5%.
FIVE PERCENT! People ought to be cheering them, not attacking them.
How did they do it? By expensive drugs? Partially. They always had the expensive drugs. They dropped the death rate from 30% to 5% by assigning only a few patients to one nurse practitioner. The NP diligently tracks the patient's health and gives advice, including nutritional, attitude, and lifestyle advice. The NP learns the patients, sees them often, and notices if a problem arises.
So let's compare that to alternative, natural medicine. I hope it's no surprise to you that I researched the dozen or so natural therapies that well-meaning friends recommended to me. What did I find?
Nothing. No records. No people that could be contacted. First names and user names with comments on web site. Absolutely nothing verifiable. I was insulted by one "camp" that promises turned around health in three weeks because I asked them if they had any references to prove their method worked.
Gerson Therapy has recently started releasing their records. Kudos to them. The results are not very impressive, but they do have results. Gerson Therapy, according to the Gerson Therapy web site, doesn't do anything for acute leukemia, so I quite researching them once I found out.
Everyone else? Nice claims. Wishful thinking. No evidence.
I once looked up the claims that a company called Lose Your Back Pain (I think) was making for an enzyme that you could take by mouth. They said it would relax your muscles, relieve pain, and help your back.
I looked up the enzyme on the PubMed database. It was there! Only one study, but the study concluded that the enzyme relieved pain and inflammation as well as ibuprofen.
The problem is, very few alternative medicine claims pan out like that. And when they do, the herbs or enzymes are sold almost as expensively as pharmaceuticals. A small dose of the enzymes costs $60/month.
People make excuses. "No one will study these herbs because they can't make money on them."
That is just not true. The last time I checked there were three ongoing studies on the efficacy of Pomegranate juice for preventing prostate cancer. It's hard to find a natural food claim that hasn't been studied.
I want to make it clear that I agree with the importance of good health. We could greatly reduce cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other diseases by eating more healthy and exercising.
However, it is ridiculous to claim that doctors don't know and don't promote healthy eating and exercise.
Miracle health, from drinking Acai juice, doing Pilates, or taking colloidal silver, is a fantasy. Colloidal silver, by the way, can permanently turn your skin gray if you drink too much of it. Oh, yeah, the medical establishment has studied colloidal silver, too.
It makes me angry that people with no evidence to back up their claims, and who have no intention of keeping track of the success of their claims, fire salvos at a medical establishment that has a lot of problems, but which has almost doubled our expected life span over the last century.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
So Much To Talk About!
The last post was named Nothing To Talk About, so I thought I'd name this the opposite as some sort of interesting pun, though now that I think about it, I can't imagine what would be interesting about that.
But it's an appropriate title.
Life's a whirlwind. I'm a writer, and it's not just this blog. I write the content for Christian History for Everyman and Proof of Evolution. I edit and upload the pages for A Brief History of Soccer. Well, I should say that I think about writing the content for Proof of Evolution. I don't have time for it.
I do have two blogs that I do find time for, though, this one and The Rest of the Old, Old Story.
I recently wrote a 40-page booklet called The Apostles' Gospel. I was supposed to do a final edit on it this last week, but I couldn't get to it. I spent all day Thursday in Nashville getting checkups at Vanderbilt, which I wrote about. Friday we were out looking at warehouses all day because our business has outgrown its current building, and we need to move. Between the heat and all the walking—one of those warehouses was like a small town—I was exhausted and had to cancel a teaching I was to do Friday night.
Today I edited an old booklet of mine called How To Make a Church Fail. It purports to be a discovered letter by Satan explaining how he got the church to compromise with the government in the fourth-century Roman empire. Call it an unusual form of historical fiction. I haven't read it myself in three years, and I loved it.
Okay, maybe that's a weird thing to say about my own book.
It'll be out on Kindle in no more than a month, I'm sure. My assistant and daughter-in-law, Dassi, is furiously fast at turning edited copy into a booklet with an incredible book cover. She adapted the terrific painting done for me by Jeremiah Briggs into the best cover I've even seen. Too bad's it on a 20-page booklet. On the other hand, booklets are cheap. The artwork on the cover will be worth more than the purchase price!
I've already started on a book called The New Law. It's only got eight pages so far, but the only review I've gotten was, "I'm so disappointed it ended there."
I have a booklet somewhat done that I found on my hard drive called The Gospel and Grace. I would love to edit that one, too, but I don't know when I'll have time.
In the meantime, I just sent an email today asking for Dassi's help on turning the "Yippee! I Have Leukemia" blog into a book. I've been meaning to do that for a year, but ... yeah, I haven't had time.
Thursday and Friday, the days I went to Vanderbilt and looked at warehouses, I spent free time on the phone trying to work out pre-approval for a loan so we can buy a house in Memphis. Friday afternoon, a customer with an Irish brogue came in and struck up conversation. It was great, but I got a phone call and questions from the warehouse staff during the conversation, and when I was done, I couldn't think straight. I was light-headed, and the world looked extraordinarily yellow.
I'm featuring my first book, In the Beginning Was the Logos, on Kindle boards on Monday. It will be at 99 cents for Kindle through all of June, despite the fact that it is over 400 pages of captivating history and years of research. (The most common remark about the book is, "I can't believe you did all this research!" The second most common is, "Wow, this history book was actually interesting.") It will also be featured on Bookbub.com and BookGorilla.com sometime this month.
What I got really excited about, though, was that the manager of the Buffalo Wild Wings in Jackson asked me to come down and do a book signing. That would be fun!
I gave him a signed copy of the book when it came out. I talk to him here and there because we've ordered a massive amount of wings for our warehouse a couple time as a thank you to the workers. If they were closer to our warehouse, we'd do it more often!
