A Wet Hilly Ride

I just did the a bikeathon for The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp. Today would have been Jonathan's 11th birthday, so being able to do a fundraiser for the camp had special meaning.

I had initially planned on riding the 60-mile course, but they canceled that ride due to inclement weather(it was raining heavily, and riding for 4 hours soaking wet and doing 15-20 mph could lead to hypothermia). So, I did the 30 miler instead.

It started with a 3 mile, 6% downgrade in the pouring rain. By the bottom of the hill, my feet were soaked, my butt was frozen from the water thrown off by the rear tire, and my glasses were completely covered with water. Since it wandered through Northeast Connecticut, the course was extremely hilly (close to 10 hills of over a quarter mile and greater than 5% grade), and rained most of the way. Since they mismeasured the course, it turned out to be more like 38 miles than 30.

Still, it was a blast. I'm actually glad they cancelled the 60 miler. Where I live is relatively flat, and it's easy to avoid the hills (so, I usually do). Ashford,CT and the surrounding areas, on the other hand, are extremely hilly. So, if I'd done the 60 miler (which, given how they measured the 30 miler, could have been a 70 miler), I'd have ended up in the sag-wagon (or limping for a week).

As it was, there were some ridiculous hills. There was one at the 25 mile mark that was only about 150 yards, but was probably a 8-10% grade. It was so ridiculously steep that everyone just started laughing when they saw it.

But still, it was a great time, and I'll definitely come back next year. Thanks to my supporters - they ponied up almost a thousand dollars, and it was for a great cause.

It Is Done, And Yet Also Just Beginning (updates)

At 1:55 this morning, the Unknown Son (his name is Jonathan, by the way) eased away and stopped breathing. Our son has finally let loose the bonds of earth and gone home. No more suffering, no more limitations, and no more cancer. He now rests in the lap of the Father with his cousins Jacob and Jennifer. And that's NOT a figure of speech - it's a description.

It's been a tough time - 2,439 days since his diagnosis on 10/1/2002. After gallons of chemotherapy, multiple surgeries, and visits to six hospitals, our son is finally free. After years of pain and limitations, he can now run without tiring, jump without limits, and stay up as long as he wants.

We miss him, and will every day for the rest of our earthly lives. But believe it or not, it's not all grief (but there is that). We're glad that his pain and struggles are over. But now he doesn't just have the absence of pain. He has JOY. For him, this isn't the end - merely the end of the beginning. We know that we'll be together again.

If you know us in our "real" lives and would like to read our son;s story (or just want directions to the memorial service Saturday), send me an email.

UPDATE:

Since many of you have have asked, our charity of choice is: The Tomorrow Fund, 593 Eddy St., Providence, RI 02903. Put "Jonathan" in the note of the check. They're affiliated with Hasbro Children's Hospital where Jonathan had a significant part of his treatment done, and they're a very worthy recipient of any donations - they both support research in cancer and provide a lot of support (financial, emotional, etc...) to families of children undergoing treatment. They'll allow us to choose the manner in which the funds will be spent (probably something relating to computers, books, or videos), so that we can come up with something that really captures something of who Jonathan is.

Bad Biopsy News

About a week back, the Unknown Son had a CT scan that showed some suspicious spots in his right lung. He had his biopsy today.

Unfortunately, the news wasn't good. His cancer (Wilms Tumor) has recurred. According to the surgeon, there was at least one clear tumor (pea-sized) in his right lung, and clear evidence that it had also metastasized into some of the lymph nodes. I'm currently in the ICU with him as he recovers from the biopsy, and I'll spend the night (the Unknown Mom will take over tomorrow).

He's awake and in good spirits. Looks like we'll be watching Sponge Bob DVDs for a while longer, followed (hopefully) by sleep).

I'll post more information as I get it.

update: It's the morning after, and he's doing well - his fever has broken, he's talking up a storm, getting all the tubes out except for his chest drainage tube, and about to start drinking fluids on his own.

