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Posted
On 7/18/2025 at 2:50 PM, Sbbruin said:

Scans came back clear.  NED for this guy.

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Ned, you magnificent bastard, I love you!

Just had my annual physical and my PSA was low (2.0) and my CEA (colon cancer marker) was lower than one percent, which is perfect.

My blood work ups were fine, cholesterol was 170, BP was 120/65, and I weighed 30 pounds less than my last physical.   My doctor was a very, very happy man.

Keep fighting my fellow assholes.   Kick the can that is your body down the road - and we will find something eventually that will cure us all.  

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Posted
On 7/22/2025 at 12:54 PM, MissingInAction said:

I guess it takes nearly dieing in the MRI tube to qualify for swag. Also got a tote bag.

 

20250722_125412.jpg

 

ugh, i want that

damn my tote bag fetish 🥺🥺🥺🥺

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Posted
46 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

CT showed tiny nodes, less than 5 mm in my lungs. Most likely mucous. I talk to the Dr tomorrow afternoon. 

Shit shows up all the time on scans, if the radiologist thought it was mucous it probably is, they are pretty good at spotting things. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Gatorubet said:

Ned, you magnificent bastard, I love you!

Just had my annual physical and my PSA was low (2.0) and my CEA (colon cancer marker) was lower than one percent, which is perfect.

My blood work ups were fine, cholesterol was 170, BP was 120/65, and I weighed 30 pounds less than my last physical.   My doctor was a very, very happy man.

Keep fighting my fellow assholes.   Kick the can that is your body down the road - and we will find something eventually that will cure us all.  

CEA was 3.0 or lower?

Posted
19 minutes ago, Vanilla Strange Gato said:

CEA was 3.0 or lower?

I don’t know exactly what it was, but the test results said it was lower than 1.0.      Three years ago it was 15.0.   It turns out that respiratory issues like inflammation or mucus plugs, blocking airways can increase your CEA.  Which is why people should treat a CEA number with a grain of salt if not accompanied by other evidence of disease.  Which is also why a CEA test is not useful as a stand-alone diagnostic, but one of a number of things that could indicate cancer (PET scans/MRI and actual biopsies being more of a certainty.)

Posted
12 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

I don’t know exactly what it was, but the test results said it was lower than 1.0.      Three years ago it was 15.0.   It turns out that respiratory issues like inflammation or mucus plugs, blocking airways can increase your CEA.  Which is why people should treat a CEA number with a grain of salt if not accompanied by other evidence of disease.  Which is also why a CEA test is not useful as a stand-alone diagnostic, but one of a number of things that could indicate cancer (PET scans/MRI and actual biopsies being more of a certainty.)

I understand how CEA’s work and their relevance.  Mine was 29 when I was diagnosed but I met patients who had CEA counts in the hundreds.  
 

hopefully they get a better blood test in the future. 

Posted
9 minutes ago, Vanilla Strange Gato said:

I understand how CEA’s work and their relevance.  Mine was 29 when I was diagnosed but I met patients who had CEA counts in the hundreds.  
 

hopefully they get a better blood test in the future. 

I had a massive tumor in my colon that the doctors could not believe I was unaware of.  They wondered how I was even able to make a bowel movement.  My surgeon said he almost “spanked its butt and gave it a name” when he took it out.  And my CEA was only 4.0 when that happened.   

I understand that there is a ton of research on establishing better bio markers for all kinds of cancer going on right now.   I could envision 20 years from now we all do blood draws every six months and they will know what the hell is going on inside us with a great deal of precision.  

Or they will be applying leeches and bleeding us to let out the bad blood humors

Posted
1 hour ago, Gatorubet said:

I had a massive tumor in my colon that the doctors could not believe I was unaware of.  They wondered how I was even able to make a bowel movement.  My surgeon said he almost “spanked its butt and gave it a name” when he took it out.  And my CEA was only 4.0 when that happened.   

I understand that there is a ton of research on establishing better bio markers for all kinds of cancer going on right now.   I could envision 20 years from now we all do blood draws every six months and they will know what the hell is going on inside us with a great deal of precision.  

Or they will be applying leeches and bleeding us to let out the bad blood humors

I’m ready for Star Trek Enterprise sick bay open scanning technology.  But hey, I want a teleporter so I don’t have to deal with TSA and long flights too. 
 

My primary site tumor was a foot long, weighed ten pounds, and had grown thru the back wall of my large intestine and was pushing on my spine.  I had tweaked my back in the past so I thought my back pain was just associated with an old injury. 
 

Had about 60 lymph nodes involved and 6-8 tumors in my liver, with the two largest being in the lower lobe and they were Silver Dollar sized. 
 