But it's an appropriate title.
Life's a whirlwind. I'm a writer, and it's not just this blog. I write the content for Christian History for Everyman and Proof of Evolution. I edit and upload the pages for A Brief History of Soccer. Well, I should say that I think about writing the content for Proof of Evolution. I don't have time for it.
I do have two blogs that I do find time for, though, this one and The Rest of the Old, Old Story.
I recently wrote a 40-page booklet called The Apostles' Gospel. I was supposed to do a final edit on it this last week, but I couldn't get to it. I spent all day Thursday in Nashville getting checkups at Vanderbilt, which I wrote about. Friday we were out looking at warehouses all day because our business has outgrown its current building, and we need to move. Between the heat and all the walking—one of those warehouses was like a small town—I was exhausted and had to cancel a teaching I was to do Friday night.
Today I edited an old booklet of mine called How To Make a Church Fail. It purports to be a discovered letter by Satan explaining how he got the church to compromise with the government in the fourth-century Roman empire. Call it an unusual form of historical fiction. I haven't read it myself in three years, and I loved it.
Okay, maybe that's a weird thing to say about my own book.
It'll be out on Kindle in no more than a month, I'm sure. My assistant and daughter-in-law, Dassi, is furiously fast at turning edited copy into a booklet with an incredible book cover. She adapted the terrific painting done for me by Jeremiah Briggs into the best cover I've even seen. Too bad's it on a 20-page booklet. On the other hand, booklets are cheap. The artwork on the cover will be worth more than the purchase price!
I've already started on a book called The New Law. It's only got eight pages so far, but the only review I've gotten was, "I'm so disappointed it ended there."
I have a booklet somewhat done that I found on my hard drive called The Gospel and Grace. I would love to edit that one, too, but I don't know when I'll have time.
In the meantime, I just sent an email today asking for Dassi's help on turning the "Yippee! I Have Leukemia" blog into a book. I've been meaning to do that for a year, but ... yeah, I haven't had time.
Thursday and Friday, the days I went to Vanderbilt and looked at warehouses, I spent free time on the phone trying to work out pre-approval for a loan so we can buy a house in Memphis. Friday afternoon, a customer with an Irish brogue came in and struck up conversation. It was great, but I got a phone call and questions from the warehouse staff during the conversation, and when I was done, I couldn't think straight. I was light-headed, and the world looked extraordinarily yellow.
Sponsored Link
I'm featuring my first book, In the Beginning Was the Logos, on Kindle boards on Monday. It will be at 99 cents for Kindle through all of June, despite the fact that it is over 400 pages of captivating history and years of research. (The most common remark about the book is, "I can't believe you did all this research!" The second most common is, "Wow, this history book was actually interesting.") It will also be featured on Bookbub.com and BookGorilla.com sometime this month.
What I got really excited about, though, was that the manager of the Buffalo Wild Wings in Jackson asked me to come down and do a book signing. That would be fun!
I gave him a signed copy of the book when it came out. I talk to him here and there because we've ordered a massive amount of wings for our warehouse a couple time as a thank you to the workers. If they were closer to our warehouse, we'd do it more often!
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Nothing To Talk About!
I want to tell you about my checkup at Vanderbilt today.
I got some immunizations. I saw the Nurse Practitioner, lovely and charming Cathy, and one of my favorite doctors, Dr. Jagasia.
Yeah, my best checkup report ever. There is really nothing to report! In fact, there was so little to report, I forgot even to check my blood counts, which I usually do on my iPhone before Catherine ever comes in the room. (What do you call a room like that? A seeing room? A patient room?)
But I'm going to chat anyway. Thanks to all those who have said they are interested in my inane ramblings.
I've been training—doing squats, sprinting, jogging, walking, playing soccer—in vain hopes of legs of steel. Today, I was happy to have legs of pale, human flesh, rather ordinary except for the large amount of varicose veins around my right ankle.
Today was checkup day. Usually Vanderbilt likes to give me two months between appointments, but I had a May appointment due to the large amount of GVH rash I had. For the last week, though, I've had no rash at all.
No rash at all.
My lower legs have been covered with a red, bumpy rash—that doesn't itch or bother me—for as far back as I can remember. At least 8 or 9 months. The rest of my rash comes and goes, but I have always been able to count on my entire lower leg being covered in rash except the upper calf area.
I still can't reveal the new treatment that I added in late April, which produced immediate results. Afterward, circumstances prevented my added treatment for a couple weeks, and the lower leg rash was still pretty bad for my appointment in early May.
Between then and now, though, circumstances have changed, and I have been pretty diligent with my secret treatment. The result has been no rash on my entire body, even though I've only been treating my lower legs.
However, since I don't care to tell my awesome care team at Vanderbilt about this secret treatment—yet—I can't tell you, either. I need more data.
So I go back in two months, August 2, for another checkup. If we have managed to stay GVH-free between now and then, I will reveal my treatment to them and face my just desserts. They're such nice people, I really don't want to kill them with astonishment. Nor do I want them to choke me to death for trying it.
So I have to have a lot of success under my belt.
I have a new goal. Remember in one of the last posts I told you I ran a whole mile, but it took me 13:56 to run it?
Well, the very next day someone told me that a friend of mine has been out jogging with her two children, and they ran a 14-minute mile with her. I blinked a couple times in silence, and then I asked, "How old is Tanaya?"
Tanaya is my friend's daughter.
She is 4.
The day after that, I saw my friend, her son (Jaden), and Tanaya come running in the gate of our village. My friend was pushing a baby stroller while she ran. Jaden and Tanaya ran casually beside her, clearly not tired. Jaden is 7 or 8 years old.
