Helo again my friends!
OK so I told you all days ago on Facebook that this entry was coming but just didn?t get around to it. It?s been a while since my last entry, but it all for a good reason.
Personally: ?Life has been a whirlwind over the past few months. When I lived in Hawaii, I met a friend who I have maintained contact with for the past ten years. The same friend I wrote about in my last entry. We instantly realized that we are basically the male and female versions of the same person. We always know what the other is thinking and always blurt out the same sarcastic response to the stuff happening around us. We never stop laughing when we are with each other and always knew that we would be friends forever and never judge the other. Anyway, so she has been my best friend for ten years, and her and her husband had to come to Nashville so he could undergo an extensive medical procedure. There?s no way I was going to let my best friend and her family blow a ton of money on a hotel room for what was supposed to be a few months of his recovery. I invited them to share my 3 bedroom house as I was living alone at the time. While they spent time with me in Nashville, they decided that they really liked my town and wanted to move here. My intentions were to rent my house to them and buy a second home in San Antonio close to my sister so she wouldn?t worry about me so much. I know she loves me very much and I love her and don?t want to add stress to her life worrying about me. ?So my friends decided they would move to Hendersonville and take advantage of the area resources such as better schools, job opportunities, plus the coziness of a country setting with the convenience of having a large metropolitan city only minutes away. Following his recovery, they decided that it was best for them to separate. It?s not my place to broadcast the personal details of others? lives so I?ll just leave it at that. ?It was truly the exception to the rule that ?if it ends, it always ends badly.? They amicably separated and remain friends and stay in contact. He and I also frequently exchange text messages razzing each other about our favorite sports teams. Before anyone goes assuming anything, know that their divorce has absolutely nothing to do with me. I think it was just an irreparable personality contrast. So she decided to continue with their plans to move herself and her boys, whom all I all have known since infancy, up here and he returned to their home state. ?Basically all that said was, ?I have roommates now.?
Professionally, not much has changed. I stay in contact with my supervisor.? Being at a ?Detachment? in Nashville, we have a Supervisor instead of a Commanding Officer, but it?s the same smell, different nostril. I also keep in touch with members of our Sector Command, especially our Command Senior Chief. I really love that I work in an organization that really takes care of its people. I always get the feeling that my supervisors really care about me on a personal level.
Medically, my last MRI was on the 13th of October. I got the results on the 15th. While I was waiting in the doctor?s office, I was pretty excited because I got the cd of the scan right after the MRI and looked at them on my home computer. To me, it looked like things were good, so I was excited thinking that the doctor was going to tell me that things were getting better, or at the very least, that the tumor was still stable. Once again, I was reminded that I am not a professional MRI reader. The doctor came into the room and immediately asked me to follow him to his office. ?I want to show you exactly what I?m looking at on my computer.? he said. I thought, ?Well this is going to be really good news, or bad news.? ?This MRI scan shows an increased uptake of contrast on this ridge right here, and right here.? Translation: The tumor is getting bigger. The contrast they injected into me highlights the tumor in the scans. This scan took on more contrast than in previous scans, and showed new ?ridges and edges? in the tumor. At least that?s how he explained it to me. I followed up with my oncologist on the 17th and he explained that it could possibly be new scar tissue from the therapy I got over a year ago, ?but statistically, with my other patients, it usually means that the tumor is growing.? I don?t know about you guys, but whenever I get cut, the scar doesn?t show up a year later. I guess though that it?s not terribly serious. They decided to play the wait-and-see game again. The neurosurgeon said that he couldn?t do anything about it because any attempt for further resection of the tumor would damage several healthy parts of my brain, leaving me severely wounded, handicapped, or possibly in a vegetative state. So surgery is out. The other option is to start chemotherapy, but they don?t want to start something that drastic until they know for sure that the new sections of the mass are actually cancerous tissue and not scar tissue. I just hope they don?t play wait-and-see too long. If it is more cancer, I don?t want to wait-and-see what part of my brain it?s going to destroy next. ?I have also continued to have intense headaches that I can only moderately contain with painkillers. Tack on some neurological deficits such as increased loss of memory. Short-term seems to be a recurring problem. Things like getting to Wal-Mart to buy groceries and forgetting why I am there. The other night, I was going to pick up chineese food from a restaurant across the street. I?ll say that again, across the street. Lynette?s car was parked broadside in the street behind me, and shortly after backing straight into the passenger side of her car with my trailer hitch and smashing in her rear corner panel, I proceeded to go pick up our dinner. ..across the street. I got lost. Didn?t know where I was or where I was going. To make matters worse, I had the 13-year old in the car with me. He quickly reminded me where we were headed, and after two more wrong turns, we ended up where we were supposed to be. I?m just glad that nothing more serious happened and that he was able to get my focus back on track.
