August 14 2010 Another Great Weekend And Encounter

Sun rise with Vanessa this Saturday morning. A light rain washing the humidity from the morning air gave a moments respite from the oppressive humidity and heat that has draped us for the past many days.. I had a great workout at the gym but passed some solids with my urine afterwards. Not blood per say, not sure what the hell it is but when it passed it made me jump. Flakes of something, tissue, dried blood, parts of a kidney, who knows. I took pictures of it for posterity.
What I do know is it is very disconcerting to have anything but urine coming out. As for the gym it was 10 minutes on the elliptical, first time back followed by a 30 minute round through the gym. I feel great as I write this, though a little weak kneed from my whizzing experience. Oh well, off to breakfast as we always do and today hopefully visit the Colts practice.
In the line waiting for our golf cart to transport us back to parking he stepped up and out of the blue ‘What’s going on with the leg?’ he asked with a smile. ‘I’ve got a condition called lymphedema caused by cancer in some nodes. His eyebrows raised and a smile of recognition came over his face, like he had just run into an old friend he handn’t seen in a long time and always liked. With a grin he proclaimed ‘Look at this leg. It’s twice as big as the other. Prostate cancer, but yours looks a lot better than mine’ he said.
‘We got hooked up with a great therapist at Clarian North’ I explained. ‘Doing the massage thing?’ he asked. ‘Yes, and with the compression stockings it has got it under control. She trained Inger, my massage therapist to do this at home. Her name is Deanna. She taught me that it wasn’t just ‘part of it’. I paused, struggling to remember the last name. Vanessa, aka Inger, jumped in with details. ‘Have you ever heard of Reids Sleeve?’ he asked. ‘No’ was my reply. ‘Well, they’re expensive, about 1800 bucks and you wear them at night. You wake up and take it off and your leg looks like a waffle iron but it breaks down those proteins. ‘I’ll check it out’ came my reply. A Grandfather likely in his 70’s, he jumped out of the cart when it stopped at his car and came around to shake my hand. ‘Prostate cancer, 13 years and still going strong’ he said. ‘Bladder cancer and just getting started’ came my reply. ‘You’ll make it’ he bellowed with a big grin, ‘have you got a card?’ I gave him one of my awareness cards with my blog address and off he went.