I tried to decipher the scene in front of me.
People from our village run on that road all the time. If someone is coming in the gate of Rose Creek Village running, then usually they have either run to the end of Lola Whitten (2 miles), or to the end of Rose Creek Road (4.4 miles), or around a loop that we call the King Road loop (6 miles). (Or sometimes back from my warehouse, which is about 15 miles.)
I'm pretty confident that Abby would not have run with three children down Rose Creek Road, so I'm guessing they only ran two miles.
I looked at Tanaya's smooth, casual stride, the turn of her head—both sideways and upward—to impart some bit of adolescent wit to her mother as she hit the end of her 2-mile jog, and I realized that this 4-year-old girl, over which I had a 4-second advantage, had surpassed me; indeed, left me floundering in the over-sized wake of her success.
So today, on the way to the hospital, my wife read a social network post from Tanaya's mom. "The internet results show that Jaden and Tanaya ran 10:57 for that mile!" (paraphrased)
I was depressed. My wife assures me that I can catch her.
I'm thinking, well, by the time Tanaya is 11 or 12, it's going to be hopeless. I'll be 60 or so and slowing down. However, if I can make some real strides (no pun intended) in the next three or four years, a 55-year-old guy ought to have an advantage over a cute, but 4-foot-tall, munchkin.
So that's my new goal. First, catch up to Tanaya's standard right now, which will take at least six months, probably a year. Then apply my extensive knowledge of speed training to this tired, beat-up old body, and I ought to be able to compete if I don't let her get much over 4 feet tall.
Well, that's my fun for the day. I am so excited to go in, see the doctor, and feel like a normal person getting a checkup. I never imagined that could happen this soon!
I'm still on immunosuppressive medications that help make that result true. We are tapering off them very, very slowly. Why?
Cause that's the way we run.
I got some immunizations. I saw the Nurse Practitioner, lovely and charming Cathy, and one of my favorite doctors, Dr. Jagasia.
Yeah, my best checkup report ever. There is really nothing to report! In fact, there was so little to report, I forgot even to check my blood counts, which I usually do on my iPhone before Catherine ever comes in the room. (What do you call a room like that? A seeing room? A patient room?)
But I'm going to chat anyway. Thanks to all those who have said they are interested in my inane ramblings.
Conquering GVH of the Skin
I've been training—doing squats, sprinting, jogging, walking, playing soccer—in vain hopes of legs of steel. Today, I was happy to have legs of pale, human flesh, rather ordinary except for the large amount of varicose veins around my right ankle.
Today was checkup day. Usually Vanderbilt likes to give me two months between appointments, but I had a May appointment due to the large amount of GVH rash I had. For the last week, though, I've had no rash at all.
No rash at all.
My lower legs have been covered with a red, bumpy rash—that doesn't itch or bother me—for as far back as I can remember. At least 8 or 9 months. The rest of my rash comes and goes, but I have always been able to count on my entire lower leg being covered in rash except the upper calf area.
I still can't reveal the new treatment that I added in late April, which produced immediate results. Afterward, circumstances prevented my added treatment for a couple weeks, and the lower leg rash was still pretty bad for my appointment in early May.
Between then and now, though, circumstances have changed, and I have been pretty diligent with my secret treatment. The result has been no rash on my entire body, even though I've only been treating my lower legs.
However, since I don't care to tell my awesome care team at Vanderbilt about this secret treatment—yet—I can't tell you, either. I need more data.
So I go back in two months, August 2, for another checkup. If we have managed to stay GVH-free between now and then, I will reveal my treatment to them and face my just desserts. They're such nice people, I really don't want to kill them with astonishment. Nor do I want them to choke me to death for trying it.
So I have to have a lot of success under my belt.
My New Exercise Goal
I have a new goal. Remember in one of the last posts I told you I ran a whole mile, but it took me 13:56 to run it?
Well, the very next day someone told me that a friend of mine has been out jogging with her two children, and they ran a 14-minute mile with her. I blinked a couple times in silence, and then I asked, "How old is Tanaya?"
Tanaya is my friend's daughter.
She is 4.
The day after that, I saw my friend, her son (Jaden), and Tanaya come running in the gate of our village. My friend was pushing a baby stroller while she ran. Jaden and Tanaya ran casually beside her, clearly not tired. Jaden is 7 or 8 years old.
I tried to decipher the scene in front of me.
 | |
| Yep, that's her (photo by Ashley Hartle) |
People from our village run on that road all the time. If someone is coming in the gate of Rose Creek Village running, then usually they have either run to the end of Lola Whitten (2 miles), or to the end of Rose Creek Road (4.4 miles), or around a loop that we call the King Road loop (6 miles). (Or sometimes back from my warehouse, which is about 15 miles.)
I'm pretty confident that Abby would not have run with three children down Rose Creek Road, so I'm guessing they only ran two miles.
I looked at Tanaya's smooth, casual stride, the turn of her head—both sideways and upward—to impart some bit of adolescent wit to her mother as she hit the end of her 2-mile jog, and I realized that this 4-year-old girl, over which I had a 4-second advantage, had surpassed me; indeed, left me floundering in the over-sized wake of her success.
So today, on the way to the hospital, my wife read a social network post from Tanaya's mom. "The internet results show that Jaden and Tanaya ran 10:57 for that mile!" (paraphrased)
I was depressed. My wife assures me that I can catch her.
I'm thinking, well, by the time Tanaya is 11 or 12, it's going to be hopeless. I'll be 60 or so and slowing down. However, if I can make some real strides (no pun intended) in the next three or four years, a 55-year-old guy ought to have an advantage over a cute, but 4-foot-tall, munchkin.
