April 1st - April 7th / 2024 - Crazy Hours, My Wandering Mind, Emotional Health and Thought-Provoking Stuff

What's on the Agenda This Week?

  • You can now listen to the blog post : Click this link!
  • Crazy Sleep Hours 
  • What is NGS?
  • Emotional Health
  • Healing the Soul, Heart, Mind and Body
  • The Digital Fab Lab Idea
  • Medical Expenses and Life
  • New Feature - Email Subscribe

Crazy Sleep Hours and My Fitbit

This past Christmas my wife got me a Fitbit watch which I haven't been using much.  She found it last week and told me to wear it (in a tone that I had no choice about it). I'm very OCD when it comes to technology tracking my statistics and reporting it back to the cloud for analysis. But now I see that it can provide some very useful insights, especially for those of us that have a critical condition such as myself.

While I can verbally relate my lack of sleep to my wife and doctors, the Fitbit app provides hard statistics in a graphical form. As you can see below I'm typically getting less than 4 hours of sleep a night where most of it is light sleep with lots of awaking moments in between. Wednesday and Friday where my best sleep day/nights.  My point here is having this app track my sleep cycles and my heart rate can help myself and others (medical) understand the data and make good decisions on next steps.

That's really nice Rick, but how do you feel you may ask.  The answer is I have cycles of energy where I feel good and then cycles where I can fall asleep in an instant.  I have noticed this is starting to give me "senior moments" with my memory.  I'll be talking about something and then suddenly I forget about what I wanted to say to finish off the thought.  Lupron is known to cause these side effects, insomnia, fatigue and memory loss are just a few.  The question is, should I take other drugs to combat these side effects and if so what harm will the combination of them do in my body?  Does it really matter at this point? I would love to hear your comments!

One other thought - Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to digitally measure stress and pain levels in a similar fashion of what the Fitbit provides in a sleek small form factor?  A technology like that could provide even more insight!  By the way, yes, I experience constant muscle and bone pain throughout the day and night, but what helps control it is the hydromorphone I am taking.

Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS)

My doctor has ordered a blood test to do DNS sequencing on my blood cells.  The method is called NGS.  It plays a significant role in guiding decisions regarding treatment for prostate cancer. It provides insights into the molecular characteristics, allowing for personalized treatment strategies aimed at improving patient outcomes.  The results will determine which hormone therapy drugs will work best for me and also may help qualify me for clinical trials working with smart drugs.

In a quick knowledge capsule Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) is an advanced, modern technique for accelerated DNA sequencing that allows the complete genome to be sequenced in just one or two days. Traditional sequencing methods, such as Sanger sequencing, are much slower and less efficient in comparison. NGS is high-throughput, meaning it can sequence many different DNA or RNA samples at the same time, significantly speeding up the process.

The role of NGS in fighting prostate and bone cancer are multi-faceted and largely center around personalized medicine, diagnosis, prognosis, and research.

1. Diagnosis: NGS can rapidly identify mutations and genetic alterations responsible for cancer, including those in prostate and bone cancer. This can help in the precise diagnosis of the type and stage of cancer.

2. Personalized Medicine: Genetic information gathered by NGS can aid in determining how a patient might respond to certain treatments based on their unique genetic makeup. This ushers in the era of personalized medicine where treatment is tailor-made for each patient.

3. Prognosis: NGS might be helpful in predicting the patient's course of disease. Certain genetic alterations may predict a more aggressive disease or likelihood of relapse. 

4. Research: The sheer amount of data NGS can generate is a boon to cancer researchers, enabling them to discern patterns, make connections and understand the disease on a genetic level that was not possible before. This, in turn, can lead to the development of new drugs and therapies.

5. Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) Monitoring: NGS can also be used to detect the presence of small amounts of cancer cells that remain after treatment, which can lead to relapse.

In all these ways, Next-Generation Sequencing has transformed and continues to transform the approach to understanding, diagnosing, treating and monitoring prostate and bone cancer.

I see this as good news for me as now it might be possible to treat the cancer at the molecular level and additionally it might be possible to limit severe side effects with the knowledge of the DNA analysis.

