hey I'm Dan Bachman again and we are here for a very long overdue update here so I realize I have not posted any videos so apologies for that and there's there's a reason it's been kind of uh on some uncertainty some test results that didn't come back the way I like um so essentially here's here's the latest um I had my tumor my cancer blood work done a couple weeks ago came back that was signetera and cea there are two markers we use to track that like circulating tumular molecules in the blood and the last
time I had done was about four months ago and this time I had it done and they jumped 10x so they were 10 times higher than they were before so obviously not what I wanted to hear so my oncologist said okay let's run some CT scans so and just see as it spread where is it growing Etc confirm that those test results are accurate so I had uh two days ago had chest abdomen pelvis CT scan again with contrast which is the usual thing and just as kind of a clarification earlier this year maybe February
I think is when we might have even been November February so somewhere six eight months ago um I've gone through all the treatment all the surgeries scanned and then a liver spot came back the three spots in my lungs grew a little bit one spot in my right lung which I'd forgotten about as small as five millimeters um so those are what we're tracking and they had grown last time we checked the liver one had doubled to about an inch the three left lung were smaller if five eight millimeter something like that this one was
five millimeters so since the last set of CT scans I got the liver one has stayed the same so it's been stable which is good the three in my left lung grew a couple millimeters each I think they're one of them's an inch I think that's about the biggest one we have two and a half centimeters and the one on my right lobe of my lung grew one millimeter from five to six now the new thing that just to mix things up and make it more interesting right there's a spot on my pancreas now so
and it's at the head of the pancreas and I don't know the an internal anatomy that well but my oncologist told me yesterday just met with her yesterday Dr ottomio she said uh that is where I think it's a um a biliary duct or something some tubule of some kind attaches I believe it carries bile or something I'm horrible with that internal anatomy but she said because of the location if that tumor grows it can pinch off that tube and then lead to um liver and digestion and bowel issues or a liver liver issues I
believe and maybe gallbladder that can get pretty serious pretty fast so she said if you turn yellow that's an emergency come in right away and she said they may we have the option perhaps depending what it looks like at the time if that happens and by the way turning yellow is is John going to call it jaundice which is a sign of liver disease or liver failure liver injury so um uh they can put a list she said they may be able to put a little stint in there a stint uh which is a little
section of tube that they they put into that closed off opening to open it up and hold it open so they do the same thing it various places in the heart my dad has three stents in his heart he's had him for 15 20 years Run Like A Champion 85 years old um so that's a possible way to buy us some time basically um but the that's she she said that is the biggest risk right now that I'm facing as far as um emergent things that need to be acted on right away and could end
our story much faster um so and she said I have three I have three options for you she said you can either there's an ex there's a trial an experimental trial so it's a phase one trial or early trial whatever it is for immunotherapy which is targeted non-toxic medication that uh as my understanding is it's calibrated to Target only my tumor DNA so we've done DNA analysis on my tumors or genetic or whatever it is and found that oh it has this composition and you immunotherapy or targeted therapy my understanding is you can Target the
specific tumor cell so unlike a regular chemo where you just get a bunch of poison put in you and you hope it kills the tumor before it kills you because it affects everything unlike that it's more targeted so it's less toxic fewer side effects is my understanding that's option one option two is go back to the chemo that we used two years ago and uh full Fox and I I forget the other she said would not do oxaloplatin if I'm saying that correctly because that's what gave me the horrible paresthesis in my hands we had
to stop it last time but there were two chemo meds she said me we could try she said you may have developed basically tumor cells get accustomed to the chemo and become chemo resistant some of them do not all of them but that's why like if it kills off not chemo let's say it kills off 90 of the tumor but the 10 that are left are like super tumor cells that are resistant to chemo and so those are the ones that can grow and become bad again but she said if enough time goes by that
may allow the old chemo we did to be more effective and so that's option two so one is a trial it's experimental she's she's referring me to the doc who who oversees that program experimental trial old chemo third do nothing so she said this would just be palliative care palliative means helping you feel better it doesn't mean fixing anything so for example Tylenol is palliative care for aches and pains if you've got a headache or if you've got you know a joint ache if you take Tylenol it temporarily gives you some comfort so you can
sleep or you can work or whatever the thing is you need to do it's not fixing the problem it's not speeding recovery or anything but it it's a little Bridge across across the rough patch that can allow you to be comfortable during that situation while hopefully you're healing so Tylenol or Ibuprofen those are examples of palliative care that we use a heat and ice or other examples they don't fix anything but they can make you feel better so experimental trial old chemo or do nothing and so I asked her what is my life expectancy because
