Two Years is Worth Everything

Two years ago when my oncologist was giving my wife and me the possibilities for my future, I was shocked when he expressed contentment that chemotherapy could extend my life a couple of years. That was really disturbing to me. I wanted much more than two more years, especially if I was going to go through the agony, suffering and potential lethal risks that chemotherapy can dish out. Thinking that my oncologist was being conservative with his bedside manner, I searched the internet for more optimistic news, but everywhere I looked the message was the same, two years, even several months of extended life was considered worth doing the most dangerous medical procedures. Now it’s been about two years after my diagnosis of cancer and I now know the truth – life is worth every bit of struggle.

These last two years I have lived a lifetime. I’ve ran two marathons, a half marathon, and my wife has joined me on shorter races. We’ve been on many trips these last two years. My wife and I had a romantic wedding anniversary in Las Vegas. My wife and two boys have gone to the Minnesota Boundary Waters for a canoe adventure, a trip to Arizona and Las Vegas, and a road trip to Arkansas to my in-law’s cabin in the Ouachita Mountains. My two boys and I went with other family members on our first Huck Finn trip, canoeing down the Mississippi River along with the barges, and camping on sandbars. My wife traveled with me on a week long business trip to Phoenix while Grandma and Grandpa watched our boys. There were snowboard outings and countless family gatherings for birthdays and holidays and special family annual get-togethers like the Strandjord Winter Lutsen gathering on north shore of Lake Superior and the Strandjord Fall Wiener Roast at my parents place in the country.

During these last two years I’ve seen my granddaughter catch her first fish, my grandson shoot his first real gun. I saw my daughter move to Manhattan all on her own and land a job as an assistant to a COO of a hedge fund during one of the most difficult times in the job market and economy. I saw my oldest son, who’s a senior this year, make the All Conference Team in high school bowling by ranking 7^th in the conference. At the conclusion of the season he was ranked 81^st in the state. I saw my youngest son blossom in wrestling to become a captain of his middle school team and go undefeated during regular season. This year he is wrestling on the high school team and has wrestled both JV and varsity. Two years ago I was hoping to live just long enough to see another bowling and wrestling season.

Just after finishing chemotherapy I joined my wife in riding Harley’s. My wife has been a Harley biker for many years and has her own Super Glide. I bought my Fat Boy while still going through chemotherapy. When I was going through chemo and fighting cancer I didn’t put my dreams and aspirations on hold. That really helped me stay positive during those difficult times. Since then my wife and I have gone on many rides. We like head out with little planning and see were some country roads take us. As we explore the countryside we look for that special biker bar in some little town to have a hamburger and ice tea. Over these last two years biking has become a very important part of my life, and what makes it extra special is I get to enjoy it with my wife.

Those were the major highlights of the last two years and this article only takes a slight glance at them. To really convey the wonderfulness of each would require a novel to describe the sights, the sounds, the feelings, the smiles and laughter that make up each one. When you break down a life highlight into the constituents that really make it wonderful you find those elements that also make up any ordinary day. When I look back at these last two years I see a lifetime of those elements: smiles and laughter with my family, my wife snuggling to me while I hold her in my arms, my youngest son snuggling to me while we watch TV, my granddaughter giving me a leg hug while she says, “I love you grandpa”, and it goes on and on and on.

Now I get it. Now I understand why physicians show high spirits when there is a chance of extending someone’s life a few months or a couple of years even if it means undergoing a dangerous procedure; because every minute of life is worth every bit of struggle. All it takes is one minute to feel joy from a smile, a hug, a laugh, a sound, a sight, a smell or a few simple spoken words. There’s about 43,000 minutes in a month, and over a half of a million minutes in a year. That can add up to a wealth of hugs, laughs and smiles.

Friday the 13th, In Your Face!

Friday the 13th my wife and I were escorted by a nurse to exam room #13. “Is the universe trying to tell me something”, I thought. It’s Friday the 13th and I am in room #13 about to here from my oncologist about my recent PET scan results. The nurse did ask if I wanted to change rooms, but I figured if there was such a thing as fate, it was already sealed for that day and changing rooms wouldn’t suddenly change the outcome of my visit. Honestly, I don’t believe in superstition and fate. Well, in your face Friday the 13th, my PET scan came back perfect – absolutely no cancer. Of course, my great results were not just random luck, I had a little influence.

