Biopsy #4 and Revlimid Start

It's been a while and much has happened. I had the biopsy procedure of my right sacrum performed at Sloan-Kettering. The pathologists have read the sample and confirmed that yes, there are the telltale Hodgkin Lymphoma Reed Sternberg cells present. It's the same disease trying to flare again, now most certainly in my bones. This wasn't a surprise to anyone, but it does help the situation to know we have some hard pathology evidence of the disease we're trying to go after. 

The biopsy procedure was not fun, this is certain, but it’s over, and I was fine after just a couple of days of swelling and soreness in the area. There were many hours – way too many hours – spent waiting and fasting before the procedure. I had to fast from midnight the night before until after 4 p.m. when I came to from the twilight sedation. It was a long day in the city. The surgeon went in with a needle and bone hammer and extracted a piece of the bone and marrow where disease looked to be involved, pinpointing the area with live CT Scan technology. The surgical team gave me medication to relax me, but I was by no means asleep. I played Bob Marley through my headphones and welcomed the anesthesia nurse’s hand that rubbed my arm throughout the most painful moments.

Then came more days of waiting: for results and a plan. Then came more traveling to NYC to solidify that plan, including a solo trip by car and train – liberating! I’ve done an incredible amount of thinking and contemplating and talking out options with my family and medical team, but mostly with myself. I had to ask the really difficult questions to my doctors to be able to get things into perspective here. They’ve been realistic and gracious and I could not be more appreciative to have the individuals that I have in my corner.

It took me a few weeks to get to this point, but right now, that CT Lottery tagline: “You can’t win if you don’t play” keeps coming to mind. So does the Wayne Gretzky quote: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” There are still shots for me to take and I can still win, but I have to play in order to do so. Playing will not be easy and the idea of more treatment is deflating, but it beats the alternative. To be very blunt, if I don’t play, I will die. This lymphoma will begin to become very painful and it will kill me.

In black and white, the risky treatment might kill me; the cancer will kill me. I’ve decided to hedge my bets. Because there are areas of cancer on my vertebrate, it eliminates my hope to be able to ride this out for a while longer, to “wait and see”. If I want to maximize the effectiveness of my current options, I need to act now. There is still hope for this donor transplant process to work – we just have to poke it a little bit. 

I am reluctant to have more toxic, traditional chemotherapy and have exhausted most of those options anyway having been so heavily treated. I do not want to send my body into tremendous trauma again, and because of constant scientific developments I hopefully will not have to.

Gratefully, there is a promising option and I have decided to embrace it. I’ve started a targeted therapy drug, Revlimid (also known as Lenalidomide). It is an FDA approved drug used primarily against Multiple Myeloma. However, there have been recent and ongoing studies of its efficacy against refractory Hodgkin Lymphoma – even after donor transplant. It has shown some promise in these studies, and I’ve connected with a couple of other refractory HD patients who have had great disease reduction results with it. The best part is that because it is a targeted therapy, the side effects are said to be minimal. So far, this has been true. I’m a little more tired and more easily winded, but that seems to be all.

The drugs were delivered via FedEx to my door. It is an oral pill that I have been taking once a day and will continue to for the 21 day cycle, one week off, then a second cycle. After two cycles we will check a PET Scan to see the progress that the therapy is making against the disease. Because this pill is such a "light," targeted treatment I can be on it for a very long time if needed. It's not like toxic chemo that a body can't handle for prolonged periods.  

In some post-allogeneic transplant patients, Revlimid has actually pushed them into some mild Graft vs. Host Disease proving that the drug may actually have a stimulating affect on the immune system/donor lymphocytes. This possibility makes the therapy even more ideal because not only will it be going after the small amount of lymphoma I currently have, but it may also ramp up my newly donated disease fighting cells: a win-win.

The hope is that the Revlimid will reduce the disease tremendously and will allow me to go forward with the Donor Lymphocyte Infusion with a super blast of my sister’s disease fighting cells. That procedure of course comes with the risk of mild to severe Graft vs. Host Disease, but also the only promise for long-term remission. I’ll revisit that decision when we get to that point. Right now, we’re working on getting the lymphoma under control while keeping my quality of life as high as possible.

Life has been very emotional in many respects – tough moments but also beautiful moments. I am feeling mostly well and I can do most everything again. I’ve had nearly five months without chemotherapy treatment and much healing has happened during that time. The freedom and confidence that allowed has done wonders for my spirit. My limitations will increase some again once this new drug begins to affect my blood counts, but it shouldn’t be anything extreme. I’ll continue to see my lymphoma doctor at Sloan-Kettering once every other week and will have blood work drawn locally at Hartford Hospital’s nearby cancer center every week.