we haven't talked about that in a while and she paused and she said this is a this is the hard part of her job is what she said she said two to six months and the two months would be if we have that if that pancreatic spot gets bigger pinches off things even if I get a stent it might be two months that would be a fast acting thing the six months would be if I did the experimental trial and it worked so I said whoa so this experimental thing that's targeted to my tumor if
it does is job a hundred percent it may get me like two extra months to live and she said yep so wow this is obviously a whole lot to hear and it's um well man where do you start when you're thinking when you hear this and you're thinking about it I'm still obviously processing this this is just I just got this news yesterday um the it just seems to Just Disagree completely with my reality my reality is I've been feeling better I've been functioning better I mean everything is improving I had some knee issues that
are getting better I had arthritis is my big toe it was bothering me almost making me limp it's getting better I had a cough that really bothered me not I was just a tickly cough right here for about a month or so and I was like oh great are these the lung tumors coming to get me is that what's happening now is that why I'm coughing yeah that went away too it was a dry ticket that went away so all these things are getting better I'm feeling more alert um my diet is more I'm my
GI my GI system is more adaptable to diet I can I'm eating really good I'm exercising regularly feeling stronger feeling like I'm starting to get my life back and have been for months now you know probably a good three four months something like that I feel like I'm trending better undoubtedly and then at the same time so there's that progress it feels so good and my lived everyday life experience that says yes we're getting better and then at the same time oh things are actually getting way worse inside you and um your your future is
shorter than we had thought at least your estimated feature and I understand I'm not resigning myself to what any test says I'm not just rolling over and going oh well if they saw that then I guess I'm done and I better just start checking out and wrapping up Loose Ends I'm not I'm I'm not being defeatist and uh depressed and kind of thinking about well I'm thinking about all the time for probably you know a couple of days here but I feel energized I feel vital I feel like a a really alive person I feel
the most alive that I've ever felt and so those two those two ideas go they don't fit together very well um and yet it's something I have to you know acknowledge and deal with figure out in my mind a way to think about all this and then of course it raises all these other issues like I have to think about how much longer can I work um how do I want to if I did have two months or if I had six months how would I want to spend those um it makes me really glad
that I went up and saw my brother and his family in Late July it was you know I've only been able to work mornings just because of my surgical issues it's a long story but I mean all the eating triggers this process that then can interrupt my work so if I time it and eat just the right things in the morning it lets me work uninterrupted in the mornings but as soon as I eat lunch which is my only solid food meal of the day and starts this process that would get in the way of
me working afternoon so it's only able to work part-time halftime and and then also um I burn through all my savings um last year which man I feel so fortunate to have had savings to burn through because I couldn't work I mean I was off work four months last year and in between surgeries I was limited in the amount of time I could work because of symptoms you know so but I'm all out of I drained the thing dry no more savings and I'm only able to work part-time now so finances are a little tricky
this is not a feel sorry for me at all this is just the kinds of things you start to think about well I need to work to you know pay bills and eat and put food on the table and all those things but um how how much obviously you can tell I'm just kind of working through these things right now in my head I mean is that this is my chance it may be my chance I'm not giving up at all so I just and I'll tell you about I switched my diet I'm going hardcore
keto I mentioned doing that before I fell off of that and I was doing you know because it felt pretty good I was I was eating car plenty of you know carbs but good carbs you know fruits and veggies and stuff and some cheat days and stuff as well but have some muffins or something but I've changed a strict keto try to the idea being there's a theory that's been around forever since the 30s that if you star star of a tumor uh it well you can starve a tumor because they eat mostly sugar uh
sometimes at a rate 50 times the amount of sugar compared to other cells in your body in fact that's how a pet scan works um a pet pet scan is how they find tumors in your body one of the ways and they have you take no sugar for a while and then they give you some sugar to drink and then and then they scan you and it shows hot spots where the sugar is being sucked up like where all all the more sugar is being eaten the bigger a glow it is on you so they
can find tumors that way because they consume it at such a faster rate than other cells so anyway theory is you can starve a tumor by cutting out most carbs so I'm trying to keep it the last two days I started two days ago 50 grams or less of carbs sometimes they need 20 grams of carbs a day that is tricky man so so it's almost a carnivore diet carnivore would just be meat products only Fish and Chicken I will say like beef or red meat chicken Fish seafood that kind of stuff uh which is
