Everybody cover your ears.

Wooooo Hooooooo!!!!!!!

(Thanks for the woo hoo, Aaron.)

OK. You can uncover them now. But why the cheer, you ask? Easy. We made it through my chemo and radiation treatments yesterday! Take that, cancer!! Every minute I feel myself getting better and stronger. At least that's what I'm thinking in my head. My body hasn't caught on yet. I offer the last 24 hours as evidence.

Of all the side effects listed for my chemo and radiation there were still a few we never encountered. Take constipation for example. At 1:30 Thursday morning we checked off vomiting. No kidding. I went 27 of 28 treatments without throwing up once. So what better to do on the last day than to puke my guts out.

I didn't feel like going in to work after that but I went anyway. I'm burning through my sick leave faster than it's accruing. By the time I got to work my feet decided to flair up making me hobble to and from the restroom all day. I'm either at my desk or in the restroom when I'm at work so that's why I mention my hobble path. Isn't there a song about a crooked man who walked a crooked mile? I know there's a song about diarrhea.

Anyway, the icing on the cake came right after dinner last night. No, I'm not talking about dessert. I had exactly three more chemo pills to swallow. We cheered as a family on seeing the empty pill bottle and then dad, that's me, threw the pills into his mouth and chased them down with a half glass of water. It's important that I mention the half glass of water because the glass really was only half full. After the chasing the pills down with water part of the story the glass was now empty. That's also important to know because of what happened next.

The last pill got stuck in my throat half way down. Go figure. Now had the glass been full of water this is no problem. It was trying to get my wife's attention to refill my glass while not gaging on the pill that makes this a story at all. My kids are watching me choke while my wife runs for more water. I just want all three pills to stay down because I'm not up to taking any more, thank you very much. Nice way to end my treatments. Of 196 pills swallowed over the last six weeks, what are the odds of the last pill being the first and only one to stick in my throat? It kinda chokes me up just thinking about it.

Hopefully you're on my side by now when I say that the last 24 hours have conspired against me. As the final piece of evidence please note the time of this entry. I'm still up. And why is that? Because I've been running into the bathroom every 30 minutes for most of the night. I should be completely empty by now and I am certainly tired. Let's see if I can get a bit of sleep now since I have to be back at the hospital by 11:00 for another test. Good night, everybody. Thanks for all of your support these last two months and thanks for celebrating with me on the end of round one. Next up, surgery.