Here are some good sports thoughts this week:

• Phillies fans need to figure out how disappointed they will be with Bryce Harper.  I don’t think he is going to live up to expectations.  But, if he hits .250-.280 with 25-30 home runs over the next 4-5 years, I will be happy.
• A 13 year $330 million dollar contract is a bit outlandish.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.  Here is why I am not distressed about it.  The Phils will have 4-5 years of Harper playing in the outfield.  By that time, there will be the inverses DH, which will add 4-5 years of productivity to Harper’s career.  That will leave us 4-5 years of figuring out what to do with Harper (calling him a bum, making him a player coach, etc).  By that time, the contract that Harper signed will be peanuts compared to all of the other contracts that have been signed in the next 10 years.
• I would love to see Harper come out of the gate this year and just start raking.  Hit a couple of home runs in the first series.  Don’t go 0 for April, please!
• It has been an incredibly good year in Philly sports.  The Eagles won the Super Bowl a year ago – and they are off the hook for the next 5 years in me bellyaching about them on their performance on or off the field. The Sixers made good trades to take a run at the title this year.  Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris make the Sixers a contender for both the Eastern Conference and the NBA title.  It should be a good playoff run.  The Phillies just signed one of the two top free agents in the off season (Harper) and did a nice job of changing prospects into good players.  The additions of Realmuto, Segura and Harper make the Phillies a contender as well.  All of this to say – Flyers – you are on the clock!  The Flyers get a small pass for unveiling Gritty this year – but they are on the clock.  Chuck Fletcher – it is time to do something that will make the Flyers contenders for years to come.  Each of the other teams has a young core ready to contend for years to come. It is time for the Flyers to get moving.
• Speaking of the Sixers, they are unwatchable at times because they struggle with turnovers.  I can’t yell at the TV loud enough for Embiid to take care of the ball.
• Speaking of the Sixers – If we hadn’t named our dog Kelcie, I was pushing to name it JoJo.  Embiid will be a hall of famer.  He has a dominant game – once he ages out of his turnover problem, he will be unstoppable.
• Speaking of the Eagles – Wentz to Jackson is going to be alot of fun.  Great move to bring DeSean Jackson back.  He never should have left.

I had a doctor’s appointment with a neurological oncologist at UPenn on Friday afternoon.  I was hoping to work out a schedule for radiation during the appointment.  In the last two weeks I have been able to wrap my head around radiation and come to peace with the destruction and damage it is going to do in my life and in my family’s life. We are becoming more and more ready to face this next trial in our cancer journey.

However, early Thursday afternoon I got a call from UPenn saying that their tumor board looked at my file and they may think that surgery would be a good way to go in addressing my brain tumor.  I could talk about it more on Friday with the oncologist.

Kick in the Nuts.

I don’t want to have my head noodled again.  Once was enough for me.  I can’t wrap my head around a second surgery.  Jenn and I have been thinking about what route to take in the coming months with my cancer.  We are coming to terms with radiation.  We feel like we can endure chemotherapy if we have to.  The side effects for both are going to be incredibly tough.  The thought of another surgery is daunting.  I will have a season where I am knocked out by the weight of the side effects with chemo and radiation.  But I should be able to recover.  But one of the side effects of brain surgery is death or major damage.  If a doctor makes a mistake, or nicks a blood vessel or something like that, it will be death or major damage – like learning to walk or talk again.

It was a kick in the nuts.  We ended up going to the appointment with the oncologist to plead our case against surgery.  We laughed in saying that we are ok with radiation.  (what kind of world do I live in where I am ok with my head getting blasted by radiation?)  They can convince us about chemo.  But we would make our stand against surgery.

Here are two of the three dumbest things I have heard in my life.

The first was in 2010, the day before I had brain surgery.  Jenn and I spoke on the phone with the anesthesiologist for my surgery.  She went through the entire procedure and her role in the surgery.  She told us that she would put me under, then some time in the middle of the surgery she would wake me up to be sure that they hadn’t noodled the wrong part of my brain (that I could still talk), and then put me back to sleep again.  Finally, she said one of the dumbest things anyone has ever said to me: “I want to be sure that you get a good night of sleep tonight.”  The next day I would be waking up early to get to the hospital, get put to sleep, have someone crack my skull open then scoop out a part of my brain, then wake me up, then put me back to sleep, put my skull back together and stitch me up.  There was no way I was sleeping the night before that.  Dumb, Dumb. Dumb.

Here is the second dumb thing that someone said to me.  In February I had an appointment at UPenn for a consultation on proton radiation.  The first person to enter our room was the resident of the doctor we saw.  She was very nice and very smart.  Her job was to play bad cop.  She explained proton radiation to us.  She filled us in on how it is administered.  After a bit she told us about the side effects of doing proton radiation on your brain.  There were some side effects that we knew about:  I will lose my hair and be fatigued.  I will get a sunburn on my head.  There is a chance I will lose short term memory, where I will have trouble recalling words in the future.  Then she went deep with the side effects.  I could lose hearing in one ear depending on the location of the tumor.  I could lose sight in one eye depending on location of the tumor.  I could develop secondary cancers in years to come (leukemia and melanoma were mentioned).  After spending 10-15 minutes on all of these side effects she asked me, “How are you doing?”  I am sure my face was pale.  I think I said “Well, that is a lot to wrap my head around.”  And then she asked, “Well, why is that?”  I thought, “Well, lady, did you just hear what you were saying?”  Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

It was a joy waking up with this kid this morning.

