Wow, what a roller-coaster ride!  So, as of getting the “hot spot report” Tuesday from Monday’s PET/CT scan, here was the plan: check into Los Robles Tues evening to get prepped for biopsy ASAP (I’m in room 2140) [insert nasty night of pain-sans-sleep here, followed by increasingly nasty wait for biopsy] get biopsy tissue extracted […]

Thanks again to all for your calls, offers and general concern.  I’m touched that so many people are such an important part of my life, and that those people cross “work boundaries”. So, as you might recall, our gimpy hero was desperately trying to break out of Los Robles hospital yesterday.  By 5:00pm, they couldn’t […]

(From 2/13/14) Thanks everyone for all your calls and visits during my mystery tour here at Los Robles Hospital (a sort of slow-motion episode of House going on here…).  While I feel a bit presumptuous boring you with all the details of my personal health, I’ll put them out there to keep you “filled in” […]

It has been a long time since I wrote here…and that’s a good thing.  I guess I felt the “cancer thing” was about done after over a year of clean scans.  And maybe it is/was/will be.  But regardless, I thought I’d share some thoughts I’ve had over the last year.  Some of this might seem […]

What else is there to say? Always a little anxious around scan time, but there is nothing to worry about.  

For those of you who haven’t seen me in a while, I thought I’d share the full progression.  It’s all a blur now…now that I have a clean post-chemo scan behind me and am officially in remission, I suspect I’ll ignore the blog for a [hopefully very long] while as my life transitions back to […]

Just a quick note to all my blog followers: Happy 2013! Me? I’m really feeling great and the hair has re-emerged…it’s soooo soft.  Ah, to have brows again 🙂 And my first brew is really, really good, too.  

      It’s been 5 weeks and look what’s re-sprouted! Ben was the first to notice the “creep stache”, something he just got familiar with.  He offered to teach me to shave…It took a few weeks, but I’m feeling better every day.  Been hiking and, yes, drinking beer, again.  Life is almost feeling normal. […]

…might not be the hardest part, but it has been a bit of a challenge.  So, I got out of my LAST ROUND of chemo a week ago Monday.  I thought I was ready to feel lousy for a week or two before my last “climb out” to health, strength and renewed lust-for-life.  And yet, […]

Just one more day here at the chateau, and then I get to climb out of the chemo doldrums!  My gang helps the time go by during my 6th and final round… I head home tomorrow knowing that my scan is clean and that as I purge that chemo hangover  and start to feel human […]

I was at a Halloween party last night, feeling particularly “removed”.  This morning, it occurred to me why… I’ve begun to view my life and my self in three phases: Pre-cancer Cliff, Cancer Cliff and, presumably, there will be a post-cancer Cliff.  Only, I’m not sure who he’ll be quite yet.  It’s unfortunate, that cancer […]