The Battle Continues - I Will Not Quit

"Effort only releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."

-Napoleon Hill

It is with some sadness I write today that I've learned my battle with cancer is not over, and that additional treatment awaits me in my near future. Disease has been discovered in my lungs - presumably, these cells have been resistant to all the treatment I've had thus far, hid out for a while, and are beginning to grow back again. We first learned about this last week but it was officially confirmed this morning.

This is my first attempt to write about a current challenge on this blog and so I'm not sure if everything will come together very well, but I will do my best.

Now I can spend a lot of time writing about the details of what has happened, why this has come back, why it won't go away and what the treatment options are, but instead, I want to focus on just one thing: Letting everyone know that I am not going to quit. I will push through this latest obstacle, get it behind me and get myself back on track. My goal has always been to wipe this disease out of my system, I don't intend to change that goal.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the disease coming back now, after all the punishing treatment I've endured to kill it, is not a good sign. But even still, I refuse to give up.

I don't think I will ever understand why my family and I are being tested like this, but I do know that if I stop trying to win this battle, I will never be satisfied with myself. I think that no matter what happens, I am going to keep working hard and doing my best to find a way out of this. And I'm sure that if I keep up this attitude, doors will open as they always have.

I took the news about this latest setback surprisingly well. I'm not sure exactly why that is, but I haven't shed a tear yet, even though I know this is terrible news. I think it's because I know deep down that I am fighting as hard as I can and I am giving my full effort. I truly and honestly believe that I am doing all I can, so how can I be upset with myself? Clearly this is out of my control, and worrying about things beyond my control is pointless.

So how am I keeping my mind clear and dealing with stress? Primarily I am trying to stay very proactive about searching for a solution. I refuse to believe that there is no solution for this problem on Earth, and since it's here, I'm going to find it. Even if it's not here, I'm going up in a space ship to find it. These last few days I've been extremely busy calling various doctors around the US to get opinions and suggestions on how I should proceed. This has served as a good mental distraction for me.

I'm pretty sure I rambled quite a bit in this post, but the bottom line here is that I refuse to quit. No matter what happens, if I have the strength in me, I will continue to fight this disease. I plan to post regularly now about the current situation and provide updates as they come along. Please pray for my family as we tackle this latest obstacle.

Fight on...

Having Faith that Things Happen for the Best

"Faith is like electricity. You can't see it, but you can see the light."

Unknown

Eight months before I was diagnosed, in August of 2006, I decided to switch jobs. Now I already touched on this story in an earlier post involving my boss, but I am going to take a different angle this time around to share another lesson I've learned.

I decided to take the job because it would give me the opportunity to re-connect with a former co-worker who I had become good friends with, to travel abroad, to work on different kinds of projects and to make more money. Some of those things panned out, and some didn't. But as it turned out, none of them really mattered. Switching jobs became crucial for maintaining my most valuable possession - my health.

Four months into job, I was doing well and my future looked very bright. I had just arrived in Hong Kong, where I would be spending the next year living and working, as well as traveling extensively throughout Asia for business. My first assignment was to assist on the coordination and analytical work to help take one of our portfolio companies public in the U.S. My first three months were consumed with working on this project.

It was a tough assignment, but a valuable learning experience. I made a quick trip back to the US for business at the end of February 2007, and then it was back to Hong Kong. At this point things began to take a negative turn, and I really began to wonder why I had made the decision to take this job.

First, the company that we had helped to go public began to perform poorly, significantly reducing the value of my firm's investment. This was a big blow to us as we were counting on the profits from this deal to help fuel future business. Also, around this time, I was told that my stay in Hong Kong would be extended to possibly two years. I wasn't happy about this as I was already growing weary of the lifestyle on the island and I was looking forward to getting back home. Finally, China began showing some signs of slowing growth, a prospect that would make it much harder for us to do well there.

For these reasons I began to wonder if I had made the right decision. Nothing seemed to be working out the way I had envisioned. My previous job in Los Angeles was stable, I enjoyed working with the team and I was happy with my lifestyle. Why did I leave?

Then I was diagnosed with cancer.