So far two of my PET scans came back positive for cancer activity, but later proved out to be just inflammation of scar tissue where I had surgery. It’s not a good day when your oncologist says, “Your scan has shown in uptake, it is probably nothing, but it does indicate that the cancer is coming back and we need to watch it very closely and have you come back in a few weeks for another scan”. I reason, for good reasons, my active lifestyle with long distance running is causing my hernia surgery site to be inflamed and not to worry about it, but it still can rest heavy on the mind. So I found a way to combat it, with ice!

I figure if ice is good for reducing swelling and inflammation of sports injuries, then why not old hernia surgery sites. So about 3 days before my PET scan I start applying an ice pack to my groin each night, and oh that’s cold. That doesn’t sound like much fun does it? It beats the alternative, going through weeks of anxiety until another PET scan shows that the cancer is not coming back. Every time I have used ice packs before a scan my scan results have come back negative. Earlier this year I got lazy one time and didn’t use ice packs and sure enough, the PET scan came back positive. Now I’ll do anything to make sure I use the ice treatment.

This last week I got lazy again, waiting to the last night before my scan before using ice packs. That night I went to my parents, which is about an hour drive from my home, to visit and help out with a few things. I didn’t want to stay up late at night, so I employed my technique on my drive back home. It was good I wasn’t pulled over by the police. It would have been uneasy trying to explain why a bag of ice was stuff down my pants.

It’s amazing that we spend a lot of effort dodging superstitions, yet many times we’ll do little or nothing of the things that really have control in the outcome of our lives.

Good Luck Tasgirl

Tasgirl,

Good luck completing your second marathon after completing chemotherapy. I hope it goes well at the New York City Marathon this weekend.

Chemo-Man

$$$ I’ve won the Lottery $$$

I feel like I have won lottery. My PET scan came back squeaky clean and my blood counts are normal. I’m back on my normal schedule of four months between PET scans. The next PET scan will be just two months shy of my second anniversary of starting chemo. After two years my odds of making it five years and beyond are pretty good and the PET scans will be done less frequently. As more time goes on with good PET scans, the more likely it looks like I am cured of cancer.

After my last post I did start to have weird feelings again. The strange feeling is hard to describe, but I feel kind of a tingling in my skin and at the tip of my tongue. I’ll get slight headaches and will feel some nervousness or a little jittery. Sometimes the strange feeling keeps my up at night. I was pretty confident that it wasn’t the cancer coming back, but I was still very anxious to see my doctor. I told him all about it including going cold turkey with caffeine. He said the strange feelings are most likely caffeine withdrawals. Furthermore, since I have undergone one of the strongest chemotherapy treatments that are administered, my body may have more difficulty handling things like caffeine withdrawals. My doctor also said that it can actually take four to six weeks to be completely free of caffeine. He ordered some additional blood tests just to be sure something else isn’t causing the strange feelings. Most of those tests have come back negative and next week I get the remaining results.

I also have a constant tingling in my toes and sometimes my fingers. The tingling in the toes started when I was taking chemo and has never stop since then. Sometimes it gets pretty intense and can be annoying. The tingling, called peripheral neuropathy, is from nerve damage cause by one the chemo drugs called Vincristine or Oncovin (the O in RCHOP). The nerve damage can take up to three years to repair, and in some cases is permanent. I can live with this; it is better than the alternative. One thing is for sure, the tingling does not get in the way of my happiness.

Some things are beyond our control and we have to live with it. But so much in our lives are within our control, like caffeine, eating well, exercising and taking the time for those things that truly give us happiness. Life is the most precious thing we have, nothing else compares to it, yet it is amazing how we so easily waste it and throw it away.

Lost My Fire, Now I Have It Back

I was really nervous waiting to hear about the results of my last PET scan that was done about 6 weeks ago. A couple of weeks before that PET scan I was feeling some discomfort in my groin area where I had hernia surgery and a tumor removed. I just didn’t have the same fire that made me boldly go into my oncologist office with the attitude that everything will be ok. My PET scan did show an uptick in the surgery area. All other indications were good, so it was most likely inflammation of scar tissue. That would also explain the discomfort. But to be safe another PET scan was scheduled to be done 6 weeks later. Then things got worse a couple of weeks ago.

To get through some challenging times at my work I started drinking massive amounts of coffee. Caffeine has been a long time addiction for me. I’ve quit a few times, but always quickly succumb to its momentary euphoria it gives with that first cup in the morning. Caffeine controls me in many ways. Nothing starts in the morning until I get my fix and I’ll do just about anything to make that happen. Before going on a business trip I’ll check with Google Maps to see where the closest Starbucks is to my destination. It became clear a couple of weeks ago that I had to do something about this addiction.

