It is a good size store that is about twice as big as the one that we had been to in Frisco, TX. It is a fraction of the size of the one that we had been to several time in Downtown Disney in California though. It was still way cool though and of course we had to buy some Legos. Here’s a video we took while there.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-mVIDRXWQM

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The Pill

This turn of events from eating to not eating all started with a pill. I had been doing so well eating that I got cleared to take pain medication via a pill as opposed to liquid. I decided to start small and try a Tylenol gel cap. As soon as it cleared to back of my throat I felt it stick.

I waited out the night but it still felt like it was stuck so I went to the ER. They did an emergency EGD on me and while the pill was no longer there the are of the surgery was extremely irritated. I was sent home and told to do liquids for 48hrs which I did. On the third day I was back at Chipotle. By the second bite I felt like something might be stuck again. As the day went on the sensation went away but things were slow in going down. The next day it was worse. The day after that I could not get water down my throat.

Another trip to the ER

This time they did find something stuck and removed it. They also saw that the diameter of my esophagus was even smaller. It was now about the diameter of a pen or pencil. I was placed on clear liquids only and sent home. I stuck to the restriction of clear liquids but by Monday the following week getting water down was again an issue.

That same day I had a visit to discuss the plan to get me back to normal with my GI doctor. He had scheduled me for another EGD the following day (today as a matter of fact) to do another dilation. Unfortunately he didn’t (and couldn’t) have much of a plan because he needed to see how my esophagus. We discussed more dilations, maybe a stent, and maybe another surgery. We would just have to see.

The EGD Results

The result of today’s EGD is that my esophagus was 4mm in diameter and he dilated me to 8mm. A normal person’s esophagus is 18mm so mine with the dilation is less then half of most people. I am on liquids only which is fine with me since I could not get anything down before today.

With what my doctor has seen with today’s procedure he has decided that a stent is the best course of action. The reason for this is that my esophagus is just not responding well to dilation and so doing several more of those isn’t going to help. They have already contacted the stent company and are hoping to have it placed within the next week.

The stent is not a permanent solution as it comes with it’s own set of restrictions. It will however allow me to eat and prevent things from getting stuck. I see a lot of soups in my future .

My Take

While this has been a rough 2 weeks I am glad that we are making progress. I should have this portion of the journey behind me in time for my start of chemo in week. Wish me luck in that journey.

Thanks again to everyone’s help, support, and prayers during this time. It helps more then you know.

Clarification

After reading through all of this I just wanted to clarify that the reason for the narrowing of my esophagus is a direct result of the surgery that I had and not because there is cancer there.

I was a little concerned about this but my GI doc takes biopsies each time he is down there and they each come back negative. So we are not fighting cancer here, we are just experiencing some unfortunate side effects from the surgery that I had. The expectation of everyone is that over time my esophagus will return to a normal diameter and that this will no longer be a issue. I just have to been patient until then.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECOctgAyMr8

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He also told me that he was a little concerned with me going into surgery because of one of my lymph nodes that the cancer had spread to. The reason for his concern was due to it’s location – it would be hard to get to. Fortunately he had recommended a great surgeon who did a great job of getting it out.

He had another concern though.

His current concern was that the cancer that I had came back in the same area after being radiated and shot with chemo. That area is now gone but what that means is that this is/was a pretty aggressive cancer. I say is/was because they have taken all known cancer out of my body but the concern is the unknown.

To tackle the unknown we have agreed to do some more chemo starting near the end of July.

When the doc presented the option of chemo that is exactly what it was – an option. I could have opted to do nothing and that would have been acceptable but as I put it to the doc – I am not rolling the dice anymore. I want to do everything possible to make sure that this cancer is completely gone from my body.

It is weird, when I first had cancer I was terrified of chemo, radiation, and surgery and their side effects. Today I am thankful for the surgery I just had am looking forward to chemo. The side effects suck but they are temporary. I am happy that I can have treatment and beat this thing.

