No Surgeries? We Can Fix That

First, I want to thank those who participated in the poll to pick my cover. I have selected and finalized the design. So, without further ado...

I am very pleased with how it turned out. I feel it does an excellent job embodying my story and the truth of what life after cancer is really like.

My next post will talk more about the book, including its release date and an excerpt. Information regarding my book can be found here, or at the top of the page in the Memoir: Surviving the Cure section. 

Now, I want to share what has been going on the past few weeks with me.

A few weeks ago, I realized something astonishing. I didn't have a single surgery all of last year! That's right, 2016 is the first year I've gone without surgery since...well, I was diagnosed actually. That didn't sit well with me, so I'm having two surgeries—and possibly up to four—to make up for it. For sure, I know I have to replace my right knee (I did a partial replacement in 2012, but the damage in the original part of the bone causes a lot of pain). Also, I have a screw loose—but let's get back to surgery. I'll be having an arthroscopy on my right ankle to clear out arthritis and remove the screws from my 2010 ankle allograft (replacement). I also have to get my left knee replaced (same situation as right knee), and might have the rest of the screws removed from my left ankle (I had one removed in November 2015), but whether those take place this year or the next is still up in the air. But having both knees replaced will bring me up to 11 joints replaced—one off tying the world record! 

No, not THAT World Record!

Yesterday, I had my hips checked out. They've been hurting for the last few months. However, the doctor said they looked fine. I was glad to hear that, but then a little part of me whispered, "Yeah, but now you have to wait to replace them and get the record!" So...bummer? Somewhat conflicted, but definitely leaning toward being happy not to have to hack off my body parts.

On a different track, I've been engaging more in the cancer community, in particular the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's online forum. Mostly, I give advice to people and discuss what life after cancer is really like, not what most people think. It's messy, there's usually numerous complications and problems (see world record attempt), and the amount of support is drastically reduced compared to when someone is actually going through cancer treatments. But that's why I'm writing my story, to educate the public on the reality of survivors. My goal is to help advocate for survivors to help get them the best quality of life possible. Fingers crossed. 

Until next time,

~Andrew

End of Absentia

Hello all,

I guess I'm back. I mean, I am back, but the question of whether I shall remain back has yet to be answered. I suppose we'll all find out together.

The good news is that the surgery discussed in the previous post (I will end up getting to the Coming Soon section, but not now) went very well. It turns out that, in addition to the bone spurs, one of the screws from my ankle allograft in 2010 was loose, so that was taken out during surgery as well (I told him that another doctor said it might be loose, "I've known for years that I've had screws loose, but this is the first I've heard about the one in my ankle"). That was early November. It's been healing up very well, the pain is down and the flare ups of pain have become much less frequent. I'd call that a success. It has been good enough that I did a lot of walking on our family vacation to Oahu this last week (by the way, we went to Oahu), although my ankles weren't particularly pleased and I did spend some time in a wheelchair because of how painful and swollen the ankles were getting (see right: wearing a tight ankle brace does not really mesh well with very swollen ankles/legs). I'm planning on sitting and icing my ankles for the next couple days, that way my ankles return to normal as soon as possible.

After the surgery, I started to feel like I was returning to the mental state that had plagued me at almost the exact same time a year ago. It felt like my mind was beginning to slip again, and fear of pushing myself too hard and taking on too much led me to pull away from the world and try to keep my stress and anxiety levels as low as I could to avoid having another total nervous break. I'm hoping that I'm more stable now, and that this three-month hiatus can be broken without too much worry that I'm overreaching. It really bothers me, I feel like more of an invalid than I ever did with the physical problems, having my definition of "overreaching" be talking to people, writing, and taking a couple classes to finish up community college (which also bothers the intellectual in me, but after two failed attempts at UC schools due to bone collapses, I just don't want to go through the hassle for a third time until I'm in a much better physical, mental, and emotional state). But I've learned over the years that I can't compare myself to anyone else, or, at least, I shouldn't compare myself to anyone else, which is nearly impossible I'd like to add. It's a hard lesson, harder still to live by, but I'm doing my damnedest to follow it and take care of myself to the best of my ability, even if it feels a lot like failing (I just need to ignore that, it's hard, but I'm trying).