After I got through my challenges at work I cut back to relatively normal levels of coffee drinking. I started to feel strange about the same time. I wasn’t sure if the strange feelings were due to reducing caffeine intake, or it was something else, like the cancer coming back. The feeling is hard to describe. I felt tired and kind of tingly all over my body, kind of like I was lacking oxygen. I started to get real paranoid that maybe the cancer was coming back. Then I started to get depressed. However, I didn’t have any problems when I ran or rode bicycle. In fact, the only time I felt really good was when I exercised hard. Because the exercise went well, I had hope that the problem was related to the caffeine. I finally decided the only thing to do was to go cold turkey and completely quit caffeine. That’s was about a week ago and in a couple of days I was feeling great. The fatigue, most of the funny feelings and the depression went away.

I have PET scan again this Wednesday and will meet with my oncologist on Friday. I feel confident about this one. I haven’t been feeling any discomfort in my groin and I feel strong. I took control over caffeine and I got my fire back.

My New Adventure: The Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon

I miss having a marathon in my plans, but I promised my family I would take a break from full marathons. So I’ve decided to run in the Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon (http://www.lakeminnetonkahalfmarathon.com/) on May 3rd, 2009. To make it adventurous I’m setting a time goal of better than 1:39, which should place me in the top 10 for my age group (50 to 59) based on last year’s results. I was in my best shape when I ran the TC marathon in 2007 and at the halfway point my time was 1:48:52, so I need to cut ten minutes off that time to reach my goal. Now my thinking is I should be able to do that. When I made 13.1 miles in 1:49 time back in 2007 I had to complete another 13.1 miles, so I was saving a lot of energy at that point. Furthermore, it was hotter than heck during the 2007 TC marathon. So I’m thinking with good training I should be able to do this no problem. Last week I get on the treadmill and crank up the speed to 8.0 MPH or a pace of 7:30/mile. Holly smokes! I was surprise how fast that was. There’s a huge difference in the speed for a half marathon time of 1:49 vs 1:39. I can’t imagine running 8.0 MPH for 13.1 miles. Never the less, I’m going try.

I wanted some adventure into the unknown, well here it is. This requires a big change to my training. I’ve never done any serious speed training before, but now’s the time. Last week I started by speed training by employing the Fartlek (http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fartlek) method on my treadmill. I’ve tried Fartlek training in two different ways. One is to start out at normal pace for a few minutes to warm-up, then run for about 3 minutes at 9.1 MPH (almost a sprint for me), then back to normal pace to rest for a few minutes, then sprint again. I repeat this cycle until I finish 6 miles. The other method I’ve tried is to run again at normal pace, then up my speed to 8.0 MPH (my goal speed for race day) for as long as I can, then back to normal speed to rest, then repeat the cycle as often as I can. I love this type of training. It makes time go much faster when running on the treadmill.

Speed training may not be enough to reach my goal so I’m planning on doing something else to help my speed – loose weight. During chemotherapy last spring I gained about 7 or 8 pounds. There were a few reasons for that. The Prednisone increased my appetite. It also caused my problems with stomach acid and gas to flare up, way up, and eating actually helped with that, so I ate very often. The other cause of my weight gain was comfort foods. My sons like milkshakes. During chemo I would get through the day by looking forward to an evening of making and eating milkshakes with my sons while we watched our favorite TV shows. Fortunately I was running about 40 miles a week, otherwise my weight gain would have been much more.

I’ve read that you can improve your percentage improvement in marathon time is about the same percentage in weight loss. I’m assuming this is roughly true for a half marathon too. I’m at about 175 pounds right now. So I if loose about 15 pounds I could expect about a 9% improvement in my half marathon time. A 9% improvement over my 2007 TC time gets me pretty close to my goal. I have 15 weeks before the race so I need to loose about 1 pound a week. That’s not unreasonable.

I’m not planning on loosing weight just to improve my race time. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. 160 pounds is a very healthy weight for me. Maintaining a good weight has tremendous health advantages that are obtained in a natural way and without drugs. Before I lost my 30 pounds in 2007 my cholesterol was high and my doctor wanted to put me on drugs to control it. I lost 30 pounds and my cholesterol came down into the normal range without drugs. There are so many health risks associated with being overweight (http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/) and one of them is an increase risk in cancer. I don’t need that! So I’m going to use my half marathon time goal as a motivational means for obtaining my weight loss goal. I’m also using this public announcement as a motivational means – I must be crazy!

