Way over due update from Greg
SIGNS - Cancer Blog Update
First, let me apologize for this update taking so long to get completed. There were a lot of post treatment reactions that made things difficult at best. A trip to the E.R. which turned into an overnight stay in the hospital with a 102 fever and just basically feeling crappy. Actually the post Chemo, post radiation recovery was worse than the time during treatment. But enough about spilled milk, let’s hope that as the new week dawns all the signs prove to be true and that the upcoming 6 week check up and CT Scan show nothing but empty bladder meaning that all the prayers from everyone have worked, the cancer is dead and my life can return to normal.
As we journey through life we see many, many signs along the way. Some of them are easy to see and understand while a good portion of them are more subtle and you have to kind of look at them and try to decipher the message that it is sending to you. On the hour long journey to my cancer treatment the other day the song "Signs" came on 70s on 7 and I thought that would be a good post for the blog, so here we are (extra points for those reading this who can name the band that originally recorded that song without using a search engine like Google or skimming through the story for that information).
So one positive sign along this journey was that on one of the colder days of the treatment so far, when it was an unusually cold morning. I walked into the radiation center wondering if this was all going to worth it when the 9 weeks were done. After treatment I opened up the car door and tossed in my gloves on to the passenger seat and it made a perfect Victory sign. Those of us hippies from the late 60"s and early 70s also called that a Peace sign. Either way it was a sign literally 10 - 15 minutes after I silently asked a question. Could it be a coincidence? Sure it could but I prefer to think divine or cosmic intervention of some kind, call me a hopeless romantic or dreamer.
Signs from the past. We more often than not, go through life not knowing if things that we have done have had any impact on people we have known. I mention this because from pretty much out of nowhere I get a Facebook instant message from a friend in my past.
I always knew Nate was destined to do some very great things based on what I had seen. He was quite a bit younger than I and we both worked a large big box electronics retailer. He was a singer songwriter and enjoyed working on constructing videos. I dabbled in them myself so we would share our work with each other for feedback and critiques.
I invited him along to play an Earth Day show in Macon with a regional favorite, Bobby Mountain. It was fun, he was nervous but everyone enjoyed it. My wife and I opened a singer songwriter venue called "Inside The Song Acoustic Cafe and Guitar Store". It was a small venue in Winder, Georgia where we served beer and wine, some finger foods and sold a few fun guitars and related things like strings. We had a small stage where we had video recording and everything that went through the P.A. was recorded in stereo and given to the artist as a memento of the night. It was a labor of love that was killed when after 911 griped the country keeping people from traveling to perform or see live music. We had to make the decision to either get a bank loan to keep her afloat or closer her down. After paying expenses like store rent, electricity and more out of our household budget, we made the heart breaking decision to close the business and move on. The time Inside the Song was open was glorious and we will always be happy we had the experience. Little did we know, others felt the same way.
Nate and his band "Problem Thomas" performed there somewhat regularly. All of them pretty much had a first "real" on stage in front of a live audience right there at Inside the Song. The rest of the story from that Facebook message is that Nate found his calling not in music, but in movies and has a couple acclaimed successes and is now teaching film. The other members of the group went on to get much more stage experience. One name who graced the Inside The Song stage as one of his first gigs was a now very well know artist named Levi Lowery.
Nate said that one of his proudest moments was watching the other members of Problem Thomas - his brothers, take the stage at the Phillips Arena in Atlanta as the opening act for the Zac Brown Band. The band signed with Zac Brown's label and toured with him several times across the country. In fact Levi actually co-wrote a CMA award winning song that Zac recorded called "Colder Weather" which was a number one hit. Amazing.
He told me in his message that he credits Donna and I for giving them the start at Inside the Song and that without a place for them to learn and grow and to hone the performance skills that none of that may have happened.
Again, he reached out to me and shared this with me. I was having one of those rough cancer treatment days when I found the message. Another sign that we had made a positive impact on the life of him, his family and other musicians. He did not have to write that but it certainly made a positive impact in my overall life view knowing that we had made a positive impact on them.
Don't bury your nose in your phone and ignore the signs happening around you daily.
Every day on my journey to and from treatment I see the signs that the road I am on is an ex-pow highway, a gold star memorial highway, the first highway to cross Tennessee from Memphis to Bristol. The signs remind me that I daily travel the Trail of Tears where the Native Americans were driven from the land they had owned since time began.
I see the occasional horse and buggy sign that reminds me to keep an eye out for our local Amish population.
Okay, so here we are, the 38 radiation treatments are done and the 8 chemo treatments have been completed and on Monday I go in for a C.T. scan with contrast to have them look over my bladder and that specific area to see if they have killed all of it and to make sure no traces of the monster remain inside me. The whole tour into the radiation thing is scary in and of its self.
The smiling faces in the Radiation and the Onocology office’s made it easier to bear from the smiling face I saw first every day in Radiation, the registration girl Cassandra who is a 10 year survivor, to my Radiation Oncologist Dr. Wendt and then my once a week visit to Jeremy McDuffie for my double dose of chemo.
It is making for a rough weekend I have to say. On this past Friday I found yet another rare side effect of the treatment. It seems that one of the two Chemo drugs I was taking (Taxol) has a rare and unusual effect on some people of making the large toenails and large thumbnails fall off. Not all the toe and fingernails mind you, just the large ones, weird! Well, as of yesterday I am minus one large toenail.
So on Tuesday the 19 I find out if all the signs were telling me truthfully. So keep your fingers crossed and we will update as we get the news and are emotionally able to tell the rest of the story.
By the way, the band was the Five Man Electrical Band.
UPDATE From Donna: Here is our song "Love Story" written shortly after Greg's stroke on Christmas night in 2009. This is me singing lead. Keep in mind, I am not a singer but I felt it important that I sing this song at that time. Hindsight is 20/20 and it is all sadly very clear to me now. The doctors appointment did not go well but we are not ready to talk about it yet. When we are, it will be here on the blog.
UPDATE From Donna: Here is our song "Love Story" written shortly after Greg's stroke on Christmas night in 2009. This is me singing lead. Keep in mind, I am not a singer but I felt it important that I sing this song at that time. Hindsight is 20/20 and it is all sadly very clear to me now. The doctors appointment did not go well but we are not ready to talk about it yet. When we are, it will be here on the blog.
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