happy cancerversary

I got the results of my last CAT Scan today.

We're cool.

Tomorrow, the 25th, is the two-year anniversary of my last radiation treatment. I should probably have some wise and wistful words to spout, but I'll just leave it at this: yayyyyyyy.

From here on the checkups are less regular. The next CAT Scan and blood work will be in January, but after that it varies which times I get a CAT Scan vs. just a chest X-ray vs. just blood work vs. any combination of those. That will go on for another five years, at which point I'm mostly safe, although I would still have checkups every few years.

I'm also considering joining the Cleveland Clinic's "4th Angel" program, which was started by ice skater/Ohio native/cancer survivor Scott Hamilton. It's a mentoring program that matches survivors with similarly-situated diagnosees (e.g. in my case, a 20-something male with Hodgkin's) who seek comfort and reassurance, have questions, and just want to talk with someone who has walked that path. It's all done over the phone, so they have Angels -- about 500 now -- across the country who help encourage and inspire newly-diagnosed cancer patients. Seeing as I'm doing so well, I think it would be rewarding and fulfilling to be a part of that team.

levi the jedi

As mentioned previously, I will be playing a brother (Levi) and the butler in Elyria Summer Theatre's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which opens this week. We only do four shows, Thursday through Sunday, at Elyria High School. Tickets are $10 for adults or $9 for 18 & under, and are general admission, only sold at the door. Thursday through Saturday are at 8:00, Sunday is at 2:00. The show is only an hour and a half, so it's a brief but fun evening. Afterward, you can swing by Jim's Coffeehouse in downtown Elyria, which is staying open with special hours after each performance.

Doing this show has been fun, and it's nice to be on stage singing again, not having to worry about making practice CDs for the cast or recruiting an orchestra. I do have a brief solo as the butler, and I get some deliciously high tenor notes in the chorus. I love it. It has also been nice getting to work with Mo Olejko for the first time, who has incredible patience with non-dancer types such as myself, yet somehow still manages to get us moving on stage.

Now then, to explain the subject line of this post: my costume makes me look like a Jedi. Even better, in the opening production number, the brothers get to play with some children's toys, among which is a plastic lightsabre. And with my short hair I kinda look like Ewan McGregor in Star Wars: Episode I. It's great.

the 16,000th performance of CATSSSssscan

'Twas the eve before CAT scan
and all through the house,
not a Bryan was eating
because he had to fast 8 hours before drinking the barium sulfate suspension.

Per usual I will probably post an update after my appointment as I'm enjoying a Tuscan chicken sandwich at Panera Bread. Next Tuesday I'll meet with my oncologist for the results of the scan.

We are but a week and two days away from the two-year anniversary of my last radiation treatment, at which point I was cancer-free. I still feel normal (a quick recovery which my oncologist attributed to my age), although it's irritating not knowing what should or shouldn't be reported to my doctor. Was that cough the precursor to a lung problem, or just the beginnings of a cold? Were those freckles always there, or did I miss an area of my neck with sunblock? Does it matter that my allergies have been raging for several weeks and I've been popping Sudafed like a madman?

I can't believe two years have gone by already. At this time in 2005, I was experiencing this lovely sensation of a ripped up esophagus. I have been getting CAT scans every four months to check for new growth beyond the scar tissue that will always remain, but now I will only be scanned twice a year, I think for five years if I'm not mistaken.

As I was discussing with Justin earlier today, one of the ironies of Hodgkin's Lymphoma is that we have a "higher risk" of recurrences and secondary cancers simply because the chemo works so well: i.e., we live longer. The longer we survivors live, obviously the more chances we have to become a statistic!

Incidentally, I got a few responses to my Relay For Life blog post, including one extremely generous individual, whose donation ensured my church's team would reach the "Silver Team" level of $2,500. Thanks, everyone! Rock on.

Edited 7/17/07 to add: The CAT scan went more quickly than usual, because it only took two pokes to find a good vein. Hurrah! The technicians remembered me from the umpteen previous visits, so they immediately each took an arm and started looking at the same time.

Panera no longer has the Tuscan chicken sandwich, but they do have a delicious new Chicken Pomodoro panini. That's chicken on Sesame Semolina bread with mozzerella, basil, and Pomodoro marinara sauce, grilled in their usual panini way. Mmmmm.

ancient ice

Pictures of an "ice tsunami" in Antarctica

Surf's up!

dew date

For best taste, enjoy this bottle of Mountain Dew before July 3007:



Who knew Dew would last longer than Twinkies?

wicked twixter

Grow Up? Not So Fast

It appears to take young people longer to graduate from college, settle into careers and buy their first homes. What are they waiting for? Who are these permanent adolescents, these twentysomething Peter Pans? And why can't they grow up?

Well, I'd say the instability of the job market has something to do with it. Every time you get a new job, you're lowest on the food chain, and first in line when the company starts laying off people. The days of settling in at one company for 30 years no longer exist because the companies themselves simply won't have it that way. Look in the help wanted ads and see how many employers are hiring managers and directors rather than promoting underlings who are already familiar with the work. If the underlings never leave, it makes it that much harder for a graduate to find entry-level work.