This will not be easy. Many of you know that loosing weight is not easy. I love food and many of the foods I love are not good for me. However, there are a lot of foods that are healthy and are wonderful for the palate too. For the most part I do have very healthy eating habits. My diet is very high in fiber, I eat a lot of fruits (mostly berries which are the best fruits) and vegetables (probably could do better with veggies), I go with low fat versions of most foods, I avoid foods with refined sugars as much as possible, and get low or no sugar added foods when available. So all I need to do is tweak my diet; mostly cut out those evening milkshakes. I’m not going on any special diet. My plan is to have a well balanced diet and to watch calories. For weight loss the bottom line is calories. To loose weight one has to burn more calories than what one consumes. It’s that simple. However, I’m not going on a strict diet like a 1200 calorie a day diet. I don’t have to with the running I do.

Here’s my plan and how I’ve figured it out. I’ve checked with many websites that have online calculators that calculate calories burned. They don’t all give the same answer, so I’m taking an average. For my weight, age and gender, I burn about 2000 calories a day without running – if I were to lead a sedentary lifestyle. The calculators also show that I burn at least 700 calories for 6 miles of running. So if I run 6 miles a day for 5 days a week I’ll burn 3500 calories per week just running. One pound of fat is equivalent to 3500 calories. So, if I eat 2000 calories a day and run 30 miles a week, I should loose 1 pound a week and reach my weight goal by race day on May 3rd. One way to look at this is that all my weight loss is due to running, not cutting calories. I just need to be careful and not eat extra calories.

Ok, now I’m going to get a bit anal with this plan. To make sure I eat the right amount of calories I’m going to watch my calorie intake very closely. I’ve bought a kitchen scale to weigh all the food that I eat. Weighing food is a lot easier than trying to measure the volume. For example, for breakfast I put my empty bowl on the scale, hit the tare button to zero out the scale, add my cereal, write down the weight, hit the tear button, add my fresh blueberries, hit the tear button, and so on until I have the weights of all my ingredients. It really doesn’t take much effort and it’s kind of fun. Then I’m going to try a trial version of some software from CalorieKing’s website that will help me keep track of calories. Once setup I’ll just enter in the weights and the software will keep track of calories and other nutritional data. If the software works well I’ll buy it. My poor wife, she didn’t know what she was getting into when she married me.

Besides keeping track of my calories I’ll keep track of my daily weight. They say you shouldn’t weigh yourself every day because there are normal fluctuations that occur and a normal but temporary weight increase may be discouraging. However, they weren’t addressing a scientist with this advice. By using curve fitting functions I should be able to average out the normal fluctuations and get a better measurement of weight loss trend with daily measurements than I can get with weekly measurements. Here is my weight over last week:

The solid line is a linear fit to the data and shows that over the week I had a weight gain trend of about a quarter of a pound a day. Kind of alarming! But my guess that besides a daily variation there is also a weekly variation. After a couple of weeks I get a better idea of things. The R2=0.6 is basically an indication of how well the line fits the data. The closer to 1.0 the better the fit. A value of 0.6 is not good correlation and is due to having a lot of variation over the fit period. What this means is that there is not a lot of confidence in the accuracy of quarter of pound weight gain trend. Whew! Eventually I hope that the fitted line extrapolated (extended) out to May 3rd will show that I will eventually get to my goal. I suspect that a linear fit may not be the correct model to use and I may need to go to something like an exponential fit (a curve that starts out steep and the beginning and less steep at the end).

Besides monitoring my weight I’m going to monitor my improvement in running speed each week. In a couple of weeks I’ll be running 13.1 miles for my long run each week. I’ll keep track of my time to finish 13.1 miles and chart that too. Hopefully a fit to that data will show that I will eventually reach my race time goal.

I’m really excited about this. Training for a half marathon will not take nearly as much time as a full marathon and there will be less risk of injury. From my experience I start to run into injury problems when I start running about 16 miles or longer. Keeping my weekly long runs to 13.1 miles will save a lot of time. Not only from running shorter distances, but also shorter recovery time. When I run 16 miles or more, I’m kind of useless for about 2 or 3 hours afterwards, whereas I can do something like mow the yard after a 13.1 mile run. That helps a lot in the wife department. The speed training is a lot of fun and from what I read can actually help reduce injury risk.

I can’t believe I’m doing this – posting this kind of detail on the internet. Oh well – I’m on the hook now.