Yes, treatment continues, but my life does too. Living is my focus now more than ever. No more being a full-time, incapacitated patient. I am taking full advantage of my renewed strength and mental capacity. I am still going back to work full-time from home as planned. I start tomorrow and I can’t wait to delve into the projects at hand. I'm working out with the LIVESTRONG at the YMCA program. I am also flying to visit my sister in Las Vegas for a few days and very much look forward to seeing the desert and mountain landscape out there: one night we’ll be camping in the Valley of Fire, another we’ll be taking in the Vegas strip. Maybe I’ll just put it all on red? 

Scan Storm

Two days after getting my less-than-desirable PET Scan report, we lost power at our home in Connecticut, along with just about everyone in our state. We had no heat, hot water, lights, internet, cable, or electricity. We remained out of power for 7 days. There are still 45,000 customers out of electricity here in Connecticut and I feel greatly for them: the scenario can be quite frustrating. The timing of it all was impeccable because for Craig and me, it actually provided a very welcome distraction from the realities of the news that I got. 

We spent the week in the comfort of neighbors' company with unexpected sleepovers, rotating dinners among all of our houses, lots of laughs and indoor camping. I got good use out of my long underwear and all of our blankets. It was confirmed once again that we have the best friends, neighbors and family. 

Lights out pizza party 

After a long day of doctor meetings at Sloan-Kettering on Friday, Craig and I came home to the beckoning beam of our driveway floodlight and the sound of our neighbor in our basement rewiring the electricity from our generator to our main switchboard. We came in to the heat pumping from our pellet stove and the house whirring with that buzz we all take for granted. It was glorious to be able to sleep upstairs in our bed for the first time in a week, rather than bundled on a couch or air mattress. 

The symbolism of it all was kind of eerie. The plug was pulled out of me for a while there, but there is still light. Yes, there is the dark light of hot spots on my PET Scan, but there is also the promising light that is new experimental drugs and a lymphocyte boost. All of that light came flying at me violently twelve days ago when I first learned the news. My friend Meredith's mother, Julie, generously drove me into Manhattan and killed time while I endured my PET Scan then went to meet with Dr. Sauter to go over the results right afterward. 

He walked into the room and said: "How's your back feeling?" and proceeded to rub the middle of it asking me if it was sore. I knew immediately what that question meant. He informed me that there were some hot spots on vertebrate on my spine, two new lymph nodes lighting up in my right chest, and that the spot on my right hip/sacrum had grown more prominent since my last scan. In short, it looks like the lymphoma is on the rise again despite my new immune system.

Just Another Surgery

It's crazy to think how commonplace anesthesia, breathing tubes, cold, cold, cold operating tables, steri strips and hospital provided no-skid socks can become. This was my third biopsy in just a little over a year, not to mention the two bone marrow biopsies and egg retrieval surgery.

However, this time I got a blue-and-white seer sucker robe to tie over my johnny. I kind of wanted to take it home. Other than that, it was same old. Just another slice-me-open-and-take-out-a-chunk-of-lymph-nodes kind of day.

I was the surgeon's first case of the day so my mom and I arrived at 6:15 a.m. after a 4:30 a.m. wake-up. We were bright and cheery to say the least. I'm glad she was the one driving on the highway.

I was brought to the pre-op room where an IV was placed in my forearm and I had a visit from the anesthesia team where they explained the usual process of sending me to Tahiti, that I would be breathing on my own but would have a tube in my throat to breathe in the gas that would transport me.

Before long I was rolled into the cold OR where the operating team all introduced themselves and we made small talk about the construction at the hospital. My funny little surgeon was cracking jokes and full of smiles. He indicated that he would reopen the "wound" he left there in May, 2009 as my new cancerous lymph node was right underneath it. They were all so nice and we repeated together several times what procedure I was having done before the surgeon wrote it in marker on my left shoulder ensuring he was going into my left underarm.

The last thing I remember is breathing gas out of a big tube covering my entire mouth ... the anesthesiologist telling me to mouth breathe.

"Have a nice, deep sleep. We'll see you soon," said the nurse.

I thought of snorkeling less than 10 days before when I was also breathing in and out through my mouth and pictured myself surrounded by cobalt blue and neon yellow fish rather than wrinkled blue scrubs and blindingly bright round surgical spotlights.

With just a few breaths I was out and remember nothing until waking up in the same room that I had started pre-op in, which was now converted to the recovery area for all of us morning surgical cases. Soon my mom was brought in and I felt totally at ease. My underarm was in some pain so they gave me some IV pain meds and after cranberry juice and graham crackers, a Percocet.

