The University

It isn't a secret that I am a die hard Wolf Pack fan. I will always have a special place in my life for the University of Nevada. Truthfully it is a small university, but Nevada has always been a great school for a sports fan myself. My first couple of years in Reno, the Wolf Pack was a dominant basketball force, followed by the unbelievable success of the Nevada football program led by Hall of Fame coach Chris Ault and our record breaking quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Even though we are a great University, because we aren't a huge, nationally recognized school like Ohio State or Notre Dame, we get little to no respect even when Colin leads the team to a 13-1 record his senior year all the while breaking a handful of nationally held records.

What does this have to do with anything? Well my little rant leads me to this point. I feel the same way about USC. Because they are who they are, they get treated like gods in the athletic world. As long as they win 7-8 games, theyre going to the Rose Bowl no matter what. On the other hand, teams like Nevada, Boise State, and TCU Have to win out and perform incredible magic to even get a look. Thus, I have always had some animosity toward USC. The fact that I hate California probably adds to it as well.

So here I am now, sitting in the Norris Cancer Center at, none other than, the University of Southern California. And, all of a sudden, I find myself not hating USC like I did before. Obviously. Maybe I still dislike the Trojan Athletics program, but this place is amazing. I have all the faith in these doctors, and mine are doing great thing.

Basically, I love USC. At least from an academic standpoint. Maybe I can still dislike the Trojans athletically, but truthfully, the doctors here are great and I have all the faith that they will get me to the health I want.

The Trip

So here I am in my cousins car on the I-5 in California and all I can think of are how my students are behaving for their sub right now. I know I probably should be more concerned with my own personal matters, but I feel like there is still so much in my life outside of this and I don't want my cancer to drown out the rest of my life. Right now my kids are in third period and I am constantly thinking of how they are doing. If I do need to have medical work, how will their education be affected? People keep telling me to take care of myself first, but I keep going back to their education. Most people won't really understand it unless you actually work in education and you see as a teacher how much of an influence you actually are, or in some cases, how much some of these kids just need something stable to hold onto. I like that I am able to be a figure for students to look up to, but maybe for some kids I can't be that now.

Anyway, that's what I am thinking right now. With all of this going on, there has just been a lot of time to think, and obviously lots to think about.

The Cancer

The hardest part of making a blog is the actual making part. The “creation” actually takes, well, creativity. I would be lying if I said creating this page has been easy. I didn’t know how it would look, what it would be called, what my direction would be or even if anyone would care. I’ve already determined what the blog is for and then over time it kind of just came together. So now that I have the creation, I guess all that’s left is to write…

So let’s start with the big news. If you don’t know yet, I have cancer- or I did have cancer. We don’t know what the post-operation status is yet, but the predominant type of cancer I had is apparently very aggressive. On December 29th I went into surgery to remove it just a week and a half after being diagnosed. Now that we know what types of cancer made up my tumor, the journey gets a little more complicated.

At first the plan was to get my blood tested in three weeks to see if my AFP levels had gone back to normal. If they do go down that’s good, but because of the aggressive nature of my cancer, I will need to undergo another surgery to remove my lymph nodes. If the AFP levels are still high, then the cancer has moved somewhere else and I will begin chemo treatment. Although this was the original plan, we have learned a lot in recent days that may speed things up.

The problem is that in most cases, this type of cancer has a high rate of metastasizing in other regions of the body. With this in mind, we may be taking further actions sooner than we thought. And by sooner I mean within the next week or so.

So that’s where I am now. It’s pretty scary to think of, especially since I am still trying to recover from my last surgery. To be honest, I hate surgery and I hate trying to recover from it. It just gets aggravating after a while not to mention hard and depressing. But I guess you do what you have to. And the brutal truth is that I either take this seriously or I essentially let it take over and win. I just pray God gives me the strength to get through this and makes me a stronger person because of it.

The Beginning

I guess if I’m going to start a blog I need to have a reason for it. Or maybe I don’t NEED to have a reason to start a blog, but if I want it to have direction, or even more important if I want people to care to read it, some sense of a purpose would help. So here goes…

I won’t pretend to believe everyone I know is dying to hear what I have to say. In fact, this is one of my biggest aggravations with society today. Everyone thinks they are entitled to everyone else’s attention. This sense of entitlement isn’t something we pick up as adults in college or even as teenagers. No, this is bred into kids as early as T-ball. It is the entitlement factor that causes kids to believe they are the center of the universe, and thus freak out when any aspect of their life deviates from everything they have been told they are and everything they have ever dreamed would come true.

With that being said, I ask that readers realize I am not always writing to entertain them, nor do I write with the perception that you would love to know what’s going on in my life. First and foremost, I am writing to organize my own thoughts. If you are reading this, and happen to check into my life every once in a while, you will see there is a lot going on with me. Once again, I don’t expect anyone to care though. This is for me first. If you would like to know about me and choose to read this as well, I do appreciate it and hope you find something worth looking for.

With that being said, thank you for taking the time to check into my life. It has been a crazy roller coaster the past 23 years and I don’t anticipate the ride ending anytime soon. I plan to regularly update as things happen or as news comes to me. At the moment, my news has been centered around my health which you may come to learn and understand more about in time.