My first CT didn’t know all the lymph involvement and only showed one little shadow on the liver.  The PET/CT, however, made my liver look like the surface of the moon. 
 

I went thru shock and sadness and about three days and moved into being furious pretty quickly.  It helped.  
 

Fuck cancer.  All of it.  Every form in every part of the body. 

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Posted
32 minutes ago, Vanilla Strange Gato said:

My primary site tumor was a foot long, weighed ten pounds, and had grown thru the back wall of my large intestine and was pushing on my spine.  I had tweaked my back in the past so I thought my back pain was just associated with an old injury. 

Yikes, brother.  That was almost me.   I tweaked something in my stomach when I was twisting and lifting a gas generator. - like an idiot.   So I had occasional twins of pain after that, but I associated it with the muscle strain from my bad lift positioning.

My tumor was a 16th of an inch from breaking through the large intestine wall, so I assume if it had I would pretty much be exactly in your condition.    You are beating the shit out of cancer, and you’re going to continue beating it until it rolls over on its scummy back in croaks “NED”, right before giving up the ghost and going to diseased body part hell.  

We’ll look on with adult beverages in our hands and laugh….

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Posted
1 hour ago, Gatorubet said:

Yikes, brother.  That was almost me.   I tweaked something in my stomach when I was twisting and lifting a gas generator. - like an idiot.   So I had occasional twins of pain after that, but I associated it with the muscle strain from my bad lift positioning.

My tumor was a 16th of an inch from breaking through the large intestine wall, so I assume if it had I would pretty much be exactly in your condition.    You are beating the shit out of cancer, and you’re going to continue beating it until it rolls over on its scummy back in croaks “NED”, right before giving up the ghost and going to diseased body part hell.  

We’ll look on with adult beverages in our hands and laugh….

Oh, I beat it in 2007.  
It came back in my liver again in 2008. 
I beat it again and it came back in my liver once more and a lymph node by my aorta in 2009. 
 

I’ve been clear since October 5th, 2009. That day they removed the lower third of my liver and took my gallbladder as well. 
 

They removed the lymph node that was hot and a few others in the vicinity just in case. 
 

Then they shielded my organs as best they could, except for the aorta, which withstands radiation pretty well (????) and they performed intra-operative radiation therapy inside my body on the tumor bed where that lymph node had been, right there in the OR while I was open on the table. 
 

Instead of going five days a week for six weeks like I had to when I got radiation in my hips/pelvic area, they just zapped me once inside and I was done. 
 

I do not recommend doing any of this if you can avoid it. And if you have ever had a rib spreader used on you, then you understand the soreness that comes with that for a few weeks after. 
 

All of that was done at M.D. Anderson in Houston. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Vanilla Strange Gato said:

Oh, I beat it in 2007.  
It came back in my liver again in 2008. 
I beat it again and it came back in my liver once more and a lymph node by my aorta in 2009. 
 

I’ve been clear since October 5th, 2009. That day they removed the lower third of my liver and took my gallbladder as well. 
 

They removed the lymph node that was hot and a few others in the vicinity just in case. 
 

Then they shielded my organs as best they could, except for the aorta, which withstands radiation pretty well (????) and they performed intra-operative radiation therapy inside my body on the tumor bed where that lymph node had been, right there in the OR while I was open on the table. 
 

Instead of going five days a week for six weeks like I had to when I got radiation in my hips/pelvic area, they just zapped me once inside and I was done. 
 

I do not recommend doing any of this if you can avoid it. And if you have ever had a rib spreader used on you, then you understand the soreness that comes with that for a few weeks after. 
 

All of that was done at M.D. Anderson in Houston. 

Wow, that’s quite the journey, very amazing. I am glad you are here with us today to share. 

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Posted
9 hours ago, Vanilla Strange Gato said:

Oh, I beat it in 2007.  
It came back in my liver again in 2008. 
I beat it again and it came back in my liver once more and a lymph node by my aorta in 2009. 
 

I’ve been clear since October 5th, 2009. That day they removed the lower third of my liver and took my gallbladder as well. 
 

They removed the lymph node that was hot and a few others in the vicinity just in case. 
 

Then they shielded my organs as best they could, except for the aorta, which withstands radiation pretty well (????) and they performed intra-operative radiation therapy inside my body on the tumor bed where that lymph node had been, right there in the OR while I was open on the table. 
 

Instead of going five days a week for six weeks like I had to when I got radiation in my hips/pelvic area, they just zapped me once inside and I was done. 
 

I do not recommend doing any of this if you can avoid it. And if you have ever had a rib spreader used on you, then you understand the soreness that comes with that for a few weeks after. 
 

