Turning 50

No, not that turning 50 – not ‘til December, actually. This week, I had my 50th chemo treatment and, like a birthday, I think of it as a milestone. It was the usual fare other than the addition of a dose of magnesium. Who knew we need magnesium? I know – all you smart medical/health people do – but I didn’t. And evidently, I was below the proper level so I got a bonus half hour in the chair. By the way, taking IV magnesium gives you a hot flash that lasts a couple of hours but I was assured by the nurse that it wasn’t just menopause.

So now that I have my metal back (I know, terrible pun), I can move on to ruminating on the big 5-0. I have many friends who in the last couple of years, or within the next year, have/will hit the half century mark and many of them accept it with a bit of resignation. But perhaps this comparison would help: having 50 chemos is a good thing. It means that I’m still here. It means I still have the opportunity to do things that are meaningful to me and to my family. I can still learn and grow as a person. Turning 50 years old can be viewed the same way. You are here, leading a meaningful life, helping your friends and family, learning new things, accomplishing goals. And, as a bonus, you have the experience of the last 50 years to give you more wisdom and perspective.

If you ponder for a moment the idea that most people will live a relatively healthy life into their 70’s and many well beyond, then turning fifty simply signifies that you have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 more years to learn and grow and contribute. Twenty or thirty years!!! Imagine what you would say to a twenty year old about all the things they could do before they turn forty…then apply that logic to yourself and go for it! So, fifty chemos or 50 years, it doesn’t matter – they are both an opportunity and a gift - it just depends on your frame of mind.

And to commemorate the combination of age and opportunity, I bequeath you this photo of the “Terra Nova” – a fishing trawler from Provincetown, MA. She’s a bit long in the tooth but goes out every day in search of a big catch. And I’m sure her crew prefers the joy of trawling the seas to sitting on the dock wishing for a better (younger) boat! BB

Things past and present

I haven’t had a lot blogging mojo lately so hence, it’s been quiet.  My father’s passing has made it a busy time, for as much as he tried to simplify things, settling up all the accounts and such has been a lot of work.   My brother and I made another trip to Florida last month to take care of a number of things that could  best be  done there – transferring the car title, visiting the tax assessor, the lawyer, the condo association, various insurance agents, etc.  It’s all on track but, like I said, very time consuming.

My father had made arrangements to have himself cremated and I brought his remains home on the plane.  We are going to have a family gathering for a small ceremony at the end of the month and we will inter him in a plot not far from mine.  Once we do that, I think I’ll feel a bit more like moving on.  In the meantime, to distract myself from the mundane paperwork of the estate, I spent some time looking into the family history on Dad’s side of the family.  His mother was orphaned as a young child and raised by an older brother.  I had always kind of wondered what the story was behind that.  It turns out that I found a wealth of information in a database of old New York newspapers (and with the help of some of my mother’s prodigious genealogy skills).  Of course, answering one question often just leads to another so now I understand how genealogists can become so obsessive about it!  FYI - the orphan story is that her Mom died of kidney failure in 1909 (at age 48) and Dad of food poisoning (bad clam chowder) at age 49 in 1910.  My grandmother was 6 at the time, with older siblings who were 11, 15, 18 and 22. It’s also quite a trip to read some of the articles in these old newspapers – the ones I read are from the 1850’s to about 1920.  For example, there was a piece on a woman who was convicted in 1889, and fined $25, for being “a common scold and a nuisance.”  The judge lectured her and told her that some of her neighbors were just as bad!  Can you imagine being convicted of “being a nuisance!”

On the health front, I have had three rounds of chemo and one CT scan since I last blogged.  The treatments are going well and my scan looked very good.  I had some significant pain problems in January and February for which I was taking more oxycodone than normal, but those have abated.  David suggested that perhaps, instead of “growing pains” I was having “shrinking pains” from the treatment.  In any event, I’m doing very well.  The treatment this week was the 49^th of my career as a cancer patient.  I wonder if they’ll give me a merit badge next time for my 50^th!