Bad News

We just got som bad news regarding the Unknown Son. As many of my regular readers already know, he's gone through a lot - he's a two-times cancer survivor.

In 2002 he was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a particularly nasty and resistant childhood cancer. After a great deal of chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, more chemotherapy, and experimental treatments (including an autologous (i.e. "self") stem-cell transplant, he went into remission in 2005.

In January of 2008, he was diagnosed with a Wilms' tumor (a kidney tumor), which resulted in the removal of his right kidney and, after more chemo, he was given another clean bill of health this summer.

Now it looks like he has another tumor - in the lower part of his right lung. We just found out about it two days ago as a result of routing follow-up scans. He's scheduled for more surgery this coming Monday (the 29th). He'll get the tumor removed, which will give us the best information as to what exactly it is. He'll probably have about a week-long hospital stay, and we'll then know if this is a recurrence of the Wilms, tumor or something else (it could be a recurrence of his neuroblastoma, but that's unlikely because there was no indication on his latest MIBG scan a couple of weeks back).

So, please keep us in your prayers.

If you're one of my "non-blogosphere" friends (or a regular reader who knows me by my real name) and you want to keep up with what's going on, we maintain a website that we use to keep family and friends abreast of the little guy's treatment. Drop me an email and I'll send it to you in case you want the url.

As The Semester Winds Down

Since Unknown University starts (and ends) their fall semester a bit late, I'm just putting the finishing touches on my grades - two classes down and one (the smallest, luckily) to go.

It's been a tough semester - three preps (for the non academics among you, a prep is a unique class - so three preps means I taught three different classes), and one was a brand new one (Fixed Income) for me. I took it because the senior faculty who regularly teaches it took a sabbatical, and it's required of all our students. The new prep took far more time than I'd thought, so I didn't get as much research done as I'd hoped.

The winter break will be dedicated first to getting two papers completed and submitted to journals. I let things slide a bit these last few years due to the Unknown Son's illness, so I'm glad to be finally working on things that have the potential to go to decent journals - these two will likely be sent to Financial Management and Journal of Banking and Finance (two very solid journals). As for the other things I'm working on, one should go to to a solid accounting journal (JAAF), another to Journal of Futures or Journal of Derivatives, and another will be targeted to the Financial Analyst's Journal. I'm also working on a piece with a PhD student that will hopefully be finished in time to submit to the FMA annual meetings.

Somewhere in there, I'll also make some minor changes to my class (it's the same class I taught for the first time this past semester, so it's in pretty good shape). It shouldn't take more than a day or two to make the changes, since I prepped pretty thoroughly for it last time.

It's an ambitious schedule, but three of the pieces use the same data set, and a fourth is mostly done. With a bit of hard work, I should have a very productive Winter break. So, to all of my coauthors who read the blog: take heart - things will be done soon enough.

On a more somber note, please keep Mark Bertus and his family in your prayers. He's a fairly young faculty member at Auburn, with several young children. He's in the final stages of colon cancer, and is a remarkable guy. He'll leave an amazing legacy of memories to those of us who've had the privilege of knowing him. You can read the blog his wife has been maintaining to keep everyone informed about the illness here.

Mark's journey reminds me of something Steve Brown (a radio preacher) once said. It's something to the extent of "Whenever a pagan gets cancer, God allows a Christian to get cancer
so that the world will see the difference in how Christians deal with it." Depending on your beliefs, that might or might not sit all that well with you. But as you read his blog, you'll see that it definitely applies here.

To all who're reading this - Have a Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate).

Childhood Cancer Awareness Video

Regular readers of this blog are aware of the Unknown Son's continuing treatment for cancer. While I try not to post about his illness and treatment too much, I do talk about it (and related topics) from time to time.

