A guy with no taste

Just when I thought I escaped my radiation therapy with almost no side effects, I lost my sense of taste this week. It came on slowly, last Sunday. At my celebratory Red Lobster gorge, I was left less than satisfied, but I chalked it up not having been to RL in about 4 years. Then, we bought all kinds of great looking fruit at Costco, and I was disappointed in all of it. The strawberries looked ripe but had no sweetness, and the grapes were simply awful, tasted like water. And on Monday I was certain the cereal I had for breakfast was stale or something because it didn't taste right either. Then in the afternoon I got a crazy metallic taste in my mouth, like when you lick a 9-volt battery (what?? you've never done this?? clearly you didn't grow up having somebody like my sister around), I figured out what was going on Tuesday, after thinking about Becca's chipotle shrimp I had eaten Monday night, and how it just tasted bland and greasy (its usually spicy as hell and fantastic). And when I looked up "RAI and taste" on Google, sure enough, about half the people who go through radioactive iodine lose their taste at about 10 days later.

So, I have been dealing with that, but its no big deal. Just kinds sucks. What's weird is that while my sense of sweet, sour, and salty is totally gone, I can detect bitter, So, coffee is still pretty good, just tastes like its black whether I put sugar in it or not. And chocolate all tastes like its extra dark. Fritos, a mainstay of my diet, are absolutely disgusting, like soap. Tonight we got Applebees take out, and I thought I could tast the salt on the fries, so maybe my sense of salt is coming back. From what I have read this shouldn't last more than a month.

I've still been feeling great otherwise. I was going for 5 out of 5 work days riding to work this week, but I only got 3. Wednesday I was way too sore to bike to work after having done a brick plus weights on Tuesday. Yep, I had my first run since June 21 (mile 14 of IMCDA), it was 3 miles and I felt pretty good. And on Friday it rained its butt off here, so I canned it. This week I will try to run to work at least twice (9 miles per day). I like having these commuting goals as a good way to get back in shape.

Life is returning to normal

What a week! I am finally back to feeling like my old self. I owe this entirely to Synthroid. It was unbelievable to be thinking clearly at my job, doing house chores, and generally feeling awesome again. It makes me feel so bad for people who have undiagnosed hypothyroidism.

I had my last cancer-related doctors appt on Thursday: a post-RAI whole body scan. It came back clean, with only residual thyroid bed and most of the left side of my neck (former site of the tumor) lighting up on the scan. The RAI should kill it all off in the next few weeks. So the nuclear medicine doctor said I am good to go for a year. I'll have a few endocrine appts over the next couple months to get my snythroid dose right, but other than that I am done with cancer stuff for awhile. It feels so good to write that! We had a celebratory dinner at Red Lobster last night, courtesy of my in-laws. Thanks!

And I rode to work twice this week, so I guess I have returned to training somewhat. Though no plans to race in 09 still. Just getting back to normalcy feels like plenty for me for right now!

One last shout out to my buddies Jason and Scott who raced Timberman this weekend. Nice races guys! I gotta get up to NH and do that one now that I live in the Northeast.

Bring on the 'roids

No, I'm not doping...synth"roid" (levothyroxine) is what I'm talking about. Today I started taking replacement thyroid hormone and I think I am starting to feel better already. I went to the park with the girls this morning, and then used my chainsaw to cut down a bunch of wild bushes in front of my house this afternoon. Lots more energy than I have had lately. I'll go to work tomorrow, and if I make it strong all day I'll consider biking to work on Tuesday.

Even hotter man: RAI big dose

Yesterday I went back to nuclear medicine for my whole body scan and got a couple of pieces of good news. One, my scan didn't light up anywhere except my thyroid bed, which means my cancer probably hasn't metastasized. And two, the doctors were able to accelerate the schedule of my big radiation dose to yesterday afternoon. So, to avoid having to drive back home and back downtown, I killed a couple of hours in center city Philadelphia. It was very cool but also odd to be doing touristy things like walking around Independence Hall, visiting Ben Franklin's grave, and seeing the Liberty Bell, knowing that in just a few hours I'd be taking on more radiation than anybody should normally get in a lifetime. But it was a good way to pass the time.

When I got back to the clinic, they told me my pill was being walked over from the radiation safety department. A really nice guy with "nuclear physicist" embroidered on his lab coat showed up and formulated my pill to 107.1mCi, and then we chatted a little bit about isotope half lives and such (we both geeked out a little, I think he was as excited to talk to a patient who finally understands what he does as I was curious to be learning about what exactly I'd be swallowing). Taking the pill was a little freaky. First of all, you have to go get it from a chemical fume hood (131-I is an inhalation hazard as well), remove it from a lead vial, and then slam it back with a full glass of water. They have you do all this yourself so the nurses won't get any extra exposure. So, after I downed it, the physicist measured me with a Geiger counter, and told me to go directly home. Because this procedure used to involve an overnight stay in the hospital, they have to be positive that if they send you home you won't go in public or endanger anybody for the next couple days. So I drove straight home and went right to the bedroom.

