The Q Continuum

While I’m working on recovering from my cancer surgery (see updates at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/eriqneale), another chapter in our lives has come to and end. Our pet turtle, Allie, has been moved to her new home, the Wildlife Center at Crosstimbers Ranch (http://www.crosstimberswildlife.org/index.html). We’ve been needing to find a new home for her for several years, and made a serious contact last year, but couldn’t arrange the exchange. Given my health issues, there’s no way we were going to be able to adequately take care of her in the short and longer term, so we aggressively pursued a new home for her.

We have a long family history with Allie, and unfortunately we really didn’t have an opportunity to let everyone in the family know we had made the arrangements for her transfer in advance, so we’re having to let everyone know after the fact. Allie was found by Anna’s brother Daniel down in College Station about 10 years ago (we think, we’ve been bad guardians by not committing her full history to memory) when he was a student at A&M. As the story goes, he almost ran over her on his bicycle, not recognizing the small bump in the road as a turtle until he turned around to see what it was he almost hit. Dan kept the turtle with him while he finished his time at A&M, but then surprised us all by heading off to China, and that’s when Allie when went to live with Mike and Jan, Dan’s parents. They kept her a number of years, including at least one tank change, and back in 2007 is when Allie came to live with us.

Allie is a snapping turtle, and she (we’ve just always assumed she’s a “she”) has some interesting features that make her almost look like an alligator snapping turtle, but we’re about 95% certain she’s just a regular snapping turtle.

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed having her over the last 4 years, as she’s always the life of the party when we have company over. It’s not many people who have a very large turtle in a very large fish tank in their living room, and she likes to follow people around the room. She would get really animated when I would feed her, and she could definitely tell the difference between Anna and I. Sometimes she would flat out ignore Anna, but almost every time I walked by, she would follow me around the room. Maybe she just thought I looked tasty, but I like to think differently.

Fortunately, she is going to a wilderness animal rescue facility out near Terrill, Texas. She will be out in a natural habitat without releasing her directly into the wild, which we got mixed recommendations about doing. So, we think this is the best of both scenarios. She won’t be kept in a tank, but she will also be in a protected area with people looking after her to make sure she’s doing OK in the environment.

It’s going to take some time to get used to not hearing her in the tank when we walk by. We’ll take down the tank at some point (we actually now have three unused aquariums of various sizes that we’re probably going to put on Craig’s list sometime to get rid of them). We’re going to miss her, but she’s also in a much better place for her long term health and well-being. And we don’t have to worry about not being really able to care for her properly over the next few months.

I’ve been trying to post daily updates over at the Caring Bridge site (http://caringbridge.org/visit/eriqneale) as that’s a bit easier than posting here, and it’s easier to get notifications of updates. But, since I’ve had some notes here, too, I thought it was worth doing a quick update.

Surgery is set for March 29. The surgeons still think they can extricate all of the cancer by resecting a large chunk of my liver. Not looking forward to the downtime, but definitely looking forward to getting this behind me.

If you want to keep up to date with what’s going on, I’ll be doing all future updates over at the Caring Bridge site. Will get back to posting stuff here when life returns to “normal,” whatever that is…

We met with the surgical team this morning and got some additional information about when and how on the procedure, but there are still some questions on the specific dates. They’re going to try to get me in for one last set of tests tomorrow (hopefully), another CT/MRI with a specific type of liver contrast, some additional blood work, and an endoscopic ultrasound of the pancreas. Fortunately, they can do them all at once (well, not exactly simultaneously) so we only have to make one more trip down to the facility before the surgery.

There’s still no complete clarity on exactly where the cancer came from. The best guess at this point is that it originated in the bile ducts, and if that turns out to be the case, then the procedure they’re planning to do should “cure” the cancer. Byt effectively completely removing it from my body. How they’re going to do that is a little more drastic than I was originally thinking:

Current plan is to resect (remove) 30-40% of the right lobe of my liver. It will be a full open surgery, not a laproscopic procedure, and I’m looking at 7-10 days in the hospital following surgery, plus 3 months recovery time.

Wow.

But by then, I’m told, my liver will have mostly grown back, so I won’t be losing any liver function overall once everything is done. I’m strill trying to wrap my head around that, but that’s the way it works, supposedly.