Recreationally, I?ve had a lot of really great things happen recently. Deer season opened up in TN for bow hunters on September 22nd.? Muzzle loader season opens up next week, and rifle about a month after that. Two years ago, I went out during rifle season and never even saw a deer. I promised myself I was going to get a bow and get out two months earlier the following year, but cancer had other plans. I just wasn?t healthy enough to get out last winter. This year is different and I have been taking my bow out and having a great time. I have a great little honey-hole that I go to on some public land by Percy J. Priest Lake. The area is small and thick with brush and dense with trees. There is one nice oak tree among many cedar trees that is just suitable for my climbing tree stand. Unfortunately there is only about a 15 yard range that I can shoot in. Anything beyond that is blocked by the foliage and wouldn?t be a clear shot. So the trick is that I have to coax these deer to within 15 yards of me, which is extremely difficult, but the challenge is very thrilling. A few weeks ago, I had a great shot on a doe, and I took it. The arrow passed straight through her and she took off like a bat out of hell, or like a deer that just had an arrow pass through its lungs. ?I was so excited that I had finally shot my first deer that I immediately climbed down from my stand and tried to track the deer. Big mistake. ?I followed her hoof prints for about 60 yards, and then saw her jump up and run off, straight over a cliff into the water. Always always always give the deer at least a half hour or an hour or maybe even a half a day to expire before trying to track it. If it isn?t completely dead and you walk up on it, it will get up and run off again. I contacted the United Special Sportsman Alliance about a month ago. They are a non-profit charity that grants ?dream hunts? to terminally ill children and injured vets. Well I?m young at heart, terminally ill, and active duty military, so I thought I?d give it a shot to see if I could get a good hunt. ?A few days later, I got a phone call from one of the kindest and most compassionate women I have ever met. The CEO of USSA called me and we discussed details of a hunt that she wanted to send me on. A high-fence whitetail hunt in Oklahoma. If you don?t know (cause I didn?t) a high-fence hunt is where the deer are raised on a wildlife management property and allowed to grow to full maturity. Most hunting takes place on open or public land where a deer has a good chance of being harvested by hunters at some time before they are 4 years old. A high-fence property protects the deer from escaping out into the wild before having the chance to grow to their full monster potential.? I mean we?re talking huge massive bucks! ?This past weekend, she called me again to tell me that there was a family in Arkansas that wanted to take me hunting as well. In that same conversation, she told me about the annual Illinois Dream Hunt, a hunt in Illinois that she was putting on for twelve terminally ill children and asked me if I would like to be a part of that. I jumped at the opportunity and headed to Illinois Thursday afternoon. Surprisingly, it only took be about 2:45Hr to get there. Volunteers and mentors were assigned to accompany each child while in the blind during the 3-day hunt. I was with Don, our experienced mentor, and our child was Tommy, a 14 year old with a serious medical condition. It?s not my business to divulge anyone?s medical information, but I will say that Tommy was so fragile, that when we were able to harvest two deer, Don and I had to hold and aim the guns and Tommy would reach in and pull the trigger. He got a nice spike buck at sunset on the first night. The second day was uneventful, except for the morning portion where the chairman of the Illinois Bowhunting Society (IBS) too me on a bowhunt on this phenomenal private hunting plot owned by another member of the IBS. Within 5 minutes of being in my stand, a giant doe walks out to the fringe of this plot, and proceeded to skirt around the edges of the field, just out of my ?confident shot? range, about 65 yards away. We played a sort of hunter-prey hide and seek for about twenty minutes before I was able to draw down on her and take the shot. My memory failed me and I could not remember