Deanna is letting Mike Blog

Dear Ones,

Isn't it funny how ironic life can be at times? I got a staph infection, spent a week in the hospital, and went home with a daily IV antibiotic that comes in a little plastic ball with a rubber cylinder inside. They call it an "elastomeric device". You plug it into your port, open the clamp valve on the tube, and the rubber cylinder squeezes the daptomyacyn into my superior vena cave via the troublesome port. It really is a convenient little miracle. It's not much bigger than a handball, fits in my pants pocket, and takes only thirty minutes each day to administer the medication.

Since this situation is incompatible with chemo, it's been about a month since my last treatment now. My taste buds have started functioning again. The taste of water and most foods is wonderful. When we walked the McKinney square the other day, I had a cafe' mocha. That bit of romantic normalcy, a pleasant morning walk with my beautiful bride, talking in the coffee shop, was very special and valuable to me. The irony is that I feel much better than I have in a long time--but it took a staph infection to get me here.

Men, spend that time with your wife. Don't make an excuse that you're too busy. Someday, you may not be able to. I pray that one day this will be a routine event for me, and not an occasional treat as allowed by my continually VUCA medical situations. (Yes, you USAF SDE guys, I used the VUCA word. The world of cancer has made me appreciate the term much more than when I took the SDE course.)

I am endeavoring to do as much as I can for as long as I can.

Today, I had a PET scan. This is an interesting little test where they shoot you up with glucose (the only food of cancer cells...they reproduce so fast while growing tumors that they have an extremely high metabolic rate that can only be supported by pure sugar) that is tagged with a radioactive marker. Then they scan you in a tunnel much like a CT or MRI. The scan detects any concentrations of the radioactive glucose so you can find the cancer and gauge how active it is. We started early, and were finished before lunch. Results next week some time. A quick blood level check (numbers looked good), and we were off.

Deanna, I, Elizabeth, and one of her friends drove down to the Dallas Art Museum to see the King Tut exhibit. We pulled the kids out of school early, and off we went. It was okay. Not fantastic, just okay. The funnest part was watching the girls...they seemed to really dig it. I was tired and a bit sore from the PET. We had lunch in their 1717 restaurant which was very nice. I had the Moroccan Chicken Pot Pie, and Deanna was kind enough to share her chips and dessert with me. She had a gourmet BLT, and the girls both had--go figure--chicken nuggets.

I said the blessing and remarked how the Egyptians had once been the most advanced and powerful civilization on the planet. And then they held onto their false gods instead of listening to the one true God, for which they paid dearly. All their greatness now reduced to museums, not a single vestige of true ancient Egyptian culture left anywhere. God completely destroyed them. Their civilization is so dead we would know next to nothing about them had we not stumbled across the Rossette Stone. I wanted the girls to enjoy the exhibit, but it bothered me that maybe they might be enchanted by the ancient Egyptian pantheon. So I made it a point to always refer to them as "false gods".

After lunch we went through the rest of the museum, which was okay. Deanna pushed me around the entire museum in the wheelchair, all four floors plus the Tut exhibit. She sure got her workout today. She worked tirelessly to make sure that our special day went off smoothly.

Dinner did not stay down tonight, but lunch did, so I suppose I'm batting .500 today. We're a tired crew now, but all in all, it has been a wonderful day.

Please continue to pray for us. Big week coming up with potentially four surgical procedures, trying to eradicate the staph infection, and getting the PET results back, and starting a new IV treatment of monoclonal-antibodies.

My hat's off to the 623 AOC comrades running in the Relay For Life this week. I really wish I could be there with you. And you guys know how much I hate running, but it would be worth it to see you again. (Somebody sneak some weights into Gugs shoes so he stays below Mach 1 this time!).

God Bless,
-Mike