And that's pretty much where I have been the last 29 hours since I took the pill. I didn't notice any really bad side effects, only a little nausea, and pain in my neck and salivary glands. I will say I did everything I could to avoid side effects, like drinking a ton of water, and sucking on lemon candies non-stop (stimulates salivary glands, a common side effect is losing a salivary gland or two for a few weeks). And when I say I drank a lot, I mean it. I read a guy's blog who said he drank a gallon of water per day when he had RAI and that helped clear the excess radiation fast. So, being a naturally competitive person (and a triathlete out of commission, I need a competitive outlet!), I aimed to double this. Between 4PM and bed time last night I drank 1.5 gallons, and today I hit 2 gallons. Which means A LOT of peeing. I did leave the room around 4PM to take my dogs on a long walk. Though I had been feeling really hypothyroid the past two days, this afternoon I got a jolt of energy, which I think came from laying down for nearly 24 hours, not to mention 10 hours of sleep last night. I even mowed my lawn after the dog walk, but it kicked my ass, and I am totally spent now. By far the highlights of my day were the picture Elena drew for me (winnie the pooh in pink and orange scribbles) and the take-n-bake pizza Becca (who is known on my FB page today as the "hot nurse") made for dinner. Ahhh...cheese, I have missed you! I am off the low-iodine diet and loving it.

Tomorrow I can officially re-enter the world, though I still have to take a lot of precautions. Especially with Elena, no lap sitting for at least two weeks, and no hugs or kisses. I mainly need to do two things: keep people at a distance and watch where my body fluids are going...which I geuss is pretty good advice for just about any situation! I can also start Synthroid tomorrow, and should begin climbing back out of my state of hypothyroidism. That will be nice.

Hot Man: my RAI Therapy - small dose

Yesterday for breakfast I ate 5 milliCuries of radioactive iodine-131. It was quite the experience. This is the "tracer dose" I am given to check for thyroid cancer metastases. I get the whole body scan tomorrow morning. So, this dose is "low" right? Well, let me say I continue to be amazed at the doses of radioactivity that are handed out for this treatment. To give you some idea, the biotech company I work for has a license to use radioactive iodine in our experiments, and our possession limit is 0.5 milliCuries. So, the minute I stepped into work yesterday, we were ten fold over our maximum limit. It all just seems so silly when I see how much time, effort, and money goes into the licensure, inspection, safety badging, tracking, and waste disposal of the radioisotopes we use, when I can go take a 5mCi pill, and then take a leak and whiz out a few milliCuries at a time. Craziness, and this is just the small dose.

We did have some fun with it at work though. My buddy Jon made a video of me walking up to a geiger counter, which sent it from a soft "tick...tick" to screaming. I had the video on FaceBook for awhile, but then I got some weird comments about how I looked like I was humping the counter when I tried to get my bladder and intestines close to the meter, so I took it down. Also, to see how hot my saliva was, I spit in a paper towel and we checked in on the geiger. It was hotter than all the radioactive waste we had on site. So, what to do with it?? We can't put it in the radioactive waste bin, because everything has to be logged in, and we're not even supposed to have that much! So, we wrapped it in more paper towels and threw it in the trash. To be on the safe side, my colleagues designated me my very own stall (see picture) for this week and next.

Not much else to report. I'm still generally tired, but I have good days and bad days with the energy. Today was a 50/50 day. Yesterday I was great, but all last weekend was terrible. Soon enough, say mid week next week I can go on Synthroid and start feeling better. Sometime next week will be my big dose of radio-iodine. Then I'll have 2 or 3 days confined to my bedroom. Becca and I have planned a big celebratory dinner out when I get out of confinement next week. I plan on eating tons of cheese, bread, chocolate, and ice cream!! No more low iodine! I know Bec's looking forward to cooking normally again. And not eating out for 4 weeks has to be some kind of record for me.

That's all for now, and stay out of my stall...unless you want a radioactive butt.

I'm not alone...

Lots of emails in my inbox the past two days about my blog post "In memoriam: my Jeep." It seems that my telling of this story moved a lot of people. Friends of mine I haven't heard from in years came out of the woodwork to tell me their car stories, or to say that they too shed a tear for my Jeep.

One friend sent me this article, that describes "clunker grief" as a condition caused by the governments current program. The friend is a psychiatrist, and I imagine she took a keen academic perspective on somebody grieving the loss of a machine from their lives. It made me feel like there are lots of other people out their like Bec and I.

