We had a very uplifting, productive session today. The usual friendliness of the staff certainly helped, coupled with Angie** batting 1.000 on IV sticks (she’s 4 for 4!)

The good news continued during the x-ray and injection process – – Herbie has decreased substantially (probably 25-30%!) We installed a new tailpipe and while Herbie ordered alcohol “neat” (given his previous love of that,) we chose the fizzy drink again instead. Next treatment is Tuesday at 8 AM with hopes for continued shrinkage and minimal drainage.

Many thanks for the thoughts and prayers – please keep ’em coming. My energy levels are increasing and this past week I’ve been able to resume lots of activities including singing at the hospice in-patient unit and re-connecting with my wonderful friends and colleagues there. Such efforts re-charge me all the more!

Have a great week ahead and we’ll hopefully be sharing positive news again this upcoming Tuesday….

** Angie is an upbeat presence in the SSU – – she’s nicknamed me “clammy hands Steve.” In addition to being a great “contact hitter” on the IV front, she is a wife, mom and is nearly ready to graduate with her next degree (she just completed an ethics paper and scored 95 out of 100 on it and is now readying for a 30 minute presentation.)

Seems Herbie is “enjoying” a theme of The Long and Winding Road just a bit too much. We’re counting on the road disappearing for him at some point soon, but the horizon is not yet in sight.

Kim and I separately had great conversations with our radiologist, Dr. Young. Because of the location of Herbie in my body, it’s more difficult to do surgery so that may be in our future, but ideally not. The result is that our treatment journey with Herbie somewhat resembles those car rides many of us endured as kids and/or as parents – – “are we there yet?”

Herbie’s drink of choice has changed – – he’s moved from ordering his alcohol “neat” and is now onto a fizzy drink (thankfully WITHOUT the umbrella.) Unless this fizzy drink is miraculous, we’ll be putting in a new drain on 2/21 and continuing with weekly rounds of the fizzy drinks with hopes the output drops substantially and/or Herbie becomes a MUCH smaller presence at the bar.

For those who hated the car rides described above, you may wish to unsubscribe from this blog post. Experience shows that Herbie-like cysts can require many iterations of various possible Rust & Disintegrate agents (we’re just now starting on #2 of 3.)

As for me, my intention is to enjoy this ride for what it is. It’s not the ride I’d like to be taking but it continues to be filled with some of the nicest folks and provides important perspective. Along those lines, upcoming posts will likely include writing about a person who has touched my life that day and made it special. [Today’s person is Andrew and I’ll share more about that below.**]

In closing, my wish and hope is that this moment for you can be filled with love … and that the experience will continue for every minute for all of your days!

With love and appreciation for you on this Valentine’s Day, from your friend and admirer, Steve   <3

In talking about Valentine’s Day with my radiology crew while waiting for Herbie’s drink to be applied, I asked “any special activities scheduled for today?” This paraphrase of Andrew’s response captures my feelings too:

why do I need a holiday to show my special person I love her? I’ll intend to do it all year long without making a fuss on Valentine’s Day and Sweetest Day…

Amen, brother! [And my follow-up to Andrew was: for those of us who need  reminding to show all of our loved ones we care, maybe such days can be a good thing too?  🙂 ]

Herbie may have paid extra for anti-rust protection – – multiple applications of the QR&D procedure will be necessary since rust/disintegration has been minimal. Today we quadrupled the level of alcohol and then did the slow motion head-to-toe 360 rotation to fully coat the interior.

Hopes are that Valentine’s Day this year will be the end of Herbie, ironic given the name of The Love Bug? We’ll be making an 8 AM visit on 2/14 to see our x-ray/radiologist team. By then we’ll hope that fluid drainage slows significantly.

The good news? No IV necessary for today and not likely for next week! 🙂 For a guy who is a “hard stick” this was EXTREMELY welcome news!

Have a great weekend all, and many thanks for the prayers, kind thoughts, offers and actions!

