Posted on 01/04/2010 2:45:21 AM PST by DollyCali
You can find him on line at places other than here.. at Facebook he is Jeff Head
Jeff's Web Page - (check out the neat stickers he sells)
Jeff's FR Profile
Jeff's blog on his Cancer
Father we pray for our friend Jeff. May he find your perfect peace as he continues to trust you with his life. Give the surgeons and medical personnel wisdom and perfect skill in treating him. Please keep him close to your heart as his body responds to treatments and to surgery. Help us to love him as our brother and give support and strength to wife Gail and their large and loving family. In the name of our Savior and Creator. Amen.
It is so great to hear that you are doing so well.
God bless you, Jeff!
God bless you Jeff ....you surely earned it
Prayer bump
Jeff, as my grand dad used to say, “Your current conditions sure beats the grim alternative!”
Keep on top of it, do your PT and continue to enjoy the real treasures of our short trip on this orb, your family and friends.
Thanks for the feedback.
Jeff, as my grand dad used to say, “Your current conditions sure beats the grim alternative!”
Keep on top of it, do your PT and continue to enjoy the real treasures of our short trip on this orb, your family and friends.
Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the update Jeff. May God continue to Bless you and your family.
Here's to you,
Leni
Jeff, thank you for continuing to share your experiences with us.
May God continue to Bless you and your Family. You have been, and continue to be an inspiration to many..
Take care my FRiend. I will always admire your Faith and strength of character.
May God continue to bless you, Jeff!
Jeff, you know you are ever in my prayers. Keep fighting the good fight. I know God hears our prayers, and His will be done.
My dear Jeff,
Thank you for the update news...both good and otherwise. Amen for prayers said on you and your families behalf. You are an inspiration.
So happy. I’ve kept you in my prayers.
Like!
Thank you so much for keeping us informed! Praise God for your healing!
The video embeds may not work here on FR>:
Well, I am very late entering this information and making this entry,.
In early August we traveled to MD Anderson in Houston for our annual pilgrimage and to accomplish three things.
We stopped in Amarillo and ate with a close friend, Caylin, there who is retired US Army EOD. We then stopped in the Sanger area to spend time with Brenda, my late oldest brother's wife who lives out on the "place," where we grew up. It was a great visit, but short-lived because we had to get on down to Houston.
We arrived in Houston and over the next several days went through all of the appointments associated with my checkup. Blood samples, MRI, CT scans, x-rays, preparation for the radiation treatment, and finally consultations with Dr. Rhines.
While doing this, on August 12, we took the time to vist it USS Texas, the hiostoric dradnought class battleship that sevd in both World War I and World War II and which is not a museum at the San Jacinto State battlefield park. I had last visited it as a child when my Dad took us there in the 1960s. They have significantly refurbished her since that time and it was a very good visit. Gail took some pictures and a video of me climbing around on it (very slowly and carefully) in the 1000 degree heat. Hehehe...she wisely stayed in the visitor center where it was coool. Therewas no air conditioning on the ship where I was looking around.
Jeff climbing around on the Battleship Texas
The consultations went very well. could not have been a better report. The bone fusion in my spine and around the two strusts made up of my left fibula bone placed where my sacrum ised to be, or as good as they can be...better than expected. The small tumoirs of chordoma in my illium continue to grow slowly, but are reaching a size now where the radiation treatment proposed by Dr. Rhines is warranted. One areaa that they had thought was scar tissue since my surgeries has grwon so they believe it in fact is a 4th small tumor and will be treated with the rest.
After this good news, we attended the conference, which itself was great. I always love listening to the several seminars during the day. Always good information...[particularly now over the years eeing new information and developments. Particularly good was seeing our friends. The Shaws, Mohammed and his wife and children (Mohammed had the same complete sacrectomy surgery I had a year and a half after me), and so many others, including Dr. Garvey (my bone/plastics Dr. for the surgeries), Dr. Fu (the rehab Dr. at MD Adnerson who referred me to TIER), and Dr. Lieberman (the Phd Rehab Dr. who worked such wonders with me a TIER).
