The Fight Goes On

(I should edit these blogs, but I'm sure you'll forgive my errors)

April 6, 2010: I had my first treatment yesterday and all went very well. I didn't experience any ill effects, but then it was only the first day of a six week series of treatments. I'm taking so many types of medication, each with it's own regimen as far as at what time and on what day it must be taken that we had to create a color coded calendar just to keep track of them. The heavy duty one, though, is something called "Tamador". It comes in a bio-hazard bag and I'm not suppose to let anyone touch it other than me. Sort of scary, considering I've always, even in my younger days, been really careful about the purity of whatever I ingested. I always knew the source, the potency, and made sure there were no additives. I guess the same can be said about Tamador, but it is definitely a high dose of poison designed to cumulatively build up and specifically to attack and kill cells. For the present time, we are all doing just fine.

The photos are of me with a Giant Card I received from the Criminal Division. I really appreciate all the love and thoughts coming my way. I will need it and I will never ever forget it, because with that kind of support I WILL BEAT THIS. I have received so many cards and letters and visits and e-mails I can't believe so many people care so much about me. Thank you, all.

I do have one request, however, and that is for the e-mail addresses of those in the courts (if they want my blog). So, if anyone out there thinks of it, ask someone in the clerk's office, the Sheriff's Dept., Judge's Chambers, etc., for their e-mail address and send them to me in the comments section or by e-mail. I would appreciate it.

Hopefully, no one reading this will ever have to experience what I'm going through, so let me describe what radiation is like. I went in a couple of weeks ago and the made a map of my brain using a CT Scanner. It took about 45 minutes. They also made a mask used to hold my head in place for each successive treatment. The mask is a piece of wet cloth mesh that they stretch over the face and it quickly hardens into a plastic. So yesterday, the mask was placed over my face, attached to the table I was lying on and then the process began. There was a lot of humming sounds, sounds of fans blowing and a very distinctive "buzzing" sound that seemed to travel from front to back, then minutes later from side to side, and in between each session of these sound effects the table I was lying on would mechanically move into a different position, then the sound effects would begin again. Along with the "buzzing" sound, which I later was informed was the radiation part of the process, I'd experience seeing a purple light flash through, not my eyes, but through my brain. Really weird experience. I could tell it was coming from somewhere in the brain and not my eyes because sometimes it would initiate in the back of my head and just be a flash moving forward. This purple light happened about 50% of the times when the "buzzing" sound occurred. Then it was over.

Today I go in, but from now on the sessions are suppose to take only about 15 minutes. It can be a depressing place, to see so many people in different stages of treatment, some looking gaunt, dragging their feet, heads hung down and a sense of fear pervades throughout the complex. On the other hand, I see us as a group of comrades, each in differing stages of treatment that may cause us to look like a defeated band of desperate patients seeking a miracle, where if truth be told, we are in this battle to win. How one looks or shuffles about at any given moment in time is not the standard by which to judge us, let's see how we look in five years. This is truly a battle and we are filled with poisons and being shot with beams of radiation that could, and is designed to, nearly kill us. The result, however, is that the cancer will eventually lose. So, these depressing figures that shuffle around in silence are really my friends, compatriots in this contest of wills. Well, my will to live is far greater than any cancer cells' desire to wreak havoc on my body. I WILL BEAT THIS. Lenny