How I got this blog!!!

My nurse is a bit odd, but she cooks a mean roasted chicken.......

ALas, I am back on the blogness as I have now made it to treatment #7 of my predicted twelve. As I was told there would be a cumulative effect as I became more and more intimate with this poison. Seems ever since the beginning of my last treatment I just want to sleep and I'm having a different sort of fatigue. Oddly, this is almost better though because now I can just make the time blur away in a foggy mixture of family guy episodes, surf films and the back of my eyelids. Been getting an elixir down to help reduce my aches and my almost over the edge anxiety, a drug called adavan which is a pre-0p sedative and some special baked goods have turned this whole escapade into something nearly manageable I reckon. SO things get a little weird around here day after day by myself, the cats stare at me like I'm lazy and unemployed which I am I guess, but so are they those little bastards. It's been funny getting super deep into the computer cyberlife thing, lurking on facebook, writing two blogs and for once actually using my email to communicate with people. It's the little tasks I get to complete that would never get done or even hold a spot on my to due list. Like the other day I "had" to go get a new bulb for my Spiderman Lantern that I keep next to my bed, and also a tiny watch battery to put in another micro headlamp I have. There has been talk since I started the treatment about "chemo brain" though I hadn't really felt it I kind of wrote it off. Well now I know what those people who don't know what they're doing are talking about. I'm thinking about starting to wear a man purse around my waist to keep track of the five things in my life that I'm responsible for as to avoid leaving my wallet in the rental car, my water bottle at the hospital or the cereal in the fridge all of which were haphazardly executed this last week. "I FEEL LIKE I"M TAKING CRAZY PILLS! So, what the heck happened to the Stickman? How the what the fuck did you end up with cancer?

Last Christmas 08 I was home with the family having a generally saucy rip riding helluva good time. We got waist deep snow on Christmas day! When we got home from the mountain and for most of my visit I felt tired as the evening developed, more than usual though. One of the best times in Reno is going to the bars over the Holidays, surely something I never would miss. Well it was different last year, I was just too tired and not into it. Didn't really think twice about it other than maybe the pow days were just draining me. So we had a Christmas dinner toast and everyone wished for a better year to follow, expressively my brother who had just gone through a lame break up. Looking back now this gives me the goosebumps...... I remember thinking "This was the sickest year of my life, I'm the luckiest guy ever really, nothing truly rotten has ever happened to me" I honestly said that to myself!!!!!

When I got back to Washington I was working for LiB Tech building snowboards and had also been hired to work at one of the elementary schools as a TA in the special needs department. After my first official day working at the school I came home and my dad was putting up some siding on the house and asked me for a hand. From the time that I had had a faint cough at lunch break to the time I was fumbling to help my dad I felt like I had developed fucking malaria or something. For the next week and a half I called off work with a brutally deep yet dry cold and flooding amounts of exhaustion. In order to prove I was legitimately haggard to my employers I had to go get a follow up check up from the urgent care who had given me some anti-biotics to wrestle my symptoms down. In a possible out of step move, the nurse ordered a chest x-ray to ensure there was no pneumonia impending on my lungs. I left the clinic back to my house thinking this sickness was in the bag like the twenty others I'd waded through, " I don't have pneumonia" I said to myself. Two days later the phone rings and my x ray nurse tells me they see some surprisingly enlarged lymph node in my chest cavity and want to schedule me a CT scan.

"What does that mean"? I thought. "What do those lymph nodes do?""You have them in your chest?" "Why are mine so big?" With the news I eagerly broke out my computer and began researching what these findings could mean, Lymphoma, Leukemia, Lymphadenopathy....all daunting prospects. That day was the first day I had cried in years and years, I was so scared and confused. The cold grey Washington day felt so much darker and unjust.

I had to go to the University of Washington Medical Center for my first Biopsy which would be an outpatient surgery though I would be anesthetized. They stuck a tube and a camera scope down my throat and sliced a small portion off of one of the two now striking familiar and large toad nodes. The surgery was about an hour and a half and I woke up comfortably sedated and numb. My dad and my girlfriend wheeled me down to the car and off we went back across the Puget Sound onto the Peninsula. It took about two weeks for the results to prove that there was no malignancy and that the swelling was most likely caused by environmental effects like something I had breathed in while remodeling the house or working at the snowboard factory. Well Far Fuckin Out! I had no cancer, I just had to focus on taking care of this weird unknown lung infection. Happy Days were back!