Also, we saw Mrs. Amiee and her mother. They were at the conference to accept an award on behalf of our good friend, Neil Aimee, who had passed away a month before the conference and whom we miss. I was asked to give a tribute to Neil at the conference and I was proud and happy to do so. Neil helped me a lot five years earlier when I was just being operated on and coming to terms with the disabilites and life after the surgeries. We talked each month thereafter and several of the times called him sI was getting a Chicken Sandwich at McDonalds for lunch. He used toalways joke with me about that. He told me towards the end that if he got to the Pearly Gates before me, he would have a Heavenly Chicken Sandwich waiting for me at the true Golden Arches when I arrived. I know he will...and though I miss him, I know, like with my parents and brothers and grandparents and others who have gone before, that I will see him again in a place without pain and suffering.
I will certainly not hurry that, because it is given to God to make such decisions...but I do not fear that day and look forward to it in God's own time.
After the conference we traveled back up to the Denton, TX area to spend the week before the radiation treatment. We had a wonderful time just taking it easy on the ranch and spending the time visiting friends we have in the area (Gail and I lived around dentobn for a total of 6-7 years during our married life). Gail and Brenda got to spend a lot of time together and accomplished a lot. We also were blessed to eat dinner with and spend several hours with our good friends, Trey and Patty Martino. Trey has been a life-long friend, and is as close to a brother to me as anyone could be who is not actually a blood brother. Through our mutual testimonies of Jesus Christ and our many years of relations and memories...the difference is virtually non-existant.
Then, it was back to Houston and the radiation treatment. Stereo tactic radiation is a process where they use a 3-D, highly computerized equipment to generate five beams of radiation and then have them converge at the tumor sites to give a large dose of radiation to the tumor, but to do so in such a way that the individual beams do not do appreciable damage to other tissue they pass through. They take the week between the preaparation appointment (which they call a simulation) and the actual procedure.
We had tried this the year before...but it was unsuccessful because when they make the mold for you to lie in, they then pull a significant vacuum on you as you lay under thick, clear mylar, so you will not move. That pressed my back into the mold they had made and in my case caused a lot of neureopathic pain as nerves were pushed against the titanium in my back.
So this year they planned to put me under each day for the procedure. This involved starting a little earlier and having an anistetheolist team there to put me under...remaining under while they ddid the procedure for two to two-and-a-half hours, and then spending anouther hour to hour-and-a-half being brought back out of the "sleep," in recovery. Well, you cannot eat for twelve hours before the procedure, and when you add the 5 hours that all of that took, you end up with about eight hours to eat between procedures.
So, we would get done, go eat a light meal, and then about four hours later, eat a heavier meal, before going to sleep and coming in for the next procedure.
At the Radiation center we sat with and got to know numerous people who were coming in for various radiation treatments. Most of them were on 28-30 day treatment plans where they came in for 20- 30 minutes of treament each time. They would all go in and then come out again and leave while we waited, and by the time we got done, they were all gone. But we only had five treamtents to do. where they had 30 or so. It was a good exerience being there with them....getting to know them and their stories as we shared our own...and then praying for them each as they went through their procedures to treat their various cancers.
In such circumstances other differences pale and you come to know and love people without delving into the things that might otherwise divide you.
As we came in Wednesday for my third treatment, I have to say I was feeling VERY badly. Everyone responds a little differently to radiation. Some are more susceptable than others. Stero-tactic radiation, though it avoids too heavy a dose to vital areas, still deposits a very massive dose of radiation to the targeted areas. Your body does not like that. For everyone, radiatin is a poison. Specific types have been shown to be more effective against different cancers...like with Chemo. But, like Chemo, they are poisonious to the system. I was once told, while my brother Greg was going through his fight with Lymphoma, that radiation and chemo are poisons that can and will kill you. The treatment plan is designed so that hopefully they kill or impeded the cancer before they do the same to you.