The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange, transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which people stall for a few extra years, putting off the iron cage of adult responsibility that constantly threatens to crash down on them. They're betwixt and between. You could call them twixters.
[...]
It's too easy to write them off as overgrown children, [Jeffrey Arnett] argues. Rather, he suggests, they're doing important work to get themselves ready for adulthood. "This is the one time of their lives when they're not responsible for anyone else or to anyone else," Arnett says. "So they have this wonderful freedom to really focus on their own lives and work on becoming the kind of person they want to be." [...] It's not that they don't take adulthood seriously; they take it so seriously, they're spending years carefully choosing the right path into it.

That's a good way of putting it. We're less inclined to just jump out into the world and live on Ramen noodles for the first five years of our adult lives (even if it means we'll miss out on bragging rights later in life as we share our more-suffered-than-thou "when I was young" stories).

I think another part of it may be that the cost of living "comfortably" keeps going up. Now comfort is found in high-speed internet, air conditioning, and daily Starbucks coffee. Generation Y expects to be promoted to supervisor status at work within two years and have gobs of paid time off. I'm not saying these are necessarily bad things, just that it makes it harder (or scarier) to get a start when we expect so much so soon.

Here's another good one:

Recent college graduates owe 85% more in student loans than their counterparts of a decade ago, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. In TIME's poll, 66% of those surveyed owed more than $10,000 when they graduated, and 5% owed more than $100,000. (And this says nothing about the credit-card companies that bombard freshmen with offers for cards that students then cheerfully abuse. Demos, a public-policy group, says credit-card debt for Americans 18 to 24 more than doubled from 1992 to 2001.) The longer it takes to pay off those loans, the longer it takes twixters to achieve the financial independence that's crucial to attaining an adult identity, not to mention the means to get out of their parents' house.

Also, I think this is probably the largest issue:

Annual earnings among men 25 to 34 with full-time jobs dropped 17% from 1971 to 2002, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Timothy Smeeding, a professor of economics at Syracuse University, found that only half of Americans in their mid-20s earn enough to support a family, and in TIME'S poll only half of those ages 18 to 29 consider themselves financially independent.

I really think that's at the heart of the matter. Unlike the baby boomers before us, who were happy to delve into marriage, child-rearing, and home ownership right out of college or high school, the twixters want to be more careful. They realize up front how expensive those things can be, and decide to wait until they have stable jobs before diving in. In that regard, it may be that the baby boomers raised us too well to learn from their mistakes, so we're ever more cautious. Hence, marriage is done out of love and compatibility more than as a means for financial security, raising kids, and having someone to drive you to the doctor when you're sick.

And speaking of learning from baby boomers, we're all too aware of how splitting up into sequestered little '50s sitcom white-picket-fence families can allow close friendships to fade as spouses, children, and home repairs take precedence. I guess more of us want to hold onto those friendships longer, before we move on. Some manage to find a balance between the two lives, while others simply resign to the fact that their children are their new social outlet. So as to avoid mid-life crises, the twixters figure they might as well get the crisis out of the way while they're still young and flexible.

But if twixters are getting married later, they are missing out on some of the social-support networks that come with having families of their own. To make up for it, they have a special gift for friendship. [...] They throw cocktail parties and dinner parties. They hold poker nights. They form book groups. They stay in touch constantly and in real time, through social-networking technologies like cell phones, instant messaging, text messaging and online communities like Friendster.

Amen to that.

relay for life coming soon!

The Elyria Relay For Life is Friday, July 13 overnight to Saturday, July 14. Unfortunately I won't be in town for the actual event, but I still have been helping my church's Relay team (if you'll recall the two flyers I designed).

Now comes the hard part: CA$H!!

Our team is close to raising $2,500 for the Relay For Life, which benefits the American Cancer Society. To reach that goal, I'm asking you kind blog readers out there if you'd be willing to make a donation -- of any amount. This stuff is tax deductible, if you're into that, and the ACS will send you a letter confirming the contribution.

Think of it this way: Should the day come when I have a recurrence of Hodgkin's or some other secondary cancer (sha! sha!), my options for treatment could be greater, less painful, and more effective thanks to the work of organizations like the American Cancer Society, and Relay For Life, and my church's team, and people like you.

(By the way, did you know I had cancer?)

If you're interested in helping my church's team reach their $2,500 goal, you have several options:

• You can mail me a check made out to "American Cancer Society." I'll give them to my mom before I leave on Friday, so our team captain can submit them all as part of our team's contribution. If you need my address, just e-mail me at bryan (at!) bryanbird . com.
  
• You can go to our team's donation page on the official website (it still shows $0 raised because our to-date collected funds haven't been added yet). You can pay securely with a credit card here.
  
• Or, just come to the event itself at any time and stop by the St. Paul UCC tent. Enjoy a "hillbilly taco" while you're at it! (That's taco meat and shredded cheese in a bag of Fritos, eaten with a fork.) More details can be found on the official website.

Thanks, everyone!

Edited to add: I just found out that anything we collect through August will count toward 2007's Relay, so you have a bit more time. After August it would go toward 2008.

grandma :(

My last remaining grandparent passed away yesterday. Grandma had been in a nursing home since her stroke about two years ago, and her short-term memory had been fading for several years (e.g., in her mind I was still in college). She would've been 88 later this year, so she had a pretty good run.

Hence, we'll be with family for the 4th, but there probably won't be sparklers.