Of course I'm a patient and not a doctor so take the above statement with a grain of salt. The technology is bleeding edge and I'll will have to wait and see what my doctor decides for next steps.  I do know that the Lupron shots I'm getting now will be replace with a more aggressive cancer fighting drug.  It won't be a cure, but it can/might slow down the cancer growth and extend my life a few more years.  Won't know all this until I/we try it.  

Going this route will be a long journey (this doesn't happen overnight) and expensive unless I am accepted into a clinical trial, which can take a while.

Emotional Health

To date my psychological health is stable and positive. I do have times where I am extremely board and I start to reflect on my situation.  Then it is very depressing thinking of the limited life I have before me  and what can be done about it.  Basically nothing is going to cure it, so I'm at the mercy of the cancer which has already intruded my prostate, bones and lymph nodes.  Once it's in the lymph nodes it will continue on to infect other organs and body tissue as time progresses.  It is better for me not to dwell on that aspect as I really can't change the outcome.  Depression, anger, anxiety and feeling alone just adds to more stress and degrades my health even faster.  Again I say - "Fuck that Shit!".  Let me make a difference in life before something more serious happens - like hey Sash and Sax (our dogs) did you dig a hole for Rick yet in the backyard?  

By the way the medical community has a study running to fully understand the mental and emotional issues of those of us diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.  You can find it here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10124830/

What really gets me all fucked up is thinking of my wife and the effect that it has forced on her daily routines, changing her social life because she taking on more roles in the household and her down time is very limited.  All the added stress is overwhelming at times and added to this, a side effect of Prostate Cancer is low to no sex drive.  Intimacy can suffer, which is no small matter.  I know the list doesn't end here, but I don't want to write anymore about it either.  She needs support even more than I do!

Healing the Soul, Heart, Mind and Body

I asked David Sommerville to do a little write up this is what he had to say:
As an Intuitive Healer I am guided to work with people to help uncover and resolve what might be in the way of balance of the body system.

My online Zoom session work focus is to help to transform your limiting beliefs or patterns on a mind level, clear cell memory/trauma on a body level and heal emotional wounds from living life on a heart level.

Once there is communication and a clear flow of energy between the Heart, the Mind and the Body once again, the body system knows that to do, to create balance once again.

In Rick's case, as he has an issue that has manifested as a physical issue, it is generally a sign there are body level memories that need clearing. This is where we started the process together. in a Cell Pattern Release Method session to clear the memories from the body level. From there I was guided to do a series of complimentary long distance energy attunements (Vibrational Re-Alignment Attunements). They are used to disrupt the energy pattern of the "illness" we are working on resolving. Finally, we worked on resolving emotional heart level wounds from life experience that can affect access to the power of the Heart in Rick's healing process. 

Rick has been so open about the session process we are on together. That is the most important thing anyone can bring to any healing work! 

Digital Fabrication Lab

If you have been following my blog you will certainly know about my idea of creating a non-profit/charity for a place where anyone that wants to learn how to use various tools and digital equipment to make "stuff" with like minded people under the guidance of a mentor. A mentor I say, not a coach.  There is a difference. I'll leave that up to you to google the difference. :)  Here is a link to the video I put together about the lab.

It seems at this point there is lots of interest in the project and some equipment is already been donated while other important equipment is in the process of being acquired.  This is very good news! You might be asking why I want to do this without getting paid for it?  It gives me something to keep my mind busy and at the same time I won't feel the pain from standing or sitting all day; I can change positions as needed.

Take a look at the video for more information and if you can help I would really appreciate hearing from you.  There is an email at the end of the video.

Medical Expenses and Life

My daughter has setup a Go Fund Me page for helping to cover the expenses of my condition.  Thank you Victoria!  I want to thank all those that have donated so far, it makes a profound difference! Please share the link.

You can view the Go Fund Me page here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/missedallsigns  

New Feature: 

You can now subscribe Subscribe via Email.  At the end of each post there is a form so that you can now subscribe via email and not miss a new blog entry!