After being confronted with such a gnarly scare I rearranged my life plans and decided it may be the best thing for me to get out of the snowboard shop, and head back to San Diego to complete my teaching credential studies. Arriving back in SoCal felt ok, nothing like I wanted it to feel like though. I had been scarred by the small town country roads, rural farming communities and huge glacial mountains in my back yard with peeling surf at their bases. The hustle and bustle that I was now back in the thick of was creating feelings of anxiety that I had never felt in my life. As it turns out the five months I spent back in San Diego going to homeopathic doctors, nutritionists and message therapists trying heal myself ,were not going to help and it was not the City, the move, or the people that were making me feel so tweaked. It was the cancer starting to really poke it's head out.

In July after a follow up blood test my inflammation rate was six times higher than it had been back in Washington and chest pains were feeling a bit too foreign and questionable to write off. I flew back to Reno where my Mom set up for me to have another Biopsy, this time they would take a full node from my collar bone region and have it tested at Stanford. Again It was an outpatient procedure and I was back on the plane the next day to San Diego to continue my life.

I had just come downstairs to grab my surf stuff to go slide when my cell phone rang. It was my mom so I knew she had the news whatever it be. I wanted to screen that call so bad.....I picked up the phone as my Mom's voice cracked and said 'I'm so sorry honey". Those four words was all she had to say as I swayed back looking for somewhere to sit down and deflate. That moment seemed like all the innocent childhood self perceptions I still clung onto were all taken away by some fuckin asshole bully guy named Life. He had hit me with a lead pipe right in the throat. I had no Idea what to do, I sat in the garage staring at all the artwork I had done when I was little and all the photos on the walls of me having great times. I cried, I couldn't believe all the innocence was gone, my life was no longer that great story I loved telling myself. I felt scared to call or tell anyone about the news, when I did call somebody I could only get through them saying "Hello" before my pre planned composure disintegrated into a muddle of tearful collapse. It took almost a week to fully comprehend the whole thing.

So off I was, I had to give notice on my killer apartment by the beach and leave my wonderful girlfriend to handle the final moving procedures. I packed my van with all I could stuff and drove to Reno in the beginning of October 2009. Leaving behind my jobs, house, girlfriend, school and happiness to go battle the unknown with my Mom by my side. The first week was staging, I had two heart scans, a CT scan, A PET scan, and a bone marrow biopsy. The bone marrow test alone will forever be the gnarliest most humbling thing that this experience will deal me. You never want one of those. So after two weeks and a stream of tests I swam away with Stage 2B Hodgkin's lymphoma. No organ or bone marrow infections. I get chemo every other week for 24 weeks and then a balmy dose of radiation in April to zorch whatever pesky death is left.

It's January now, over halfway into this mess and I'm having fun with it I suppose. It's weird to see how scared i can make myself and then how easy it is to bounce back by taking in the little things and thinking about all the people that encourage me and make me so strong. I miss you all so much. It was so great to hear from all you SB friends who I haven't talked to in so long. Believe it or not the comments I get on this lame little blog give me so much positive outlook and encouragement I find myself looking everyday to hear from a familiar face. I'm winning this because I have you all! LOve you guys, THanks for listening, SICKSTICK

I also write some potentially comical and insightful surf junk as Kenny Bloggins over at mitchsnorth.blogspot.com. Have a gander.

What Cancer????