Anyhow, by the third day...for whatever reason...I was one sick fellow.
Dr. Macaleer, who is very personable and a very smart and talented lady, saw me there and asked how I felt. I told her I was afraid that the next day they may have to wheel me in on a gurney. Sh said, "Oh no, that wont do...we will take care of that." And they gave me some steroids in my IV that day that are pcifically designed to help fight the side effects of radiation. I have to say...they worked! The next day I walked in under my own power feeling as ood as I have felt in years.
But steroids also have side effects as they explained to me. You cannot take them too long, and they can make you just as sick in the end. They have treamtent and impact curves and they try to design the steriod treatment to hit you with its positive effects as your system is experiencing negatvie effects from the radiation. Then they slowly take you off the steriods in the hope that its negative effects are less burdensome as they wind down, and the steriod's psotive effects offset the negative effects of the radiation. Pretty intersting staticstical and mathmatical models involved in that.
Anyhow, I was able to get through all five days of treatment and still not feel too terrible from the steroids. Then, we headed home and had a wonderful trip back to Idaho.
One of the best things about these trips for me is that they allow me to spend two to three weeks with my dear, wonderful wife and sweetheart, Gail. In that way, depsite the medical nature of it all, it is a vacation to me. Gail has been a strength, comfort, care-giver, sweetheart, and example and pillar to me through all of this. Not a day goes by where I do not emotionally thank my Father in Heaven for bringing her into my life 37 years ago, and for her goodness, kindness, and wisdon.
Now, it is December 23, 2014.
On the 20th of December I marked my fiver year anniversary since being diagnosed with Sacral Chordoma.
In Feberuary, we wll hae an MRI here in Idaho to send down to MD Anderson where they will look at the results and see what impact the radiation treatment had on he spots in my illium (hip bones). It takes a ood six motnhs for any swelling or impact of the radiation to surrounding tissue to wear off nough so they can really asses what has happened with each of the tumors.
In the last three months I have had a couple of pretty severe infections. One was a urinary tract infection (which I had not had befoe) and the other was an infection in one of my teeth. I learned somethig new in each case.
Because of the long term pain medication I am on (methdone in my case) my normal ability to feel the results of such infections is masked. This is pretty academic actually, but I did not think on it before now. ANyway, because of this, by the time the infection became bad enough for me to feel it, it had advabced sinificantly and was pretty bad. They have both been treated an I am doing a lot better...but in the future, at the slightes swelling of a lymph-node or feeling in anyway out of sorts that comes with such infections, I will go into the Dr. to get checked out.
Our local Dr., Dr. McGuffy, who is a wonderful gerneal, family practise Dr. has wlays chided me a biot for not coming in often enbough. At our last meeting I told her she may get tired of seening me and she said...no problem, you should have been coming in more often like I told you! LOL!
So, there's the latest update...strectching back four months! I will update again when we know th results of the Februaty MRI!
'Til then, a Blessed and Merry Christmas and Holiday Season to all!
...and the bery best of the New Year for 2015 to you and yours!
In Christ,
Jeff Head
December 23, 2014
Merry CHRISTmas Jeff!
Good to “see” you.
Hey Jeff! While you are running around Texas, don’t forget me—we live in Lakeway, which is very near Austin.
It sounds like you are making some progress although I’m sure it’s not nearly enough for you. All in God’s time, Jeff—we must never forget that.
You are ever in my prayers.
Mari
I got an excellent report back on my bill of health. No new cancer. Bone fusion doing far better than expected. Spots treated last year with radiation appear either completely stunted and neutralized or dead. As with all major cancer...there is no sure thing medically...but this was about as good a report as I could get.
God bless you all and my sincere and humble thanks for the faith and prayers of so many of my FRiends here on FR. God bless you all for it.
May GOD bless you, patriot.
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