Inspirational metaphor goes here

Despite all this, I've been able to take some measure of comfort and hope from my memoir (Life Has No Title). A few weeks after my surgery, I decided that I'd spent enough time trying to save money by chopping bits out and sent it off to the editor. Soon, I hope to have it back so I can take a look at the notes and start with the finishing touches to have the writing and editing portion of this project complete. Then I'll be able to turn my focus toward marketing and networking, which is something I'm a bit antsy about, but at least I have faith that the memoir can do a lot of good and it's my hope that knowledge will help get me through potential rough spots that might come up in the final stages of completion. It also helps a great deal that the editor has already somewhat eased the anxiety about how good my book actually is by being kind enough to let me know that she likes the voice and the content and thinks it could be helpful to others. The narrative tone was my biggest worry about the writing aspect of the book, so that's a bit of a load off my mind. I'm really looking forward to reading her notes and starting work again on this project. I've been doing some writing in the interim, although more dabbling than anything else.

I think that's a good-sized post for now. I'm getting weird vertigo while looking at the screen, so I'm thinking this is a good stoping point. Hope all y'all had a good (insert preferred winter-related holiday here) and will have great 2016s.

~Andrew

When Surgery is Good News

Hey readers,

So we're going to be going with a relatively short post this day. I suppose it's a good thing, not having that much to report and update you on. Mostly it'll be focused on news with my ankle.

After getting an MRI and some x-rays, I finally managed to get in to see my new ankle specialist. I went through the whole routine of filling out paperwork and running out of room where it says "List all surgeries with approximate dates" and having various nurses and doctors saying "Wow, aren't you a bit young for all this?" and "I'm sorry you had to go through all that." It's funny to see trained medical professionals act with the same stunned uncertainty that I see when "normal" people find out about my medical past and can't figure out how to express their pity and/or sympathy properly. But I did like the doctor, he listened to my opinions (I can't work with doctors that assume I know nothing and won't factor in my suggestions or treat me like an ignorant child), showed me what he saw in the MRIs and x-rays, and freely admitted that this was an extreme case and, rather than go forward assuming he knew best, wanted to get the opinions of some other doctors to see what they thought. I always like that, because I've had more than my fair share of arrogant doctors who think they know best and then turn out to be totally wrong.

The bone spurs are visible just to
the left of the screws

There is some separation of the bones that
is usually associated with older people

Now let's get into the specifics about the ankle. The x-rays and MRIs showed that there are some bone spurs on the inside portion of my left ankle, no real news there. However, he also spotted a stress fracture on the medial malleolus (lower tip of the tibia), which is right above where most of the pain has been located. It might be possible that at least some of the pain comes from this stress fracture. These are all pretty sedate problems for me, things can will either heal on their own or require basic surgery (which I'll discuss shortly) to fix.

The black areas surrounded by white
are where the AVN is most noticeable
(A dove-shaped area above and a
bridge-shaped area directly below that)

However, the MRIs showed a much more serious potential problem in the future. Back in 2010 I had ankle allografts on both ankles (basically removing part of my ankle and replacing it with donor bone) that helped with the damaged portions of my bones caused by AVN (a degenerative bone disease I got as a result of my cancer treatment's treatment, my not so little souvenir I picked up when I had to survive the cure). These donor bones were healthy and over the last few years they've looked very good on x-ray, everyone's been impressed by them. But looking at the MRIs of the ankle, the specialist saw that the AVN was now starting to affect the fresh, healthy bone. The AVN is very pronounced in the lower "knob" of the tibia and also in part of the talus (the part that had been replaced five years ago). Although it probably isn't causing my pain now, since AVN usually only hurts when it reaches the surface of the bone, which it hasn't done yet in the aforementioned areas, it will require additional surgery at some point. It could be years or decades from now, or it could be months, it's hard to say. Basically it'll happen when the pain comes back because of the AVN or if the structure collapses like it did back in 2009, which is what prompted the surgery in the first place.