It turned out that this firm supported me unlike any other company would do for someone. Not only have they continued to pay my salary and provide me with health insurance to this day, but they have gone above and beyond in many instances. My boss was kind and generous to my whole family, paying for our accommodations in Hong Kong while I underwent treatment. He gave me flexibility and freedom to focus on my health and not worry about work when I needed it the most.

Nobody could have possibly expected this battle to go on for so long, but nobody in my Company has wavered for a second when it comes to supporting me. I don't know where I would be if I hadn't decided to join.

Looking back as I write this, I realize now that if you give your full effort and commitment to something, be it work, family, or a health battle, you should have faith and believe that whatever happens will happen for the best. As a believer in fate, I believe there's a reason for everything, a reason we don't always see or understand until later on in life.

The reasons for which I thought I was taking my new job (traveling, money., etc.) were not the reasons I took it. Now I see that I was guided to this opportunity because I was going to get sick, and I needed people to support me.

So, even if things seem like they keep going wrong, have faith that there is a reason for these disappointments, and don't allow yourself to give up or doubt your decisions. If you keep working hard, things will happen for the best. Now that doesn't mean that life is going to be all roses, but whatever happens, you will be satisfied that you gave your best.

Be well...

Great Story

I hope everyone had a good week and are enjoying their weekends. I will be back next week with my laughter clips and my next post, but I thought I would post up a story that was forwarded to me that really struck a chord with me. The story is simple but the message is powerful. I hope you like it!

THE BRICK

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door!

He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, 'What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost me a lot of money. Why did you do it?

The young boy was apologetic. 'Please, mister...please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do,' He pleaded. 'I threw the brick because no one else would stop...' With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. 'It's my brother, 'he said 'He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up.'

Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, 'Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me.'

Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took
out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay. 'Thank you and may God bless you,' the grateful child told the stranger.

Too shook up for words, the man simply watch ed the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home.

It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to
remind him of this message: 'Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!'

God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts. Sometimes when we don't have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us. It's our choice to listen or not.

My Greatest Physical Battle and Perseverance

"Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain."

Unknown

"Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did."

Newt Gingrich

One of the main reasons this battle with cancer has been so difficult for me and my family is because of the unexpected challenges we have encountered along the way. One such challenge, which began shortly after my chemo treatments from the fall of 2007, was a physical setback that significantly impaired my quality of life.

Complications related to going through that chemo treatment caused me to have extreme neuropathy in my hands, feet and legs. For those who don't know, this means that I lost most of the feeling and a significant amount of fine motor function in my hands and feet. Neuropathy is a side effect of chemo, but the level of neuropathy I had and the sudden nature in which it all hit me even baffled the doctors. Now, its difficult to describe the feeling of not having any feeling, but I will give some examples of what I had trouble doing to give you a basic idea.

The biggest problem was walking. The nerve damage in my feet was so extreme, I could not walk or even stand without assistance for a month following the chemo. Not having feeling in the feet eliminated my balance, forcing me to use a walker to get around, and even then, I would get tired. I needed help with the most basic of things - just getting from the couch to the dining table, or getting from the couch to the bathroom. My coordination was impaired such that moving without directly staring and concentrating on my feet would result in a loss of balance. While I used to be extremely ticklish in my feet, cringing at the slightest human touch, now I couldn't even feel that human touch. You could have treated my feet like bongo drums and I would have barely noticed.

My hands were no better. The finger coordination was so poor that I had difficulty even holding a pen. I had difficulty holding a spoon or fork to eat, and hot and cold items seemed extremely hot and extremely cold, respectively. My typing ability was significantly impaired; it was so frustrating that for a while, I didn't even bother going on my computer. My hands would often shake and burn, and sometimes they would feel cold and stiff.

Suffice it to say, this was by far the most challenging, humbling and scary experience of my life. My physical limitations made me feel useless, which depressed me. Feeling and coordination is something that I, along with everyone else in this world, takes for granted, and now it was gone. And even when I worked up the motivation to do practice exercises to get the neurons firing again, I would get tired and discouraged, and I quickly gave up and returned to my groove on the couch.

It is very difficult for me to reflect on this period of my life because of how much suffering I went through. My memories of each day back then are vague, partly because I've tried blocking them out for so long. The only reason I think back to it and write about it now is to illustrate just exactly what I have been able to bounce back from thanks to support and perseverance.