The first thing Gabe said to me, upon opening his eyes (while sleeping in my bed), “Get this blanket out of here!”  It was a strong command and kind of rude for the first thing he said in the morning.  I ended up throwing the blanket on his head and telling him to go find his mommy.

I hopped in the shower and afterward headed downstairs.  By that time, Gabe was at the kitchen table eating breakfast.  He looked up and said, “Daddy, get out of here!”  I looked at him, found a cup, filled it with milk and grabbed the newspaper to read in the other room.

A minute later, I walked back into the kitchen to grab some cereal.  Gabe followed me back out to the dining room and said, “I am going to punch you in the face.”  So, I went to the living room, sat on the sofa and let him climb onto the sofa.  Lucky for me, he tried to karate kick me in the face – lost his balance, fell into my arms for a good tickle to start the morning.

The kid is a goofball. I hope he only speaks to me like that.

Every so often along my cancer story I get a good kick in the nuts.  They tend to make things real and cut through to the core of my desire to believe that I have a normal life.

One happened a couple of Mondays ago.

I was at UPenn for a consultation with the radiation oncologist for proton radiation.  Before he came into the room, his resident came into the room to chat about radiation.  She told us about how it works and part of her job was to tell me about the side effects of radiation.  On her behalf, she hadn’t seen my MRI scans – shew as just giving me the entire picture.  Here are the side effects I could experience from radiation:

Fatigue, loss of hair, sunburn, short term memory loss, loss of sight in one eye, loss of hearing in one ear, secondary cancers, secondary cancers that may not show for a couple  of years (leukemia, melanoma).  I think that was it.

When the doctor came into the room, he confirmed most of those side effects, but he did it in the good cop sort of way.  He was confident there would be just a few side effects – maybe just the first three or four.

But holy crap – are you kidding me?  I feel like I live a somewhat normal life.  Loss of sight, loss of hearing, secondary cancers – real stuff that are reminding me that this a unique and difficult journey.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, the neurologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston told me that I am going to have a long road ahead of me.  In talking with my doctor at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, she told me this was just a bump in the road.  The travel metaphor stirred up the memory of the first night I sat in a hospital bed as a 33 year old – incredibly scared about what was wrong with me.  It is a tough road to travel.  Pray that God is gracious to us and in the midst of our travels.

One of the things about living in the northeast is that in the winter, the roads go to hell when it gets cold.  An incredible number of potholes develop in Scranton and NEPA over the winter.  It seems like late at night each night there is a tank parade through the streets – except I have never seen the tanks.  I am sure my kids are going to be good drivers because we are going to train them to avoid all of the potholes in our streets.

When the doctors talk about a long road, sometimes it feels like I am traveling on a NEPA street instead of on a regular street.  It has been a bumpy road.  Although we missed most of the potholes, we have hit some that have left lingering damage to our vehicle.  There have been financial potholes we have hit.  We have hit relational potholes in our marriage and family.  We have had to reorient our life to adjust to the cancer road that we walk.

If blasting my brain with radiation is a bump in the road, we are working to let it be just a bump and not a pothole.

Well, here we go again. Once or twice a year I travel to Houston for a check up on my brain cancer.  Each time I have an MRI and then go to chat with the doctor about my progress. Each trip is like going to the chopping block – one of these time the ax is going to fall – but I don’t know when. For the last decade, I went to see the doctor and each time was told that the brain tumor was stable – until January 2018 when the ax fell. The doctor told me that they couldn’t see any progress from 2017 to 2018, but they could see a difference between 2013 and 2018 MRIs.  That means that my brain tumor is growing – but very slowly.  The doctor recommended that I consider radiation in the coming years. It was a kick in the nuts.

In February of 2019, I went through the program again.  I traveled to Houston, MRI and then chatted with the doctor.  Again, couldn’t see much – but there is still a difference. The resident said the difference was on the size of millimeters or less.  She recommended radiation for the tumor.  Another kick in the nuts.  I asked for a timetable of radiation.  They recommended soon rather than later.  Sooner as in 2-3 years from now or sooner as in 2-3 months from now or sooner as in don’t leave the hospital?  Doc said sooner as in 2-3 months from now.  Another kick in the nuts.  They recommended I do proton radiation therapy – different from regular radiation because it is less penetrating (using protons instead of photons – I guess I studied chemistry in college for this reason).

I would be content for radiation therapy if my brain tumor was in my knee.  Or of my brain tumor was in my stomach.  But the idea of getting blasted by radiation in my brain is a little daunting.  As the nuerosurgeon who noodled my brain in 2010 told me, “We are working with the high-priced real estate here.”

So here I am again. More accurately, here we are again. Jenn and I are again headed down the road of cancer therapy.  I am fairly sure this is going to suck my butt in a whole new way.

I am going to try and blog about this stage in the journey.  If you want to read about the previous road of discovering the cancer, surgery, chemo and such, go to meandmybraintumor.wordpress.com.