My Darkest Days; My Brightest Shine

I recently had my one year anniversary of the infamous day I got that call from my doctor – you have cancer. I was laid up in bed recovering from a hernia surgery and my wife was out all day doing errands and picking my boys from school events. I was waiting for my surgeon to call my about the results of a lymph node biopsy, but I was expecting the news to be something like, it’s nothing, just a virus or an infection, or irritation from the hernia. I was not expecting, “you have an aggressive form of cancer”. The good news my doctor said was, “it’s curable in up to about 50% of the cases”. Okay, I’m typically the-glass-is-half-full kind of guy, for when it comes to my life, I like the glass at least 99.999% full if not overflowing. A 50% cure rate just didn’t seem like good news at first, and I didn’t like the “up to” part neither. What’s with that “up to”?

Just after my surgeon called I started to Google my disease. My surgeon warned me that I would find some really scary stuff on the internet and I did. I learned what “up to” meant. The 50% cure rate doesn’t apply to all of those who have diffused large b-cell lymphoma, only those who are in stage I, where the cancer is caught early and has not spread beyond the lymph nodes and not all lymph nodes are affected. Depending on the stage of the cancer, the water in the glass can get pretty low. The news hit me like a sledge hammer; I was knocked dizzy and there was a whirlwind thoughts going through my mind. I had to pull it together before my wife got home.

When my wife arrived I nailed her with the news before she even got her coat off in the entryway. My poor wife, she was blindsided by a Mack truck. I kept the news positive though, focusing on the 50% cure rate and I think I left out the “up to” until later. That night I don’t remember any grieving, we were mostly numb.

Because the cancer was very aggressive I was placed on the fast track for testing to see the extent of the cancer and determine the best course of treatment. The next day I got a CT scan and that showed a big tumor in my gut and a small one in my armpit, but the rest of my organs looked pretty good. The following week would be a PET scan and a bone marrow biopsy, all showing that the cancer was only in my lymph nodes on only one side of my body. So we were relieved to find it was only stage I. One way to look at a 50% cure rate is take a six shooter pistol, load half the barrels with bullets, then over the course of a couple of years you need to place the pistol to your head and pull the trigger. And that’s better because if you’re unlucky at least you go quickly without pain. That is a really dark way to think about it and even with the positive attitude I normally have, those kinds of thoughts were flooding my mind for the first few weeks after I got the call.

Even though I was devastated by the news, I had to take care of my family. The day after I got my diagnoses I started to seriously plan for my death. Not that I was giving up. I had every intention of fighting the cancer and wining. But with a 50% chance one has to be pragmatic about things. I needed to know that my family would be ok if the dice don’t go my way. So I checked into my life insurance policies and added up our debt to find that my family would be ok. I thought about who would be a father figure for my boys and how this would affect my daughter who has two kids of her own and would my wife find someone else that would make her happy. That was a tough day with lots of tears.

It was just before Christmas that all this happened and there was many family gatherings planned for the season. You would think that this would be a good time to gather with family, but it was really a hard time. My wife and I were exhausted by the anxiety of dealing with all the tests, hospital visits and the grim prospects of the future. Together we did our share of grieving, so when it was time to be with other family members and friends my wife and I were all grieved out. We just wanted to put all the cancer stuff on the back burner and have a good time, but there was always someone who wanted to leave the fun and joy behind and turn the party into a bereavement session. They have good intentions, it’s just their results really suck. Fortunately I was prepared and had my shields up (my big impenetrable smile) and remained mostly positive during the holiday gatherings, but my poor wife was nearly crushed, once again blindsided by a Mac truck.

About three weeks after my hernia surgery I was able to start running. Since it was cold outside and my wife believes in the wife’s tale of being out in the cold will cause one to get sick, I was relegated to run on our treadmill. Nevertheless I was just happy to run. It was one of the best medicines for my mental health. I felt the strongest when I was running, and the harder I ran the stronger I felt. My wife knows I have a tendency to go overboard with things and she feared I would go too far with my running. But when I first started running again after my surgery I was more focused on my own needs and forgot that some compromise is required to consider my wife’s needs. One morning I was running on the treadmill and my wife was upstairs. It may have been the day just after a chemo treatment. When I completed my run I went upstairs to find my wife hunched over with her body shaking in sobs. That day I fully realized there were two people fighting my cancer. We had different needs and some compromise was required. I promised I would rest the first day after chemo and wouldn’t run until the second day, which was also a compromise on my wife’s part. If she had her way I wouldn’t run for a few days after chemo.

Just before I got cancer I would spend some time thinking about the future. My wife and I have plans for traveling around the USA on our Harley’s. All of sudden, it was difficult to think about anything other than making it through the day and completing chemo. There were times when thoughts of the future entered my mind, only to be blown away with thoughts of, “why bother, I may not be around in the future anyways”.

