Special Info: News on my current physical condition.

The disease has progressed pretty rapidly over the past several months -- as you can see from my birthday pics in April I was up and around. I'm no longer receiving treatment for the actual cancer. (Though there are tumors in my lungs and shoulder.) We're in the "symptom management" stage of treatment now, and what they call 'palliative care' -- we're involved with Hospice and all that, the purpose being to try to make me as comfortable as possible.

I've had trouble breathing so I use oxygen, a nebulizer, and dexamethasone (an adrenocortical steroid) to ameliorate the swelling in my lungs and around the tumor in my neck (which seems to be pressing against the nerves that run up to my right eye, making my lid droopy and interfering with pupil dilation, known as Horner's syndrome.) However the steroid renders my long skeletal muscles mushy, and interferes with the fit of my prosthesis and so I have a hard time walking and moving about. These reasons mean I'm stuck in and around the bed -- and that my mom takes phone calls. We're also trying Azmacort, an inhalable steroid, and albuterol sulfate, a "bronchodilator," inhaled with the nebulizer (besides the regular salt water I usually use in the nebulizer) to try and help me breathe, and minimize the need for the dexamethasone. Still, increased it to 10mg this week.

Forty-five milligrams time-release morphine (MS Contin) is what helps me stay 'comfortable,' along with liquid morphine sulfate (Roxanol) which also helps my breathing a bit -- had switched pain med over from acetaminophen/oxycodone (Tylox) combo a few weeks ago when we called Hospice.

Appetite's good, spirit's generally high -- the meds, mind's still fairly sharp -- despite the meds. ;) Other internal organs are continuing to work well, even though now I take 2 Peri-Colase a day to help keep my bowels moving every day. Usually much more is required when you start taking morphine, because narcotics have a tendency to make the bowels a bit sluggish. (A couple spoonfuls of blackstrap molasses helps -- everyone should take it.)

These shoulder pics are visual documentation of my shoulder from the first week in June. The scabbiness and redness on my shoulder were from the radiation treatments -- so that's gone now. Here are more recent shoulder pics below them. My right arm's much smaller now as well because of the steroid -- but not functional. Loosing function in my left hand and arm as well, rendering me bedfast, (and making this [updating the website, emails, etc.] difficult). Defecation in bed today (08.27) because of this arm.

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In conclusion, my gut feeling is that I'm going to be healed -- "I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord" -- despite what the physical conditions look like (and feel like, for me). I hate the condition my body is in right now. My hobby is trying most to keep the thing [body] going -- trying to make sure I'm doing the right amount of meds with the least side effects -- to keep from overdoing anything, to keep from underdoing anything. I hate this situation. Why am I going through this? And why am I coming so close to dying? (Well, for some people it is obvious -- I've got cancerous tumors growing in my body and they're killing it, and after two and a half years they're almost done.) Wow, I don't know! It's not easy. Yet, "...God is an ever-present help in time of trouble." And the reality is, for me, it's still a win/win situation: our bodies will all die in relatively short order anyway, but, "for me, to live is Christ, and to die is to gain even more," because "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." 08/27/02

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Kenneth won, for "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." He went to be with Jesus, September 30, 2002.