After maybe an hour I felt fine and was released. A pimply faced, teenaged, super shy volunteer

wheeled me out to the car via the fastest wheel chair ride I have ever gotten. I swear we were squealing around the corners. He took his patient transport assignment seriously. It was rather exciting.

Other than being loopy from the Percocet and orange from the sterilizing iodine, I really felt fine. My mom cooked me up some eggs and cheese when we got home and I cuddled into the couch where I camped out for most of the rest of the afternoon. Craig came home from work and joined me in napdom. He then cooked me a delicious burrito and we ran out to rent a movie. After an inspiring viewing of Invictus it was more sleep.

I didn't take any pain meds after getting home and have been able to squelch the ache with Extra Strength Tylenol alone, which makes me very happy. Today I was just sore in the armpit and my throat but had a lot of energy ... enough for a 40-minute walk which felt fantastic. I had good music pumping and a lot of aggression so the adrenalin just kept pushing me. I also finished a book and baked kale chips and zucchini bread. This was quite satisfying. Luckily, I was able to remove the surgical dressing and shower this afternoon as sweating in these 90 degree temps revealed smells I didn't know I could produce.

Dr. Dailey started me on Prednisone steroids which has helped to calm the Hodgkin symptoms and I'll stay on these until I start chemo on Thursday. It's eliminated my fevers and has much reduced the aches from my swollen lymph nodes and the swelling in my chest.

I have not yet heard the biopsy results and have no idea what we'll be getting into on Thursday, but I know that I'm going in to start chemo of some sort as they want to get me going on something as soon as possible to zap this cancer.

Tomorrow entails an echocardiogram to ensure that my heart is strong enough for more chemo. But more importantly, I'll be meeting Craig for a picnic of our favorite Chipotle burritos and a walk around our old West Hartford stomping grounds. Hoping for another one of these beautiful summer days we've been spoiled with.

Down a Few Lymph Nodes

Other than the fact that I look like someone sliced my neck ala Jack Bauer style, the immense swelling around the incision, and the impending news of the biopsy results hanging over me, I'm doing okay.

We arrived on time for the procedure and were escorted right to the OR prep area. My nurse there was sweet but not so savvy with the old IV insertion. She asked me myriad of questions about my health history from whether I ever had asthma to the last time I had a bowel movement. I had to strip down everything, but she told me she wouldn't rat me out if I kept my undies on. I didn't see why I had to be flapping in the breeze if they were operating on my chest. I got to wear one of the hospital's newly acquired "Bair paw" pre-op gowns which has a tube you can connect to it and blow in hot air to warm you up. It was fun inflating and deflating it and it felt good to be nice and toasty.

My nurse had breast cancer the year before so we swapped stories about amazing friends and the debilitating fatigue that the chemo can cause. Unfortunately, they couldn't use my port as it was too close to the area that would be operated on and not accessible enough to switch out the meds I would need. So in she went for a stick in my hand. Unfortunately, she missed and it was a regular blood bath. I could feel the hot blood seething through my fingers as she kept saying "sorry, sorry." I just breathed and didn't look until she got the IV in. Then I saw the blood-soaked white towel and the blood splattered on the sheet beneath me. The cracks of my fingers were stained red. Great start to the morning.

Then it was a lot of waiting. I did some calisthenics to get pumped up and Craig and I read trashy magazines and cracked jokes. I was ready to get it done and over with. We then got a visit from my anesthesia team - a doc and a resident. They were a very funny and very calming duo who explained how they would insert a breathing tube and at times they would be breathing for me during the procedure. They warned me that if the surgeon had to make the second incision in my chest that they may need to insert a chest tube to ensure air flow so as not to worry if I wake up with a hole in my side and a tube coming out of it. They told me that first they'd give me preliminary meds to relax me which would make me feel like I had a few too many margaritas then they'd send in the hard stuff that would send me right to "Maui." Sounded nice.

I asked if I'd get the chance to talk with the surgeon before. That was very important to me as I had never met this man and wanted to at least see the face and shake the hand of the person that would be slicing me open. They assured me that he would come see me.