Here's a great video someone put together for National Cancer Awareness Month (it's actually September). My sister lost her oldest son recently to the same cancer that Unknown Son originally had (neuroblastoma), and she linked to it on her site


If it touches you, consider making a contribution. There are are many good groups that are supporting research on childhood cancer. One of the best is Curesearch, which is associated with the Childrens Oncology Group and the National Childhood Cancer Foundation.

Forecast For Blogging - Light

It always seems strange to see someone post that they won't be blogging for a couple of days - it's like saying that your readers need your regular spewage so much that they'll have troubles without their regular fix. I have no such illusions.

Nevertheless, some weeks just need to be mentioned. The last cycle of the Unknown Son's chemo went fairly well – by the end of the week, they’d figured out the right mix of drugs to knock down the nausea, and he was doing pretty well. He had minimal nausea or other issues in the day or two later.

This time, it’s a different story. First off, the cocktail he’s on this time had to be infused over a 7-8 hour time frame (instead of the 4 hour infusion time last cycle), so it involved us getting there by 9 and not leaving until about 5 o'clock. Add in the 1 hour commute each way, and it made for a very long day. In addition, this time around, the chemo cycle only ran over three 3 days of infusion, so we did it on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week. Come Thursday, we were thinking "This is a snap. No problem."

Advice to self - don't say or think that. Just don't - it tempts fate.

Then the fun started.

Friday morning, we had to go bring the Unknown Son back to the clinic for repeated nausea and vomiting. He got IV fluids and some anti-nausea meds, and we were out by 2:00. Then we had to go to the local Emergency Room (it's 10 minutes away versus an hour, so it made sense) Saturday night at 9 for a repeat performance. Sunday was fairly uneventful, with a little bit of nausea in the early afternoon. He had one or two more episodes later that afternoon, but his new medication Marinol , which is a synthetic form of the active ingredient of marijuana) seemed to work. After taking it, he slept for a while, and woke up quite hungry (in other words, he got stoned and ended up with the munchies). A warm bath, and another dose before bed, and he was out like a light.

At 4:00 this morning, we were back to the vomiting. So, it’s off to the clinic once more (the Unknown Wife is there now). With luck, they can get a handle on this – he’s lost about 4 pounds this week, and unlike his dad, he can’t spare the weight. He'll spend the night there, and Unknown Mom will stay with him (unfortunately, I have a commitment I can't get out of tonight). If he requires a second night, I'll relieve her after my night class tomorrow night.

Luckily, the Unknown Mother-in-Law (who is a saint, by the way) can come over to stay and help out with the Unknown Daughter.

So, blogging might be light for the next couple of days.

Dax Locke And an Early Christmas

I was listening to the radio on the way home from my office the other day and heard the story of Dax Locke, a 13 month-old child diagnosed with terminal Leukemia. Since it was unlikely he'd make it to Christmas (it was in early autumn), his family started putting up the tree and the lights. Then the neighbors followed suit, and then the whole town.

For obvious reasons, it stuck with me. So, I tracked it down and found this YouTube video by Matthew West. Caution - it will most likely bring tears to your eyes, so be warned.



And if you're looking for a place to contribute to, this would be a good one. So open your checkbooks and spread a little cheer.

The Unknown Son's Cancer Treatment

It's been a month since I wrote that the Unknown Son had been diagnosed with cancer, so I thought an update was in order. It took a while to get everything straight, but we now have our answers, and a pretty good idea as to what the next few months will involve.

Unknown Son has a stage 3 Wilm's tumor, which is one of the "better" types of cancer to have (it has five year survival rate exceeding 90% for most variants). It might seem strange to put comparative terms like "better" with cancer, but compared to neuroblastoma (his cancer the first titme around), this is a relatively straightforward thing to treat. Here's what the treatment will involve:

• A couple of weeks back, he had a surgical port installed, which makes getting chemo, blood draws, and other input/output pretty easy and relatively painless. It was accessed for the first time this last week for his first round of chemo, and it was probably the easiest injections he's had since we can remember - they numb the skin over the port with some analgesic cream and put a needle through the port into the vein, and he hardly noticed it).
• He had his first round of chemo this week (more details below), and seemed to tolerate it pretty well. There was some nausea later on in the week, but much less than we'd expected.
  
