Jen's Cancer Fight Message Board

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Stable Scan!!

Jen had another stable scan!! Thanks again for all the well wishes. Her next scan will be near the end of August right around the 3 year mark.

Monday, June 12, 2017

As I have mentioned on the blog previously, one of the things that Jen & I have greatly enjoyed doing for 12 years now is hosting a music party. For those of you unaware, the concept is simple - everyone contributes several personal song choices. During the party, everyone's songs are put into a massive playlist and the songs are randomly shuffled. We also compile the entire playlist onto a disc for everyone to take away so that they can revisit the songs later. The songs can be well known, obscure, or even rare. People share songs they are moved by, songs they love, songs they wish simply to shine a light on, songs that make you think, songs that make you feel, or songs that just make you want to dance. We again took the party on the road this year - earlier than usual as one of the couples will be moving to Spain for a year. We had a smaller group this year as unfortunately several people couldn't make it - hopefully we will have everyone together again for 2018. We rented this farm house in Santa Margarita, just south of Paso Robles. The house was on 350 private acres. Jen said that by the end, she was more relaxed than she had been in years. The weekend was a great chance to party, but also just relax and hang out with some dear close friends.

The cover to this year's music party disc.

For those of you interested in checking out Jen's picks for this year I have included links to her chosen songs for 2017.

Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y
PJ Harvey - Chain of Keys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWIJMzj5FlE
Radiohead - How To Disappear Completely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4UDbguMfNI
The Neville Brothers - Fire On The Bayou (Live From Wolfgang's Vault) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prHcurjdlnY
Depeche Mode - Slow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gjcMkNZBs4
Chuck Prophet - Summertime Thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8VfbC4gTww
Jimmy Cliff - Guns of Brixton (Live KCRW/2012): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tb8Q5I22ts
Elton John - Bennie And The Jets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFmAOpwD8lM
Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aeWicwy7fA
The Flaming Lips - Do You Realize??: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsjQH4ppQKg

Jen's next scan is this Thursday. Please as always keep us in your thoughts and prayers. I will post the scan results when we get them.

And now for some pictures from the weekend.

View from the front porch - We all sat around a fire on Friday night.

Paul & Rich jamming.

Morning coffee!

Chrissy holding Rufus.

Jen relaxing.

Jen and I along with Paul (taking the photo) on a hike through the property

Friday, May 26, 2017

A quick update and lots of photos

As I mentioned prior to Jen's last stable scan, Jen had three seizures the week before the scan. She did have 1 more seizure two days following the scan. She then went three weeks without any seizures until this last Sunday when she had two more. They were all small seizures. Unfortunately, her appointment with her seizure specialist at UCLA was moved (for the second time), so we are now about a month away from being able to get in to see anyone in that department. Hopefully, she will remain seizure free until then. Other than the three small seizures since I last blogged, Jen has been doing well. She has had increasing issues with insomnia which contributes to her fatigue. Jen doesn't bounce back as quickly as most of us when she has trouble getting a good night's sleep. Jen's next scan is on June 15th.

I usually try to remind everyone in the beginning of the month that May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month - Go Gray for May! Sorry for just now getting to this - it is still May though. There will be about 80,000 new diagnoses of Brain Cancer this year in the US alone. About every 32 minutes a man, woman, or child dies from brain cancer. Hopefully, an impact can be made and these numbers can be reduced. I have included some important links for Brain Cancer awareness and information for those who are interested.

http://www.abta.org

http://braintumor.org/

https://virtualtrials.com/index.cfm

https://virtualtrials.com/musella.cfm

In November of this year, there is a walk for Brain Cancer in Los Angeles and Jen wants to organize a team this year to raise money. I will post the details later on - I hope we can get a large number of people from LA together to support Jen. The date is Saturday, November 4th, so save the date!

We have actually been up to a lot in the last 2 months.

In the beginning of March, we attended our third weekend long Brain Tumor Conference at UCLA. As always, this was insightful and a great source of comradery.

We also managed to get in a 3 day vacation in mid March when we went to Anza Borrego where they were experiencing a super bloom of wildflowers due to all the recent rain in California. It was perhaps the best display they have had in about 20 years and we were fortunate to be able to go see it at it's peak. It was amazing and Jen even managed to do about a 2 mile hike in the desert heat over uneven ground. About 2 weeks later we went to the California Poppy Reserve for their peak. Jen loves the wildflowers, unfortunately her allergies do not. She has had her worst allergy season in decades due to all the abundant blooming this year. She has tried taking an antihistamine on several occasions, but we have noticed a possible correlation between her taking one and her seizures. Although uncommon, some of the modern antihistamines can apparently lower the seizure threshold in some people. It may just be coincidental, but just in case Jen has stopped taking anything other than eye drops. We plan to discuss this when we finally get in to see the seizure specialist.

We also managed to take in a few concerts. As promised, here are some photos - there are a lot.