All of that was done at M.D. Anderson in Houston. 

Holy shit! And here i am being a bitch about a little heart fluttering. 

Thanks for putting things in perspective. 

I go in for my 5th cycle monday.

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Posted
Holy shit! And here i am being a bitch about a little heart fluttering. 
Thanks for putting things in perspective. 
I go in for my 5th cycle monday.

To be fair, you were a little bitch before cancer, too.

Buckle down and get this shit done. Monday’s cancer-killing time.
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Posted

there are lots of crusty cancer survivors, who even with 2007 technology kicked cancers ass all over their body, even though cancer wasn’t willing to go easily.

Everyone needs to ignore published statistics, as they are usually wrong and outdated and based upon studies from years ago, using old and lesser effective methods.    Everyone should look at vanilla and say if vanilla can go through all that shit in 2007 and come out on top, there is no reason why that cannot be me.    First, you need to decide that you are gonna be the one on the good side of the statistics. Because you are.

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Posted

Really great reading all these stories guys - I can’t tell you how much this was needed today. Today was a bit of a mental freakout day doing an MRI to see if something on my liver is a hemangioma or more problematic. Port going in tomorrow morning and chemo starting Monday. Fuck cancer.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, KingBobo81 said:

Today was a bit of a mental freakout day doing an MRI to see if something on my liver is a hemangioma or more problematic.

Twinsies.   MRI and local surgeon said metastasized cancer in three places on my liver.   My oncologist said those are hemangiomas.  so I went to MDA.

MDA did a needle biopsy while getting me ready for surgery to remove the tumors from my liver when it turned out they could find no cancer.

Whomp whomp local surgeon.  

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, KingBobo81 said:

Really great reading all these stories guys - I can’t tell you how much this was needed today. Today was a bit of a mental freakout day doing an MRI to see if something on my liver is a hemangioma or more problematic. Port going in tomorrow morning and chemo starting Monday. Fuck 

If you are at St Davids we might be neighbors.

 

Edited by MissingInAction
Posted

Great news - the last 2 scans for Mrs Fairway (March & June), show no cancer in the surgical site, MRI, or anywhere else, PT scans. And they suspended her immunotherapy;

Not so great news, they suspended it because of kidney and liver labs are not right. So she has new members on her team and endocrinologist and a nephrologist, and a surgeon who  specializes in thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal glands. They monitor her blood work regularly, for kidney and liver function and have a late September date set for surgery to correct hyperparathyroidism.

All in all, still better than having to continue to fight cancer. Thanks for all of the support, and best wishes and prayers for all of those fighting the fight and fuck cancer.

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Posted
23 hours ago, Vanilla Strange Gato said:

My primary site tumor was a foot long, weighed ten pounds, and had grown thru the back wall of my large intestine and was pushing on my spine.  I had tweaked my back in the past so I thought my back pain was just associated with an old injury. 
 

Had about 60 lymph nodes involved and 6-8 tumors in my liver, with the two largest being in the lower lobe and they were Silver Dollar sized. 
 

 

This is the Real Shit.

Posted
If you are at St Davids we might be neighbors.
 

I’m doing the port down south (at Seton in Kyle) and am doing the first round of chemo next week at Texas Oncology Balcones location
Posted
1 hour ago, KingBobo81 said:

Really great reading all these stories guys - I can’t tell you how much this was needed today. Today was a bit of a mental freakout day doing an MRI to see if something on my liver is a hemangioma or more problematic. Port going in tomorrow morning and chemo starting Monday. Fuck cancer.

I didn’t want a port when it was suggested.  I had already been thru that first big surgery and ended up with an ileostomy (reversed after a year) and knew I had a fight ahead.  
 

For some reason, getting a port made me feel like “I don’t want to be like those cancer patients that get chemo and are hooked up to tubes and IV’s and look sickly.”

 

My colorectal surgeon said “No, you want that. You want to use that instead of having the harshness of those chemicals wear down the walls of the veins in your arms over time.”

 

He was right, of course.  
 

It came in handy for other surgeries in the future and for administering contrast during scans.  
 

Had my Power Port for nine years.  It served me well.  You will be glad you have it for this part of the journey. 

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Posted

Had a kidney doctor appointment, all numbers good now, a couple of them had been kinda bad before but no longer are.

No idea how the tumors are doing at the moment.

Oxygen levels still up around 97%

Blood pressure freakishly low, like 88 over 50. I was walking around to do some errands afterwards, felt kinda like a moon walk.

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Posted

We need people who DON’T have cancer to visit this board so we can put the fear of God into them about being proactive with their health, getting checked when they are supposed to, and not ignoring any changes in their body like a typical man (that’s a shot at myself). 

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