Well the storm of Holiday goodness and fun times is gone and I'm back on the freaky tweak chemo trip as of yesterday. I have to say though this last couple weeks was a stoking realization as to how rad shit can be even in the midst of all this harshness. I got a chance to see heap loads of good people that I haven't seen in long times and in an ironic and equally cliche way this whole being sick thing has brought our family, whether near nor far a whole lot closer. Not saying I'm this almighty radical person but I do believe the reality check of life's unpredictability and sometimes vicious twists that have unravelled upon me have effected a good amount of my family and friends and that's a really good thing as far as I'm concerned. It's so damn easy to get lost out there doing things, buying things, stressing, ego tripping, following dreams, loving and living that sometimes we're not really loving or living at all. The expression, emotion, and true meaning of life, friends, and family gets broken up somewhere in the mess of so called "life". No one's to blame, I'm guilty as shit of getting lost in my own self endeavors; not calling, writing or visiting, not giving enough, not smiling enough, not helping, not saying what needs to be said. Well......not anymore i reckon this is a whole new enlightening self growth experience that I hope no one ever has to go through in this way but that they may find in some other less frightening, furious way.
On a less insightful and possible overly analytical note, I got my ass out and about over the holiday period do some good stuff. Went snow shredding with my pals Jon and Erin on Christmas day along with my moms. Always good shredding with your best buds especially ones who you idolize in the elements of style and ability. Also got to ride with my broham one day which was the raddest ever, super good snow, sunny skies and some fun little jumpers to send my chemo carcass sailing off. Riding with my brother pretty much makes the whole snowboarding thing "uber fun", nothing else compares. On an even higher note I got some fancy baked goods from some friends that have been making the sketchy days a little less jagged. Went skating with my brother as well, still pretty snowy around these parts so we were forced to the utmost of junk skating but it was still stoke provoking. My other brother showed up two days ago and took me along for a butt ass early morning , freezing balls cold pursuit out on a desolate lake in an Indian reservation for some famous cutthroat trout fishin. Top notch fun I have to say, out on a boat on an eerie, foggy wintry lake stoned to the bone off the prescription cookies talkin shit and reeling in some fine fishies. So there it is, nuff rambling for now, my life ain't that interesting for you to squander much more of your time reading this. Thanks for checking in, Miss da likes of yooz guys. Stick


Twenty degrees, 8 am on a spooky, foggy snow covered Indian Lake in the middle of Nevada, showing the rewards with a 20 inch cutthroat.

Big Toe and I acting like we got some trophy fish or something, this 20' was just barely legal size at about a pound and a half. Guys spend years out here trying to catch 10 pounders, they call em' toads. This was just a guppie but after three hours and no bites this catch was hyping.

BBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRR...................

Big T in trolling for a toad of his own, bundled to the gills in his one piece flannel cammo suit still shiverin a little.

The prescription serving me well, haggard, tired and freezing yet comfortably sedated.

Reno sunrise en route to Pyramid Lake.

Moms and I headed up the lift for some snow sliding. She has proven to me once again that she is the utmost ski fanatic; outlasting, outskiing and outsmiling almost anyone on the mountain.

Ma, Kev and I gleaming with stoke with views of Tahoe out back. Best day ever.

Lifting now.....

Me and Chafe amped on a new booter we found in shape that we hadn't ridden for a couple seasons. Looking for some aerial endeavors.

Christmas Kookiness.

Broham and my Aunt. Holding down the party.

Christmas feeling haggard but soo distracted by happiness and good people I look pretty stoke here eh?

Moms threw me a surprise party on my birthday and rented me a suite at the hotel and invited all my pals and family for a party platter filled hoorah of spirits and laughs. Thanks Ma!!!!

The suite had a hot tub and flat screen, needless to say my humanoid nature more turned to that of a crustacean. Hours in the tub i say......

Old man withers also made the trip down from Washington to see me and spend some holiday times around the house. Ahhhhh the Jigs.....

WTF?
Fleece beanie, fleece gloves, a snuggie and a 40 oz. Lowenbrau Stine.....the cure for cancer?

Whoa there tiger??!!!

