Drew Wohl

I now have been totally isolated by myself, away from family and friends, for 10 days.  My wife drops food off and I wave.  We have a conversation for a bit from about 20 feet away.  Then she has to leave.  But it makes sense - she works in a hospital and it is too risky for me.  After 9/11 I was determined never to sit on the sidelines when something happened, and I became a volunteer EMT a little over a year later.  Unfortunately I have to sit this one out. I am getting into my exercise routine again.  When my race got cancelled and I started to prepare to the isolation that was coming, dropped a bit on the training.  Swimming is off the table as gyms close down, but I am running and biking.  Bike is on indoor trainer.  Run is mostly treadmill, though on nice days, I try to sneak out - the only time I am outdoors.  When I do run outside, it is pretty easy to move 20-30 feet away the rare times I see people during the run.  To...

Yeah, it is not pretty. Once again, my Holiday Inn Express stay, coupled with 5 years of having scans, has made me qualified to read a scan.  Under the right circumstances.  And this time I was right.  But a little less correct. I spoke with my oncologist today and she confirmed that things are spreading.  I basically had another big bloom The one thing I missed, however, is that one tumor is now close enough to my airway to be of concern.  (There is another one running a distant second in terms of being something of concern in terms of structural issues.) She is now checking with the radiation oncologist to see if it can be radiated.  The location, size and potential scarring may make that a non-starter.  Additionally, the third and fourth line chemos will not shrink anything, if they work at all.  Five years ago I had FOLFOX, and I asked about that.  Normally you do not go back on a cocktail once off it due to lack of efficacy.  But en...

I think I have been coughing more since I stopped chemo.  But I have allergies and tend to get upper respiratory infections now and again.  The last week or so I have been feeling like that maybe I had another respiratory infection and have not been training as much.  Resting.  A bit bummed because I was not training.  So today, before a CT scan of my lungs, which is the first CT scan of my lungs since I stopped chemotherapy, I made sure to do a bike/run brick as part of my defiance (in my mind :) ) to my cancer.  About 13.6 miles on the bike and 1.2 miles on the treadmill. A quick photo of the computer screen of two images from my  l ast scan and the current scan.  Pretty much lined up to be at the  same spot.  Looks clear as to what is happening.   Then off to CT Scan.  I am not sure if I have ever stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.  I may have.  If I did, that would be the pinnacle of the medical training I have...

Does Stage IV cancer that spread throughout the lungs qualify as a chronic medical condition?  Just curious.... "The CDC says early data suggests older people and people who have severe chronic medical conditions like heart, lung, or kidney disease are at higher risk for more serious illness from the novel. coronavirus." I really do not want to concede any ground to #cancer.  It have not stopped this entire time.  And I am not saying the sky is falling.  And I am still not old (they said 60, and I am not even 60 in triathlete years😀)  But it does seem this is the time discretion is the better part of valor. Will try to swim more (hopefully) before it gets bad in my area, but may be looking at bike trainer and treadmill for awhile in the not too distant future.

Reports of a new virus started up in December, 2019.  It was that time of the year, give or take a month, of when we all begin hearing of the current version of the flu.  We are reminded to get a flu shots and to wash our hands.  But this one was different.  This one was raising eyebrows and getting attention as it is spread.  The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses has it listed as the “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”, or SARS-CoV-2.  More often it is referred to now as covid-19 or simply coronavirus. And in the day of the 24 hour news shows, coupled with social media (which was not quite like this when the first SARS came about), there was some ebb and flow about how dangerous (or not) this is.  For awhile it would be reported more on slow news days (i.e., non-primary days) or really grab headlines.  Kind of hard not to jump on a story where a cruise ship that is bigger than many cities becomes a huge petri dish....