Unfortunately, it also looks like very late March before they can get me in for the surgery. So I’ll be continuing with my current approach to pain management in the meantime, and working as much as I can, which still won’t be full-time

So, that’s what I know today. I hope to have more to report after the procedures tomorrow.

My last post generated a lot of questions from people who hadn’t been in on the full back story of how we got to where we are, so in addition to providing a current update on where things stand right now, I’ll also fill in the back story for those who haven’t heard it.

First, however, the update. We did get confirmation from the oncologist yesterday that the tumor in my liver is indeed cancer. Since that was what we were really expecting, I can’t really say that’s bad news, but we’d had a week to prepare for it. Sure, we were hoping that it would come back as a benign growth, but that wasn’t what we were expecting. But, that was where the bad news ended. We were expecting the results to show the tumor had spread from the colon, but the pathology didn’t indicate that. The initial findings show the cancer coming from upper-GI areas (stomach or esophagus), and those areas didn’t ping on the PET scan. We’re also pretty confident that it’s not pancreatic cancer. So, because the pathology and the other tests don’t exactly line up, I’m going to undergo exploratory surgery and have an expert look around in my gut to see what they can see that looks “bad” and remove it. That means the tumor in the liver will come out, and anything else that they find that’s questionable. We’re hoping to have the surgery scheduled for early next week, as there’s likely going to be a 4-6 week recovery from the procedure. But I still have to meet with the surgeon who will be performing the procedure and see what he has available in his schedule.

So, how did we get to this point? Well, the story goes like this. In mid-January, I noticed that I had a sharp pain in the right side of my abdomen when I laughed hard or hiccupped. Since I’d had a head/chest cold the week before and had done a lot of coughing, I just figured that I’d pulled an abdominal muscle and didn’t think anything else of it. Except that over the next week or so, the pain got a little more intense, and I didn’t have to laugh as hard to get the pain. Then I started feeling a steady discomfort in the same area, and it would get a little more intense as the day went along. I chalked that up to an abdominal muscle pull as well, as I’d changed the office chair I was sitting in to improve my posture, and I was relying much more on my abdominal core than the back of a chair to keep me upright.

Finally, the pain and discomfort got to a point where I decided to see my doctor. I went in on Feb 21, and he ordered some blood work to look for anomalies, since it wasn’t obvious that it was an abdominal muscle. The following day, he called to let me know that two liver enzymes were reading high, along with a pancreatic enzyme. They were still within the normal range, but on the high end of normal, and higher than the results we got from a test that had been done two months prior. To eliminate the liver and pancreas as a cause of the problem, he recommended a CT scan of the abdomen, which we did that Thursday.

That afternoon, he called with the results of the CT scan, which showed a growth on the liver that wasn’t present on a similar CT scan from 2 years ago (when I had my appendix removed). He was concerned enough to arrange for an MRI the following morning, which took some work to get scheduled. So Friday morning, I went in for the MRI. Friday afternoon I got the call that the MRI was still inconclusive and we probably needed to schedule a biopsy to pull some tissue from the growth and have it analyzed to see what it was. We scheduled that for the following Tuesday, when I should have been in Redmond for MVP Summit at Microsoft, but I wanted to get this done and out of the way.

And as with all great plans, everything changed the following day. Saturday night the abdominal pain increased significantly and I started running a fever, so we chose to go to the Emergency Room. I was admitted for observation (the ER diagnosis was pancreatitis) and started going over all of the recent history with the physician who was assigned to me. Since we were already admitted, she opted to start some procedures to help identify what was going on overall. On Sunday, I had an MRI of my shoulder (which has been in a constant state of low-level pain for the last 6 months) to see if it was referred pain from problems in the abdomen or something else altogether. That MRI showed that I have a torn rotator cuff, and was told that we’d deal with that later down the road. I also had an endoscopy and colonoscopy performed on Monday, and both of those came back clean. We held off on the biopsy that had been scheduled for Tuesday, and instead had a PET scan on Wednesday. We were hoping to go home after the PET scan on Wednesday, but that’s when we first started talking about cancer.

