More Great News!

I got the results of my blood work today. My tumor markers are normal!!! No elevated tumor marks = no cancer!!!

Yea!

Great News!

Final tests today. Although tumor markers take a day or 2 to come in, based on my chest X-Ray and CT Scan, my Doctors have officially taken me off of Chemo and reduced the frequency of my Oncologist visits. Instead of having to go in every week, now I'll go in for blood work and a chest X-Ray once a month and a CT Scan just 4 times a year.

According to my Doctor, I have a "less than 1% chance of a recurrance." Wohoo!

Now, to find a job that will insure me...

I'm Done!!! (almost)

Ok, so I know it’s been a REALLY long time since my last post. I think that every post starts out this way, but what are you going to do? Yell at a cancer patient? yea... I didn't think so. haha.

I can't use that excuse for too much long because I got my last Chemo dosage on Monday (7/10/06). No more Chemo for me (hopefully)!!!! Pending the results of a CT Scan and chest X-Ray this coming Monday (7/17/06) I should get a "cured" diagnosis. Really happy about that. My tumor markers have been normal since my last hospital exit, so the doctors don't seem to be too worried about the CT Scan. They expect it to be normal.

Life is beginning to get back to normal. I'm eating and feeling fine. I still get outta breath very easily (playing with Sophie in the dining room last night got me tired more quickly than it did her) but that will return with time.

We made all of our reservations/bookings to head out to LA for the Hull/Abshire wedding yesterday (For those who don't know, they're fellow Emory Alums and Water Polo cronies). After searching all the usual travel .com (Orbitz, Travelocity, CheapTickets, Hotels, LastMinuteTravel, Expedia, Priceline, CarRental, and all the individual airline sites) I think we found good deals.

Oh FYI - Contrary to what all those Orbitz-type sites advertise, it was cheaper (and more direct... we got non-stop flights) to book the flight, hotel, and car rental separately as opposed to reserving all 3 at once through 1 site.

The World Is Flat got interesting again... talking about open-source projects. There is no need to use anything Microsoft. Linux Linspire to replace Windows, OpenOffice to replace MS Office suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Exchange, Publisher, etc.) Firefox to replace Internet Explorer, GIMP to replace Adobe Photoshop, Nvu or Mozilla to replace MS Frontpage.... all this for free. Buying all of those software titles would cost thousands of dollars. MS Office Professional $500, Windows XP $200, FrontPage $200, Photoshop $100... well, you get the idea.

Next time I need a new computer I'm going to spend $200 or $300 on the hardware and load all free open-source software onto it. We already use and love Firefox and Nvu.

I know this probably isn't news to some of you, but it was to me. I'd never heard of OpenOffice before. That one is pretty key to freeing one's self from MS.