Leukemia, FitBit & Kindle Scout

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have been getting my daily and weekly stats from FitBit. The good news is that I’ve lost about twenty pounds just watching my carbs and using the FitBit app food diary. I also strive to get 10,000 steps a day, and now that I got Erika a FitBit too, we’re competing. That leads quickly to large step counts. The hourly activity icon reminds me to make sure I get in at least 250 steps each hour that I’m at work since my job is pretty much defined as sitting my large derriere in a chair all day. I’ve got a few friends that also challenge me, but I’d like to get more. If you do the FitBit – the app alone or with the fit bit device, add me to your friend list. The link is over there *points to the right* next to my email and Amazon link.

I had a visit with my hematologist last week to check my white cell count. No change there. Which I guess is a good thing. My leukemia is rather underwhelming. He got all up in my grill because according to his records, I’m down 26 pounds since my initial consult a few months back. I told him that I didn’t want to fight blood cancer and diabetes at the same time, so I was going to continue to work on my weight goal of 230 pounds. (FitBit makes a scale that links via Bluetooth to the app… How’s that for over done?)

I didn’t read my last few Leukemia posts, but in case I didn’t mention it before, my lymph nodes are normal, so it’s just my blood that’s all screwy. (And I guess my bone marrow, too.) I went around the bend for about a month or two trying to eat healthy and eliminating most carbs. The kids were miserable despite my insistence that there was little difference between spaghetti noodles and spaghetti squash. The squash is a little al dente, but it’s better for you. Now, I’m on a more realistic (and cheaper) diet. I’m not as carb adverse, and since I’m still losing weight, I guess I’m doing fine.

Anyway, no news is good news I guess. I don’t go back to the hematologist until January, and my dietician appointment had to be postponed due to the recent Trump rally. I should check to see if there’s a way to print out my food diary so she can scold me for eating too many Sausage Egg McMuffins.

Thanks for your prayers, good vibes, kindly emails and texts, and for nominating War of the Worlds: Retaliation on Kindle Scout. Oh, wait, that shameless self-promotion needs a link to the Kindle Scout campaign:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1P15HGBUYJZLJ

Oh, and my friend, Rachel Wollaston, has her Kindle Scout campaign starting today: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2DDQ7HVBHR2TV

Recent Health Issues

You may have noticed that I’ve been absent on the blog and a few of my normal haunts lately. To some of you, this won’t be news. You’ve all been super supportive, and I appreciate that very much.

I’ve gained a lot of weight in the last year or so, and I’ve been exhausted a lot. I just figured I was just lazy and eating too much crap. Of course, a new baby sure does sap away your strength. But, Aubrey is sleeping through most of the night now, and I tried to make a conscious effort to watch what I eat, but I’m still tired and fat. My father died in January of a heart attack, and that was on my mind. I finally decided that it was time to see my general practitioner about the rapid weight gain, and always being hungry.

Blood tests happened. And more blood tests happened. My white cell count was something like double to quadruple where it should’ve been. My GP referred me to a Hematologist for further testing. More blood tests.

I showed up at the Hematologist’s office to get the results. He sat me down, and declared, “We have a problem.”

I’m like, no shit, that’s why I was referred to you. BOOM, he dropped one hell of a bomb on me. He advised me that he had a preliminary diagnosis of Leukemia. Mutha fuckin’ cancer.

Deep breath.

It’s not a death sentence. He, and several colleagues and friends told me that they knew people who had Leukemia and lived years and decades with it. It was pretty odd that I have Leukemia. That mostly happens to people much older than I am. We need more tests to check it out, and really to confirm that it is indeed Leukemia. Can we drill into your hip and take a bone marrow sample for a biopsy?

Uh, I guess so.

Great! We’ll schedule it for my lunch hour a week from today.

I exaggerate the Hematologist for the narrative. There was a lot more talking and explaining, but that doesn’t make for a good story…

I tell Erika the news over the phone, and inform her that I’m going to Panda Express and getting enough orange chicken and the biggest cup of Mountain Dew they’ve got. (I stopped drinking the nectar of the gods while trying to eat better.) She’s all. The kids don’t like Panda. You guessed it; I didn’t give a flying fructose what the kids wanted for dinner.

Erika and I decided we would wait to tell the children until after the biopsy. I had to tell the family, and my employer because I had to take the following Tuesday off for my bone marrow biopsy. Since my father died without a will or insurance, I was looking into both, and had already applied for life insurance. I figure I’ve got at a minimum of sixteen years left to live, since I’ve got fifteen years left on my life insurance policy.

Erika keeps telling me that that joke’s not funny. The Hematologist says no one can be sure, but if we confirm Leukemia, he expects me to live another thirty years.

I’ve been told stories of people getting diagnosed with Leukemia, and then dying of old age forty years later. One of Erika’s friends even told her that he had a Leukemia diagnosis twenty years ago, and they’ve never treated it because it wasn’t doing anything. A co-worker told me that her son was diagnosed at age seventeen, and now in his thirties, he’s cancer free. The Wednesday morning talk show host has stage four inoperable malignant cancer, and he told me that I had to wake up every morning and kick cancer’s ass.