So that's my new goal. First, catch up to Tanaya's standard right now, which will take at least six months, probably a year. Then apply my extensive knowledge of speed training to this tired, beat-up old body, and I ought to be able to compete if I don't let her get much over 4 feet tall.
I got a nice email from Tanaya's dad, Nathan. He told me his family only ran one mile that day, and he also corrected my spelling of Tanaya. He told me he doesn't know if he'll be able to keep up with Jaden, who has run backward in order to slow down enough to stay with with his little sister.
Another anecdote: Before all this, my wife saw Abby racing up the hill towards here house at full speed. Worried, my wife sent her a text asking if everything was all right. The answer? "Everything's fine. It's just that if I don't work on my speed, Jaden's going to outrun me real soon."
Final Note
Well, that's my fun for the day. I am so excited to go in, see the doctor, and feel like a normal person getting a checkup. I never imagined that could happen this soon!
I'm still on immunosuppressive medications that help make that result true. We are tapering off them very, very slowly. Why?
Cause that's the way we run.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Life as a Leukemia Surivor
I am a leukemia survivor. People tell me that I am an unusual one.
This post is written specifically because I'm worried that yesterday's was boring, even though I felt like it was essential to write those things for the sake of other survivors who might need to see how others did.
Today's ... well, it won't be.
I was given permission by Vanderbilt Medical Center to move away from the area in early May, 2012; just over a year ago.
Here was the story at that point:
May 1: "When [the EMT] lifted the bandage, there was a small explosion of blood that splattered all over the bed, my shirt, and even on him. The blood then began running off my chest and pooling in the crook of my arm."
May 10: We moved back to Selmer from Nashville.
May 30: "I only got about three steps down the line before my conscious mind caught up and realized that I had no idea where my feet were in relation to my body. All I knew is that my legs were somewhere behind me, too far back to have any hope of staying upright.
"I imagine it probably scared everyone to have the leukemia patient take a dive down the first base line, but we were playing in a grass field. It was soft, I rolled, and it didn't hurt at all."
June 13: I was still losing weight. I was 130 pounds, down from 190 before the transplant, and the chemo lines on my fingernails were growing out:
That sorts of sets the stage for where I was one month after returning to my home in Selmer.
In that condition, I returned to work. I run my own business, so I was able to set my own hours. I had to stay home and rest about one day per week, and hemorrhoids would be an ongoing problem throughout the summer.
So what would you do?
I rented a building in Selmer and tried to start a coffee shop.
Understand the scenario. Our church owns the building in Selmer, and they tried to do a coffee shop in 2011. It was almost successful. I really believed the problem was that we had a terrible sign, and there was no way to really tell what the building was being used for. Also, we had no advertising budget, so there was no advertising, either. Just word of mouth.
So I rented the building and tried to do it right. I advertised in the paper. I put a good sign on the front of the building, and I tried to run it with my daughter and a friend.
Run it? I was already working, and I was taking naps at work on my office floor to do so. I was trying to catch up from 10 months of being in Nashville away from the office. The worst part was trying to catch up from the four weeks I didn't even eat, much less look at emails and texts.
I don't just have a warehouse business I was running, but I maintain four web sites besides this blog.
Why was I starting a business?
It seemed right. The building was sitting empty, costing my church money. I really thought I could make it work, and I was looking forward to using the building for seminars and other educational events that would benefit the community.
People suggested that maybe I was overdoing it. I acknowledged they might be right, then went on about my business.
Then came "The day."
I don't remember what day it was. I think it was in August.
We were open in the afternoon, but my daughter was unavailable to work for some reason. I tried to get hold of the friend who was helping me, but I couldn't reach her, either. Finally, I got my secretary from work, and I went down to The Selmer Buzz, as I was calling the new coffee shop.
Our advertising and sign hadn't worked at all. Business was incredibly slow, and we certainly weren't making any money. We did have one very successful seminar on health care reform, but otherwise, pretty dead.
It was not a good day for me. Back then I called those "fatigue days." Usually, I just stayed in bed all day. I'd been told not to fight those days. They always win. Today, however, I couldn't do that. I had to open the coffee shop.
I remember the time frame now. It was late October, early November, 2012. I had jogged for 3 or 4 minutes one day a couple weeks earlier, an extremely long run for me at the time. The next day I had run, then walked, 20 or 30 yards each, for a mile. That was really tiring. The day after that I went on a 4-mile walk with my family at a local park, much of it on hills. I was hobbling by the end, as was my daughter, who had injured her knee.
Exercise is supposed to help prevent blood clots, but I suppose overdoing it can make them happen. I got a blood clot in my calf so bad that I couldn't stand for longer than 5 minutes at a time. The pain in my calf would build and build as I stood, then begin to relieve if I could sit down and get my leg elevated. I brought a wheelchair to the coffee shop so I could get around with my leg up.
In that situation, on a fatigue day, I went to the coffee shop with my secretary from the warehouse so she could help me run it. I showed her how to the run the espresso machines and the "cash register," which was really a program on the Selmer Buzz' iPad.
Then, exhausted, i went to take a nap in the back seat of my car. I covered myself with a sleeping bag, and then realized that my toe hurt too much for me to sleep.
I have always been prone to ingrown toenails, but rarely have they been bad. I had chemo lines on them now, though, and the toenail was brittle. It had broken, and when I looked at my toe, I realized how bad the ingrown toenail was.
Sighing and longing for sleep, I got out my toenail kit, which I carried with me at all times due to my finger and toenails constantly breaking or crumbling. It was agonizing, but I got my toenail as cleaned up as possible, and I got some Neosporin on the bleeding side of the nail.