• He also had his first two doses of low-level radiation (again, without much problem).

Here's what's ahead for the little guy: He gets about 25 weeks of chemo, involving three drugs: Vincristine, Actinomycin, and Doxyrubicin. He gets the Vincristin every week, and will alternate the other two drugs (i.e. for every three week cycle he gets Vincristine and Actinimycin on week one,Vincristine and Doxyrubicin on week two, and Vincristine alone on week 3 ). They alternate the meds because some of them take a few weeks for the body to recover from.

He also receives low-level targeted radiation for six days. He had two doses last week (Thursday and Friday), and will have four this week.

So far, he's had a bit of nausea the last day or two, but a couple doses of Zophran appeared to control it pretty well. We really don't know if it's from the chemo or from the virus the Unknown Daughter has had this week. But either way, the meds seemed to work. He's also had some mouth sores, but the analgesic mouthwash they gave (it primarily contains lidocaine and benadryl) did the trick.

So looking ahead, he'll be getting radiation every day next week and then chemo once a week for the next six months or so. The chemo will typically be scheduled on an "off teaching" day (I teach on a TuTh schedule this semester), so I'll be able to make most of the chemo appointments.

I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.

Stylin at the Cancer Clinic

Unfortunately, one of the side effects of the Unknown Son's Chemotherapy is that his hair has fallen completely out. Everyone says it increases our resemblance. But, as he often reminds me, "Daddy, at least MINE will grow back".

So, I looked around on the web, and found this company JKaye Designs (actually, a one-lady shop) that makes colorful surgeons caps. Yesterday, he showed up at the clinic wearing a cap in this pattern:


I wore one with multiple Snoopy characters on it, but unfortunately it's out of stock, so I don;t have a picture. And the Unknown Daughter has this one on order:



Unfortunately, we can't convince the Unknown Wife to wear one.

In any event, if you know anyone undergoing chemo who wants to dress up their noggin, give JKaye Designs some business. A small one fits a kid pretty well.

Chemo Weeks Bring Teh Crazy

It's a chemo week for the Unknown Son, so things are a bit on the crazy side. While I don't usually get into the details too often, I thought it might be instructive to walk you through a typical chemo week.

U.S. gets the chemo every day for five days (the clinic where he goes is only open on weekdays), so we make the 45 minute drive every day. We leave the house at 7:30, armed with a backpack full of whatever his latest video obsession is - for the moment, it's classic Pink Panther (the cartoons, not the movies).

• Monday's are the long days - he first has to get his fluids up to snuff, so they take about 2 hours to put in lots and lots of saline. Then they start the chemo (two separate drugs, proceeded and followed by various other meds to protect him from side effects) usually around noon or so. I get the morning shift, and the Unknown Wife relieves me around noon (after her Ladies Bible Study) and takes the afternoon slot, which allows me to go into my office for a few hours to prep for the weeks' classes. When all's said and done, Unknown Wife gets home around 4 or so.
  
• The rest of the week, we're out of the house by 7:30 and home by 2 - they don't need to pump as many fluids in as on Mondays, so the chemo starts (and ends) much sooner.
• Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach until about 2 and then rush home to meet the Unknown Daughter at the Bus Stop (Unknown Wife gets chemo duty),
• Wednesdays and Fridays, I get chemo duty. If all works well, I get to go in the office for a couple of hours afterwards.

Unknown Son typically handles the first day (or two) of chemo fairly well, with only a bit of nausea, By the end of the week, however, he pretty much is sick until about 6 every night (and sometimes into the evening, and we're pretty tired out.

Somehow in the midst of this, we manage to get everything else done (with the help of the Unknown Wife's friends, who bring us a LOT of meals). We also typically have a family member (usually the Unknown Mother in Law) stay over for a couple of days to help out and lend moral support.

