Lymphoma – Page 3 – Benjamin Murphy

Undeserved

Everyone has been so amazing throughout this journey that I don’t even know how to begin. You can see in the photo below the outpouring of cards, and well wishes from friends, family, church members, co-workers, and people we’ve never even met before. It’s amazing to see how many people are out there pulling for you. I can’t even begin to describe how uplifting each little sentiment is to me.

Someone ordered a Kindle off of my wishlist a few weeks ago and it showed up at my doorstep just a few days ago. Thank you so much!! It will really help those chemo treatments fly by, and already has! I took it this Monday and I was done with my treatment before I knew it. For those that have no idea what I am holding up next to my goofy mow-hawk; it’s an Amazon Kindle ebook reader. Think of it as an iPod for books. It can hold somewhere around 1,500 full books on it and they can be purchased wirelessly from anywhere in the US. So it’d be pretty hard to get bored and run out of things to read, no excuses! Thank you so much for the crazy people that got me this amazing piece of tech I really, really, really, appreciate it! I threw in some size comparison photos of it next to the book Sara is currently reading to give you guys some perspective on size. I’ll try to do a full review later.

But I really just wanted to say thank you to everyone. I’m going to speak for both of us when I say we can’t do it without you guys. This is a pretty crappy process and knowing that everyone has our backs helps us to get through it that much easier. So thank you so much!

Not Going Down In This Fight Without…

looking like a complete badass!!

Or a baboon’s ass, I haven’t decided yet. However while Sara was filling my love tank by giving me the best haircut of my adult life(guys usually stop getting this summer only haircut after the 3rd grade), I couldn’t help but think Jason Statham. Okay so I’m not that badass…but there may be hope! Maybe if I work on the accent, crotchety attitude, and stubbly face just a little bit more.

I guess I don’t really need to explain what Sara and I did this Saturday night after I worked in the basement all day long. A picture is worth a thousand words right? She says I can only keep it for two days, but we’ll see how well I can play my cards. I think everyone I work with would love to see this in person. Don’t you?

VOTE IN THE COMMENTS!

Time To Work On My Sales Pitch

I work up this morning getting ready as I normally would. It’s been a little difficult for me to get up in the mornings. I seem to want to keep sleeping, but I did get up eventually. After I got out of the shower I was doing the whole gel and combing of the hair thing when I noticed in the sink a nice coating of my hair that was falling out as I combed.

I was pretty shocked that it is happening so soon. I’ve felt so great through this first treatment and I haven’t really felt anything too unbearable as far as side effects go. But to see all of that hair gone at once was pretty unnerving. I guess it’s time to bite the bullet and break out the clipper set. I’ll spare you a photo of the sink but you better believe you’ll be getting one of me shaving it all off.

Hmm, my scalp is kinda tingly while I sit here and type this up. I guess that’s all my last remaining red hairs jumping overboard, “abandon ship!”. It was a good run while it lasted hair, thanks for at least being there for me at my 10 year high school reunion!

White Blood Cells – Fail!

Well my second chemo treatment on Monday was a dud. They always do blood work before they begin treatment to ensure that everything is good to go. My white blood cell count was knocked down too low to give me treatment. We were kind of wondering what was taking so long because the first time I was treated it only took about fifteen minutes for my blood work to come back. I guess they are double and triple checking my counts to make sure that they were reading it right.

Which sucks because now I will be a week behind and it just pushes off the inevitable anyway. Oh well, I guess I’ll let you know how it goes next week instead. They said that if this persists they will have to add another drug to my regiment to stimulate white blood cell regeneration. Just what I need, more drugs! The drug they are talking about giving me is Neupogen -(wikipedia link), for the curious. Better luck next time I guess!

Today I was hoping to get my braces off. I was scheduled for a “check for de-banding” at Dr. Kingas’ office this morning. In my mind that meant take these buggers off of me. But in reality that meant, lets take a look and let you suffer for two more weeks. Thankfully though his schedule was all booked up and the next best date is one week from today, hooray! So next Wednesday I should have a pearly new smile for everyone to enjoy. I’m pretty excited, nobody loves a brace-face!

Back to Basics

So right after I email everyone telling them that I won’t be sending out mass emails and will only really be posting on my site so as not to annoy everyone, my site goes down. I blame SCIENCE! Oh well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.

I went into work yesterday and felt pretty good for most of the day. I went down to the gym just to stretch out a bit and test the range of motion in my right shoulder because of the port. I was shocked that I was able to do some push-ups without any problems. Even more, I couldn’t believe that I was able to stretch out completely and do a few full wide grip pull-ups. Just two or three to see how it felt. I’m pretty excited that it felt that well already. Maybe I’ll try a more normal workout later this week.

Sara and I were planning on meeting up at CEFC(our church) later in the evening for a membership class. Since I was heading that way I stopped at Becky’s to pass the time. I was feeling kind of gross so she fixed me up some yummy scrambled eggs to fill my stomach. It seems like I feel better the more I have something in my belly. However, I did weight myself at the gym yesterday and I was pushing 189. but that’s most likely a ton of water weight from all of fluids that were pumped into me the previous day and that I keep eating so I don’t feel gross. I better be careful I don’t get put on the biggest loser show next year at this rate.

Membership class was great but it ended fairly late. We didn’t get home until around 10pm and I was whupped from the entire day. I slept in this morning a bit because I was just beat. I think I should be able to take it easier today and just get some packing done for Myrtle Beach instead of all the running around.

Two days into the torture! Tony says, “Bring It!”