I hope you are all doing well and thank you to everyone who sent condolences….here’s a picture of Dad with his Mom – Grandma Agnes – in 1938…BB

Charles J. Birmingham 1937-2012

I am very sad to say that my father passed away this week. It’s hard to put into words the variety of emotion that comes with his loss. He lived in Florida since I was a senior in high school, but fortunately, I was able to see him regularly throughout my adult life. My business career involved a lot of travel and I always managed to add a few days of personal time whenever I headed south so that I could drop in to see him. Those visits, in addition to other times when he came north to see us (especially his grandchildren) made the distance seem so much smaller.

I think the thing I liked best about our relationship was our conversation. He was a lawyer, specializing in real estate, and for the last 15 years of his career, he was Florida State Counsel for a title insurance company. As a result, he was mostly involved in cases of land fraud, which often proved to be quite interesting. Some were classic “swampland in Florida” deals and others were family squabbles or complex attempts at thievery. We could spend hours over meals talking about these shenanigans, and about politics and about family. He was always interested in whatever we were doing and loved to spend time with Robbie and the kids. In all of these talks, he was unconditionally supportive of me, of Robbie and of the kids (especially). He also had a very good sense of humor – a bit of a wise-ass actually – so now you know where I got it.

For example, last fall he told me that he couldn’t read my emails because his computer wasn’t working. When I came to see him, I sat down to see what the problem was. He said the problem was a “user error.” I turned on his PC, waiting to see the error message and it worked just fine. “Dad,” I said, “It boots up just fine, I don’t see a ‘user error’ message.” “Oh, there’s no message,” he replied, “I’m the user and I don’t know how to work the damn thing!”

Unfortunately, the last couple of years were very tough on him as his health deteriorated. In particular, his Parkinson’s Disease kept him from doing the things he enjoyed – most particularly walking his dog – and the complications of his heart surgery and a growing problem of dementia really wore on him. Then last November, he fell and broke his arm. That event began a downward cycle which my brother and I could not curtail, despite our trips to Florida to help him. In the end, those falls led to a brain hemorrhage last Friday and he passed away in hospice on Wednesday night.

While I’m sad to lose him, his health issues were robbing him of the better part of his quality of life. He often, in this last year, spoke to me about his concerns regarding the deteriorating effects of Parkinson’s and it was heart breaking to witness that decline with very little ability to help him stop it. So, in that regard, his passing means less suffering for him and for that I am thankful. I am also thankful that both Kevin and I were with him in his final days. And, in fact, his sister and niece were with us when he passed, which I hope brought him some comfort.

So, goodbye Dad. I will truly miss you but I am happy that your suffering is at an end.

No news is good news

I guess it’s time for a mid-month update. I continue to get my Vectibix every two weeks – my last treatment being last Tuesday. It’s not as tough to take as the old treatment except for the acne-like rash. The rash is pretty pervasive, covering just about everything from the top of my head to my waist. It’s dry and itchy and unsightly but on the whole, not a terrible price to pay to keep living.


Tomorrow, I leave for Florida for the week to visit my father. He is transitioning to an assisted living place after his fall last November. I hope to finish up a number of things related to the move, and have my fingers crossed that he will be able to settle in to the new place. For anyone who has done this with older relatives, I’m sure you know that it’s not easy. Anyway, I look forward to a few days of warmer weather.

In the meantime, we shipped Vicki back off to school and took in a Columbia basketball game when we dropped her off. She had a terrific first semester and is excited to be back. David is finishing up the Winter track season having not run a single race – a high ankle sprain side-lining him for the entire season. He goes to practice and the trainer and PT but not to the meets. Hopefully, he’ll get back out there in the Spring track season.

I hope you Northeasterners enjoyed the first snow yesterday since our snow-tober surprise! I’m not a huge fan of snow generally, but it does look pretty. And speaking of pretty, this post’s photo is of our Christmas Cactus which has been blooming like a manic in the front window! BB

The Balance of the Year

I see that I haven’t blogged during the entire month of December. Just a sign of how busy it’s been. I’m sure that it has been a whirlwind for most of you as well. On the health front, I am doing fine – I have been doing treatments every two weeks and surviving them just fine. The plan is to continue this regimen for the foreseeable future. Dr. S told me last visit that he has one other patient who had a remarkably positive response like mine, to a drug that is very similar to Vectibix (a drug called Erbitux which he says is to Vectibix what Coke is to Pepsi). When I stopped to think of how many hundreds (thousands maybe?) of patients he has had, it struck me how fortunate I am.