a change for me because I was I'm a lifelong vegetarian I've been adding some meat since I got anemic earlier this year I've eaten salmon almost every day and my iron levels are good so that hasn't happened I mean I was able to handle not too weirded out by eating it doesn't give me a stomach ache or anything like that it's just it's not my preferred food so um I made a big frittata last night a big big casserole with um some veggies like I'm doing I did spinach and mushrooms because they're very low glycemic
index and they have some Fiber too which that's another thing with carnivore diet is you don't get any fiber so you get constipated which I do not need um so anyway I'm kind of rambling here this is kind of stream of Consciousness stuff you're just basically I just want to kind of share with you where where am I where I'm in my situation in kind of the thoughts that it raises it's it's pretty incredible this is uh it almost feels like a blessing to have known this was a possibility two years ago because what are
the options you know I guess before all this I just assumed I would probably die suddenly and unexpectedly I wonder how most of I assume that's how most of us feel we we realize we're going to die sometime and we just think oh maybe I'll get hit by a car or have a heart attack or something you know out of the blue which which seemed comforting at the time it's like oh I that way I'm not dreading it if I knew it was coming but since I knew this was a possibility two years ago when
I was diagnosed early 21. it gives you a chance to kind of roll all these things over in your in your mind and cut and think through that it takes you down a bunch of little Trails I mean everything from wait I need to cancel this subscription you know what about my Netflix what's gonna happen then you know is somebody what about my phone is it just going to be locked if no one knows my password or what about what do I do for canceling leases what happens with all this stuff and when do I
have to stop working and should I work as much as I can and uh so you're just getting kind of uh this is a big mismash of stuff some of things that run through I would think anyone's mind in this situation um and it feels like it feels so strange walking I went on just went on my hike this morning it's just gorgeous out there it's like 84 degrees sunny is a light Breeze blowing the trees are beautiful here the birds and the I mean every little thing just seems uh so intensely beautiful and that
is I'm gonna try not to get emotional here that's one of the that's the cool thing about cancer is it and that's a book I want to write that's the title for a book I want to write I don't know if I'm going to have the time now but um it just heals off all the superficial stuff that that we could accumulate layers of it over our life you know all the petty stuff all the politics all the squabbling all the gossip all the um caring about how others think about us and trying to dress
in a good way and have the best car and and be successful and and be have Prestige all these things that we end up carrying I was speaking for myself you know we just accumulate these these distractions and it just it just peels them all away and you're left with caring about people pretty much and which I think we you know I've always wanted to be more empathetic and more tender and more more genuine and authentic I've always tried to be but it it up into my life so up until this point like up until
I I supposed to be 55 in November on November 18. so my birthday's coming up so that's my near-term goal is to make it to my birthday feeling okay and then we'll set more goals after that obviously but um up until about 50 years old I just had this un unfinished unsatisfied unfulfilled feeling that was just always there in the background it's no matter what kind of successes or great things that happen to me here uh whatever I was no matter how much joy I had there was always just this theme going on underneath it
I was just not uh you call it the meaning of life why am I here I just didn't feel like I really knew I didn't feel like I was fully expressed as a person as a Dan Bachman I didn't feel like I was a fully formed person yet and of course the irony is that once I get this diagnosis it radically realigns your priorities it changes the way you think it forces you to look in areas that you just didn't want to think about you know the difficult the difficult thoughts the things you're ashamed of
the things you regret makes you look at all these things it also makes you feel everything more intensely I mean I'm looking at my office window I see the trees blowing in the breeze the grass fluttering I mean they're Birds I see deer walk by here sometimes it's and outside it's so pleasant and I mean even little things you know the mundane things pumping gas going to the grocery store or taking a shower or you know putting my cat curled up on the couch or you know all those little things they just they just assume
they just take up so much more meaning in a way that makes life Rich it just makes it so it that that unfinished feeling inside me has been gone and even more completely gone the kind of worse my trajectory has gone health-wise and the irony of all this if it's irony is that I finally feel like I am in a place and I'm in the best place I've ever been in my life and now I don't have a chance to use it you know um I'm not even gonna say it's unfair I mean obviously we
all die we don't get a say and win or how it just feels like a waste I feel like I have a lot to give in various ways you know friends family strangers professionally with my my musculoskeletal treatment approach all these things and and then it's like oh nope you are getting pulled from the game so it's in a video game it's like you just conquered the big boss the toughest level in the game and then it's game over instead of now I get to enjoy my accomplishments or or um give back the things that