The PET scan showed that the liver tumor lit up (as expected) and also highlighted a lymph node and a spot on the colon, but outside and not inside. Based on that, the doctors were now convinced that we did need to have the biopsy done to determine if it really was cancer and, if so, what kind. They scheduled the biopsy for first thing Thursday morning. But before that, the oncologist who was assigned to our case was going to sit down with us Thursday morning and go over what the big picture would look like for how they approach diagnosis and treatment.

Thursday morning, we met with the oncologist and had what I felt was a really good session, at least in terms of helping to assuage some of our concerns. Of course we wouldn’t know anything definitive until after the biopsy was analyzed, but we’d work with him as soon as the results came back in and develop the treatment plan from there.

Well, the physician who was going to do the biopsy got called in on an emergency issue, and so they brought in a different physician from another facility to do the procedure that afternoon. After they started prepping me for the procedure, it became evident that they wouldn’t be able to go straight for the tumor, they would instead have to go through the lung to get the liver tissue, and that meant another night in the hospital for observation, to make sure that the lung didn’t deflate or the incision site didn’t get infected, etc.

Fortunately, everything checked out Friday morning and we were allowed to leave the hospital (finally). We had to wait until yesterday to meet with the oncologist to get the results of the biopsy, but as mentioned above, we got as good news as we could have expected. The waiting, as usual, was the hardest part, and I’m still adjusting our pain management so that I can be as productive as possible but still get as much rest as possible, too.

So, there’s the story in a rather large nutshell. I’ll be posting updates back here as we get them (things like when the surgery gets scheduled, etc.) along with other related anecdotes. Anna and I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support we’ve received from our family and friends during this time. We are so blessed to have so many people who have been sending good thoughts our way!

For those who follow me on Twitter and Facebook, you saw a lot of updates from me this past week about being in the hospital, concluding with my release on Friday, but no real updates since then. Since what has been going on really can’t fit in 140 characters, I needed to take some time to collect and organize my thoughts to give everyone a full update about what has been going on with me for the last 6 weeks or so.

It looks like I may have cancer.

I have an appointment scheduled with an oncologist this coming Thursday to go over the results of a biopsy of liver tissue that was taken this past Thursday. There’s still a chance that the growth on my liver might not be cancer, but given the results of the PET scan from Wednesday, there’s also a strong indication that it is.

But we won’t know until Thursday, and that’s the personal hell that I’m living in now.

Those who know me well know I’m not a patient person. Yes, I can be patient when the situation calls for it, but on the inside I get all knotted up when I have to wait on really important matters.

There are so many questions spinning through my head. Is it cancer or not? If it is, what kind? Did we catch it early, or has it been growing a long time? What treatment options are there? Surgery? Radiation? Chemotherapy? How much more time will I have to spend in hospitals? Will the process take days? Weeks? Months? How is this going to impact my businesses? The music I’ve been doing? Will I have to cancel on other speaking commitments I’ve made for later in the year?

The worst part for me, right now, is that there’s really nothing I can do until Thursday when we start to get some of these questions answered. For someone who is more of a doer than a thinker, this is tough.

What I have been able to do, however, is decide that no matter what information we get on Thursday, I’m going to fight through. If I do have cancer, then I’ve decided that very soon I’ll be able to add “cancer survivor” to the list of my accomplishments. If there’s a treatment path to follow, I’m going to follow it. I’m not going to give up and take a “woe is me” approach. I’m going to follow the lead set by the local collegiate sports team we support and have a David vs Goliath attitude about all of this.

I come from a family of survivors, cancer and other. My wife’s family has a number of survivors. I know that this is not necessarily a death sentence. I’m thankful that this didn’t happen to me 100 years ago when the treatment options would have been few and far between. I have hope that this might still come back as an anomalous growth and not be cancer, but even if it is, I have hope that we’ll be able to get rid of it quickly and with as little discomfort as possible.

In the meantime, I have to cope. I have to somehow distract myself to keep my head from running continually through all the worst-case scenarios. I also have to do this while recovering from a week in the hospital where I went through a battery of tests, was on a very limited diet, and basically got very little sleep. I plan to be back at work on Monday, even if it’s on a limited schedule. I’ve still got two businesses to run and customers to take care of.

I greatly appreciate all of my friends and associates who have shared their support and concern this past week. It’s been overwhelming to be on the receiving end of so many thoughts and prayers. If I have one request that I could make for those who are so inclined, I would ask for prayers of strength for me and Anna and our families as we deal with this upcoming battle. Prayers of healing are also welcome, but right now we need strength and patience to get through this next week.