the ranges that I had tried to establish when I got there. I said ?OK This tuft of grass is at 30 yards, easy shot, that patch of grass id at twenty yards, easier shot) Well when she finally walked into range, I thought she was at 40 yards, still a fairly confident shot, and I released my arrow. When she ran off, she did not appear to be hit, and she ran out of range, turned, and stared me down. I used my rangefinder to see how far she was when I shot at her, and it was only 30 yards. Wrong tuft of grass I guess. ?Well over the next 15 minutes or so, I got to watch this doe walk through the woods and drive off every other deer in the area. I literally watched about 9 deer be herded off by this one deer that was lucky enough to be standing just close enough for my arrow to sail right over her. Thank you short-term memory loss. It?d be real nice to harvest my first deer. My first anything! I spent the rest of the afternoon in the blind with Don and Tommy with no luck. The next morning was the last morning of the hunt and Tommy woke me up at 4am. We headed out to the blind knowing that although the hunt officially ended at noon, we were supposed to be back at the Carrier Mills community center for breakfast/goodbyes at 9am. At about 8:30 we decided to pack it up and head out. Tommy and Don stepped out of the blind to?well, they stepped out. As I was packing our bags together I stood up to stretch my legs and caught a glimpse out of a deer in my periphery about 300 yards away. I quietly tried to get the attention of the guys, but they were pretty involved so I grabbed the muzzle loader and set up to ready the shot for tommy. The deer was just out of range due to the blind, and it was too far off to our right. Donald made it into the blind and started the video camera. We thought that the deer would eventually continue walking along a nearby ridge towards the left and right in front of the blind, so we decided to just wait a few seconds. Just as I relaxed, Don said, ?it?s walking up the ridge!? I quickly shifter the gun over to my left shoulder and had to lean as far as I could to the left without falling out of my chair to get the shot that far to the right. By this time, Tommy had made it into the blind and was standing just over my right shoulder. As I lined up the most awkward shot of my life, balancing on the edge of my chair, holding a muzzle loader (a firearm that I have never shot and knew nothing about) in the off-hand position peering through the scope with my right eye, I told Tommy to reach in and pinch the trigger. BOOM! And smoke went everywhere. The smoke cleared out of my line of sight just in time for me to see the limp carcass of the deer tumble down the ridge she was climbing. Seeing the deer drop dead in its tracks like that, we knew that we didn?t have to wait for her to bleed out. Maybe I hit her head, maybe her spine, but wherever the bullet went, it dropped her instantly. Good. I know I killed her, but it wasn?t a random killing of a creature. It was a harvest, and I was glad that she didn?t have to suffer through a bleeding-out before expiring. I grabbed my range finder and calculated how far the deer was when we shot her. 165 yards! Not bad for a hand-loaded .50 caliber muzzle loaded rifle that I didn?t have any experience with. ?We grabbed our shotgun, and slowly walked toward the deer. When we got to within about 25 yards, she popped her head up and tried to stand up to run away, bud couldn?t stand up. Damn!, she?s wounded. We figured she wasn?t going anywhere because she couldn?t stand up. Must?ve been a spine shot. We waited right where we were figuring it wouldn?t take long for her to die. She kept trying to stand up and run, and I didn?t want her to sit there and suffer, as well as let her body dump a bunch of ?I just got shot!? hormones into her body and spoil her meat, so I took the shotgun and disengaged the safety. ??When she lifted her head again above the tall grass, I aimed our 12 ga slug just below the top of the grass to shoot her lungs. Just as I pulled the trigger, she dropped her head and the slug passed right through her neck, slitting open her esophagus and trachea. About a second later, she stopped moving. We walked up to her and saw the blood gushing from her slit throat, and just knew that she was done. I also got to see where the