Fortunately, the AVN is not an immediate problem, but it is something to keep an eye on. The more immediately problem (bone spurs) are a lot easier to fix. My doctor would prefer to be on the cautious side and err toward a minimalistic approach to healing, which I can totally get behind. The plan is to do arthroscopic surgery, which uses a small camera and instruments to see and clean out the damaged areas of the ankle, and then see if that helps sideline the pain for a little bit. Compared to the huge joint replacement surgeries I'm so familiar with, this is far less intrusive and debilitating. After the surgery, the specialist wants to see me every 6-12 months to get images of my ankle so we can check on its progress and catch any further damage early on, before it has a chance to morph into something major. Until the surgery, I've been given orthotics and a brace to help take some of the weight off of my ankle and alleviate the pain as much as possible. And I'll be back to using my cane to take weight off of my ankle. (The doctor felt bad for me, since I would "stick" (terrible pun) out, but told me I could use it to whack people. I think that's the moment I realized how much I liked this guy. Beating people with canes always makes me think of the man who tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson and the 67-year-old president wailed on the guy with his cane). All in all, it feels like this is something that can be taken care of easily and I'll be able to move past it with relative ease. I don't have a date yet for the surgery, but I'm supposed to get a call from the doctor's surgery scheduler to get that sorted out.

Until then, I'm going to keep chugging along and staying productive.
Ciao

Coming soon:
Keep an eye out for the next blog post, which will throw some hard truths and harsh spotlights on an issue that underlies everything in my life, and in the lives of millions and millions of other cancer patients and survivors.

PS: I don't think this was nearly as short as I thought it would be. Sorry for accidentally lying to you.

Another Milestone Down, Another Surgery Up

G'day errybody!

It has been an extremely hectic month, to say the least. I've been busy trying to sort out all the stuff from the last post and then some! Mostly I've been focused on the memoir and my physical health, although I have also started back up school. I've been able to get enough strength around my knee at physical therapy to avoid knee replacement surgery (yay). However, as I mentioned before, I do have a couple bone spurs in my ankles (boo). I'm going to have an appointment with an ankle specialist (my old one moved to Seattle shortly after I had the double ankle allograft) in a couple weeks to see what the best option is, but I'll likely have surgery to get the bone spurs removed. It's not as bad as it sounds actually. It's relatively minor, so much so that I could probably just do myself by this point. I might as well have the surgeon cut me open, point me in the right direction, and I'll chip the spurs away myself. Otherwise, my health has been rather quiet and uneventful. And you know what? I'll take uneventful with little change, it sure as hell beats the alternative that seems so dreadfully
common with me.

This is kinda how surviving feels

Onto writing news. I have finished the third draft of my memoir (yay)! It's kind of intimidating that I'm getting so close to having my book published. However, I have been getting some very positive feedback from a couple college professors that read the manuscript. I've been reassured that my book is an important part of helping to get awareness up about the many issues that face a cancer survivor. Both acute and chronic, from mental to physical to emotional, there are a great many pitfalls that await those freshly gifted with remission when there doesn't need to be. Lack of information and attention to what can be the most difficult part about cancer has constantly made my attempts to rebuild my life extremely difficult. So I am hoping that with this book and speaking events and the like I can do my part to make survivorship (the part of a cancer patient's tribulation that comes after the cancer is beaten back) just a little bit easier for the millions and millions of survivors and patients out there (which is the reason for starting the Surviving the Cure Facebook page that I'm hoping will gather momentum and help a bit with that awareness. If you feel so inclined, please like it and share it with your friends). Being reminded of my goal and told that this book has great potential to achieve it, well, that's a good vaccine against the anxiety and nerves surrounding the publication. At the moment, Nick and I are reading each other's books and helping to guide the other in the right direction and polish both our manuscripts up. And slim them down so we can cut down on costs when we send our stuff out to the editor.

