Kate Thaxton has a great post today about rules for the chemo room. My personal favorite:

Eat your Big Mac before you step foot into the chemo room, even if that means cramming it down while standing in the elevator. Most chemo patients walk the line between nausea and hunger - the smell of french fries will usually send us running for the bathroom.

I'll admit, I'm slightly guilty of this, especially since Starbucks is just down the street from our center. Also, since Holly tries to get the first appointment of the day, I'm usually downing breakfast there. I promise, Kate, I'll try harder not to do this in the future. I do love that our center brings lunches from Panera to patients and their families. We are usually gone by then, but it is a nice touch. I usually get free cokes and JR's.

Well, not better, but I was pretty down the other night. Holly was pretty down too. So here we are, dealing as best we can. The earthquake was exciting. I wasn't around to feel it, but everyone is safe. In having dinner tonight with a friend, he really helped me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Holly has her next treatment Monday, then only 2 more after that. We should be done with chemo by the middle of December. We see the the finish line.

I'm pretty tired of cancer ruining weekends, evenings, day trips, mornings, visits from friends and whatever else you want to think about that you deal with on a day to day basis. The thing that sucks about it now, and this has been on going, really since the second regiment of chemo started is how it sneaks up on Holly.  It isn't like she feel terrible all the time.  There are times when we all forget that she is undergoing treatment.  Those are the best times. Then, like a jealous monster, it rears cancer rears it's head and things go downhill in a hurry.  It sucks. Photo by: river2sea72

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Tags: cancer, colon_cancer, fuck_cancer

I was really bummed this morning. Holly feels lousy and has felt pretty under the weather since her treatment on Monday. Watching someone you love be sick for so long gets pretty old. Then I got a nice email. Today, Reuters ran a story about people who use online video as a way to raise awareness for various causes. The article included comments by the head of YouTube's news and politics division, the CEO of Pure Digital, the program director for Witness, Peter Gabriel's amazing foundation and me. One of these kids is not like the others. When we made the video, we never thought that it would receive so much attention, but I'm really glad that it has. It is everything that we hoped that it would be. Here is the article:

11:53 19Oct2007 Nonprofits turn to YouTube to raise awareness, funds By Yinka Adegoke NEW YORK, Oct 19 (Reuters Life!) - After Holly Schnaars, 37, was diagnosed with late stage colorectal cancer she picked up her video camera and decided to tell her story on the online video site Metacafe to raise awareness of the disease. The mother of two from San Jose, California, is just one of thousands of Americans, as well as charities and nonprofit organizations, who use online video to publicize their cause and raise funds as it becomes easier and cheaper to post videos than hope for television coverage or other forms of marketing. The ground shift has prompted the biggest online video sites led by YouTube to reorganize their pages to make it easier for such users to find videos related to their favorite causes. YouTube, which is owned by search giant Google Inc , is creating a special section for nonprofits to air their videos and link them to its Google Checkout online payment system to receive funds directly. "Nonprofits understand that online video isn't just a way to broadcast public service announcements on a shrunken TV set," said Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube. "It's a way to get people to do more than just absorb your message but to engage with their user generated content as well," he said. POWER OF VIDEO It's not just the online video companies giving support to individual causes and charities. Pure Digital, maker of the Flip video camera, has said it plans to give away a million video cameras to nonprofit organizations around the world to capture images and moments in places traditional media outlets might not be able to reach. "Video has power and media has power but the challenge is that the media is limited to telling stories that are controlled by a very small number of people," said Jonathan Kaplan, chief executive of Pure Digital. "This program along with YouTube and other sites will expand the media universe for learning what's really going on in the world," he said. One recent example of the power of video was the impact of clips of the Myanmar army's confrontations with local protesters which were posted on YouTube and other Web sites. Some of the clips made their way to mainstream news outlets. Witness, an activist organization founded by veteran rock star Peter Gabriel in 1992, has focused on raising awareness of such previously unseen events through video. Sam Gregory, program director at Witness said online distribution has made it easier to put videos in front of the right people such as decision makers and others with a personal connection to the cause. "It's not necessarily about the size of the audience it's about placing targeted video and turning 'watching' into action," said Gregory. Scott Schnaars, Holly's husband, said the eight-minute long video of his wife talking about her disease and then shaving her head to donate her hair to a charity that makes wigs has attracted more than 20,000 views on Metacafe and YouTube. But for the Schnaars the most important thing is that the video has helped educate people about the importance of recognizing any cancer symptoms as early as possible. "We've had amazing responses," they said. "The thing that's made us most happy is people sending us messages saying 'I've had these symptoms too, I am going to get checked out.'"

