Happy Halloween

There was an awesome Mintz's Mentschen bike ride last weekend that took us from Washington's Crossing to Lambertville and back. We had the opportunity to visit with our favorite coffee barista, Jessica Cichalski, in Lambertville before tackling the climb up and out on route 518. The 32-mile ride, great weather, and good company has me looking forward to a possible re-run this coming weekend.

My daughter Bailey made it to a pumpkin patch last night where apparently they carved pumpkins. Happy Halloween!

It's always gonna be something

My last blog post was nearly two full months ago and today I received the FRAMED award-winning Mintz’s Mentschen jersey. So I thought it would be a good idea to use that as a prompt to try and quell the complaints I’m starting to hear from my loyal blog readers.

As if I don’t already have plenty of pictures and indelible memories from the past two years of Mintz’s Mentschen exploits I now also have a framed Mentschen cycling jersey. I love it and will hang it proudly in my home office. The only thing that would have made it any better is if the Lance Armstrong foundation had Lance autograph it before they framed it…. But I’m not complaining… much… LOL.



These many weeks of blog silence have not been an attempt on my part to lull you into submission. Although I may have been fairly successful at achieving exactly that, the explanation for the silence is mostly that there wasn’t a whole lot that was very exciting to say.

Following the Philly LiveSTRONG event I have been able to enjoy every possible weekend opportunity for continued cycling. I have been riding progressively more challenging routes and my climbing strength is returning slowly but surely. When we rode a couple of weekends ago I achieved a symbolic milestone by conquering one of the more challenging hill climbs in our Washington’s Crossing repertoire. I enjoyed every second of it and look forward to continued strength gain and hopefully a bit of weight loss. While my fitness has been improving I’ve struggled to drop the pounds that I gained this year. Hmmmm, last year I dropped 45 pounds only to regain every bit of that and more with the treatment this year. Go figure!?!? I joined a gym that I can manage with my current office location and commute so I hope that I’ll be able to turn this weight situation around as I get into a regular routine of spin classes.

During these past two months I also learned a valuable lesson. It’s a lesson that first was a bit unsettling but after having some time to digest it I came to realize that it was an important one for me to acknowledge and internalize NOW. The moral of the lesson is, “It’s always gonna be something”.

On September 4th I had a regularly scheduled PET/CT scan and I guess I made the mistake of looking past it and thinking that the scan in December would be the first post-treatment scan that I needed to be nervous about. The scan showed VERY LOW levels of “activity” at the G-E junction and the familiar follow-up with my gastroenterologist was suggested. While a basic endoscopy wasn’t going to provide sufficient information the scenario was now right for the endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) that I discussed with Dr. Dhar back in January. I had the EUS on September 22nd and to make a long story short all fears were put to rest. Visually there was only inflammation and the biopsies revealed no evidence of cancer. So…. in December we get to do this all over again! Dr. Dhar did increase my Prevacid prescription to be twice per day though.

I’ve learned that “cancer survivor” isn’t just a temporary thing and that more often then not I’m going to be dealing with something or another medically. The key here is that in dealing with these situations that we accept the reality of the situation and keep emotions in check. I will be making an effort to learn how to dance in the rain instead of expecting the rain to stop.