My toe was throbbing, and it was trembling like a hurt puppy. I figured the pain would wear off pretty quickly, so I laid back under the sleeping bag, leaving my foot bare. I took a deep breath, and ...
Tap, tap, tap.
I looked up at the window where my secretary was tapping. I unlocked the door, and she opened it.
"There are four customers in there, and the espresso machine blew apart. I don't know how to work the other one."
My heart sunk. I was so tired. I couldn't imagine getting up. My toe was throbbing, and my foot was cold.
"I don't know if I can make it," I told her.
She went back in.
I pulled myself up, then I pulled my sock over my still trembling toe. I loosened the laces on my shoe, and I pulled it on my foot. Then I hobbled into the coffee shop through the back door. My calf started to throb as I got inside. My toe was already throbbing.
I smiled and greeted the guests, and I went to our new espresso machine. We weren't using it because my daughter didn't like it. I knew how to use it, but I'd only used it a couple times. Being distracted by pain and trying to take care of the customers, I quickly reached down and pulled the cap I would have pulled on the other machine.
Steam blasted across my hand. The pain was instant.
I jerked my hand back, looked at my secretary, smiled, and said, "Oops."
Amazingly, between me and her, we got the lattes out in a couple minutes. I had been standing the whole time. Pain was shooting through my calf and making its way up into my hamstrings. I looked at my secretary and said, "I'm going to bed now. I hope we have no more customers."
I grabbed a soda can on the way to the car so I'd have something cold to relieve the pain in my burnt hand. I hobbled quickly to the car, needing to get my leg in the air to stop the pain in my calf.
In the car, with the cold soda can pulled under the blanket with me, I uttered one prayer before I went to sleep. It was pitiful. "God, please stop hurting me." That's the last thing I remember.
The next day I closed the coffee shop.
Obviously, I'd learned my lesson. I needed to rest. I'm a former leukemia patient, but still a recovering one.
The blood clot cleared up and stopped causing me pain in November. So in December I drove with my four youngest children to California for a vacation. My oldest son lives in southern California, in Riverside, and my brother lives in Sacramento, as do some "missionaries" from our church.
My oldest daughter, just turned 17, was diagnosed with the flu right before we left. She threw up regularly throughout the first two days of the trip.
Funny, though, despite my depressed immune system, I didn't get sick. Neither did anyone else in the family.
The weather had been in the 40's and 50's and drizzling for at least 2 or 3 weeks before we left. We were looking forward to the drive across the deserts out west.
When we got to southern California, the weather was in the 40's and 50's and drizzling.
I was cold all the time. I liked nothing better than curling up under blankets with a ski cap on, breathing down into the blankets to keep them warm.
My skin was also incredibly dry. It flaked everywhere. I was constantly having to brush it off my clothes. It was like I had dandruff everywhere, especially my face. To combat it, I applied a strong moisturizing lotion over most of my body twice a day. It was cold to put it on, and the moist layer on my skin just made me colder than I already was. It was also horribly time-consuming, as I also had to apply steroid cream to my skin twice a day.
I froze every time I had to apply the lotion or cream. Then I would be cold afterward, and I was cold all the time anyway. I missed a few applications of the steroid cream because I couldn't bear it, and I returned to Tennessee, driving, with a GVH rash over most of my body.
I tried to rest through January, but at the end of the month my son called from California.
"Hey, mom and dad, I'm getting married."
"That's fantastic, son! When?"
"February 10."
My wife said "Great!"; I said, "Isn't that in 11 days?"
It was. Amazingly, we found one very well-priced flight for February 8. Back out to California we went.
This kind of "rest" turned out to be very effective. I had a big increase in energy about that time. No kidding!
March brought spring break. We planned a vacation with the kids to Gulfport, MS. We would take them to the beach.
Then a friend called. He was coming down from New England. Could we meet him in Virginia Beach, Va on the 15th?
Sure, we'll just drive, uh, 14 hours, then come back, pick up the kids and go to Gulfport a few days later.
The trip to Virginia Beach was spectacular. We stopped along the way to visit another friend we know in Virginia, but we made a wrong turn and ended up on a narrow dirt road, climbing a mountain with a drop on both sides. My wife was driving at the time, and we were both terrified. When we got up the mountain, I got out of the car to ask someone for directions, and I was bitten by a dog.
By the time we got to Virginia Beach we had been on the road closer to 24 hours.
When we left Virginia Beach, we chose a highway through Norfolk. We hit Norfolk at rush hour due to poor planning. But it was not just rush hour. There was also construction on the east and south exits out of the city. Traffic was literally at a standstill. We gave up, parked, and went to a mall. This time it was my wife's turn to sleep in the car. She was too tired to shop or drink coffee.
Once we made it back, much slower than had been planned, we got ready for our vacation to Gulfport.
But wait! A pianist with whom my wife is familiar was coming through our town, and he could do a concert if we could arrange it! The only available day was the Wednesday of the week of spring break.
We made a change of plans. Only two nights down in Gulfport, then race back for the concert, then off to the space museum in Huntsville, Alabama, which is only 3 hours away.
Great plan, except our car broke down in Gulfport. We took it to a mechanic, but he couldn't fix it. It's a Lincoln. It's an older Lincoln that I got for $2250, but it's losing functionality because all the parts I need to repair it cost more than the car is worth. (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.)
Off to the dealer it went. Off to the dealer in Gulfport, MS, that is, and since the first mechanic had the car for a day, we no longer had time to pick it up. We had to go back to Tennessee for the concert. We rented a car and headed home.
The return of the car at the end of the week, after the space museum in Huntsville, went without incident. The trip was not 3 hours, since we had to drive to Gulfport from Huntsville, a good 6-hour drive, then an 8-hour drive back to Selmer, but our Lincoln was fixed. The dealer had even fixed it inexpensively. Amazing.