The QR&D procedure was fairly uneventful other than the “being Steve” IV challenges (third time was a charm!) Herbie had his first alcohol treatment and then they had Steve roll around in a couple positions to fully coat the chassis. The tailpipe (drain) will stay in until Friday. Hopes/plans are for fluid drainage to stop almost immediately prompting effective rust and disintegration of Herbie. If so, that’ll be the end of the Herbster.

If Herbie is particularly resilient then we’ll need a second alcohol treatment on Friday. Maybe it’ll help if I consume a little alcohol in the next few days? I say…”whatever it takes!”  🙂

My pain is fairly minimal now and mostly related to the drain (at least until the alcohol coating has a little time to impact things.) I’ll still be taking it fairly easy for a few days but hopes are to get a little closer to normalcy.

Many thanks for all the prayers, thoughts and actions that you are sharing with me, the family and the medical community. They continue to lift us up, helping make this situation so much brighter.

More news on Friday…. Here’s hoping you have a wonderful week ahead!

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For those who like comics, these few had me stifling laughter while waiting to go up for the QR&D procedure:

• Baby Blues – boring to be a grownup http://babyblues.com/comics/february-5-2018/
• WUMO – contracting to build Rome http://wumo.com/wumo/2018/02/01
• Dilbert – business intelligence? http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-02-05

We’ve heard of April Fool’s Day and now are adopting February Fool’s Day;  the procedure planned for today is postponed. The drain wasn’t turned on (how did Herbie make THAT happen?) The excessive drainage complicated the procedure’s effectiveness so postponement was the prudent solution. We had a nice chat with Dr. Aukermann about Herbie so that was a nice by-product of the postponement, in addition to having two fine nurses with Angie and Sherry back there in the SSU with us.

Thanks for all the thoughts, prayers and actions that you shared this morning.  We’ll “bank ’em” for next week – we’re now set for Herbie’s Quick Rust & Disintegrate for Monday, February 5 at 8 AM.

Steve & Herbie are now scheduled for the  “Quick Rust & Disintegration” procedure on Thursday, February 1 at 8 AM. Thoughts and prayers of strength and support for us and the medical team working with us are much appreciated.

Also, we say “many thanks” for the thoughts, prayers, offers, notes and more that have been shared for/with our family. A 3-minute Youtube video Steve recorded this morning is HERE (https://youtu.be/Iz10YUvNP0c) in case you’re interested in a little perspective and a whole lot of gratitude!

Over the course of a mere two weeks Herbie had totally refueled – what a lush! About 430 ml drained today.

Dr. Young, the radiologist doing the procedure came by early on to chat. Turns out that Herbie’s consumption levels will require a multi-stage solution since injecting too much alcohol into that size cavity could cause poisoning. We’d like to avoid that.

I’m now wearing a very fashionable drain right at the beltline. We will be monitoring the fluids and about a week from now will begin the official “Quick Rust & Disintegrate” plan.

My left hip area is very sore after this procedure, but pain levels are tolerable and will be treated with regular Tylenol. Kim’s taking great care of me and the far-reaching support team has been tremendous – thanks to all of you who have phoned, written notes, texted, emailed, etc.!

More to follow about a week from now. More details below on the process for those who have interest.

Many thanks to each of you. It’s a Wonderful Life and you’re many of the reasons why… Thanks for all the kind notes over the past several weeks. I’ll hope to reply to them at some stage but right now the priority is for some R&R.

More to follow next week…

MORE DETAILS

Here’s my non-medical understanding of the next steps in the process:

• we will monitor the drain, keeping track of volume, color, etc.
• around a week from now we’ll go back in for Phase II b
  • run contrast through Herbie to make sure he’s not sharing fluids with any area of my body we wouldn’t want alcohol going
  • take those fluids out and determine the amount of alcohol to apply
  • put alcohol through the drain to help sclerose the area (Quick Rust – harden really)
  • repeat the rusting as need be so disintegration can occur