So the next few weeks will be for me to recover as much as possible from the surgery. I am confident that I will be able to go through this round of chemo as good if not better then the previous round.

Everyone’s thoughts and prayers are welcome through this leg of the journey!

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beware-encore-pianos.com

From talking with Mat and reading his website he gave them a piano to sell on consignment for him. They sold it, but did not give him the money from the sale – none of it. Also mentioned on his site is the fact that this is not the first time they have done this. Another former customer contacted him saying the same thing happened to them.

It is unfortunate that this has happened especially to a good guy like Mat. If you can, spread the word of his story and definitely don’t buy anything from them as it could be stolen.

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On Wednesday this past week I was released from the hospital. That is 10 days after the Ivor Lewis Esophagectomy Surgery I had.

What is that you may ask?

That is a pretty major surgery where they remove half of your esophagus and half of your stomach and put then back together again. I was in surgery for 5 hours and they made 2 incisions – one down my belly – the other between my ribs on the right side. I was in ICU for the first day (this is standard because of the length of the surgery), on the cardiovascular floor for a day (because of a heightened heart rate), and the rest of the time I was on the pulmonary floor (due to my chest tubes). I am happy to say that I do not remember the first 2-3 days after the surgery.

My recovery went pretty well in the hospital other then having a little air trapped above the outside on my right lung. They monitored it for several days and then figured it wasn’t a big deal. I think the hardest part about recovering in the hospital was the lack of sleep. It is amazing that they expect you to get better when they are waking you up every couple of hours.

I am glad to be at home now to complete my recovery. I am having some pain in the area where they went in near my ribs. I have been able to get a handle on the pain with a heat pad and taking the right dosage of pain medication. When I was in the hospital they were giving me 10ml’s of Vicodin. When I got home I assumed that it was the same. Only after talking to my mom about my pain did I read the label and discover that I was supposed to be taking 15ml’s. Those other 5ml’s make a big difference. So for the most part I have a handle on the pain.

I am pretty swollen in the rib area though. If it does not go down by Monday then I will go in to the doctor to see if there is anything that should be done. I would rather play it safe then have something that could have been easily treated turn into something big.

I want to say thank you to everyone who came and visited me and reached out to me while I was in the hospital. It is always nice to see a friendly face or hear a familiar voice.

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The Good News

The good news about it is that I will only be in the hospital for a week as opposed to the 2 weeks I thought I was going to be. When I leave the hospital I will be eating again, walking, showering etc. It should be about a week after that when I should be able to return to semi-normal life.

The Not So Good News

The not so good news is that because they are making in incision in my side that I am going to be sore for several weeks after the surgery and the range of motion in my arms is going to be limited. Due to this I will not be able to drive for about 3 weeks after I get out of the hospital. I can go places, I just can’t drive.

My Outlook

I am good spirits but in a little bit of shock. I have a very vivid imagination so sitting in the surgeons office and having him explain what he was going to do to me was a little traumatic. I think I may have gone to my “happy place” a couple of times because I only remember bits and fragments of what the surgeon said.

I did ask him how this was going to compare to me going through chemo and radiation and he said this is nothing like that – it is much easier. That helped me a lot since I know what that felt like. If I could go through that I can go through anything.

Prayer for My Wife

While I am on the subject of surgery I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers for my wife as well. She has been doing great with everything that has been going on with me but is going to be having surgery herself as well. Her surgery is on her eye and it is the day after my surgery. I think she will only be out of commission the day of surgery and maybe part of the next day. It is kind of a lot in a small time frame for both of us but I am confident we will both make it through just fine.

Finally, Thanks

I just want to give a great big thanks to everyone that has reached out to us to help with this latest round of treatment. You all are making a big difference in this going smoothly for our whole family. I look forward to being able to repay you generosity some day in the future.

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Although I had a clean EDG and PET scan back in January I had new tests last week and they came back positive in the same place in my esophagus as as before. That means that the cancer was not gone in February , it was just hiding.

