"Be here now"

I had another Brentuximab treatment a few days ago, and things still seem to be going well. I can still feel two swollen lymph nodes that are hanging around, but I think they're shrinking. At the very least they are not growing. 

I've now gone more than six weeks without having to visit the emergency room or stay overnight in the hospital. Believe it or not, that's a personal record for the last four or five months. On a recent visit to the doctor's office, I saw a doc I'd not had before and she said she was happy to finally meet "the famous John Carta" who kept getting admitted to hospital with his nasty non-hodgkin's lymphoma and mysterious fevers. Crappiest fame ever. I hope someone at least writes a paper on me.

Side effects from the Brentuximab still seem pretty limited. My muscles and joints have ached for the last few days, but who knows, that might also just be from my muscle weakness coupled with increased activity from feeling better. My blood pressure has been a bit too high recently, but again, that could be from a host of different things that have gone on with me over the last while (including a Five Guys Burger, a Hintonburger, and a visit to Smoked Meat Pete's). But for now I'm off coffee, again. Green tea is a poor replacement.

No word from the transplant folks about whether a match has been found, but there's still time as long as the Brentuximab keeps doing its thing.

As part of my ongoing Netflix therapy, I recently started watching the Spartacus TV series. In a lousy coincidence, it turns out that Andy Whitfield, the actor who played Spartacus in the first season, was diagnosed with a very aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at the end of filming. He was never able to return to the show, and died about 18 months after his diagnosis.

I don't want to suggest that any one death is more tragic than any other because of celebrity. But I'm sappy these days (I'll pretend it's a side-effect of meds), and he was my age, with kids of similar ages to mine. And, admittedly, I found it heartbreaking that his last words to them were that he had to go to sleep, his body didn’t work, that he was like a butterfly with broken wings, but he would always be watching over them. Now his kids say "hi dad" every time they see a butterfly.

As an awareness-raising activity, he invited documentary filmmaker Lilibet Foster to follow him through treatment. The film should be out sometime soon. You can check out the trailer here.