April saw us flying out to California again!
There was a Bone Marrow Transplant Information Conference in Costa Mesa. Two days of doctors, seminars, questions and answers with BMT specialists, and meeting fellow blood cancer survivors. I really wanted to go.
Just for fun, we threw in another trip to Sacramento by car. Another 8-hour drive. We rented a tiny car that got 40 miles per gallon, and we gallivanted around California for a week. We even drove the Pacific Coast Highway coming back from Sacramento. We took pictures and exhausted ourselves, then arrived at our hotel the night before the flight at 11:30 pm. Fortunately, we had a non-stop flight that didn't leave until early afternoon.
We flew out of California on April 30. On May 2, two days later, I spent the entire day in Memphis at a writers guild and meeting friends. The next day, we spent the entire day in Nashville for doctors' appointments. That was Friday, and another week was gone without an appearance at my warehouse.
The following week was a blur of catching up.
Did I mention that we are outgrowing our warehouse? So we are not just performing business as usual. I am also going out with my warehouse supervisors to look at larger buildings.
On a typical day I get up between 6 and 8 a.m. It takes over an hour to get ready for the day. I have several prophylactic treatments I do every morning, including checking my big toenails for fragmentation and cleaning them with alcohol. I have to steroid cream my entire body every morning, too. Sometimes there are other things I have to do, depending on the condition of my stomach. Breakfast is not optional, but mandatory so that I can take my morning meds without throwing up.
Usually the morning is filled with internet stuff—answering emails, writing blogs, marketing online, working on a book—which I often do from home. I leave for work before lunch. Often I have to stop on the way for refills on medication, either from the pharmacy or from the grocery store.
I get to the warehouse between 10 and noon, depending on the errands I needed to run and how long I was writing. If it's before noon, I check my to do list, then check on the people. One of my main jobs there is to make sure it's a positive work environment. I take lunch with the warehouse workers, and if I'm lucky they'll have room for me to play soccer with them the last few minutes of lunch.
After lunch I face the torrent of things that come my way. If there's problems at the warehouse I handle them. Accountants, meetings with supervisors, website and book planning with my daugter-in-law, church meetings, salesmen. There are never enough hours in the day, and it's always a temptation to hang around the office late—a temptation I'm careful to rarely let myself fulfill.
Most of the projects that pile up and demand my time are web site and writing projects. I have four main web sites and two blogs, including this one. Between them they got over 2000 unique visitors per day and over 4000 visits per day in April. Since that's 1.5 million visits in a year, the writing seems worth it. I always wanted to be a writer, but I could hardly imagine well over a half million unique readers of the things I write.
My web sites, by the way, are:
Christian-history.org
Revolutionary-War.net
Proof-of-Evolution.com
History-of-Soccer.org
I only write the first and third of those. My daughter and daughter-in-law have written most of the Revolutionary War site, and my daughter-in-law, Esther Pavao, has a booklet called Slavery During the Revolutionary War
that is available on Kindle!
My son and some college friends write the pages on the soccer web site. The fullest section of the site is its famous players section.
This post is written specifically because I'm worried that yesterday's was boring, even though I felt like it was essential to write those things for the sake of other survivors who might need to see how others did.
Today's ... well, it won't be.
I was given permission by Vanderbilt Medical Center to move away from the area in early May, 2012; just over a year ago.
Here was the story at that point:
May 1: "When [the EMT] lifted the bandage, there was a small explosion of blood that splattered all over the bed, my shirt, and even on him. The blood then began running off my chest and pooling in the crook of my arm."
 |
| The bandage that squirted when peeled. |
May 10: We moved back to Selmer from Nashville.
May 30: "I only got about three steps down the line before my conscious mind caught up and realized that I had no idea where my feet were in relation to my body. All I knew is that my legs were somewhere behind me, too far back to have any hope of staying upright.
"I imagine it probably scared everyone to have the leukemia patient take a dive down the first base line, but we were playing in a grass field. It was soft, I rolled, and it didn't hurt at all."
 | |
| This is how I had to dress for softball, too |
June 13: I was still losing weight. I was 130 pounds, down from 190 before the transplant, and the chemo lines on my fingernails were growing out:
 |
| The scrawny dude |
 |
| chemo-lines; one grown to the end, the other halfway |
 |
| Being scrawny gave me some good stretching abilities! |
Life as a Workaholic Leukemia Survivor
That sorts of sets the stage for where I was one month after returning to my home in Selmer.
In that condition, I returned to work. I run my own business, so I was able to set my own hours. I had to stay home and rest about one day per week, and hemorrhoids would be an ongoing problem throughout the summer.
So what would you do?
I rented a building in Selmer and tried to start a coffee shop.
Understand the scenario. Our church owns the building in Selmer, and they tried to do a coffee shop in 2011. It was almost successful. I really believed the problem was that we had a terrible sign, and there was no way to really tell what the building was being used for. Also, we had no advertising budget, so there was no advertising, either. Just word of mouth.
So I rented the building and tried to do it right. I advertised in the paper. I put a good sign on the front of the building, and I tried to run it with my daughter and a friend.
 |
| Front of the Selmer Buzz |
Run it? I was already working, and I was taking naps at work on my office floor to do so. I was trying to catch up from 10 months of being in Nashville away from the office. The worst part was trying to catch up from the four weeks I didn't even eat, much less look at emails and texts.
I don't just have a warehouse business I was running, but I maintain four web sites besides this blog.
Why was I starting a business?
It seemed right. The building was sitting empty, costing my church money. I really thought I could make it work, and I was looking forward to using the building for seminars and other educational events that would benefit the community.
