MD Anderson Day 2 and a HUGE announcement

The evening after Day 1 was spent at the Farace mansion in Katy, TX.   The highlight was Audra doing a dramatic reading of the last blog post, and she has been chosen as the official reader for the audio version of the blog, coming in the summer of 2016, immediately following my interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show.

Day 2 started with a mid-morning call from MD Anderson letting us know that Dr. Patel and the team was running ahead of schedule, and that I was free to come in earlier than my scheduled 2:00 appt.   Having anyone at MD "running ahead of schedule" is like seeing Halley's Comet every Tuesday for a month...it just doesn't happen.   After a short wait, we were called back and did the blood pressure thingy, and weight (3 pounds less than yesterday....SCORE!!!!)  and met with Dr. Patel's nurse and she went through a rough history and general medical questions.    Then the very cool Dr. Baez entered and spent about 30 minutes going through a complete history of surgeries and treatments.  Side note:   Dr. B is freaking cool, like the flip side of the pillow and you want to invite him to dinner at Flemings when the Bradleys are paying cool.   Grew up in Puerto Rico, went to Stanford, worked on Wall Street with Goldman for two years before going to med school back in PR, and then doing his residency and fellowship at MD Anderson.   Yeah, about like my path and story, we could be twins.   So Dr. B had an interesting focus on the questions....he wanted to know the dates of each surgery and reoccurrence, but wanted to know the specific treatments, length, how I tolerated, ect...    After beating him down with "no really, we should be best friends" he left to go update Dr. Patel.    About 12 minutes gave me just enough time to watch the best Ted Talks ever.....Amy the Unicorn...watch it here if you've never seen it, you can thank me later:

Best Ted Talk Ever-Shawn Achor

So then the great Dr. Patel enters and we are reminded why MD Anderson is so great.   Her bedside manner, like everyone at MD is impeccable.   She is friendly, attentive, knows every date and person's name along my journey off the top of her head and wants to have a discussion, not just tell me what she thinks.  At the end of the day she suggests doing nothing at this point, other than monitoring and checking scans quarterly.  She gave a concrete reason for not doing Yervoy at this point, the 10% uptick in pushing back reoccurrence is not worth the terrible side effects.  They are basically waiting for the 'next time', then LEAVING the cancer in place, so they can have something to monitor to see if the treatment is working.   The tumor or cancer is shrinking, great, stay on whatever drug or in whatever trial, if it's not, then try something else or remove it.   The other interesting thing coming out of this is I'm somewhat of a Melanoma Rock Star!!!   Having an initial diagnosis, then reoccurrence, reoccurrence, and reoccurrence puts me in rare company....so MD will send a private jet to Addison Airport so I can travel in luxury each quarter to make MD my home base.   Ok, so I made up the private jet part, but my agent is working on that, right after making sure Matt Lauer doesn't get 'handsie' during my Today Show interview.

So now for the big announcement.....thanks to the generous offer from Mrs. D (you know who you are you Scandal loving principal.....even thought the acting and story line in Scandal is terrible) I will be teaching 4th grade writing at Isbell Elementary starting this Spring.    So expect a generation of writers that like to use "..." to join run on sentences, put anything and everything in "quotes' to draw attention because you can't see me doing air quotes while I'm typing, and a smarmy attitude and understanding that sometimes comedy makes people uncomfortable.  (see Emily and Mike's rehearsal dinner toast)

Thank you to Mindy and Dave for hosting us for two nights, and buying two of the most expensive meals I've ever eaten.  (Mitch, we still hold first place with Nobu NY)   And to Craig and Audra for a great dinner, company, and keeping the girls for two days.

Mike

PS  I'm kidding about teaching at Isbell.......after the 5th person asked either when I was starting, or if I was still working at Splunk, I figured I needed to clarify!  haha

#Blessed  #TrevoneBoykinisanidiot  #TCUquarterbacksliketohavefelonies  #StillwishTexashadaQB #Scandalisterrible  #LittleSweetslidingdownthebannistermakesmelaugheverytime  #Ilovedrpepper  #MancrushonDrBaez  #MancrushonKirkHerbstreit  #Alabamadefenseisprettygood   #Idon'tproofreadIjusthitpublish   #Untilnexttime