One of the horses on the 2016 Corrales Garden Tour struck some nice poses for me

I can really relate to the first seven lines of Procol Harum's "Conquistador" during this current battle with lymphoma.

Conquistador your stallion stands in need of company
And like some angel's haloed brow
You reek of purity
I see your armor plated breast
Has long since lost its sheen
And in your death mask face
There are no signs which can be seen

Day two chemo has gone very well so far. They give me a lot of fluids, plus I've been drinking lots and lots of water, so I've racked up a couple thousand steps hitting the porcelain every 30 minutes.  No immediate side effects. But I'll have to see how things progress. They pushed everything through in 6.5 hours today, although I was at the Cancer Center for 7 hours total.

I managed to get in 5 hours of telecommuting for the office updating reports to comply with various changes in Department of Labor rules in what I call our Office Automation program we use for time sheets, accounts receivables and billing among other things. I originally wrote the Office Automation system between 2000 and 2002, and then we update it as needed for security, input from users and changes in rules over the years, but the most recent changes are quite challenging, as I'm discovering I didn't design the system to make it easy to adapt to the changes in some cases.  One advantage to working from the Cancer Center is I don't have all the distractions of building maintenance, hardware breaking and software issues. But then I have time to discover all the issues with my old code. Argh!

Aw some company

Beautiful Arabian face

Three of the properties on the 2016 Corrales Garden Tour had chickens, so what better way to mix a discussion of cancer treatment with the garden tour than with photos of funky garden chickens?

We got to the Cancer Center bright and early as scheduled and they took my vitals and did labs (blood work) first thing. Then I went in to see the oncologist and we had a discussion about the first diagnoses versus the current diagnoses, and while they are different, he believes that since we never really got a 100% clear diagnoses the first time - what they thought was one type of lymphoma, was probably the same thing that I have now.  However, getting the precise variety didn't really matter because the treatment in 2010 was the correct treatment for the advanced stage of lymphoma I had at the time. They went for an easy to remove lymph node in my groin in 2010, but he said the problem with lymph nodes in the groin is that they are always "hot" because they process so much waste. Thus lymph nodes from the groin are not as reliable as indicators of the type of lymphoma as lymph nodes from the chest and neck; but lymph nodes from the chest and neck are much more risky to remove, so they go for the easiest and safest lymph nodes to remove when possible.

After our discussion of diagnoses', he checked my chemo schedule and discovered it was not what he was expecting. They decided since it had been six years since I had Retuxan, they wanted to only do Retuxan® (Rituximab) today (7 hours) to see how I would react, but they also had to reschedule the chemo sessions, because the timing wasn't going to work out for using Neulasta for the immune system therapy between chemo treatments. Instead of 21 days between chemo treatments, it will now be 10 to 11 days and they will use Neupogen to force white blood cell production instead. This schedule accelerates the chemo to get me into remission several weeks early than I originally thought. Since I took to the Retuxan® like a hamster on a running wheel, they will "push" the Retuxan® in round two and three of the treaments, reducing the time to administer it from 7 hours to 1.5 hours, which will reduce the over all time for each treatment from 9 hours to 7 or 8 hours.  But then the nurse told me if I don't react too adversely to the ICE (Ifosfamide, Carboplatin, Etopiside) chemo treatments, they will be able to push them and possibly reduce treatment times to 5 or 6 hours each day. On the other hand, there are all kinds of side effects I can get from the treatments, so we'll see how my body reacts.

Even though I didn't have an adverse reaction to Retuxan®, it makes me feel hot, causes a good amount of pain as it works and makes me feel a little hazy. I also have to drink a lot of water to flush the chemicals out of my system, so I'm racking up steps on my Fitbit® running to the bathroom.

Koi from the 2016 Corrales Garden Tour.

A turkey hen had her newly hatched poults taking cover under the trees and bushes in our orchard and garden.

The poults are so cute.

The neighbors dogs were barking and barking. When I went over to see what they were barking at, a baby porcupine crawled under our fence and headed for the roses. It was a really cute ball of quills.

The baby porcupine finally got fed up with us pestering it and made a speedy break for Dr Huey who gave the little guy refuge.

Black Hollyhock — our first almost truly black flower

I'm a sucker for photo quizzes, but I always seem to get a big fat ƒ-stop on them because 1) I've never been much of an acronymphomaniac (can't remember what those letters and numbers mean), and 2) the establishment doesn't agree with me about what I think are perfectly reasonable definitions of photographic terms. After taking a recent photo term quiz, I looked back at earlier blogs and noticed I had done the same quiz in 2011 and came up with mostly the same answers, and the same failing ƒ-stop score of 0:

1. F Stop: — The metro stop between E and G on the Red Line.

2. Depth of Field: — How far you sink in the mud when it rains.

3. Matrix: — The green numbers that fall from the top of my computer screen.

4. Resolution: — Beatles songs on iTunes.

5. Flash: — A partial wardrobe malfunction.

6. Exposure: — A complete wardrobe malfunction.

7. Exposure Compensation: — The settlement over a wardrobe malfunction.

8. Rule of Thirds: — 3.33333333333333333333333333.

9. Diaphragm: — A contraceptive device.

10. ISO: — The opposite of ISNOT.

11. Chromatic aberration: — A white guy.

12. APO: — Abnormal performance option (special effects).

13. Sunny-16 Rule: — Always check ID, she may only look 21.

14. SLR:  — Sharp Looking Rectangle.

15. Golden Rectangle: — An expensive SLR.

The third sit/stand desk I've built using a Beseler 45 MXT enlarger chassis for the motorized lift.

