Thanks again to all of you for the continued positive support.

This last round is probably the worst, but it's also the last.

One more day of this toxic chemotherapy and how wonderful it is to finish it up on Christmas Eve. I didn't plan it this way, but timing IS everything.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a joyous, Happy New Year!

_________________
Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

All the best to you Mike. What a fight you have fought!

I came in late but reading this thread, I can think of no one more suited to help others through the process...God bless you, buddy.

_________________
Ignorance IS bliss - and I am the happiest person here!

To you Mike and all your family - HAPPY CHRISTMAS! Have a good one: you really earned it!

Cheers - C

+1 Mike, from the Hopkins household to yours!!

+1 Mike from Mr. Gil's household to yours!!

Gil

_________________
Where ever you go, there you are

1998 Ovation 1861 Standard Balladeer Natural
Taka - 2005 Squier '51 Black
Yume - 2006 Squier Strat Cherryburst
Houbi - 2008 Fender VG Strat Blizzard Pearl - won here
Fender Super Champ XD; Vox DA-5

Best Wishes to You and your Family Mike.

_________________
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

Mike,
You made my christmass mate, thankyou.
Doc sent me a mp3 of one of your songs, its tremendous. Certainly a lesson in intoxicatingly sublime melodies and guitar tones.
Thankyou so much for sharing, your one in a million mate.
You certainly made my christmass with that tune,
I wish you every happiness for yours.

_________________
No no and no

Thank you all for the continued positive support. I don't think words can describe the greatfulness I feel inside for the well wishes and mojo.

I'm now finished the chemo phase of this long and winding journey. The side effects of the toxic chemo meds are kind of strong after this final week of treatments, but now the body can start to heal and recycle.

I'll be starting the follow-up bloodwork checks, mediport maintenance, scans and checkups in about a month.

I wish all of you a great 2009! You all were a part of helping me to cope with the ups and downs of fighting cancer and I sincerely appreciate it.

If all goes as planned, I should be ready to have the surgery to remove the mediport in late Spring or early Summer....but the worst is over!

_________________
Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Congratulations Mike. That is a major accomplishment! Still sending lots of prayers your way! This brings to mind a Tom Petty song, "The waiting is the hardest part". But I am confident you will pull out of all this a winner! Hang in there buddy!

Keep the faith!

_________________
Bill

"Show me a crowd where the band is loud and my drunken ballet is in fashion!" Jerry Riopelle

_________________
"I don't trust nobody, not even myself" - Willie Dixon

[quote="Miami Mike"]

Well....I'm all caught up on this end....saved the best for last.

_________________
"Another day in paradise!"

Hi Mike,

It's over. You've made it through the storm and the wind to home. Now, the New Year begins with no more chemotherapy. Sincerely, I pray that may God bless your new era.

Mike, although the treatment is over, we don't just bounce back to the shape we were in. We flow into a new shape, afterwards. In my case I had a lot of adriamycin (sp?) as I took the stage III treatment protocol for Hodgkin's Disease. Turns out, that A in the ABVD treatment is a bad neurotoxin. I'm changed. Some would say I'm partially disabled, but I can see that it's truly a case of being differently abled. The din of the crowds and what's said is dimmed, and somehow now I see through the surface of things to undercurrents. In part, it's the experience of having been through that diagnosis and staging and treatment. I suspect all cancer survivors partake of it. In part, it's a permanently altered state of consciousness from neurotoxins. It's not altogether a bad thing. It's a yin-yang thing, like everything in our world.

Here are some challenges to watch and prepare for and so you can overcome them. You may tend to be more irritable. Your temper may be quicker and more easy to get away from you. You may be very, very tired going forward - almost as if it's an off-week from chemo when the steroids had flushed out. You may have trouble multi-tasking, recalling factual information or "to dos," or be slower to have the thing you're trying to say. You may lose your train of thought more than other people. If you face these challenges that many of us do face - and I hope you get none of them - the way is to follow what they say about writing a list, counting to ten and the other things. Those are like the little tools in the box that help you to maintain and function well. Ultimately, what's needed is to stay centered. The experience of overcoming cancer through the ordeal of chemo will open a pathway into a higher viewpoint than you will find around you. It's a little bit of a bird's eye view of reality. Your fellow man may seem to you to be often putting themselves in a box of "I must or I should" or defining themselves as this or that - all the while seeming to have no idea or clue about what's coming or about what life really entails. So then, people drown in trivia and sweat status and "competition" that leads to no brass ring, but just an endless series of people they have cut-off on the freeway. I talk in analogies a lot and so I hope it's coming across. Surviving cancer through the lengthy ordeal of chemo, as you have just done, can make you a much wiser person who sees more clearly than you did before - definitely, that happened with me. At the same time, if like me you have to deal with chemobrain that's also a very real condition that has to be taken very seriously and dealt with using all the available personal resources. Now, your life stretches out in front of you, a bright shining road lit by the Sun, and if you're like me now you'll be able to see it clearly, and understand where it goes, and see what are the other drivers doing (even to the point of understanding that a lot of the time it doesn't make sense what the other drivers are doing at all and then you realize that many cannot see the road, nor where it leads). Whatever differences you notice from the now-well-known neurotoxin impacts, understand that they do produce a person who is differently abled, not disabled. Personally, my net worth has increased roughly 20 times in the roughly 7 1/2 years since I finished chemo, even in the current downturn, which downturn also is setting me up for future prosperity. I can't describe it but I can't remember anything now from the chemobrain, but I can see what's going on now, where before I was like somebody who could not see. With the imperfections that chemo imposes on many of us, I hope we can also understand how it can permit a deeper (although less detailed) understanding.

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/redrock-thumb.jpg

Soon, your rough experiences of going through chemo will fade, like into a dream.

"So long ago
Was it in a dream, was it just a dream?
I know, yes I know
Seemed so very real, it seemed so real to me

Took a walk down the street
Thru the heat whispered trees
I thought I could hear (hear, hear, hear)
Somebody call out my name as it started to rain

Two spirits dancing so strange

Dream, dream away
Magic in the air, was magic in the air?
I believe, yes I believe
More I cannot say, what more can I say?"

_________________
"Now, bring me that horizon."
-Capt. Jack Sparrow

You are sooo right, strat58cat!

Fighting cancer is a lifelong deal, but you do what you gotta do!
The neuropathy is abating a little, not completely, but I was told that it might take a few months or more.

The other side effects can also be problematic (gastro/chemofog/headaches...)

All in all though, I'm hoping for a much better year than last! I go for my first follow-up on Jan 21st and we'll see where the journey leads after that...

_________________
Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Mojo sent!! Mike

_________________
The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

you will be in my heart and in my prayers, mr mike. all the best to you in the future, and keep rockin'.

_________________
Fender Classic Series '50s Stratocaster, 2-Tone Sunburst
Carlos 207
Dunlop Crybaby
Digitech RP50
One WORKING Pro Junior