Vince's Journey

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's holiday season. We had a great time on our annual ski trip to Holiday Valley...the only down side was that one of the members of our group, Doug Fiessinger apparently blew out his ACL and MCL...he'll learn more this week after he visits a local doctor but the doc at the emergency care facility was pretty confident he blew it out.

As we start the new year, we'll also get more aggressive at treating my lymphoma. Tomorrow (January 3rd) I get my first CHOP chemotherapy/Rituxan treatment and we'll continue this every three weeks for 6-8 treatments. Following the Rituxan treatment in December Dr. Leming told me I should notice that the lymph nodes are significantly smaller and they are. That is obviously encouraging! So we'll just continue to bombard away at the lymphoma until it is gone.

On Friday I'll have a port put in to make future infusions a lot easier to administer. And the next time many of you see me the chances are I probably will be be in the process of losing my hair....fortunately I have a bunch of hats!

So the wild ride is truly set to begin. I continue to feel pretty good. In fact, over the holidays is the best I've felt for a while. I'm more at ease and relaxed. That will probably rise a bit tomorrow during the chemo treatment but once I know what I'm dealing with, I think it'll be a little easier mentally. (At least I hope it will be!)

The only thing left to say is....GO BUCKS!!! There's a big game later this afternoon and hopefully the Buckeyes will be able to show Notre Dame that they still have a ways to go before they can say they're truly back.

I'll keep you all postedon the events of this week. Peace and blessings to all!!