You can see the first sit/stand desktop I built at https://photoofthedayetc.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/diy-sitstand-desktop/

Marmalade Skies

Kitty cat eyes

Strawberry fields forever

Besides all the thunder, lighting, wind, threatening clouds and rainbows, we got four drops of rain at our house.

The butterflies and honey bees love our salvia.

Veteran's Honor with perfect form in appreciation of the service to our country our veterans have provided. 

Veteran's Honor is a beautiful red rose to honor our men and women who have served our country and in many cases given all so we can be free.

And yet our veterans suffer under stifling regulations, indifference from government officials, and often outright hostility from the very people who should be most appreciative of them. Our veterans have fought and died for everyone.

Veteran's Honor

America

America

Laurie and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary in the garden.  All those years together is reflected in our garden and our deck.

Our garden is beautifully wild

Our deck, lighting up our "moon lit" garden surrounding it

This is what we call "the circle" garden

The north side of the deck with a view of the outdoor kitchen

The catio with Pink Iceberg on the left and Carefree Spirit on the right

The south and east side of the deck

Tristan's "secret garden" with a collection of pink roses

Looking west from the circle garden over the grapes at 4th of July, Betty Boop and Marmalade Skies against the wall and the David Austin roses in front of the secret garden

Lola, Sasha and Spunk

I got the kitties some new toys to play with including a kitty tunnel. Spunk got his first foray into the world outside the catio on a leash — the world outside the catio is not ready to have Spunk unleashed on it.

Spunk in the great out doors

Spunk eyes

Spunk tiptoes through the vinca

Najar thinks this new contraption is like totally tubular

In February I went to the doctor about some tell tale symptoms I’d been having for a couple of months. I’d had these same symptoms in 2008, two years before my first bout with cancer, but I didn’t know then they were anything more than muscle, back and joint pain for exercise and getting old. All my blood work and vitals were normal, but after the GP told the oncologist about my symptoms, they ordered a PET scan. I got the images from the PET scan the next day, and when I compared them to the last PET scan I had in January 2013, I was “hot”, but nothing like the PET scan from June 2010, when I was starting stage 4 lymphoma.  

After my oncologist reviewed the PET scan and radiologist’s report, he ordered two needle biopsies, one from a lymph node, the other from a bone, and they both came back indicating two different types of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. At that point the doctor decided I needed to have a lymph node removed and biopsied to get a complete and definitive diagnoses. The most logical “hot” lymph node to go after was under my clavicle, so I went to visit a surgeon to see about getting the lymph node under the clavicle removed. 

The surgeon reviewed the scans, felt around my clavicle and said he couldn’t feel any swollen lymph nodes, and it was too risky to try and remove a lymph node from under my clavicle. He told me he wouldn’t do it, and sent me back to my oncologist. My oncologist ordered a CT scan, and send me back to the surgeon after they got the images and radiologist’s report from the CT scan.  The surgeon told the radiologist thought he could get at the lymph node from above the clavicle and after poking and prodding around the surgeon decided that it was a less risky route, and we scheduled surgery to have the lymph node removed on June 18th. That surgery was successful, and the surgeon removed a large lymph node for the pathologist to biopsy.

I got the results on May 27th, and I have a Hodgkin’s type lymphoma that is slow but aggressive, and while it will respond to a treatment like I had in 2010, my doctor does not want to do a treatment like I had before, because he said the cancer will just come back again in 3 to 5 years. Instead he is going to do a very aggressive chemo with stem sell replacement that will begin on June 6th. 

The treatment is outlined as follows:

1) Chemo will be administered every day for four days in a row over a period of nine hours each day.

2) Twenty-one day recovery period

3) Another round of chemo like the first round.

4) Check to see that I am in remission

5) Start the process to extract stem cells from my body

6) Extract stem cells, process them and freeze the stem cells

7) Another round of intensive chemo

8) Whatever tests to see that I’m ready for the stem cell replacement

9) Replace the stem cells they removed before the last chemo

10) Twenty-one day recovery while the reintroduced stem cells take hold

If the treatment works has planned, I should be completely cured at the end of my stem cell recovery.  In a normal population, the chance of being cured is 50/50. Since I am otherwise healthy, active and determined, we are hoping my chances of being cured are even higher.

I had not told many people about the recurrence of cancer before this post, because I wanted to have a definitive diagnoses and a treatment in place before I broke the news to everyone.  It has taken over four months since my first visit to the doctor, until we got a diagnoses and treatment scheduled. In the time between biopsies, I got all kinds of tests and preparation for treatment including “re-ported”, so that once we got a diagnoses I would be ready to go. So all the prep, testing, and extra surgery to have the new port installed were time well spent while working on how to get a lymph node out.

For anyone who’s noticed that I don’t comment on your blog as much as I used to, you now know why. After I start treatment, I’ll have to see how I feel each day — while I might not post anything at all or look at other blogs some days, I might just be so bored that I comment on everything and put up lots of pesky posts on other days. Until I see how I will react to the treatment, the amount of posting, reading and commenting I will do with blogs will remain a mystery.