muzzle loader shot went. Bullseye! ?Passed straight through her torso in about the lung area, but must have caused enough trauma to prevent her from getting up and running off for a few hundred yards. As we reached for her legs to turn her over, she started flailing her head around! What the hell!? How can she possibly still be alive? I quickly put the shotgun to her lungs and pulled the trigger. Remember the movie Backdraft where the smoke would puff out from the bottom of the door and then get sucked right back in? Well her lungs did that. Her hot breath puffed out in the cold air from both sides of her lungs and made a loud pop like you hear when sticking a needle through a balloon, and then was sucked back in as she gasped for one last breath. Finally, she was down. We pulled up the gator, loaded her up and took her back to camp. I didn?t have a cooler with me on the trip because the hunt was for Tommy, not me. Tommy had other plans. This amazing child has been hunting his whole life and has taken several bucks. He even killed a bear with a crossbow! He knew that this was the first time that I had ever been on a successful hunt, and since he had already gotten a buck on Friday night, he was generous enough to give me the doe. What a great kid! I ran to Wal-Mart to buy a cooler while Don processed the deer, and by the time I got back, he had already bagged up the tenderloins, backstraps, and hind quarters. The shoulder roasts weren?t salvageable due to several large bullet wounds.? After that, Tommy gave me a big huge hug and we parted ways, I thanked Brigid for inviting me to participate in the hunt and I exchanged numbers with several of the other mentors. What a great bunch of people. They didn?t know me from Adam, but from the second I showed up, they instantly accepted me into their circle and treated me as if we all had been best friends our entire lives. I really hope to see all of them again and look forward to participating in this hunt for years to come. ?If anyone is interested in participating USSA, or more importantly, supporting USSA with donations, you can check them out at: www.childwish.org/
I?m not really sure I have much else to share this time, but since things are moving along with my tumor, I?ll be sure to update the blog more often so everybody doesn?t feel compelled to call me and ask what?s going on. A guy can only take so much of, ?How are you feeling today?? each day.
Speaking of donations, the 2013 OMG! Young Adult Cancer Summit in Las Vegas is just around the corner and the fundraising campaign has begun. If you don?t remember me talking about this from last year, the Stupid Cancer foundation draws awareness to young adults between 18-39 who are cancer patients, survivors, caretakers, advocates, supporters, and more. The summit is an opportunity for us to all come together and meet others who have had to endure the same challenges as a young adult cancer survivor. From the Stupidcancer.com webpage:
The OMG! Cancer Summit For Young Adults is the premiere oncology conference and social networking event for the young adult cancer movement. A program of the I'm Too Young For This! Cancer Foundation, the OMG! Cancer Summit, now in it's 5th year, has become a pivotal healthcare event that inspires thousands of survivors, cargivers and providers?along with scores of academic, advocacy, research and support organizations?to get organized, build community and unite as one to drive change. ?
This is an amazing event and organization and they desperately need donations to put on events like this. Donations also help offset the costs for people attending who otherwise would not be able to attend. Stupid Cancer is a national non-profit (5)(c) foundation. They rely strictly on donations to accomplish their mission of supporting young adult survivors. Please go to my donation page and dig deep to help us put on this awareness event. Also, please post the link to your Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, and ask your friends to do the same. We need maximum visibility on this to be able to accomplish as much good as possible. Here?s the link, pass it on!: http://www.crowdrise.com/omg2013/fundraiser/briananderson1
Source: http://stupidbraincancer.blogspot.com/2012/10/helo-again-my-friends.html
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