Luckily for Unknown Son and I, the clinic has all the essentials: a DVD player and Game Cube for him, and Broadband for me (hence, this post). So, he gets to watch hours of Pink Panther DVDs and I can catch up on my emails, blogging, and work -- between working on two existing projects (one of which I'm just about done with and ready to hand off to my coauthor for his part) and prepping for the new cases I've added to my Corporate Finance class, it never ends.

But at least it keeps me off the streets begging for data.

R.I.P. Mark Bertus (12/21/1971 - 1/26/2010)

A serious and sad note today - Mark Bertus (a finance prof at Auburn University) passed away early this morning at the age of 38 after a long battle with cancer. He leaves behind a wife and three children, and is now pain free and in the presense of Joy Himself

Those of you who knew him can read the story of his last couple of years as chronicled by his wife Rhonda at their blog.

I was fortunate to have known Mark these last few years. He was fun to hang around with at conferences, always quick with a laugh and a wisecrack (upon hearing that the Unknown Wife was pregnant, he immediately said "Congratulations - who's the father?"), and absolutely in love with his wife and kids. He was also an amazing teacher - just read a few of the comments at their blog, and you'll quickly get a sense as to how much his students loved him.

For those who knew him, here's some info from the blog:

The funeral will be held 10 a.m. this Friday morning at St. Michaels Catholic Church at North College St. in Auburn. Visitation hours will be at Jeffcoat Trant funeral Thursday night from 6-8pm.

In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Mark Bertus Scholarship Fund at any Auburn Bank location or mail to PO Drawer 3110 Auburn, AL 36831-3110.

Fare well, my friend, if only for a while. You'll be reunited with family and friends some day (and if there's beer in heaven, we'll share a few). When you run into him, say hi to the Unknown Son for me - he'll be the one with the Wimpy Kid books. He was never all that physical because of his illness, and he'll need someone to teach him how to throw a curve-ball, if you know what I'm saying.

One Kidney (and One Tumor) Gone, and He's Going Strong

Unknown Son went under the knife today. And a long day it was.

We got to the hospital by 9:30, and had him on the table by around 11 or so. They completed the first step of the surgery - made a small incision, cut a piece of the mass off, and examined it (by about 1:00 or so).

The good news is that, while it is cancer of some sort, it does NOT appear to be recurrent neuroblastoma. The surgeon said that it seems at first look to be either a mesoblastic nephroma or a sarcoma (we don't know much about these types of cancers, so we'll get back to you with more information later). However, both these possibilities are far less serious than recurrent neuroblastoma, so we take it as good news. We won't know for sure until the full pathologist report comes back, probably on Thursday or Friday.

The next step was to remove the kidney (a "nephrectomy" in medical terms). It took quite a while -- about 7 hours (rather than the expected 4) because of the scar tissue from his previous surgery and radiation. But that's just fine with us - the surgeon wasn't in a rush to get home, so we'd rather he took as long as necessary.

The Little Guy is resting comfortably in the PIC (Pediatric Intensive Care) unit. He'd better be with all the drugs they pumped into him. In fact, since he's got a breathing tube, they'll keep him well sedated until tomorrow morning at the earliest. So, he's sleeping about as soundly as possible, and probably a lot better than his folks.

He's comfortable, and there won't be anything happening until morning. So, since She Who Must Be Obeyed and I will probably have our share of sleep-deprived nights in the near future, we took the option of going home to sleep in our own bed. We'll come back in the morning for the waking of the lad and the removal of the tube.

Unknown Son has lately gotten interested in Greek Mythology ( was a big fan when I was his age, and I think I gave him the bug), so I'm sure I'll be reading some (actually, a lot of) stories from the books on mythology I got from the library yesterday (we figured he'd be here for a while, so we did plan ahead).

Stay tuned - I'll update when we know more.