People suggested that maybe I was overdoing it. I acknowledged they might be right, then went on about my business.
The Day
Then came "The day."
I don't remember what day it was. I think it was in August.
We were open in the afternoon, but my daughter was unavailable to work for some reason. I tried to get hold of the friend who was helping me, but I couldn't reach her, either. Finally, I got my secretary from work, and I went down to The Selmer Buzz, as I was calling the new coffee shop.
Our advertising and sign hadn't worked at all. Business was incredibly slow, and we certainly weren't making any money. We did have one very successful seminar on health care reform, but otherwise, pretty dead.
It was not a good day for me. Back then I called those "fatigue days." Usually, I just stayed in bed all day. I'd been told not to fight those days. They always win. Today, however, I couldn't do that. I had to open the coffee shop.
I remember the time frame now. It was late October, early November, 2012. I had jogged for 3 or 4 minutes one day a couple weeks earlier, an extremely long run for me at the time. The next day I had run, then walked, 20 or 30 yards each, for a mile. That was really tiring. The day after that I went on a 4-mile walk with my family at a local park, much of it on hills. I was hobbling by the end, as was my daughter, who had injured her knee.
Exercise is supposed to help prevent blood clots, but I suppose overdoing it can make them happen. I got a blood clot in my calf so bad that I couldn't stand for longer than 5 minutes at a time. The pain in my calf would build and build as I stood, then begin to relieve if I could sit down and get my leg elevated. I brought a wheelchair to the coffee shop so I could get around with my leg up.
In that situation, on a fatigue day, I went to the coffee shop with my secretary from the warehouse so she could help me run it. I showed her how to the run the espresso machines and the "cash register," which was really a program on the Selmer Buzz' iPad.
Then, exhausted, i went to take a nap in the back seat of my car. I covered myself with a sleeping bag, and then realized that my toe hurt too much for me to sleep.
I have always been prone to ingrown toenails, but rarely have they been bad. I had chemo lines on them now, though, and the toenail was brittle. It had broken, and when I looked at my toe, I realized how bad the ingrown toenail was.
 |
| I don't remember which of these chemo lines gave me the problem. |
Sighing and longing for sleep, I got out my toenail kit, which I carried with me at all times due to my finger and toenails constantly breaking or crumbling. It was agonizing, but I got my toenail as cleaned up as possible, and I got some Neosporin on the bleeding side of the nail.
My toe was throbbing, and it was trembling like a hurt puppy. I figured the pain would wear off pretty quickly, so I laid back under the sleeping bag, leaving my foot bare. I took a deep breath, and ...
Tap, tap, tap.
I looked up at the window where my secretary was tapping. I unlocked the door, and she opened it.
"There are four customers in there, and the espresso machine blew apart. I don't know how to work the other one."
My heart sunk. I was so tired. I couldn't imagine getting up. My toe was throbbing, and my foot was cold.
"I don't know if I can make it," I told her.
She went back in.
I pulled myself up, then I pulled my sock over my still trembling toe. I loosened the laces on my shoe, and I pulled it on my foot. Then I hobbled into the coffee shop through the back door. My calf started to throb as I got inside. My toe was already throbbing.
I smiled and greeted the guests, and I went to our new espresso machine. We weren't using it because my daughter didn't like it. I knew how to use it, but I'd only used it a couple times. Being distracted by pain and trying to take care of the customers, I quickly reached down and pulled the cap I would have pulled on the other machine.
Steam blasted across my hand. The pain was instant.
I jerked my hand back, looked at my secretary, smiled, and said, "Oops."
Amazingly, between me and her, we got the lattes out in a couple minutes. I had been standing the whole time. Pain was shooting through my calf and making its way up into my hamstrings. I looked at my secretary and said, "I'm going to bed now. I hope we have no more customers."
I grabbed a soda can on the way to the car so I'd have something cold to relieve the pain in my burnt hand. I hobbled quickly to the car, needing to get my leg in the air to stop the pain in my calf.
In the car, with the cold soda can pulled under the blanket with me, I uttered one prayer before I went to sleep. It was pitiful. "God, please stop hurting me." That's the last thing I remember.
The next day I closed the coffee shop.
December, 2012
Obviously, I'd learned my lesson. I needed to rest. I'm a former leukemia patient, but still a recovering one.
The blood clot cleared up and stopped causing me pain in November. So in December I drove with my four youngest children to California for a vacation. My oldest son lives in southern California, in Riverside, and my brother lives in Sacramento, as do some "missionaries" from our church.
My oldest daughter, just turned 17, was diagnosed with the flu right before we left. She threw up regularly throughout the first two days of the trip.
Funny, though, despite my depressed immune system, I didn't get sick. Neither did anyone else in the family.
The weather had been in the 40's and 50's and drizzling for at least 2 or 3 weeks before we left. We were looking forward to the drive across the deserts out west.
When we got to southern California, the weather was in the 40's and 50's and drizzling.
I was cold all the time. I liked nothing better than curling up under blankets with a ski cap on, breathing down into the blankets to keep them warm.
My skin was also incredibly dry. It flaked everywhere. I was constantly having to brush it off my clothes. It was like I had dandruff everywhere, especially my face. To combat it, I applied a strong moisturizing lotion over most of my body twice a day. It was cold to put it on, and the moist layer on my skin just made me colder than I already was. It was also horribly time-consuming, as I also had to apply steroid cream to my skin twice a day.
I froze every time I had to apply the lotion or cream. Then I would be cold afterward, and I was cold all the time anyway. I missed a few applications of the steroid cream because I couldn't bear it, and I returned to Tennessee, driving, with a GVH rash over most of my body.