The Good News

The good news is that the cancer has not spread and that I am still a candidate for surgery which I am going to do. I have my consultation with the surgeon on Wednesday of next week and am hoping that I will have the surgery a week or two after that. From my research he is one of the best surgeons in the area for what I need so I will be in good hands.

If I remember correctly I should be in the hospital for two weeks recovering. I am figuring it will be 2-4 weeks after that when I should be able to return to normal life. We will just have to see. The other good news is that my cancer doc says that if the surgery goes the way that it is supposed to then I should not need any further treatment which is great. The other bennefit of the surgery will be that I will have a smaller stomach and thus will be a lite eater from here on out. That means that I should enjoy my 150lbs 30 inch waist for the rest of my life .

To be honest this is not the direction that I wanted to go down but when you have a major surgery in one hand and not living much longer in the other surgery is very attractive. I would appreciate your prayer during this time for our family that the surgery goes well.

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What you do is select the year that you want to listen to and the app serves up the top 100 songs according to Billboard that year. It plays them in a Pandora type shuffle to where you can only skip to the next song. You can click a button and see all the songs from that year but you cannot select a specific song to play.

The other downside to the app is that it puts up an ad for the main Bing iPhone app every 3 or so songs where you have to manually click next to continue with the music. I downloaded the app that they were advertising but the ads still come up.

They are advertising that this app is going to be $1.99 but is free right now. I would hope that they would remove the ads in you actually pay for the app. I guess we will just need to see.

Currently I am groovin’ like it’s 1993. Hip Hop Hooray! Ho. Hay. Ho.

Here’s a link to the app in the iTunes App Store – Top 100s by Year by Bing

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When I was at my appointment with my GI doctor on Friday I asked him if my esophageal cancer could have been related to my celiac disease. At the time he said no. But, later that afternoon he called me to say that he could be wrong. After I had left my appointment he was so perplexed about my case that he started doing research. In his research he found a study in Europe that did link Celiac disease to possible esophageal cancer.

Needless to say that motivated me to look into this gluten free diet a little more.

My First Day as Gluten Free

My first day of my gluten free world was the next day – Saturday. It started out terrible.

I went downstairs to eat breakfast and realized that I could not have any of the 5 different types of cereal when had in the house since they all had wheat in them. I proceeded to cook (let’s say try) some hash browns and sausage – they were terrible because I am not the best cook.

From there we were out all day doing things with the kids. The only things I found during the day that I could eat was some popcorn and Cool Ranch Doritos. By 5pm I was hungry and hating life. This gluten free thing sucked!

I decided that there had to be food out there somewhere for me to eat so I turned to Google. A few short searches later and a visit to some of my favorite restaurant’s websites my sanity was restored. Chili’s, Pei Wei, Chipotle, and Freebirds all had gluten free menus. I opted for Chili’s and gorged my self with a strawberry lemonade and their Margarita Chicken (without the tortilla strips). The best thing about this is that I usually got the Margarita Chicken at Chili’s anyway.

After I ate I went to the grocery store and spent some time reading labels and ended up with:

• Corn Checks
• Cinnamon Checks
• Doritos Toasted Corn Tortilla Chips
• El Miliagro Corn Tortilla Chips
• Velveeta Mexican Cheese (for queso)
• Yoplait Strawberry yogurt
• Hillshire Farms sliced ham
• Hillshire Farms smoked sausage

Not too bad. It was actually a whole lot easier then I thought to read the labels on things to determine whether they were either gluten free and/or contained wheat products. In fact the majority of labels that I read actually come right out and tell you if they have allergens. I guess other popular allergens are Soy and Milk as well.

So I ended my first gluten free day a little happier. I was glad that I wasn’t going to starve to death.

We have a Sprouts grocery store not to far from us. I will be checking them out as well to see what other gluten free things I can find. I hear that there is gluten free bread and pasta as well. I wouldn’t mind check them out!

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