9/27/10 – A Rebirth…
There is something to say about watching your life move through tubes and syringes. Monday was my Stem-cell transplant. The culmination of all the treatments, hospital stays, IV’s, doctor visits, name bands, paperwork and stress all came down to a one hour period of time. There was a huge out pour of emotion and tears were shed.
9/29/10
After two nights of sleeping like hell, woke up to Erika having to head home to work and deal with reality. I didn’t want her to leave but she needs to get home. I knew she was headed up the hill today. It been nice having her around lately…
Fatigue is starting to set in and looking the side effects are creeping up. Its interesting to see and feel ones body tweak out from the procedure. My body is going “what the fuck did you just do to me?” There are two things that I am going to concentrate on for the next two to three weeks. nutrition and exercise. I need to feed those new cells and I need to get them oxygen too.
All the doctors think that im doing great and im going to do everything in my power to expedite my recovery. Im not neutropenic yet, at that will change by tomorrow (neutropenic means that my body is at its most susceptible to infection). I got a hall pass to go out side for a short moment so definitely going to be taking advantage of that. So now its about hanging out and letting my body do its thing.
In august, I met up with a gentleman named Devon O’neal who has been doing freelance writing around summit county. Nic Drago mentioned to him that we should do an article for ESPN. Well yesterday the article ran and I’ve been getting a bunch of good response from it all. Click here to check it out. I want to thank Brad Steward, Jeff Curtes, Gary Land, Justin Hostynek, Frank Wells, Todd Richards, my brother Chris, Mom and Dad, and Erika, Rayna and Kalina for helping me get it done.
Hey Todd, I was just browsing espn.com and saw your picture and knew your photo was a picture of someone getting chemo. The reason I knew it was because I have had Hodgkin's and chemo as well about 2 years ago but am doing better now. I enjoyed reading the article and wish you good luck man!
Came across your ESPN article, your story is such an inspiration. I wanted to let you know about a friend, Jack Shimko who is in the middle of a 150-mile open ocean paddle marathon to support cancer research. Let's kick cancer in the butt.
paddle2live.org