Of course, even with the books finished we still have the networking and marketing aspect to take care of as well. Luckily, one of Nick's friends is a photographer (a very high-caliber one at that) who took some head shots of us for when we start the marketing campaigns. They turned out really well. I might actually use some for a more personal use. If I ever need eHarmony of something, I'll definitely be putting one of Keshav's pictures up there.

Nick and I | Credit: Keshav Dahiya

In addition to all of that, I've been working on a couple short stories. Plus a whole bunch of ideas that came rushing out of nowhere in a massive creativity dump over the last few days. Not that I'm complaining, I love creativity dumps. I just wish, you know, that they wouldn't be so distracting and alluring. To me, they're like sirens trying to call me away from the memoir and all the other things that need taking care of. I hear them whispering: "Bundy, Bundy, come write us. Write us good!" To which I usually reply: "You mean 'well'! It's 'well', not 'good'!" Then people ask if I'm okay and give me that look reserved for strangers that you can't quite be sure aren't totally insane. I mean maybe I am, but that's more fun than being normal in my mind. Normalcy is uber overrated.

So those short stories. One of them I'm planning to shop around to see if any magazines or something will want to publish it. It's a short mostly non-fiction piece about my dad's summiting of Mount Aconcagua in the Andes (highest peak outside the Himalayas). The other is a more standard short story for me, which I recently posted on my author page on Facebook. I'll start you out with the beginning at the end of this post and if you want to read on, go ahead and check out the rest of it on the Facebook page. While you're there, feel free to like it! I'll be posting excerpts from my memoir and other pieces of writing there from time to time.

Many thanks to you all, have a splendid day/night/dawn/dusk/what-have-you.

Catfishing

Sitting outside, Myles realized that his plan to flush out the potential catfish was severely flawed. Sure, it probably wasn’t an old guy, but just because some girl sounded hot didn’t necessarily mean she was. “Dammit! Please, God, let her be hot. I’d give anything for her to be the hot, funny, wonderful girl she claims to be.” Maybe it was God, or maybe it was his subconscious, a little cocaine-snorting Freud sitting next to an empty couch who spoke, but the answer came to him either way: Only one way to find out.

The house was small, boring, unassuming. It didn’t fit into his picture of where such a stunning and special person like her would live. Though he couldn’t exactly figure out what that picture was, he at least knew this wasn’t it. Myles heard his friend Zachary’s voice whispering “Catfish” in the back of his mind. Try as he might to shoo it away, he could not quite rid himself of that treasonous doubt. With a sigh and a stomach full of writhing creatures, Myles stepped out of the car and closed the door, absently locking his car as he frowned at the driveway. It looked no different from any other driveway in America. What was he expecting? A driveway made of red carpet? “Go Myles,” he muttered under his breath. He couldn’t. Instead, he found himself rooted to the spot, paralyzed by the possibility that Zachary was right, that he’d been duped. But he’d seen her picture, heard her voice, how could she be anyone but who she claimed to be?

To see if Myles gets the girl or if Zachary is right and he gets the hook, read on at: https://www.facebook.com/andrewbundybooks

Gathering Momentum

Hello faithful readers!

I am happy to say that it has been an incredibly busy few weeks, and not in a bad way (mostly)! I've made a lot of progress along many different fronts and am trying to keep that momentum going and going and going. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I KNOW I can! Shall we begin?

First and foremost, I am beyond ecstatic to announce the end of the second draft of my memoir! I managed to take out a rather large chunk of useless tangents (put in the rough draft mostly to take the edge off the agonizing task of remembering the things I spent years trying to forget) and am that much closer to being finished with this whole project. In the near future, I'll be able to submit the work to an editor that Nick and I have settled on and from that point on I think it'll be a bit more work and then we can safely put this whole memoir thing behind us. Quite frankly, as important as I think my book is (I can't afford modesty at this point), the allure of fiction is always the siren song trying to pull me off track. I'll admit, I have done some work on some side projects, but the goal is to publish the memoir before I ramp up my efforts for the next major project (which I've already decided on and I giddy as all get out to plow straight into). I do find the fiction to be a nice release, especially from the more challenging parts of the memoir, but it's a constant battle to keep myself from sliding so easily back into my preferred genre. On a side note: I wrote a short story that I really liked. It's nice, I haven't finished a short story in quite some time, so you can imagine how satisfying that is to work on something so fun and familiar.

