On the road

Hey everyone!

So currently I am on the road with my sister, Derek, and my mom. We are headed to Ocala, Florida to see my grandfather, and so that Jill can help one of her friends at a horse show! I am excited just to be away from New York!! Right now we are just about to get on I-95 South from 26 East in South Carolina. Derek and I stayed up all night and drove, he started at about 2 am and I took over at about 4 am and drove until about 8. So I should be tired right now, but I am not really so I have taken some really good drugs to try and help knock me out because I am wired! (ps Red Bull Cola may be my new favorite energy drink!)

Anyways, I have been updating my Facebook and Twitter the whole way, you should check them out...I have been uploading pictures and everything! So really I think I am just going to plan on tweeting, posting on facebook, and working on my sites and my book while I am down here...not to mention relax and enjoy some quality time with my grandfather.

I have seen my grandfather since he left for Florida after my grandma passed away. This was also before I started chemotherapy so it will be nice to see him after I went through all that bullshit and my hair is finally growing back!

I have been having a lot of fun posting all night...sometime while driving, but that is what has kept me awake along with everybody commenting on the shit I was posting.

I think this trip is exactly what I need right now, just to get away and relax. I have been relaxing for the past couple months, I know, but I mean this is different. Now I am not cooped up at home in my bedroom!

While I have so time to write, I guess I will. Lets see, what is buried deep in my mind...

Lets start with my Cancerversary...it is only 4 days away, and the more I think about it the more I realize that it is a HUGE day for me. I mean that is the day I became a cancer survivor...well...I guess technically I became a survivor on the 28th of March, 2008 because that is when I had the Orchiectomy. That was a huge day for me when I look back on it though. I had a positive attitude ever since them about the whole situation. I mean from day one it was jokes, like the doctor asking me how I felt after surgery...my one word answer was....”Lighter”. My friends still laugh about this, I mean the way I told them all is still a little comical to me to this day...I simply did it through one mass text message to all of them saying, “it’s cancer”. Talk about the flood of phone calls that came in after that one, damn it was insane. Nothing could keep me down though...a week after my surgery I was in the car driving to Fredonia to party with all of my friends. Only one of them knew I was coming so all the rest of them were quite surprised when I walked through the doors of our favorite bar with a little bit of a limp.

From then on I was known as “uno” which was a nickname that I completely accepted and encouraged my friends to call me. I didn’t really realize though that someday this would bother me a little bit. I guess it was my own fault though, because I got them all making jokes about it. I mean it should have only been taken to a certain point, and there were some people that took it a little too far for my liking but I never said anything about it because I didn’t want to make any of them feel bad.

Eventually I kind of drifted away from those friends. I had so many serious things going on in my life, that I really didn’t have time to do most of the stuff that they wanted to do...like partying. I really started to grow up fast, or so I thought at that point....turns out I didn’t grow up as fast as I thought. It wasn’t until October 16th when I really started to grow up, and I would say that on November 2nd, 2009 was when the process got rushed, in a good way. November 2nd was the day that I started chemotherapy for the Stage III Seminoma in my Para-Aortic Lymph Node. For those of you that have been reading along since I started chemo you understand what I mean. If you haven’t been reading since then I would suggest going back and reading my past entries, because my process through chemo truly was a battle, and not necessarily because of the chemo itself. I had a lot of complications other than that, between thinking I had the swine flu, to cardiac issues, and finally of course that god awful blood clot that I had which is still limiting some of my activity still today!

NOW...of course these thing are not the only thing that kicked my ass into a different mode of thinking. In my third week of chemo, I met the single most influential person in my life. I had a roommate named Paul. Most of you have probably heard me talk about him, but I don’t think anyone really understands how much he really did influence me except for Paul’s wife Ruth Ann and the rest of his family. If it wasn’t for Paul I would not have had the drive that I have now to help people the way that I want to. He was a caring, kind, and hilarious man. I learned from him how to keep a smile on my face when I felt like crap by watching him with his family in the hospital when he was my roommate. I have to thank Paul for that extra push that I needed to really jump on Protect Your Pair. Paul recently passed away, and when I saw the news I had to make sure and be at his wake, because I am sure he would do the same for me if I had passed. Of course that isn’t the only reason I went, I wanted Ruth Ann and Paul’s sisters to know how much he meant to me and I wanted to show them that in person. I am sure that for the rest of my life I will keep telling the story of how I met him, and how much he influenced me. I feel like we really need more people like Paul in the world, and it would be a much better place.

On that note, I am going to try and take a mini nap here in the car, it is about 10 am, and we have about 4 more hours of driving ahead of us! I will update again later!!

Thanks for reading!

-The Tech