February, 2013
I tried to rest through January, but at the end of the month my son called from California.
"Hey, mom and dad, I'm getting married."
"That's fantastic, son! When?"
"February 10."
My wife said "Great!"; I said, "Isn't that in 11 days?"
It was. Amazingly, we found one very well-priced flight for February 8. Back out to California we went.
This kind of "rest" turned out to be very effective. I had a big increase in energy about that time. No kidding!
March, 2013
March brought spring break. We planned a vacation with the kids to Gulfport, MS. We would take them to the beach.
Then a friend called. He was coming down from New England. Could we meet him in Virginia Beach, Va on the 15th?
Sure, we'll just drive, uh, 14 hours, then come back, pick up the kids and go to Gulfport a few days later.
The trip to Virginia Beach was spectacular. We stopped along the way to visit another friend we know in Virginia, but we made a wrong turn and ended up on a narrow dirt road, climbing a mountain with a drop on both sides. My wife was driving at the time, and we were both terrified. When we got up the mountain, I got out of the car to ask someone for directions, and I was bitten by a dog.
By the time we got to Virginia Beach we had been on the road closer to 24 hours.
When we left Virginia Beach, we chose a highway through Norfolk. We hit Norfolk at rush hour due to poor planning. But it was not just rush hour. There was also construction on the east and south exits out of the city. Traffic was literally at a standstill. We gave up, parked, and went to a mall. This time it was my wife's turn to sleep in the car. She was too tired to shop or drink coffee.
Once we made it back, much slower than had been planned, we got ready for our vacation to Gulfport.
But wait! A pianist with whom my wife is familiar was coming through our town, and he could do a concert if we could arrange it! The only available day was the Wednesday of the week of spring break.
We made a change of plans. Only two nights down in Gulfport, then race back for the concert, then off to the space museum in Huntsville, Alabama, which is only 3 hours away.
Great plan, except our car broke down in Gulfport. We took it to a mechanic, but he couldn't fix it. It's a Lincoln. It's an older Lincoln that I got for $2250, but it's losing functionality because all the parts I need to repair it cost more than the car is worth. (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.)
Off to the dealer it went. Off to the dealer in Gulfport, MS, that is, and since the first mechanic had the car for a day, we no longer had time to pick it up. We had to go back to Tennessee for the concert. We rented a car and headed home.
The return of the car at the end of the week, after the space museum in Huntsville, went without incident. The trip was not 3 hours, since we had to drive to Gulfport from Huntsville, a good 6-hour drive, then an 8-hour drive back to Selmer, but our Lincoln was fixed. The dealer had even fixed it inexpensively. Amazing.
April, 2013
April saw us flying out to California again!
There was a Bone Marrow Transplant Information Conference in Costa Mesa. Two days of doctors, seminars, questions and answers with BMT specialists, and meeting fellow blood cancer survivors. I really wanted to go.
Just for fun, we threw in another trip to Sacramento by car. Another 8-hour drive. We rented a tiny car that got 40 miles per gallon, and we gallivanted around California for a week. We even drove the Pacific Coast Highway coming back from Sacramento. We took pictures and exhausted ourselves, then arrived at our hotel the night before the flight at 11:30 pm. Fortunately, we had a non-stop flight that didn't leave until early afternoon.
May, 2013
We flew out of California on April 30. On May 2, two days later, I spent the entire day in Memphis at a writers guild and meeting friends. The next day, we spent the entire day in Nashville for doctors' appointments. That was Friday, and another week was gone without an appearance at my warehouse.
The following week was a blur of catching up.
Did I mention that we are outgrowing our warehouse? So we are not just performing business as usual. I am also going out with my warehouse supervisors to look at larger buildings.
A Typical Day
On a typical day I get up between 6 and 8 a.m. It takes over an hour to get ready for the day. I have several prophylactic treatments I do every morning, including checking my big toenails for fragmentation and cleaning them with alcohol. I have to steroid cream my entire body every morning, too. Sometimes there are other things I have to do, depending on the condition of my stomach. Breakfast is not optional, but mandatory so that I can take my morning meds without throwing up.
Usually the morning is filled with internet stuff—answering emails, writing blogs, marketing online, working on a book—which I often do from home. I leave for work before lunch. Often I have to stop on the way for refills on medication, either from the pharmacy or from the grocery store.
I get to the warehouse between 10 and noon, depending on the errands I needed to run and how long I was writing. If it's before noon, I check my to do list, then check on the people. One of my main jobs there is to make sure it's a positive work environment. I take lunch with the warehouse workers, and if I'm lucky they'll have room for me to play soccer with them the last few minutes of lunch.
After lunch I face the torrent of things that come my way. If there's problems at the warehouse I handle them. Accountants, meetings with supervisors, website and book planning with my daugter-in-law, church meetings, salesmen. There are never enough hours in the day, and it's always a temptation to hang around the office late—a temptation I'm careful to rarely let myself fulfill.
Most of the projects that pile up and demand my time are web site and writing projects. I have four main web sites and two blogs, including this one. Between them they got over 2000 unique visitors per day and over 4000 visits per day in April. Since that's 1.5 million visits in a year, the writing seems worth it. I always wanted to be a writer, but I could hardly imagine well over a half million unique readers of the things I write.
My web sites, by the way, are:
Christian-history.org
Revolutionary-War.net
Proof-of-Evolution.com
History-of-Soccer.org
I only write the first and third of those. My daughter and daughter-in-law have written most of the Revolutionary War site, and my daughter-in-law, Esther Pavao, has a booklet called Slavery During the Revolutionary War
that is available on Kindle!My son and some college friends write the pages on the soccer web site. The fullest section of the site is its famous players section.
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