As for the rest of December, I regret to say that I spent a lot of it flying back and forth to Florida because my father has been having a tough time. And when not there, it felt like I spent most of my time on the phone with doctors, social workers and Assisted Living directors trying to sort things out. My brother also made two trips. But, thankfully, between the two of us, we helped him get stabilized and moved into an ALF where, so far, he seems to be doing well. There are still quite a number of things to be resolved, but the train looks like it has gotten back on track.


On a happier note, my lovely daughter is home, having completed her first college semester! So she is 12.5% done with her degree! It’s great to have the four of us all here tripping over each other in the kitchen, stealing each others’ candy and playing with each others’ holiday gifts!

I hope you all had a great holiday and wish you the very best for 2012. May you all find the perfect balance of friends, family, work and play to make it a terrific year!! BB

The New Normal (aka Nevermind)

The Friday before Thanksgiving, Rob and I met with the surgeon about the procedure to put a stent in my liver. We had quite a long discussion and she showed us the scans from September and last week. It turns out that Vectibix has been so successful at reducing the tumors that she did not feel that it was advisable to do the procedure (even though it was already scheduled for the Monday before Thanksgiving.) While the “before” shot clearly showed three big, ugly tumors that prevented her from accessing the correct bile duct in September, the “after” shot showed not only remarkable tumor shrinkage but the duct obstruction was almost completely gone. As a result, she felt that she would not be able to find the exact spot to place the stent – and evidently they have to be positioned rather exactly. Further, stents don’t last forever. They can themselves become clogged and require intervention and, on the average, are normally only good for 6 to 9 months. So, after some discussion with Dr. S, we decided to forgo the stent at this time and just monitor the situation. Hopefully, in the future, if we can catch a blockage earlier, I can do a stent then.


This Tuesday, I went in for another round of Vectibix, which went without a hitch. Curiously, my billies only fell from 2.2 to 1.8 mg/dl. In fact, there are a number of liver readings still out of whack but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything to do about it at this time. Maybe I will never make it back to “normal” but I suppose it doesn’t matter as long as I have no complications or turn yellow. As a result, I am declaring this fall’s little crisis over – this is the new normal – and I’m back to doing, you know, whatever it was I was doing before my “yellow” period. I’m going to just go on with life with only half an eye fixed on my blood work. And to prove it, here’s a photo of me waiting at a café on 53rd street while they mix my meds!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I’m sure thankful to have had one – and what a fine meal it was! BB

Nevermi....well, not quite yet....

Robbie and I saw the onc yesterday and got the results of the CT scan I had last Friday. Dr. S was very upbeat, saying that the scan looks very, very good and that my bilirubin level is now down to 2! I was hoping for a 1 (and an all-clear sign), but 2 sure is better than the 32 from last month. He said that the scan shows an area that is still blocked and that he forwarded the results to the surgeons for evaluation. They now say that the procedure which was technically impossible last month is do-able because the tumor shrinkage that Vectibix has provided gives them room to work. So, Dr. S set up an appointment for me to see the surgeon on Friday.


The goal of the surgery would be to insert a stent into my liver to hold open the bile duct. The procedure is “minimally invasive”, using some kind of needle to insert the stent rather than making a big incision. That’s sounds good. Dr. S did not go over the procedure in detail, however, as the surgeon – actually a doctor of “Interventional Radiology” - will explain it tomorrow. Also, it seems that Dr. S feels that the Vectibix alone might actually get me to an all-clear but, in order to ward off problems in the future, I should have the stent inserted now, while there’s room to get it done. Tomorrow I’ll get the full picture of what it’s all about and – I assume – will set up an appointment sometime soon to have it done. In any event, we are very close to getting clear and very optimistic that this will soon all be behind us.

So, it was all good news yesterday and I polished it off with another dose of the hamster juice. I must say that I like the fact that Vectibix is pretty easy on the digestive system. These last few visits, Rob and I have gone out for dinner in the neighborhood after treatment. We’ve hit the tapas place, a new sushi bar and, last night, Chinese (I can now recommend the Taiwanese Mei Fun at “Ginger” on East 55th). Makes the long day of hanging around the clinic seem more worth it!