I have received I don't get a chance to do that and I would say my my hunger and thirst for life is the highest it's ever been um every second feels intense not not in an anxious way it just feels like I feel like I'm it's so weird it feels like I'll have memories whenever I do die hopefully it's a long time from now but whenever I do diets feel it feels like I want to remember these moments when I'm good and of course well I mean depending on your beliefs you know um that may
or may not be possible but it feels like I just want to remember this moment I'm in um I wish I could have gotten here sooner but I'm really glad I'm here uh man I don't know what this update has turned this little talk has turned into but um I guess I just want to sorry impress on on any of you watching that there's a lot more to life you don't have to wait till you get to this spot just be intentional about what you want and what you want to value it's so much richer
it's so much more rewarding and again we don't know again depending on your beliefs we don't have proof of an afterlife I'm not counting on one if there is one and it's good awesome I'm stoked and my feelings on that may change you know they may change they say there are no atheists in foxholes right because when everything's on the line that's that's when you figure out how you really feel or what you're really willing to do but um I just hope that uh if there's anything sorry if there's anything that you can take away
from my little story here it's a look for the real stuff in yourself and around you and it's hard it's especially hard right now you know though I would say the last five years has been crazy out in the world in lots of different ways I mean economically and socially politically all those things are just insane and you feel like I can see why it would feel like the world's just falling apart but um whether I live to see it or not out of Crisis and Chaos come better things and we've seen this before I
mean just in the U.S we've seen back in the 60s then we had assassinations we had you know the Vietnam War we had Watergate we had scandals we had um you know Kent State shootings we had assassin we had I mean all kinds of race riots and burning down cities we've had all that back in the 60s now what came out of that well we had the summer of love we had civil rights we had um women's rights we had lots of good things we had the the love era right that came afterwards so so
if you're I understand that we're all very stressed and anxious and we feel like the world's falling apart but that is a necessary thing that has to happen every so often during history when we forget those lessons as a group of people Generations go by we forget the lessons we learned our grandparents learned because we didn't experience it so we repeat the same problem so there are Cycles there's a great book called the fourth turning by Neil Howe that goes over this it's fascinating but um anyway be encouraged I I am personally excited to see
what comes out the other side of our global neighborhood and Society just because the turmoil and the chaos has to happen before good things I would love to see what that looks like I may or may not but likely you watching May so try to keep positive look for the good things focus on the good things just focus on the good things there's so much we can't control most of most of everything we cannot control and as soon as for me that's been a huge relief actually so as soon as I realized why am I
getting stressed about this Injustice I saw or this um you know these are lies or this hypocrisy or this um danger harm or violence all these things if if I invest my my feelings into them and Care let them work me up it's for no good benefit because I can't I can't change those things what I the only thing I have control of course is just my own behavior and that can start with your thoughts it can start from wanting like identifying things that matter to you and focusing on them and doing something about them
every day um if you want to be more thoughtful if you want to be a better partner or friend or brother or sister father mother acquaintance workmate just start being one it's contagious it catches I mean just think about the last time someone went out of their way to be kind to you when they didn't especially when they didn't have to be just think about that how you felt you can make anyone feel like that anytime you want just a smile a friendly head knot if somebody on or giving someone a dollar who's homeless I
mean I know we have all these there's so much other weird social stigma attached to some of these things like but but if you just look at pure kindness and strive for it to be that way yourself it catches on and it doesn't have to be all of us figuring out at once I think if if 10 percent of us in the planet just deciding you know what we're going to just focus nothing on on kindness and love and understanding and and you know not letting people walk all over you but make that our goal
I bet you we could change the world just ten percent of this so well that just went rambling didn't it um it's it's Saturday the 23rd I believe of September and uh my brother John and his little girls are going to be visiting me next week and I'm very excited about that um I'll update you guys periodically I'll let you know um my oncologist said Hospice Care is going to be probably something that I need to consider um so it's so surreal thinking about that feeling as good as I feel but anyway love you all
I wish you all wonderful Health quick recoveries if you're going through similar stuff or whatever you're going through I hope you have I wish you the very best you're in my prayers as my prayers are which are I just speak my speak my mind speak what I want out loud for whoever's listening you are all in my prayers there is hope don't lose hope um just uh value love both giving and receiving sorry to be so sentimental here but I love you guys see you next time
