Oh yeah, this is how the beginning was...

Yep. This is how I look in the morning. 

But on my behalf, I did start Temodar at 6 am. As you can see by the energetic expression on my face, I didn't feel very well (to say the least). I got up at 6 am to begrudgingly feed my cat (as I do most mornings). Then after sluggishly surmounting the staircase, I decided to start the clock of my Temodar regimen. 

Other than feeling half-witted this morning, it felt good to begin what could either be the beginning or end phase of treatment. Hopefully, this will kill the tumor in my head, but due to the many blogs I've read regarding individuals in the same boat, this may just be one more phase in a slowly descending spiral to my ultimate decline, but that being said, I'm not ready to go quietly into this good night, my friends. No, if I'm gonna lose this battle, I'm at least going out with a fight.

My friend Kevin and I were talking on the way back up to Philly the other day. It was the first time that we had talked since his recent deployment to the battlefield in Afghanistan. I realized then that we actually have much in common. His enemies are external and numerous while my enemies are internal and constantly proliferating. We both have wars to fight. He's fighting his over there while I'm fighting mine right here. Kev's a bigger man, though. He's a medic out in a foreign land facing the terrors of the battlefield to save his comrades from the horrifying conditions they all assume while I'm just trying to save myself from a distinctly unenlightened gang of wayward cells. I get to fight my war in my house. Kev has to be in lonely foreign territory for his fight.      

I feel like the new dealer in the 'hood...

Jeez...I feel like a brand new neighborhood drug dealer. Let's just put it this way, as I was walking out of Walgreens, I had so many drugs that I couldn't carry them all. My mom had to carry the half-crate of Temodar that was questionably dangling from my hand. Too much, too much.

So here's the rundown of what I'm on:

Temodar- 40 mg twice per day
Chloroquine- 250 mg
Celebrex- 200 mg
Accutane- 60 mg twice per day

As of today, I'm prepped to start taking the Accutane. I'm doing this in stages so that I can see if, for example, the Celebrex causes me to have strange heart symptoms such as convulsive heart failure, and the Accutane could cause me to develop strange rashes and other sorts of odd skin problems; strange in that it's supposed to clear up acne...? Then I start on the chemo on Saturday. That's when I hit the ground running.


I'm also staying on the leviteracetem but on a smaller dose (just 1000 mg). I want to get on an even smaller dose, but I'll just wait until my body's producing vast quantities of ketone bodies to help me not to fall into a fit.

The fifth corner (you know, the secret one) of my four corners protocol is this agent called Lauricidin. One of the gents who's been helping me along with my Poly MVA protocol has recommended it. There is some evidence that the cytomegalovirus (that we all, unfortunately, have crawling through our bodies) either causes or infects brain tumor cells and could potentially cause further problems. Brain cancer: What a complicated wonder, right? (This is the positive way of putting what I'm thinking right now). Anyway, I'm taking this because it is anti-viral. I don't know that anti-virals exist, so I'm kind of researching whether they exist in the first place, and I'm just taking it (because it's fairly cheap) until I find out otherwise.

Well that's it, so far. We'll see how this goes...