To learn more about the memoirs Nick and I are working on, you can read the article in the Poway magazine 92064 called Memoirs Recount Challenges Faced by Two Poway High School Graduates

The other major mark of progress is my work at physical therapy. As mentioned in my last post, I've been strengthening the muscles in my legs to compensate for what could be further degeneration in the bones or some other issue that has yet to be fully diagnosed. I know that the ankle pain in my left ankle is caused by a bone spur (see right) that I'll probably have to do something about soon. But over the last few months the pain has been getting progressively worse. However, because of all the work at PT, I've been able to slow down a lot of the pain's progression and even prevent it from getting worse at all in some instances. I'm definitely a lot stronger than I have been in years, with the full compliment of joints replaced and feeling somewhat like I did before this journey of mine began more than eight years ago. It's amazing to me how long it's been. I can no longer remember what it's like to be a healthy person, what having hair is like, dealing with the issues that once seemed all-consuming in high school and now seem infinitely petty after the long Odyssey.

I've also been doing my best to prevent myself from pulling away again. Although I have not updated the blog in a while, I've been on other social media outlets for short bursts of time and have been trying to get out to see friends and get out of the house on occasion. I finally put up the Facebook page as my "official" author page (whatever it's called), which I will post a brand new short story (see above) if I manage to get 50 likes by the end of August. I will also be pulling my collection of short stories On The Fringes of Awareness by the end of the year as I switch from Amazon to another company that will allow me more control over my works.

In addition, and more importantly, I've started the Surviving the Cure page on Facebook as well. Its goal is something I've talked about semi-regularly on this blog, and indirectly focused on for the entirety of it, to spotlight post-cancer issues that cancer survivors must face after they are in remission and trying to rebuild their lives (the life lived after diagnosis and beyond is called survivorship). Anybody who has read at least a couple posts on here knows that surviving cancer is way more than just surviving cancer. It's trying to put your life back together after so many trials and tribulations and finding that the journey is only just beginning. It varies from person to person, and undoubtedly I'm an extreme case, but perhaps that's why I'm able to speak from experience about the multitude of challenges that survivors have to face after they escape cancer's grasp. If you go to the Facebook page for Surviving the Cure, there's a detailed mission statement and, similar to the author page, if 50 people like the page, I'll be putting an excerpt from my memoir up as a thank you for helping get the word out there about the difficulties involved with surviving and rebuilding a life left in tatters from the scorched Earth war against cancer.

What I'm trying to do is get the message out there, so if you would be so inclined to share not only the Facebook page, but also this blog, with your friends and the like, it would be a good first step toward helping spread awareness about how difficult life can be when you're cancer-free. (Damn that's catchy, if somewhat dark). It's a subject rarely discussed, even with oncologists treating you for your cancer, and as a result there is substantially less support in place for survivors. Many are forced to tread water and figure out how to cope and fix the side effects from the treatments, on top of the after-effects of the cancer itself, used to save their life. Whether those side effects be physical, mental, or emotional, there needs to be a better system of support in place to ease survivors' transition back into society and a semi-normal life. My hope is that the farther this message gets spread and the more people learn about just how painful and difficult picking up the pieces can be, in some instances its even harder than the cancer itself, we can be that ray of knowledge that pierces the dark clouds of ignorance about one of the hardest challenges any survivor will ever have to face. (I'll admit, I just added that last part to justify putting the picture in. I needed to compensate for the lack of cute little animals that I normally put in because that's what people like to see. Here, tell you what...

You're welcome)

Thank you in advance for sharing,
Andrew