PSA

[dustymojave]

I haven't posted on here for a minute or 30,000.

I have a brand new computer and I'm killing time while transferring files. Only 136,000 pictures. Takes a sec.

But I'm still around. Cancer pert near put me down in 2022. City of Hope pulled me back from the edge. What an AWESOME outfit. Spent much of 23 recovering. Then, in mid 24, I wound up in ICU for a week because the cancer had spread to my left ureter and bladder. That's the tube that connects the kidney to the bladder. It fully blocked that tube, so I had to have a drain put in to dump the output of that kidney overboard. Now that kidney is just shriveling. The cancer has spread to my bones. Spine from skull to tailbone, sternum, a couple of ribs on the left side, pelvis and tops of the femurs in the hip joint areas. Strangely, the scans show quite a bit more cancer on my left pelvis and hip, but my right hip bothers me a lot more.

More radiation and several rounds of chemo have made my life fun and busy and has my body all worn out. I'm still on 4 wheels these days, but that's often in a tube frame single seat buggy with handles instead of a steering wheel and hand brakes.

Moral of the story: Don't get prostate cancer.

Since my last post or comment in here, I even did a little upgrade to the electricals on the ol' '58 Baja in 23. Replaced the 1958 fuseboxes (originally 1, but when I rewired from the ground up in the mid 1970s, I added another fusebox out of another 58 body for more circuits) with modern type fuses. only took it out locally with a friend. Otherwise, the ol' girl is still driveable, but spending more time in the back yard lately than cruising across the desert. Pushing 960,000 miles on it.

I went out to Barstow for a MORE race in March. 1st race in a couple of years. That's probably the longest break since my parents met at a sports car race at Palm Springs in 1953 and dad was working for the western US importer for VW, Johnny von Neumann. Dad was one of 3 employees and he had just sold his 52 split window with Okrasa engine and bought a Singer Mk9 sports car.

Anyway, I was not able to be in a race car, or help in the pits. Also something new for me. Hard to get around in the desert with a cane. The walker got left at home. It would need 33" tires, a lot more suspension, + a lot more horsepower. Great to visit with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while. Then when heading home after dark, the headlights kept cutting out and acting weird. Warren (my son) was with me in his F350 4wd turbo diesel chase truck. He had been in a race car. So we stopped at the AutoZone in Barstow. lights in the parking lot were better than out in the desert. Plus wire, connectors, etc, were handy. An hour and a 1/2 later we hit the road again with no left headlight. It had Halogens lights and the left one had melted the plastic plug to the back of the bulb. It turned out the headlight switch was dying at the same time. On the way home passing through El Mirage, the headlights and taillights went out completely. JUST as we were approaching a pair of Sheriff's Deputy cars. Of course, they pulled me over. Before they let me get out and work under the hood, the deputy who pulled me over told me that I had a REALLY cool car. I had told him some of the story of the car and he was walking around checking it out. No ticket.

I recently replaced the Halogens with LEDs. I'm waiting for the replacement headlight switch. It's supposed to arrive in the next 3 or 4 days. I'm unhappy with VW over the warranty on that switch. Only 67 years and 960,000 miles. It should still be under any reasonable warranty, shouldn't it? I also need to add wires for the halo driving and halo turn signal lamp functions, not a big deal. Just a pair of 16ga wires to each headlight shell from just inside the inner fender panels.

I'm currently in the middle of another round of chemo. This chemo I don't have a reaction to, unlike the last 2. So I can drive myself to and from. I was feeling bad about my friend spending so much time taking my wife and me, waiting a few hours, then bringing us home. 3 different chemos, 6 sessions each. The punk wouldn't even let us buy him gas or lunch most of the time. Hell of a good friend. His wife hooked me up with some CBD cream to treat the pain in my arm when I had the 4" long tumor in 22. That worked great. Better than most of the pain killers, but no side effects like the opiates.

Gonna start another round of radiation in a couple of weeks. This time on my neck, C3/C4. Then in the middle of July, I start a new type of chemo where it's 2 components. One attaches to a cell that has the cancer, the other is radiation which will kill the cell its attached to.

[Chris V]

Holy crap, you’ve been through it! Glad to hear still with us and the new chemo is working out better than in the past!

[cbeck]

Hang in there Richard, you got this.
Another psa for yall. Cologaurd. We did this about a month ago. Mine came back negative. One week from today my wife is having the right side of her colon and her appendix removed. And they say this was caught early, she had no symptoms. Scans also revealed a nodule in her right lung. We thought she kicked lung cancers ass 5 years ago. One thing at a time.

[dustymojave]

Good luck for your wife!
I do Cologuard each year. Kaiser sends the kits for my wife and I.
So far, so good.
I have no breast cancer, although my mother's sister died of it. Double radical mastectomy. Then it got into a rib. Then to her spine. Then up into her brain. No bueno. She didn't last long then.
And I've had gynecomastia from the prostate cancer meds. I tell ya what, mammograms are no fun for a man. Especially if the Radiology Tech is a woman who wants to punish a man for every time any woman has had a mammogram.
Once you have cancer, even though it seems to be all gone, complete remission, your odds of it popping up, even in a very different part of the body, is much higher.
My thoughts are with you 2.