Thanks again to everyone who has asked after me this past week, and I hope this explains a little more about why I’ve been a bit vague at times about what was happening in the hospital. I really debated whether to hold off on posting anything until after Thursday when we meet with the oncologist, but I decided that I wanted to go ahead and get my thoughts collected and shared now rather than wait for another 5 days. That’s all for now, and I’ll be able to update more after Thursday when we have some hard data to start processing.

I’ve done a fair bit of writing in my time. I had kept a bibliography on the web at one point, but that page needs serious updating to cover the recent things I’ve done. Most specifically, I haven’t included the two books on Small Business Server that I wrote in 2005 and 2008 on that list. I also maintain three blogs (this one being my personal blog, my technical blog, and my MVP blog) , and contribute to my company’s blog and the blog over at Third Tier.

I don’t have a complete list, but I’ve also been writing music for nearly 25 years as well. The most notable compilation of those efforts is the album available over on iTunes (along with other digital distribution venues, but the iTunes link is the only one I have handy). One of my early blog efforts was a venue to share my musical creations and to try to get me in the habit of writing music on a regular basis (similar to what my brother has been doing of late).

I’m also in talks with my publisher about a couple of possible upcoming technical titles, even though I swore off major technical writing projects for a while after finishing the SBS 2008 Unleashed book. What can I say, I must just be a sucker for writing.

Which makes my announcement (well, more of a statement of fact, really) that I’ve been working on a series of mystery books for several year not really all that surprising. No, this isn’t any sort of press release that I’ve inked a deal with anyone to release the first book in the series or anything like that. It is, in fact, an admission. Not an admission of guilt, but an admission that any other writer will understand, an admission that it’s not just a passion I have for writing. It probably borders more on a sickness, but it is what it is. But the only cure I know of for this affliction is to succumb to the illness and write. In this case a blog post, but bigger things are afoot.

You see, earlier this morning, a little after 2am to be precise, I awoke from a dream with a major plot point for my mystery series firmly planted in my head. I often will drift off to sleep while running story details or character backgrounds in my mind while awaiting the sandman. Sometimes I dream about the stories, sometimes the dreams provide ideas that I can work into the stories. Tonight’s dream was the latter.

I finally realized how serious I am about actually crafting these mental notions into an actual publication when I got out of bed, came upstairs, made notes about the elements of the dream that so nicely packaged up a critical point in the series (this particular item doesn’t actually come to play until Book 3 in the series, but now knowing that it’s coming in Book 3, I can fully develop the set of characters impacted in Books 1 and 2) and then spent the next 90 minutes freewriting about the angle that had come to mind. And saved those thoughts. To a file that is stored in multiple locations. Just in case.

You see, I’ve had previous “Eureka!” moments regarding these stories that I have failed to notate anywhere, and those ideas ended up leaving my little grey cells, apparently never to return again. But not this idea. No, this element wraps up so many relationships that I was honestly having trouble putting together, so I couldn’t risk losing it. And in the act of digits pressing keys, my brain launched into a free association activity that gave me dozens of new elements to include in each of the 4 books that I’ve outlined thus far. Yes, it’s not bad enough that I’ve got this idea for just one book – I had to go and actually not only want to do a series, but actually came up with enough reasonable scenarios to get my protagonist into that the first four books came pretty easily. Well, the overall story outlines anyway. And now that I have the arc that ties them all together, well, it’s bringing me several steps closer to actually tackling this project seriously.

Although, since I’ve been working on this project in my head for at least six years, I guess it hasn’t just been a passing fancy. While I’ve always enjoyed reading mysteries, I never really got the idea that I could actually write one until sometime in 2003. Back then, I was working with a group of people who had a fondness for a particular card game, and we would regularly meet at lunch and play. Sometimes we would order food for delivery so we’d have longer to play since we wouldn’t have to wait for people to go get lunch before we could start playing. [And for those of you reading this who were in that group, it's been WAY too long since we've played, and we need to get the gang together again!] One afternoon, I posed the question about what would happen if someone died while we were playing (no, I don’t have a morbid streak, and there wasn’t anyone at the table I particularly wanted dead), which then turned into “what if someone were murdered while sitting at the game table?” The next natural progression was “and what if this all happened in outer space” and I was hooked. I started penning this missive at work (hey, I had received word that my team had been outsourced and since my position as manager wasn’t needed at the outsourcing firm I was getting laid off, so my motivations may have been a little different) and while the story came out OK, I clearly needed to work on my writing skills. I fully intended to get back to that story, but my next position took all kinds of time, and then after I started my own business, well, you can imagine what happened to “spare time” after that.