One night my wife and I were lying in bed snuggled to each other and she said while breaking into sobbing tears how scared she was. At that instant all my pent-up anguish escaped and I too burst into sobbing tears. My wife and I were holding each other while our bodies shook uncontrollably with each sob. That was a turning point for us; we hit rock bottom. From that night forward we continued to get emotionally stronger and more positive about life.

A couple of months after my diagnosis I was visiting with my father. I think we were out for a walk at his place out in the country. I basically told him that I was ready to die, but not in those words. I told him that I was happy with what life has given me and I had no regrets, that I felt fortunate even if the cancer takes me soon. I had no feelings of resentment. It wasn’t that I was giving up my fight against cancer, no way! I plan to fight to the bitter end anything that threatens to take my life. I just finally realized that I was not invincible and there was no good reason to worry about the things we cannot control.

These were the darkest days of my life. But from the darkness came my brightest shine. The love between my wife and I got much deeper and stronger. My oldest Brother and I were drifting apart with busy lives. In the past we have done many adventures together, but as time wore on we were hardly talking to each other. Now we meet often at a coffee shop to discuss plans of our next adventure like the one we did last summer in the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I don’t need big things in my life for enjoyment. Just walking out to my mailbox, hearing the birds, seeing the trees and feeling a cool breeze across my face makes my day. I’ve tended to be a recluse, but now being with people has become very important. Rather than running with a headset listening to music and withdrawn from passersby I now run without music and greet everyone I can.

Shortly after being diagnosed I started to think about running Grandma’s marathon. I created this blog at first to publicly announce my intentions in order to provide some motivation to go though with it. And I admit that I like public attention and like to brag every now and then. I saw this cancer thing and running Grandma’s marathon as Chemo-Man as an opportunity to get some fame and bragging rights. But quickly I realized that this could be an opportunity to do something good, to turn the cancer thing into something positive and constructive and help others who may be going through something similar. The fame really didn’t come, I guess running a marathon in a tutu is a better way to get on the nightly news and in the paper, but I got something much better. Being able to make a positive difference in the lives of others, even though it’s just a few, is worth all the effort.

We all have dark days in our lives. Some people have much darker days than others; I can think of much worse things than getting cancer. The biggest difference though is how one reacts. There are basically two ways people approach dark days. Some cower into a corner and wallow in their grief, blame others for their problems and only see darkness. But some look into the dark and see light. They refuse to accept defeat, take responsibility for their life, and make something good happen.

If I was given a chance to do it all over again, I would never decide to have cancer. I think I would have done just fine without it. Life would have thrown me plenty of opportunities to grow. Furthermore, I am far from being out of the woods. Statistically, there is about a 20% chance I won’t be around four years from now. I don’t need that. However, this is what life has giving me and I plan to turn it into something good. What kind of person are you when the days turn dark? Do you only drop to your knees and let darkness swallow you up, or do you stand up and try to shine? The wonderful thing is that you have a choice.

Proof that Exercise Dramatically Improves Physical and Psychological Status of Cancer Patients during Chemotherapy

One major purpose of my blog is to promote exercise as a way to improve life during chemotherapy or any other time. I’ve used my experience as proof that exercise can make a dramatic difference in how one feels during chemo. However, my experience alone is not scientific proof that exercise makes a difference. Fortunately, scientific (controlled) studies have been conducted and the results are just mind blowing.


One controlled study was done with sixty-three patients who were scheduled to receive HIGH-DOSE chemotherapy. One week before starting chemotherapy, patients were evaluated with resting and stress electrocardiograms and echocardiograms. Furthermore, their psychologic status was evaluated with a special test. One patient was excluded from the study after discovering they had cardiac disease. The remaining patients were split into two groups: 29 patients in an exercise group and 33 patients in a non-exercise group.

The exercise group used a bed ergometer to “bike” in bed for 30 minutes a day with an intensity level high enough to achieve at least 50 percent of their cardiac reserve. The exercise group was able to train 82 percent of the time. Both groups were again tested after completion of chemotherapy.

At the beginning of the study, there were no differences in characteristics between the two groups. During and after chemotherapy, the exercise group showed significant improvement in obsessive-compulsive traits, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity and phobic anxieties. They also showed a reduction in psychological stress compared with the non-exercise group. During HIGH-DOSE chemotherapy, patients in the exercise group did not have any change in fatigue level, while the non-exercise group showed a significant increase in fatigue. Read the previous sentence over and over again and try to appreciate the significance of it.

