Team In Training

Hey blogger friends! I realized that I haven't posted an update on Bryan in a while & I meant to do that last week. Last Tuesday, Bryan had another PET Scan. Since he is almost finished with 4 rounds of chemo, Dr. Rizvi wanted to see how the chemo is working. For those who don't know, the PET Scan can show all of the active cancer cells in his body. So we can compare what his new results look like vs. the scan he had back in April. Another interesting fact is that when he gets a PET Scan, they inject a radioactive dye inside his body, which makes him radioactive. Unfortunately, pregnant women cannot be around anything radioactive, so we had to spend 24 hours apart. Therefore I couldn't drive him to his appointment (thank you Jeremy for taking him!), we couldn't sleep in the same bed, or use the same restroom. We were allowed to hang out in the living room & watch TV together, but we had to sit on opposite sides of the room :(

On Wednesday, Bryan had the first treatment of his 4th round of chemo (this was his 7th treatment in total). He got really sick this time. So sick that the nurse had to call the doctor & ask for permission to give him extra drugs. I still am not sure what they gave him, but it knocked him out. We barely woke him up in order to get him in my car, then he slept the whole way home & I barely got him out of the car & into bed. Needless to say, he slept straight until Thursday - he never even ate on Wednesday. After that medicine wore off, he had a normal chemo weekend & stayed in bed pretty much until late Sunday/Monday. This week he is feeling better again & has been busy with work.

Here are a few snapshots when he started chemo last week:

You will notice that he is smiling in these pictures - that's because we had just gotten there & he hadn't gotten sick yet! This is one of his chemo nurses, Fran. I posted a picture of the other chemo nurse, Krystal, a few months ago when we first started this process. Both of them are sweethearts - they are very careful when hooking Bryan up to his port & are always encouraging throughout the day.

I realize that is a long post, but Bryan wanted me to mention one other thing. Most of you know that Bryan worked at Yahoo! for years. In fact, he still keeps in touch with several of his past co-workers & friends who are still associated there. There are several in the New York office that have kept up with him during his illness & it just so happens that a group from there is participating in a triathlon through Team In Training. I am sure some of you have heard of it because all of the proceeds go to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Yahoo's team goal is to raise $200,000 and one of the team members, Ryan Friedlander, reached out to Bryan to let him know that he is participating & thought of Bryan throughout the process. He asked Bryan for a longhorn tattoo that he can wear during the race in support of Bryan's battle. Of course Bryan mailed him several longhorn tattoos & several of our lime bracelets for him to wear & others in the NY office. If you are interested in reading more about Ryan & Yahoo's race, or if you would like to contribute to their team goal, please visit his web page here: The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society - Team In Training