But while attending my 20-year reunion with my high school class, I had an encounter with a former classmate that planted the seed for a completely different kind of story, one that fit in with another idea that had been germinating in the back of my mind for a while. What if someone got murdered at a high school reunion? (really, I’m not that morbid, and again I have no death wish for anyone I attended classes with. seriously!) And what if the suspected killer was another attendee at the reunion? Yeah, I know the formula had been done before, but this chance encounter at my reunion gave me the twist that would keep a story based on that completely different from the others that have incorporated that setting. Only that couldn’t be the first book featuring those characters, they’d actually have to be introduced in a previous book, so this notion immediately became the idea behind Book 2. And if I really wanted to make it happen, I’d have to come up with an idea for Book 1.

Eventually, the storyline for Book 1 did come around, but not without lots of effort. And while I was working out details for Book 1 (I ended up purchasing a software package to help keep track of storylines and characters and notes), the inspirations for Books 3 and 4 came along as well.

Have I penned a single word that will ultimately end up in one of these books I have envisioned? Sure, and you’ve seen most of them here. In this post. Common words. Like “and” and “or” and “the” and “a” and “them” and “here.” Have I written the hook for the first book? Yep. Multiple times. Still trying to get it exactly like I want it. Part of that will be determined when I decide if this will be told in 1st person or 3rd person, but the jury is still out on that call. I have written the cliffhangers to end Books 1 and 2, but will probably revise those multiple times before I submit any kind of manuscript. I’ve also got a solid working outline for the first book, although I need to do some research to nail down a few plot elements in there. The second book outline is fairly complete, but still in its infancy. The overall story arc for the third book, and the first four in truth, is now much more clear, and Book 4 has finally come more into focus as well.

So now that I’ve decided that I’m really going to pursue this notion of converting at least one of these stories into a novel, I’m going to have to get serious about it. Which means doing actual research. Talking with actual people about these crazy notions in my head and seeing if I’m even close to on track with some of these ideas. Carving out time to enter all of this information into my software. Getting everything in order so that the only thing left to do is actually string together words in such a way that the reader gets from Point A to Point B along the line I’ve laid out for them, and enjoying the journey along the way.

Can’t be that hard, can it?

This week, I saw two great examples of how NOT to do things and the consequences that came down as a result. Ironically, both came from the world of collegiate athletics. One example you may be familiar with as the story has made national attention in sports media, the other example was witnessed by only a few people and shared with only a few others. But both incidents are really, really good examples, and since I try to learn from the mistakes of others (and not just from the myriad of mistakes I make all on my own), I’m certainly going to take these to heart.

Example #1: Texas Tech vs. Mike Leach

Now, I’m not taking a particular side on this issue, simply because I do not have all the facts and thus cannot take all factors into consideration. I don’t know exactly what transpired between coaching staff and player, nor was I a fly on the wall in the meeting where the decision to fire Leach was handed down. What I can say with almost absolute certainty is that the entire thing was handled poorly, and unfortunately Texas Tech has pretty much lost any credibility in the collegiate sports arena. There are so many ways this situation could have been handled, and I mean more than just the decision to place Leach on suspension or to fire him, that just about ANYTHING that the school had done differently would have been better than what has transpired. Sure, Tech may have been looking for an excuse, ANY excuse, to terminate the official relationship between school and coach, but is the damage that’s been done to the football program at Tech worth it? How many recruits that had committed to Tech, or were considering Tech, because of Leach are going to keep that commitment? How many current players, especially players who, right or wrong, think that Leach was mistreated by the school are going to look at other options where they might not have before? And what quality coaching prospect is going to even consider filling the sudden vacancy left in the program?

