Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Thanksgiving and Whack-A-Mole

A strange title for another month of ups and downs. Thanksgiving week was an exciting time for the Brookharts. Bonnie and Carolyn flew home Tuesday night from their college hunting trip. They left Thursday for Boston where they visited at least 6 colleges over 4 days as well as spending 2 nights with my sister, Amy. They then flew through Chicago (where Carolyn and Bonnie's bad luck with O'Hare continued) to Iowa where they visited Grinnell. Evidently the trip was a success since Carolyn saw a couple of schools that she really liked. Unfortunately the ones that she likes are very selective so despite her excellent grades acceptance is not assured.

Wednesday night Lauren came home from U of Oregon for Thanksgiving and there was much rejoicing (especially by Devin, her boyfriend).

After such a challenging year I was a bit surprised to find that after thinking about the theme of Thanksgiving that I had so much to be thankful for: Bonnie, my doctors, especially Drs. Yom and Fong, Glen, Tom, Vince & Mary, my sisters, my friends, my collegues, refereeing and my recovery thus far. We had a wonderful meal at our house with our friends the McGoverns and Lauren's boyfriend.

I've been making steady progress toward normal work duty. The second week of November I made my first business trip since my diagnosis. I started off visiting my good friends John & Colleen D. along with Vince and John F. John and Colleen changed their vacation destination last April to California to include a visit to me during some of my darkest days. It was really nice to return the favor. It was even better to see John doing significantly better than the last time I saw him. He has persevered and is still improving years after his second stroke. He is an inspiration to a lot of folks, including me. The technical part of the meetings went well and I really enjoyed interacting with my friends at ExxonMobil. I was a little tired after a long week on the road, but I felt ready to attempt an overseas trip. Thus, the week after Thanksgiving I was off to Rotterdam.

Again, it was a bit more tiring than previous visits but it went well enough. It was especially nice seeing my R&D group again on their turf. As a special treat we had dinner with Dick and Trudi. Dick retired earlier this year after over 30 years with Chevron, most of them in the Marine division. Dick and I worked closely together with ExxonMobil for the 10 years I've been in Marine and it was a relationship I thoroughly enjoyed, both professionally and personally.

The FDA finally approved the use of the gardasil vaccine for boys. It's the vaccine that protects against the HPV viruses most likely to cause various cancers; cervical in women, penile in men, anal, and squamous cell like Tom, Glen and I have had. So finally I was able to start the vaccine series of 3 shots over 6 months for Dashiell. (The girls were vaccinated before I was diagnosed.) I fought Kaiser to vaccinate Dash before the FDA approval was granted but wasn't making a whole lot of progress. Hopefully this will eliminate the chance that he has to go through what I have gone through.

The road to recovery continues to be two steps forward and one step back. The whack-a-mole reference alludes to my view of the last couple months where I no sooner resolve one health challenge than a new one (or a previous one I thought resolved) emerges. My latest challenge is dental. I have developed what the doctors and dentists refer to as a bone emersion near the site of the tooth I had extracted in August. The flesh in my mouth near the back of my jawbone has receeded so that a small part of my jawbone has appeared. I've been told by 2 of my dentists that is does happen to some folks who have a tooth removed even if they didn't have radiation therapy. That's somewhat comforting but the truth is that if the bone gets infected it could degrade into the dreaded osteoradionecrosis that I was worried about when I first had the tooth removed. I thought that threat was gone but not quite. The best prognosis is that the flesh will grow back behind the exposed bone and ultimately the exposed part will be able to be peeled away like an old scab. My oral surgeon is taking a conservative approach to avoid disturbing the natural process. A small piece of bone flaked away yesterday but the area exposed stayed the same as before. It had about tripled in size over the last 3 weeks. I wonder what will be the next challenge after this one is resolved?

This Friday will be the one year anniversary of my diagnosis. What a year! This Christmas should be quite a bit better than last year.