Some answers to the two most common questions I got:

What is your new car?
I didn't mention the new car in my previous post on purpose. It was kind of like mentioning a widower's new boyfriend in her late husband's obituary. What a wild day last Saturday. Let me first say that we were not looking for a replacement for our Jeep, but simply another vehicle of similar size with better MPG, and improved safety features like ABS and twenty zillion airbags (we only had seat belts). We were willing to give on some things the Jeep could do like being able to scale a 12 inch vertical wall, or towing a 5000lb boat. So, we started at a Subaru place at 8:50 (10 minutes before they opened), hearts set on a Forester. But, it was too car-like. Becca liked the truck-like driving feel of the worn out Jeep with 15 year old shocks. We tried the outback but that made her ever more car-sick. So, we went home to re-fuel, and scout out our backup option: Jeep Patriot. The Patriot was an unbelievable deal last weekend. Jeep was offering to double down on the clunkers program, so it summed to $9000 off MSRP. This meant you could get a new Patriot for $10,000. Apparently we weren't the only ones who figured this out, as the 4 Jeep dealerships within 30 miles of us who had a total of 15 Patriots as of Friday afternoon, were down to 1 Patriot at one dealership left. So, we hurried off to get it, only to see a guy loading it with his stuff and driving it off as we pulled into the dealership. We drove a Compass, but it was too car-like. So, disappointed, we looked at Honda CR-V and Toyota Rav4, but neither appealed to us much. Then, at 3PM as we were heading home in defeat, my dad suggested a Ford Escape. Turns out there is a Ford 3 miles from our house, so we hit them on the way home, knowing nothing about Escapes. They had two left, and one that worked for the Clunkers program. Becca drove it straight away since the dealership closed at 4, and told me it had the feel she was looking for. So, we bought it right then, taking no chances on Clunkers being cancelled, or anybody else snapping it up (there was another guy there ready to buy it should we put down the keys). So, yes, We have a 2009 Ford Escape XLT in red. 17" chrome rims, running boards, roof rack, moon roof, Microsoft SYNC, and all kinds of other stuff I have yet to discover. I am glad the only Escape they had was one with all the features, because I wanted them, but I know I am so cheap I would have skimped if inventory was available.

What about the Datsun?
A lot of high school buddies also remembered my powder blue 1981 Datsun 210 hatchback. My senior year the Datsun was totalled when I was hit from behind by a guy who was driving home from the casino angry after having lost all his money. After 4 months of various people threatening to sue one another, I was paid $650 by his insurance company (he had been cheating on his insurance and was dropped, and had to sue to get coverage). I took the $650 and went to the junkyard where the Datsun was towed. With a jump from the Jeep, it started right up. So, I used a crow bar to clear the metal off the wheels, and drove it home (holding the driver's door closed with one arm). I put about 10 lbs of Bondo on it and repainted it, but it looked bad. I kept it for my first year of college, but when it stalled on me a couple times in unsavory parts of New London, CT (where I waited tables), I decided it had to go. I took the big steroe out of it, and sold it to a sailor on the base for $200. It was easy to do, since it was already dying and was so ugly on the side where it was hit.

In memoriam: my Jeep

So, unless you live underground you know what "Cash for Clunkers" is. Well, Becca and I went around and around, and finally last weekend we made the wrenching decision to turn in our beloved 16 year old Jeep Cherokee with 211,000 miles on it for something new. The KBB on it was just over $1000, and the trade in value was $400. With the Federal government offering us $4500 for it, coupled to the fact that the PA emissions test was looming and the Jeep was unlikely to pass (it had been emissions exempt due to age in the last two states it lived, NC and WA), we went ahead and cashed in on the deal.

My parents bought the Jeep new in '94 as a replacement for my dad's '86 Mazda pickup truck (see pic, tan truck in background), which he gave to my sister when her '77 Volvo died. And yes, my family has both a tendency to keep vehicles forever, and pass them down generations whenever possible. I remember when it was the envy of the neighborhood, all new and shiny.


I have so many memories in that Jeep. Some of the best ones include borrowing it to go on dates with my then crush (now wife) Rebecca. Now, there is just something really cool about hauling around our kid in a car we used to make out back in high school (14 years ago!). And the first summer my family owned it, my parents and I drove from Connecticut to Florida so we could visit MGM, yes drove. I was 16 with a newly minted license and gladly drove 7 hours myself the first day to help us get as far as South Carolina. Through my college years, I borrowed it on occasion, usually when I it was snowy outside. Then, at the end of my grad school after my parents had moved to the west coast, my folks were ready to hand it down, and Bec and I needed another car. So we shipped it from Washington to North Carolina. I can remember debating with Becca if we should take it. At the time it had 162,000 miles on it, and was 9 years old. But, after all, it was a gift horse, so we took it and figured if it ran 3 months we'd get our money's worth out of it (titling costs plus $1000 to ship it). In the end, six and a half years and 50,000 miles later was just last weekend.