Some would say that this should serve as a “wake up call” to collegiate football coaching staffs. I think this is a “wake up call” for anyone who thought about affiliating themselves with the Texas Tech athletic program. If there is indeed documented evidence that proves that Leach violated the terms of his contract in the spirit of the agreement, there are ways that the coach could have been dismissed that would have landed far less egg on the school’s face. As long as Tech has been trying to gain respect in the Big 12, much less Division 1, any progress they’ve made over the past decade just got thrown out with the bath water.

Lesson leaned: avoid handling internal personnel matters in the national media, especially when the national media is predisposed to think you’re a few cards short of a full deck in the first place.

Example 2: Improper motivation

Earlier this week, two Division II women’s college basketball teams met for what should have been a run-of-the-mill regular season game. The two teams weren’t even from the same conference, so while no one likes to lose, the outcome of the game really had absolutely no significance for either team when it comes to conference post-season tournament seeding.

The coach of one of the teams decided his team needed a little extra motivation going into the game. So, while on the court with his team prior to the start of the game, he shared with his team his opinion of the expected performance from the other team. Unfortunately, he shared this opinion loudly enough that it was heard by at least the other team’s coach, and probably by players on the other team, and his opinion just happened to include the word “suck.”

His team promptly went out and got railroaded by 39 points. Not because they played poorly. In fact, given their score and shooting percentage, they had a decent game by all other counts. It’s just that when the opposing coach (and perhaps players) heard his proclamations, the team was energized to show everyone what they thought about his opinions. And they did, scoring well into the triple digits for the game.

Lesson Learned: If your team is coming into a sporting contest with a 2-10 record on the season, you might want to avoid telling your team how much the other team sucks, especially when the other team (and just about everyone else in the venue) can hear you.

As 2009 draws to a close, I’ve been thinking about how to summarize the year and use that as a source for one last blog post here before getting into 2010 and the insanity next year promises to bring (along with lots of good stuff, don’t get me wrong). So while I was sitting in the office waiting for the mail to get delivered so I could make one last run to the bank, I sat down to start collecting my thoughts for the end-of-year summary post.

Then I got distracted.

The kind of distracted you get when you’re totally unfocussed and stream of consciousness takes over and you just let yourself wander. At one point in my mental walkabout, the term “patient zero” popped into mind (no, I don’t recall the specific trigger for that though, it was just there). Curious about a number of possible meanings for the term “patient zero” I popped on over to Google to continue letting my mental fingers to the walking. From a Wikipedia page on “Index Case” I saw that there was a band named “Index Case” and wandered over to that link. That ultimately got me thinking that there might be a band named Patient Zero, and found that one, too. Then I decided to do the annual self-Google, only this time I Googled my old band name, not my own name.

For those who don’t know, I had a band in college (let’s not talk about how many years ago that was) called Green Chili Burp and the Aftertaste. The very brief history of the band (the full history in painful detail can be found on the “official” web site) is that we spent a lot of time practicing, developed a good bed of material, had one public performance, and then pretty much everyone involved in the band moved away. Before letting them escape for good, though, I managed to book time in a studio and the album Sacrificing Toasters to Alien Poets was born.

This was the first time in a long time I’d Googled “Green Chili Burp and the Aftertaste” and I was really surprised at the really large number of results I got back. Most were from music sites, as a few years ago I set up the album for digital distribution through iTunes and other online music resellers, and those links have really propagated. The one that really surprised me was the reference on Amazon.com.

I wasn’t surprised that the album and the individual tracks were available for purchase at Amazon.com (OK, yeah, I was, but not terribly since I’d gone through page after page of seeing download links for the tracks on other music sites). But the link that really surprised me was when I searched on Green Chili Burp and the Aftertaste in the Amazon search field. Down at the bottom of the list was a link for the album, Sacrificing Toasters to Alien Poets.

Only the link was labeled:

Sacrificing Toasters to Alien Poets [Explicit]

That just struck me as really, really funny, since the album isn’t “explicit” at all. In fact, the title track is instrumental, which got me wondering if you can label an all-instrumental album as “explicit” or not.

And that, dear readers, is when I decided to chuck the idea of a 2009 summary post and share the giggle I got out of finding the Green Chili album somehow got labeled as “explicit” by Amazon.com. So now you know. And I’m still chuckling about it.