Mike Judge vs Ewing's Sarcoma

On Friday I had my nine month checkup. The results were good; there is still no evidence of disease! My oncologist was happy with how much healthier I looked than my last appointment in October. It was a pretty short appointment as not much has changed since the last one other than the fact that I gained some needed weight and have more energy now. The appointment was in Radnor, which I haven't been to since my three month scans. It was nice seeing the amazing nurses that were so important in helping me get through my treatment. They are so glad to see me on the "other side" now, and looking healthier every time I see them. Stress was really bad for me this time. All week I was really stressing over the appointment; much more than the previous appointments. I'm into that zone now where relapses typically occur so I was pretty nervous. I could write a lot on my thoughts about the stress I experienced this week, but I want this to be a happy post. My scans were clea...

In my last update I stated that I was going to write next about my expectations and plans for 2015. This is really hard to write about because I usually just look ahead to my next scan. I set goals for myself, and hope each scan is clean so I can keep on the same path. Looking ahead a full year is impossible. If I look at the most important factor of this year for me and that is without a doubt the scans, and ignore everything else then the answer becomes simple. If it doesn't come back then this will be a great year, if it does then....it won't be a good year.  Lets assume that I go for my scans in January(January 9th is my next scan by the way) and they're clean, as well as being all good in April, July, and November. Then the next most important question this year becomes my arm. Is the bone going to continue healing, or am I going to need another surgery? What's the process going to be like once the limitations to using my arm are lifted? Am I going to be in ...

With 2014 coming to a close I thought it would be a good idea to sum-up 2014 with a blog post as well as provide my thoughts on what 2015 will bring. I'll probably go off topic at points as I'm writing whatever I feel like, but I'll try to keep this not too long. 2014 was a very eventful year for me and I think this year can be broken up into three main parts: Late December/Early January-Late March 2014 were my last three cycles of chemo. Looking back at it now; the hardest part of my treatment. Especially the time from cycles 4b-5b, I just hit a roadblock. I was more tired, my body just wasn't bouncing back as easily as it did before surgery. Then I had the bladder issues, bone pain, and other nasty side effects from my treatment that I just didn't experience in the beginning. It was really demoralizing. And to add to all of the pain from the chemo, my arm was never healed from surgery and pretty painful. The second section of the year would be from April(tre...

Happy holidays! I hope you all are enjoying the holiday season. Family and Friends are what I enjoy the most about this season. In the next day or so I'm going to update this blog to catch you up on what's been going on since my last update. I have a lot that I want to write about so stay tuned. Here's a picture from this morning before Church.

On Monday I had an x-ray and an appointment with my surgeon to check on my arm. Let me first discuss the bad, and then I'll move onto good news. A large focus of the appointment was regarding the pain I've been having in my arm. I was told that this is not normal, and she's now confident that this is attributed to the hardware rubbing in there. She's thinking that I'm going to need injections, but I should wait until I'm doing rehab to get them. This is because I can only receive so many of these injections, and my pain is going to be a lot worse when I'm actually using my arm to its fullest in rehabbing it. I shouldn't waste them now. Taking Advil 1-2 times a day is definitely not where I want to be, and I'm getting to that point now where I don't think the Advil is helping all that much. In the morning it's a constant dull ache. By the afternoon the achiness goes away, but it's still sore when I do even basic things like open a door, dr...

On Thursday I was in Philly for my six month follow-up appointment with my oncologist. I had blood-work, a CT scan of my chest, and then saw my oncologist a few hours afterwards. Good news! I'm still cancer free, and my blood levels are improving. It was a good appointment. I had my questions answered, and now I feel a little bit better about how I'm recovering so far. Let me explain. The first question I had was about the whole sterility thing. (I discussed this in my last blog post if you want to read more about that.) My oncologist at first kind of freaked out because he couldn't remember if I stored or not. I have to say that this issue was not really pushed on to me by Penn before starting chemo. If it wasn't for my mom I may have never stored a sample, and I would be in a very bad spot right now. But as far as my last analysis he told me that this does happen, and it could improve, but like everything else it's going to take time if it ever does come back. H...

It's been three weeks since my last update. Here's how everything has been going since then... First I'll start out with the bad. My second week of school I had my first test. I prepared for it really well. I understood how to do every problem from the homework, and I was ready to receive a really good grade on my first test since returning to school. I received my Physics test, and we were given 45 minutes to take it. I began to read the first problem, and couldn't concentrate at all. About fifteen minutes passed and nothing was on the paper, but my name. At this point I began to panic making it even more difficult to concentrate, and also I began to feel very tired. I honestly felt like laying my head down for a little bit, but I already lost a lot of time. For the last 20 minutes I finally got a little bit of focus, but the damage was already done. I rushed to get whatever I could on the test, but my thoughts were filled with so much negativity that I couldn't ...