Hey there friends, thanks for stopping by to listen again. It's Saturday morning and I just finished a bowl of Peanut Butter Puffins cereal which always delights me, if you haven't had this you must, it will change you. (Ahhhhh the simple things....) As has been in the last weeks of wretchedness this past week was nothing shy of what I have come to expect, though without the constipation. WOOOOOOOFUCKINHAAAAAA! I got my Oncologist who has a keen demeanor and resemblance to Bill Murray to write me a prescription for Marinol which is THC in pill form. This was a saving grace when staring into the eyes of three days of creaking, piercing joint aches and an unexplainably maddening state of mind where there is so much indecision, built up anxiety and fatigue simultaneously in my body that the only thing I can think of to do is throw the damn couch through the front window. It feels like the worst hangover you've ever had in your life coupled with feelings of having eighty cups of coffee along with enough indecision and lack of enthusiasm to make a mentally ill person feel ill. The Marinol at least gives me a little distraction from the harshness and offers up any sort of different feeling other than what the chemo gives me. On a side note.....We went to see the Fabulous Mr. Fox the other night and it was absolutely entertaining, adventurous and so ambitiously creative I left the theatre utterly glowing even in the thick of feeling terrible. Go check it out, it's really fun! I started to crawl out of the hole Thursday as I usually do, fumbling to get my natural human feelings back and get enough energy to make it further than the couch to fridge journey which is usually the extent of my venturings for the most part of the week. Matter a fact yesterday I went to the Mountain with my mom and rode my snow sliding board for a couple hours, nine runs to be exact. This being the utmost apex of my human existence in the last four months I had smiles from ear to ear the entire time, shoulda put sunblock on my teeth...... The old legs definitely weren't ready for the whole balance strength and control routine for sure, I felt at times like I was eight years old again on one of my first days on the hill. My arms flailing to regain balance as to avoid catching an edge and my legs jarring unknowingly trying to comprehend just what the their assignment exactly was for the day. On the third run skidding down the mountain I lost control a little bit blasting mach 10 on my heel edge beaming straight toward my mom who had cut across and halted to see how I was progressing down the slightly bumping an maybe a bit too icy slope. Her regards as to what my facial expression looked like as I narrowly missed her and regained some sort of control were that of sheer panic and anticipation of impending doom as she laughed and asked if I was ok. As I neared the bottom of the hill on the same run I had again reached about mach 10 this time feeling in control though as I laid down a huge toe side carve with some hand drag which usually comes very comfortable and confidant to me but apparently not so much for my back leg as it decided it was not powerful enough to support that much carvetude and buckled, sending me into a pitching heelside edge catch to ass side impact followed by back snapping neck whiplash as my head bounced off the hard pack and my beanie and goggles went their own ways flying through the air. Sprawled out like road kill I laid there slightly hurt and a bit panicked, I felt nostalgic and somewhat comical as I don't think I had caught a heel edge like that since those now strikingly familiar first days of trying to learn how to ride one of these crazy snowsliders. I picked haggard myself up and proceeded to enjoy the rest of day on the hill with a slight neck crink and some incling to maybe take it a little easier there cancer boy. So here I am today at home plunking the keys once again with a sore ass neck and a whole lot of stoke in the air. I'm having fun here and there and the days that aren't completely fucking terrifyingly miserable are positively zen. Hope you all are having great days and have great holidays as well. Thanks for listening. Stick.

My nurse says to me,"People don't die from cancer they die from chemotherapy."

Wooooooooweeeeee!!!!!! Hot damn I been through some strange shit this past week. As I have spoke of before the constipation issues are harsh and they are still definitely plagueing me with plug. My last dose went as planned though I needed two doses of Nuepogen which is a chemical that stimulates white blood cell growth. My white blood cell count was 100 after my last treatment compared to that of any normal count which is around 4500. With counts this low my chances of catching a cold are like the chances of hitting traffic on the 5 on Friday afternoon. This has me made one of those weirdo OCD people who carries hand sanitizer around in their pocket and doesn't shake peoples hands. Yesterday I was having lunch in public and using a napkin to hold the ketchup bottle and I caught these people looking at me all strange half rolling their eyes. Got some gnarly joint aches this time around which were basically putting me on the bench, coupled with gastronomical stomach pain and flooring fatigue I was basically a sack of bones for the last week or so. I didn't sleep for three nights straight cause my stomach was bloated to the point of having a front butt, found myself walking around the neighborhoods at four in the morning to try to find some catharsis for my cringing carcass. It's kind of weirdly cool having no sleep schedule and nothing to be on time for, I find myself in really odd circumstances. With all the shatner that came along with this last dose and all that didn't.......hehehe.... I'm finally back producing some results in the lavatory after taking crack fiend doses of mirlax, milk of magnesia, senna, prune juice and coffee all simultaneously trying to get the party started. Been back on the high energy tip the past two days and on my bike again, even went and skated asswell which always gives me some groundation. So here I am sitting in this way too fucking familiar living room in my sedimentary position on the sofa plunking away on the keys again as the snow flurries are bustling in the sky out the front window and the furnace fights the ongoing fight against the twenty degree temps outside. I miss you guys so much, I miss..... I miss.....I miss....This thing is a third of the way through at this point and I will win and I will figure out how to control these side effects. I will be on the road again and be visiting all I so dearly cherish so very soon. I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm scared and I'm fucking winning this fight. Love You all, thanks for listening. Stick