Snoopy had all time shotgun privileges in the Jeep

Since we owned it during my mid 20s, the Jeep carted Becca and I around during some of the more wild times in our life. Among my guy friends, it was known as "the pussywagon" after Uma Thurmon's car in Kill Bill. When I posted that it was gone, my buddy Seth reminded me of the good times we had taking various guys out for their bachelor parties in it. To be responsible, one guy would stay sober and drive (not usually me), and we'd lay the back seat flat and pile 6 or more dudes in the back. It was like a rolling party, very fun times, and for years after the Jeep had the cigar burns, beer stains, and puke smell to prove it.

That Jeep had a lot of custom features you just can't get in a new car either. For example, it had a custom made cargo floor, after we spilled gallon of some kind of liquid in the floor on a trip to Blowing Rock, NC with my in-laws (another great Jeep trip!) and it had to be ripped out to get the smell out.

And it had a custom engraving in the hood paint from my old cat Buster, who was a big fan of the Jeep's warm engine, and would refuse to get off it sometimes. I have visions of my mom trying to back out the driveway and Buster not moving, horn blowing and all. Coincidentally, Buster also died at age 16, with high miles.

Buster left his mark on the Jeep, so did a lot of people

It also had "earthquake mirrors" which make it look like the enitre world behind you is experiencing a 9.0 earthquake. Another feature that lasted from 2004-2007 was an "emergency electrical shutoff switch" in the form of the driver's window. Roll it down, and boom, lose power to everything, including gauages, but the engine still runs. This happened once on the way to pick up our treadmill, when it was 20 degrees outside. We had to drive home with the hatch open because the treadmill was so long, and with the windows down 'cause we lost interior power. Man that was a cold 20 miles home on I-40!

The multi-colored custom paint job on the roof

In the end, the Jeep did not die on its own. I am not sure that vehicle could die, and I like remembering it that way. There was nothing wrong with it, and it never left us sitting on the side of the road. We never had to do anything to it except minor repairs, and always joked about it being Elena's first car. As a rule of "Cash for Clunkers" sodium silicate was poured in the crankcase, seizing the engine, and forever rendering it inoperable. Thinking about that part hurt. So, as I cleaned my possessions from it in preparation for leaving it behind, I started to tear up a bit. And the more things I found, the harder I cried. There was my Eric Clapton Unplugged tape, which I must have stowed in the center console in the late '90s (too bad I have nothing to play it on now). And an emergecy poncho, which was a big DeWire family joke we'd play on my dad. And Jeep's lucky feather. I took these last two items and transferred them to the new car for good luck.

Crying on the way home in our new car

I know it seems silly to cry over getting rid of a car, but there was a lot going on. This was the end of an era for me in a way. Something I had had since high school, had so many memories in, and in a few days it would be crushed to unrecognizable bits of metal and plastic. It was hard letting it go. And I think once I started to cry, it just felt so good that I let it all flow. See, I never cried when I found out I had cancer last month. I wanted to put on a strong face for Rebecca, who has been an absolute rock. But, I think crying over my Jeep gave me permission to grieve a little over everything that's been happening lately. And I guess that was the final gift from a car that gave so much to us over the years, it gave me a reason to cry. And man did it feel good.

Goodbye Jeep, we all loved you very much! (Now I am crying again!)

Scars

So I changed the face of my blog tonight. I had a great conversation with an old friend yesterday, and he gave me lots of great ideas for what to do with this place. From now on, what was formerly "Scott DeWire - Triathlete" will be "The Life and Times of Scott." Sure, triathlon got me into blogging, but now I am here to stay, whether or not racing can be a part of my life right now.

As everybody probably knows, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer about three weeks ago. Since that time, I have had two surgeries to remove my thyroid gland and the golf ball-sized cancerous tumor that lived on it. My surgeon did a fantastic job, and I have a really little scar on my neck. At my last post-op follow up, my surgeon was obsessed with the appearance of my incision scar and ways to make it less noticeable. But really, I don't share his concerns. To me, this scar is a record of my journey. In the same way that it has been my journey to experience all the wonderful things that have filled my life, it's just as much part of my life to get thyroid cancer at age 31. I would never want to hide or erase these times from the record of my life. So, I like the scar, and will be disappointed should it fade completely form my neck.

So, from now on, my blog will be about all aspects of my life now, though it will always bear the scars of once having been a triathlete's racing blog.