Chemo, riding and King of Burlingame Time Trial.

Little over a month since last post, had my first run of the new chemo (Carmustine) it was different than just taking the chemo pills once a month. Treatment was at Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital (4/7/09) in NYC in the chemotherapy suite for iv chemo. Made sure I did two hours on the compu trainer before treatment, good thing.

I was told that it may burn the vein as it entered, a separate solution was hooked up up to dilute it and ease the burning. Well, it did burn but we figured it out and made the whole thing not that bad. Funny part was putting a heat pad on the vein area with the burning sensation, it worked.
Headed home from there picked up my new Superfly and went out to the garage for assembly, not a bad day after all really.

Felt cruddy Wed/Thur/Fri and woke up in emergency late Friday night, some chemo side effects had brought on two gran mall seizures. Bad part for me was inability to speak, when told I was staying in the hospital we discovered that my ability to punch walls was still there along with immaturity.
Good thing actually, I was a mess, couldn't speak, sight and balance was off a bit as well. MRI showed brain swelling most likely from seizures blood tests showed that required post chemo med level was very low which may have caused all of this.

Big question for me was "i can still ride, right?" but swollen brain wouldn't let me say that. Communication was gone, could not speak for about two days and even then speech level was "f***" along with "sh**" along with only thing written was the letter "k". It got better as evening approached on the second day and speech was back to some degree although while saying one thing my mind heard another.
They let me out on Sunday, and we hit Sloan the next week, Dr Nolan told me that riding/racing is okay and I've gone easy from there.

I've been riding, plan on racing at EFTA's opening NECS event, Glocester Grind on 5/17/09, that should be interesting as my legs are gone along with my ability to ride too long. Gotta fix it somehow so that should be fun, hope not to get lapped on the first lap. Feel better every time I ride and will try to do 2 hours on my compu today boring as that is.

OK WITH ALL THAT JUNK.

Week before the seizure, did the 2009 King of Burlingame Time Trial had a great time while doing it, just a fun course, early in the season and usually a good thing to help judge training. Johnny Bold just hammered along and kicked butt in my class along with overall time, Kevin Hines was riding fast as well.
My teammate Thom Parsons looked great on his single speed setup along with Kurt Johnson (recovering from a recent heart attack). Full results from that event can be found below. Congrats to Andrew for his win at the root 66 opener also.

http://www.efta.com/PDF/results/2009//2009_kob_results.pdf

Riding the new bike now and it is great! It's better every time I am on the bike, just need some legs along with getting my lungs back.

Thanks to everyone for all the support.