the truths of the matter......

It's wednesday now a week after my second dose of (life), as I'm now calling it in my quest to be positive about this fiasco. It's hard to see the positive attributes to these gnarly meds sometimes when I'm cramping and constipated or I have nill motivation to do much else than stare at the idiot box all day. But...I have also been put in check a couple times by some dear ol' friends that the reality of the matter is that I'm saving my own life by letting the nurses pump me full of this wretched concoction of drug. I have yet to lose my yellow mop from my head which is encouraging though I'm pretty confident one of the days it's going to shed in one foul swoop. I'm able to make a couple of ill researched assumptions about how I'm going to feel during these courses of medication. The day of treatment (thursday) and the day after I'm usually pretty cracked out and almost hyper from the steroids they give me and then come friday night i'm like a kid on ridelin all cross eyed and staring off at the wall. The weekend serves me up real nice with some exhaustion and kind of just like brain sedation, nothing really to say and waves of complete indecision. This kind of seems like it will burden me for about the first week as it did the first round. So like I said it's wednesday now and I'm starting to feel a little more focused and defined with some energy building. Hopefully things will unfold like last week and by the weekend I'll be joyously moving my carcass about. Everything in my body seems to ache and malfunction in perfect synchronicity making me feel like i'm turning into an old man or developing some gnarly arthritis all of the sudden,although I have a feeling I'm lacking real doses of vitamin D from being house bound for so many days on end. It's frightening sometimes wondering if everything will go back to normal and I'll feel like normal ol' stick once again, at times it seems unimaginable I'll tell you what. Rode my bike downtown yesterday and passed a blind lady staggering her way down the sidewalk meticulously navigating herself to her destination with all the intent and motivation in the world. "Damn!" I thought. I could have lost my eyes in some freak accident, I could have come down with some crazy bone disease and be forced into an amputation, or have been paralized or........I pedaled along with growing acceptance and gratitude for my own situation. The realizations I have almost daily about life really give me such a new take on where I'm headed and what the reason be on this sometimes unjust, unpredictable and beutifully cruel adventure of living. Call someone and tell them you love them. There is no reason why you or them couldn't just be gone tomorrow. Thanks for checking in. Stick.

On the high horse......Yeehaaaa

Well hot damn, It's two days before my next treatment and I have been feeling stellar. Yep that's the right word to use, stellar. I have waded through the hagardness and am feeling almost like a regular ol' dude. Been pedaling my limbs around town for the past couple days checking out this wacky city I grew up in. My perspective on this place has definitely changed in the past month or so, I can see the great things about this valley and have been able to form a new found understanding as to why my mom has been here for thirty years and never left as well as why my friends can never seem to make it out and stay out. Rode my skatin board yesterday with a longtime friend which seriously felt like everything I ever needed in life, rolling my bones around and laughing at janky ass skateboardisms brought a ray of light into my life that feels like has been blocked for awhile. I told my mom it felt like soul food, like it brought me back to my own self consciousness and understanding, assuring all that I love about what my life is and who is in it.(UHHHHHH....Maybe gettin too deep eh?) Anyway, things are good for me now, my girlfriend is here and living in Mom's house with me, talk about a trip, living back under my mom's roof with my girlfriend jobless and crusty. This whole blogness is a whole lot easier and productive when I got shit to gripe about, but there's plenty of that to come here in the next week I'm sure. Maybe not so gnar though, I got this bottle of milk of magnesia that I plan on swigging on like a truckee river vagrant on a bottle of cheap bourbon. That should keep my bowels moving and eliminate the stabbing battle in my gut hopefully. With that relieved I'm hoping to just be real real tired and weak which is manageable I imagine. Got two more days of smooth cruisin here, thanks for checkin in! Hope you're all well, thank you for the comments they really make my day and I look forward to hearing from you! Bye.