As I've mentioned all along, the effects of chemotherapy are cumulative. We've been really fortunate in that it has usually only been the first day or so after the treatment that Holly has felt really lousy. Unfortunately, this week has been pretty bad. All of the effects of chemo are starting to catch up with Holly and she feels terrible. The worst part for her is that this awful disease is taking things away from her. Last night, it was back to school night for our son. Not that it is the end of the world, but because of, for lack of a better expression, digestion issues, she feels like a prisoner in our home. She feels like she is missing important chunks of her life. She's simply sick of feeling terrible, sick of being tired, sick of not wanting to do anything, sick of not being able to do anything. We know that it will get better over the next few days, but right now, there is no getting around it. Cancer sucks.

This is kind of the look that Holly always gets when I bust out the camera in weird situations. The 'Schnaars, put it away' look. We met with Dr. Uyei this morning to find out about the CT from last week. Good news!!! The spots in Holly's chest was simply a remnant thymic. What is that you ask? I had no idea and had to Wikipedia it myself. Essentially, it is an organ that helps in the creation of T-Cells. You can look that one up, but it is good news. We also found out that we miscalculated the number of chemo treatments that Holly has in our favor. We had thought that after today she would have had 4 more treatments, when in fact, she only has 3 more. W00T!! Finally, Holly had her 5th treatment today and feels horrible. Tomorrow will be better.

Good news about Holly's CT too. I'll write more on this later. In the meantime, overall good news. From AP:

Good news on the cancer front: Death rates are dropping faster than ever, thanks to new progress against colorectal cancer. A turning point came in 2002, scientists conclude Monday in the annual "Report to the Nation" on cancer. Between 2002 and 2004, death rates dropped by an average of 2.1 percent a year. That may not sound like much, but between 1993 and 2001, deaths rates dropped on average 1.1 percent a year. The big change was a two-pronged gain against colorectal cancer. While it remains the nation's No. 2 cancer killer, deaths are dropping faster for colorectal cancer than for any other malignancy - by almost 5 percent a year among men and 4.5 percent among women. One reason is that colorectal cancer is striking fewer people, the report found. New diagnoses are down roughly 2.5 percent a year for both men and women, thanks to screening tests that can spot precancerous polyps in time to remove them and thus prevent cancer from forming.

Rest of the article is here.

I work for an awesome company. Yesterday, in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness month, Yahoo! committed to donating $1 to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation for every photo uploaded to the Passionately Pink Flickr group. Yahoo! is donating $50,000 for this. There are already about 40,000 photos uploaded. Be sure to stop by, join the group and upload your pink pictures.

8 amazing years ago today, Holly and I stood on a bluff in Maui overlooking the Pacific Ocean and exchanged vows. When the judge said 'in sickness and health', I expected that we'd be toothless 90 year olds when we had to deal with that. I never thought 'in sickness and health' would be so significant at such a young age, but here we are. And I love her more than ever. Throughout this entire process, she has been stronger than I could have ever been. She is the most incredible friend, lover, partner-in-crime, mother, everything that I could ever imagine. I love you, Holly. Scott

A couple of months ago, I mentioned briefly that, during our last CT Scan, our oncologist found some spots in Holly's chest. We haven't been too worried about it as the doctors haven't expressed a whole lot of concern. The general feeling was that the risk to do a biopsy on her chest was far too high based on chance that these small dots might be spreading cancer. So they felt like they would watch it via the blood tests and do a CT in a couple of months.

Today was that day. This morning Holly had the Barium Sulfate and went in for the scan. I've never had Barium Sulfate but the few people that I've talked with that have explained that it is the worst tasting stuff that they have ever had.

Not only that, but it makes you very sick. Holly was well enough tonight to do a birthday dinner, but crashed pretty hard when we got home.

Fingers crossed for positive results on Monday.