There is no drug, no food, and no other thing on this planet that would have that much positive impact on high-dose chemo patients than exercise. To me this is so profound that all cancer patients who don’t have some significant risk associated with exercise, such as cardiac disease, should be strongly encouraged to exercise. But much of the medical industry has not put this into practice. And there’s more profound news. In upcoming posts I will share with you studies that show exercise not only improves physical and psychological fitness during chemotherapy, it improves one’s chances of survival over cancer after chemotherapy.

I search the internet for proof on the benefits of exercise for caner patients. I’m very careful about which sources I use. The best source is actual scientific papers that have been published. I also have confidence in internet articles published by well know, reputable organizations, such as the American Cancer Society. Here is a link to the paper reporting on the study mentioned above. Hopefully this works.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/75503426/PDFSTART

So there you go – scientific proof that exercise does have a dramatic difference improving the lives of high-dose chemotherapy patients. Imagine what exercise can do for you, regardless if you are a chemo patient or not. When you contemplate exercise, don’t look at it as a way to get into shape, loose weight, or buff up. Look at it as a way to greatly improve your physical and psychological well being. It should be just as important as the air you breathe.

BWCA Photos

I went a bit crazy with posting 42 BWCA photos, but I had over 400 to choose from. Before going on I need to put this BWCA thing into context. Besides Grandma’s marathon, looking forward to a family adventure in the BWCA was instrumental in fighting off depression and despair during the time I didn’t know if I would be physically capable of such a thing, or worse yet, alive. It would have been easy to temporarily give up future dreams and concentrate on the task of fighting cancer and preparing my family for the worse. However I found that the best thing for me and my family was not to push future plans aside, but rather embrace them. My brother Cary stepped in by proposing a BWCA adventure.

Cary and I have done many adventures together, sometimes with our brother Mark and sometimes with other family members. In the last few years our adventuring has gone mostly to the wayside; life was way too busy. Then aggressive cancer threatened to swiftly take my life. That was a wakeup call to refocus on the truly important things. I wasn’t the only one to get this wakeup call, others close to me also benefited from my cancer. Yes, you heard it right - benefited. As horrible and ugly cancer is, there are also a lot of positive things that can be harvested from it. Cary and I are now planning other adventures, such as a backpacking trip into the Crazy Mountains and a sea kayaking trip from the Minnesota north shore of Lake Superior out to Isle Royal, an island in Lake Superior that is a national park and a primitive wilderness area.

On our BWCA adventure we canoed over 24 miles of water and portaged more than 4.5 miles in six days and five nights. My brother Cary and his wife Pat, being pros at this thing, could have covered at least twice that distance in the same time, but my wife Renee, my sons Chris and Daniel, and I are rookies and thus set the pace. Trying to cover as much distance as possible wasn’t on our docket anyways. Thanks to Cary and Pat we learned how to do things efficiently and comfortably. We saw other groups that were obviously rookies with no clue. The right methods can make the difference between flirting with disaster, misery and pain and having a fulfilling and enjoyable time. Besides, it just feels good to do things the right way. As you can see from the following photos, we had a wonderful time.



Preparing dinner at the Sawbill campground the night before our adventure.

Day 1: Cary and Pat find a quiet nook out of the wind while waiting for the rest of us to catch up on Sawbill Lake.

Renee and Chris unloading at our first portage at the northern end of Sawbill lake.

Daniel digs in with a paddle on Ada Creek. During this stretch we had to drag the canoes over a beaver dam.

Renee and Chris bring up the rear on Ada Creek. If you try to step out on the grass you'll find yourself sinking into waist high muck.

For the first day Cary and Pat take the lead, but after us rookies learned a few things, they let us lead the way for most of the trip. I think this is Ada Lake.

Daniel and I unloading the canoe to prepare for a 180 rod portage. This was an easy landing. For some landings I would have been over my head in water if on the outer side of the canoe.

I think this is Cherokee Creek. I need to find a way to take notes along with pictures. I could record some voice memos on my camera if it wasn't inside an underwater housing. Since canoes are very prone to flipping, you don't want to take out an expensive camera while on the water. To safely get pictures on the water I put my camera in an underwater housing that is normally used for scuba diving.

Still on Cherokee Creek. Much of our water travel was not on big lakes but rather streams, small and narrow lakes. The forest here is very dense with brush and small pine trees. The only way to travel any significant distance in this land is by canoe.

Campfire at our first campsite on Cherokee Lake.

My youngest son Daniel (13) slept by himself in a hammock tent. Canoes are stored well within the confines of trees. My brother Cary learned not to store canoes on the lake shore where winds from storms can carry them away.