Good god please!!!!!!!!!!!!

All I want to do is please please take a real, sizable human-like brown long nice shit!!!! It's Tuesday afternoon here at the Nevada rehabilitation center on sunrise dr. and shit has definitely gone down hill since Friday. (Literally) On Saturday which was Halloween I was feeling pretty creepy for sure, I don't think I had dropped deuce since Thursday after treatment and I was starting to feel more clogged than a sorority house shower drain. Having wicked gnarly cramping and absolute defeating fatigue I watched as my mom prepped the house with decorations and spooky decor. I tried my best to be a real sport but I really felt like trash. I slept while my mom carved pumpkins, she woke me up with a special surprise though. I was getting a massage in a half an hour so I had to muster out of my crust and on down to the clinic. Obviously the massage felt great and I think I probably needed it but I'm not sure it was the best idea in hindsight. By the time all the kids were done ravaging our candy stash and things were mellowing out around the house I was getting stabbing stomach pains and it felt hard to the touch like I had a six pack on my bladder, not rad at all. My amazing mom made a midnight dash to the store to get me some stuff to get me squirting. I took four bowel movers and tried to sleep the night away, interrupted by stab jabbing cramps and panic stricken jolts to the bathroom with no happy endings. When I woke in the morning I must have sounded like an eighty year old fat man trying to tie his shoes. I was so crippled in pain in my stomach I marched back and forth down the hallway from bathroom to bed praying something would happen, even a gigantic fart would have been very well received. I tossed and moaned in bed for the first four hours of Sunday thinking that "if I died today it wouldn't be so bad, I've had a good run." Finally I was granted some results which allowed me to at least make it to the living room and try to start may day as a real life person. Mom was anxious to get out of the house as the weather was incredibly perfect and she has this sixth sense about what's happening up at Lake Tahoe. So she made me get in the car and go for a ride to the lake which was really the last thing on the face of the planet that I felt like doing but as she thought and I wanted to agree, it might do me some good. NO GOOD! Pretzeled in the front seat dealing with cramping constiarreah was anything but helpful, I tried my best to appreciate the heaven like day up there at the lake but everything was hell to me on sunday. We got to the beach and I tried to walk but I had nothing, honestly I did not have the energy to even walk the seventy degree alpine lake shore. I just flopped on the ground and layed in the sand feeling more helpless and defeated than I have honestly ever felt in my life. (I'm sure this will become a common claim as my postings continue) This type of fatigue is really fucking scary, I thought that I might be dieing for real, I had to concentrate to move my limbs where I wanted them to go. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......Sunday was literally shit storm of crampy, bubbling intestinal irratance with a real nice dose of flooring fatigue.

Yesterday and today have been a real improvement I must say. I went for a bike ride yesterday if that says anything to the tune of the day. When the nurses pumped me full of the death one of the drugs in the concoction called DTIC was supposed to have been split with saline to dilute the dose as it was pumped into my veins. My cooky ass nurse didn't add the saline bag to my IV pole and just started pumping me full of straight DTIC which felt like there was fire being pumped into my arm along with the fiercest charlie horse you could imagine all at once. In panic I wondered if I was having an odd reaction or if this was the wrong stuff or.........that shit was sooooooo damn painful! After I called for my nurse and she was aware of what had happened and being scolded by another nurse she hooked me up with my saline bag. The messed up thing is that now six days later I'm having these tweaked numbing pains through my forearm veins where I had initially felt the agony. My arm is sore to the touch in that area and there is some oddly foreign, powerless feelings going on from fore arm to shoulder. I think the bitch zorched the inside of my arm with the toxic death by not paying full attention to the task at hand. That's the scariest part about this whole thing is that these ladies are in control of making sure the doses, drugs, and administration are all correct every time, if not some serious shit could go down, after all they're dealing with toxic acids. Enough griping for today, that's how things have been. Thanks for checking in. I hope your having a wonderful day!