I got very mixed opinions from my doctors following that setback. In general, the most common opinion was that the nerve damage would most likely get better over time, but it was unknown if it would get 100% better, or if some neuropathy would linger on forever. Personally, I didn't care about anything the doctors told me at that point, except for one thing: being active and doing practice exercises might help the recovery process.

I made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to remain stagnant and useless one minute more. I no longer wanted to sit on the couch, lamenting about the fact that walking was so difficult, or that writing was so hard. So I sucked it up, firmly planted the dream of a normal life in my brain, and got to work. Each day I began pushing myself harder and harder. Despite the pain and fatigue, I stood up and walked around as much as I could as often as I could. I sat down and wrote, typed, and performed other mundane finger exercises for hours to jar that sensation back into place. For many weeks, I felt worse. I felt that what I was doing was pointless as I saw so visible improvement. But I pushed through these mental obstacles because of my desire to get my life back.

Within a few weeks I had ditched the walker and was up and around on my own. Granted, the walking was slow and uneven, but hey, I was walking. The writing/typing took longer to come around, but it eventually did. Before I knew it, I was performing the little tasks I never used to think twice about but had suddenly lost the ability to do. Soon after, I was behind the wheel again, an achievement I was very proud of.

As I write this today, the neuropathy has significantly healed. I still have balance problems and the coordination and feeling in my hands is not back to normal, but I've come a long way from those nightmarish few months.

Now even though the doctors told me that the nerve damage would slowly but surely heal on its own, I know pushing myself to exercise and walk when I couldn't made a big difference, both mentally and physically. The perseverance I was able to draw upon put me back on the healing track. Regardless of what anyone has told me, I have confidence that one day this will all be gone. Maybe I'll even be able to pick up my guitar again.

Before I shut the memory of those few months out of my brain again, I'd like to share what I came away with. I believe that with any problem in life, be it physical or not, if you have the opportunity to solve it, you should seize that opportunity. And even if it takes time and you feel like quitting, be patient, persevere, and believe that what you are doing will allow you to achieve your goal. In my case, the doctors never guaranteed that my neuropathy would improve or even that practice would help, but I believed that it would. This belief, and my desire to be a normal kid again, allowed me to fight through my mental barriers. Getting better has even allowed me to write this blog, as a post this long back then would have taken me 2 weeks to write.

So, in conclusion, fight on!

Laughter Clips of the Week

"We cannot really love anyone with whom we never laugh"

Agnes Repplier

I love you all so I'm making you laugh. By the way, I just posted an update of how I'm doing as of right now, so in case you're interested, it's just below this post. Enjoy the week!



On this 2nd one the laughing is loud in the background, but I highly recommend you pump up the volume, because laughter is contagious...



Have a great week! Look for my next post on Thursday.

Present Day Update

I've been working on crafting my next blog entry, but its taking me much longer than expected. So, rather than not post anything up till the middle of next week, I thought I would fill the gap with an update on how I'm doing today. Most of you who follow this blog closely I probably talk to or see quite often, but for those of you who I don't talk to, this entry should give you a glimpse of where I am at right now in the recovery process. I'm not going to go into too much detail, so if you really want all the dirt, you'll have to call me up.

Each week I feel as though I am continuing to gain my physical strength and energy back. My overall energy level and mental clarity was low after the brain surgery (Dec. 31st, 2008), but those issues have since improved, and continue to improve each day. I am now working out of my office 3 days per week, and working from home 2 days per week. I started this routine 3 weeks ago and I hope to continue it, and then eventually when I feel ready, I will gradually begin to increase time spent in the office as well as overall hours worked. My goal is of course to get back to my original performance level prior to all this.

My free time is spent doing light exercise, reading, playing chess, keeping up with my favorite tv shows, watching Lakers basketball, meeting friends in the area and writing this blog. I haven't gotten back into the gym as of yet, but it's on the short list, along with visiting friends in Chicago and on the East Coast. I try not to think about the future too much, but I do occasionally spend time making tentative plans and generating ideas for what I want to do over the next few years. I have several ideas, most of which involve taking this opportunity to expand my knowledge and diversify my skill set before progressing further in my career.