Day 2: Having breakfast in camp was also an important social time.

Pat grew up exploring the BWCA. Her family started as rookies but honed their skills over decades of practice. They made their own equipment and even their own canoes. Pat's family introduce the BWCA to Cary, who then added his own touch to methods and style. Cary has even done some solo trips into the BWCA.

Making Jiffy Pop popcorn at our second campsite on Cherokee lake. We decided to make day two a short travel day to spend more time playing in camp. This camp we found was a beaut, a rare find in the BWCA. This campsite was the only one on a big island at the northern end of Cherokee Lake.

Day 3: Sunrise on Cherokee lake. I tried to get up early enough each morning to catch the sunrise. This morning the sunrise was glorious. This day we planned to hang around camp or do a day trip and return.

Making bacon for breakfast.

Daniel and I found a nice rock to jump from into the lake. Here we are swimming back from the rock to our campsite.

Cary and Pat did a day trip to Frost Lake and my family stayed more local. After swimming, fishing and catching leaches on our island, the four of us jumped into a canoe and crossed the bay to a beach. Here Chris is doing his favorite thing - fishing.

Daniel and I like to make sandcastles.

Yours truly relaxing in nature's recliner.

Chris watches the sunset at a vista on top of a huge, granite outcropping near our campsite.

Day 4: Renee and I enjoy the sunrise with tea and coffee. Today will be a big day because we'll start on a loop to return to the Sawbill entry point. Our goal is to make it all the way to Brule Lake. At some point we'll be committed to finish the loop. Little did we know that some very difficult portages were ahead.

It's not the rocks you see that are the problem, it's the submerged ones you don't see that can ruin your day. Kevlar canoes are great because they are lightweight, making portages bearable and moving quickly on water. But they don't like contact with rocks. A punctured canoe can result in a really bad day, especially when you are two days away from any help.

Chris and Renee clear the rocks just fine. Chris steered from the stern for the entire trip.

Pat takes a break. Cary and Pat have Duluth packs, which are specifically designed for traveling by canoe and portaging. Duluth packs are shorter and wider than backpacks. Duluth packs and portage packs are optimized for canoes by keeping the weight low to maximize stability. Something you appreciate when the wind is strong and the waves are high.

Daniel took this picture of me carrying a canoe on a rocky portage. This is actually an easy one. During this day we picked our way through a couple of portages with relentless difficult terrain of steep climbs, slippery moss covered rocks, boulders, tree roots and knee deep muck. Care and absolute focus had to be put into every single step. A wrong step could lead to a serious injury.

Renee prepares for another rocky portage.

Cary and I prepare dinner at our campsite on Brule Lake. It felt good to find a vacant campsite after a long hard day of portaging. Cary and I each had a backpacking style camp stove. A canoe is turned upside down to serve as a table for preparing food and washing dishes.

Day 5: Cary and Pat are making pancakes for breakfast and I'm baking a strawberry muffin mix in a backpacking oven.

Checkout the strawberry muffins. Mmmm good. Some of the food wasn't that tasty, but when your hungry enough you'll eat anything. Everything from the backpacking oven was great, that is once I learned how to bake without burning the food to a crisp.

Renee and I washing dishes.

Chris packing his cloths into a waterproof compression bag. By pulling on straps attached to the compression bag, cloths and sleeping bags are squeezed into a much smaller size, resulting in fewer portage packs.

Renee checks our next move on the map.

Lilly pads that covered many of the small lakes were in bloom.

Day 6: Yesterday was a long and hard day with two monster portages, long stretches of water, at late camp setup, and dinner in the dark after waiting out a storm. We were very lucky to find this vacant campsite on Burnt Lake. Here Renee and I are planning out our last day to the Sawbill entry point. The winds are strong and the waves are challenging so careful planning is prudent.

Every campsite in the BWCA has a throne which is placed a little hike away from the campsite.

Cary and Daniel discuss things at breakfast. A lot of bonding happens over the course of a few days with no TVs, cell phones and video games.

Chris on our final portage to Sawbill Lake.

Renee still has a smile after six days of adventure. That's my girl.

Cary carries a 40lb canoe and a 50lb portage pack at the same time. This method eliminates double portaging which can take a lot more time and limits how deep one can travel into the BWCA.

A rest stop at the end of our last portage on Sawbill Lake. The winds are very strong here and some of us are a bit nervous about canoeing on the lake.

We make it back to Sawbill Outfitters with no mishaps. Our adventure is over, but the experience will continue to influence us for a lifetime.