I'm also slowly trying to rebuild my social life. Since the day I got sick, I withdrew myself from the world in many ways, avoiding social situations where I would feel awkward meeting new people and making new friends because of my appearance and physical limitations. I preferred a comfort zone of people who knew what was happening and who I could be myself around. Breaking out of this zone has been extremely tough for me because my confidence has eroded away while sitting at home or spending time in hospitals. But, as with everything else, I am working my way back.

My regular checkups continue as well. Depending on the test (blood test or imaging test), some are performed monthly and some are a bit more spread out. Because these tests happen so often, this battle is still a mental roller-coaster, as the days leading up to each exam bring higher levels of stress and anxiety. But I am taking action to help deal with these emotions and prevent them from coming at such extremes. Things like deep breathing/meditation exercises have helped me stay focused and relaxed around test time.

My family continues to press on as we try and distance ourselves from this disease. We've made an effort to bring more inspirational forces and humor into our house to accelerate the healing process. I continue to appreciate the support I have here - I know that in many ways, I am extremely blessed.

The Recurrence - Dealing with Setbacks

"Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward."

Henry Ford

A very very close friend suggested that I spend some time on this blog sharing the specific thoughts and feelings I had as I encountered significant setbacks over the past 2 years.

One of the most devastating setbacks I experienced since my diagnosis was the recurrence, which was detected in February of 2008. This was almost 1 year after my initial diagnosis. I had just returned from Tampa Bay where I had attended a funeral for a very close friend (something I will be posting about later on), and I was due for my routine checkup.

When the doctor called with the abnormal blood test result, it was actually my Mom who answered the phone. She then relayed the message to me and my Dad, and we were crushed. It felt like someone took a large hammer and smashed to pieces all the hope that had been building up in my mind since going into remission 4 months prior. The hope of returning to my normal life, going back to work, meeting that special someone and putting this all behind me. With one phone call, boom! It was gone.

At first I was consumed with anger. I was angry at my doctor, at the world and at God. I couldn't believe that after all I had been through, all the suffering and pain I had endured from my chemo and surgeries, all the sacrifices my family had made, the disease was still lingering. I couldn't understand how me dying from this disease would positively impact the world.

After anger came fear. We had already exhausted so many treatment options in that year, and all that was left was fairly experimental with little track record for success. I didn't want to go through more chemo, but more importantly, I didn't want to go through chemo where the doctors had no idea what the chances of success would be. Beyond that, I began to fear how my family would handle this latest challenge - would my parents be able to cope with the pressure? Would my brother be able to focus on school knowing this was happening to me back home? More treatment meant putting the return to my normal life on hold for much longer than I had ever anticipated. Having to think through all the possibilities was an agonizing experience.

After fear came self-pity. At the time I was still at that point where I was feeling sorry for myself, and this setback only made it worse. All that anger and fear building up corrupted my mind and made me wonder why I should even bother continuing to fight. Sometimes I thought to myself, even if I get through this, is my future quality of life going to be good enough where it's worth it?

Looking back now on the chain of emotions I experienced, I realize that what I was feeling at that time was very normal. It was ok for me to be angry and afraid given the new developments and what it meant about my future. The key, though, was not giving up mentally. Deep down, in my soul or subconscious or whatever you want to call it, I never let myself quit. And I believe that's why I'm still carrying on today.

There's a big difference between physically quitting and mentally quitting. Physically quitting would have meant not going for the next treatment at all, an option I would never have even considered. Mentally quitting would have meant following through the treatment, but giving up all hope that the treatment had any chance of working. This attitude would have doomed me from the start. Mentally quitting is like throwing in the towel before the Round 1 bell even rings.

What I learned from going through the recurrence is that setbacks are an essential part of life and everyone must deal with them. Setbacks help to build your inner-strength and confidence, and if you're not having any, you're probably going the wrong way. But when you encounter a setback, you cannot let the anger, fear and uncertainty caused by this event allow you to mentally quit on your goal. Do everything you can to ensure that mentally, you're continuing to fight and work hard to achieve what you want. For me, this motivation came from my strong desire to live a long life and positively impact this world in some way.

Developing and maintaining that mental focus has allowed me to get to where I am today. And even though I have since faced additional setbacks in my battle, I feel that by not quitting on myself mentally, I am doing everything in my power to live the right way. No matter how this turns out for me, the fact that I didn't quit is something that I will always be proud of.

Be well...