More time passed and one by one all of the other patients in the curtained cubbies around me were visited by their surgeons and rolled away into their respective operating rooms. Eventually it was just me and Craig. The nurses pulled the separating curtains back and it was just me on my one stretcher in this expansive empty room. My anesthesia duo were sitting in chairs in the hallway - all of us awaiting the surgeon. We joked that he was probably really hung over and had a touch time making it in that morning ... that was not a very funny thought. But he arrived, with time to spare before my scheduled start. My hero in blue scrubs. His curly white chest hair peeked above the v-neck scrub shirt and I marveled at the curly, white hair on his arms. His Ironman watch and muscular build gave off an aura of confidence and experience. I liked him immediately. He again explained in his faint British accent what he'd be doing and assured Craig and I that he's been doing this for 30 years and it was no big deal.

Craig and I kissed goodbye and I was wheeled away leaving the pre-op room empty and ready to prepare for the return of all of us patients after our procedures when it would covert back to the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU).

Just like my anesthesiologist from my biopsy in May, this one also grew up in Simsbury so we chatted about the Tariffville gorges and the hiking trails at the end of my street.

"Here we are, lucky number '8'," he said as we rolled into Core 8 Operating Room. Eight is my lucky number in fact. The OR nurses introduced themselves and again asked who I was, why I was there, what I was getting done, who my surgeon was, etc. to make sure we were all in the right place. I was then transferred from my stretcher to a skinny padded operating table. Huge, white round lights were above me and lots of beeping boxes around me.

The anesthesia resident gave me the margarita injection and told me I'd feel like I had too much to drink then came the hard stuff which burned badly as it entered my vein - exactly as they had warned me. The last thing I remember is them unbuttoning my gown and I was in another place ... .

I woke up as I was being wheeled out of the OR and back to the PACU and the anasthesiologist said, "Look, you missed all the snow."

From what I could see out the corridor without my glasses were big, beautiful white flakes coming down. I thought that I must have been in there for days. That morning it was nearly 50 degrees. Then I remembered that we live in New England.

As soon as I could speak the first thing I asked him was, "Did he have to go in twice?"

"No, he was able to get some good samples at the first entry point," he replied.

I felt like the wind was taken out of me and a lump developed immediately in my throat. When I was parked in my curtain-partitioned "room" in the PACU I was facing a large digital clock on the wall which read: 10:03 a.m. That meant that I was in the OR for less than an hour. I knew that this was bad news and got very, very emotional. I tried my best to hold in my tears, but I knew that this meant he found abnormal tissue right away. I was so hopeful that he'd have to keep entering me to try to find anything abnormal and would come away saying, "huh, must have been a fluke on the scan." But that was not the case.

I was so, so, so thirsty and my throat and lips were so dry from the breathing tube. I asked for something, anything, and what they could give me was a "post-procedure popsicle," a tiny, blue sponge on a stick that soaked in water. I rubbed it across my lips and sucked out every last drop. It felt amazing.

A few minutes later my mom and Craig came into the room and that's when I lost it. It's not easy to cry with oxygen tubes up your nose and a very swollen neck. I was still loopy but conscious enough to know what had happened. I demanded to know what the surgeon said to them and learned that he pulled three hard, abnormal tissue samples from my chest lymph nodes that were quickly determined to be good samples for the pathologist to analyze.

Tears streamed down my face and my mom grabbed my hand. The nurses looked away to give me some peace as I tried to suck it up and save myself some dignity. I was just so gravely disappointed. They took my family away and injected me with some more pain meds and some anti-nausea as I felt rather sick from the whole ordeal. The anti-nausea made me sleepy and I dosed in and out as I waited for the ride that would take me to a room in another area of the hospital where I would do some more recovering and get some food and something to drink. The PACU filled with more and more post-op patients and I woke to the sounds of a woman across the room heaving and puking violently and I was grateful that I was not in her shoes and my heart went out to her.

Finally my transportation came and I was sent to a shared room where my parents and Craig were waiting for me. I was presented with a tray of food: "turkey" with salty gravy, spinach (this was good) and white rice, a plastic wrapped piece of white bread and a little dish with something attempting to be apple crisp. I forced it down and chugged the ginger ale knowing that they wouldn't release me until I ate, drank and purged. The peanut M&Ms and Raisenettes that my family had went down much easier.

I got my bearings pretty quickly. I was very sore in the incision area but my head was clear. My mom, dad, Craig and I played some trivia games on the computer as my "food" digested then took a walk around the unit until I could assure everyone that I was fine to go home.

So, here I am. The past couple of days have been spent doing a lot of napping, a lot of reading, movies and a lot of Tylenol popping. I've managed to not have to fill the vicodin prescription. Everything is just very swollen more than anything. My mom helped me to remove the Band-Aid yesterday which I was a big baby about and now there are three steri strips that remain covering the 1-and-a-half-inch incision. Eventually they will disintegrate. Basically I look like I was mugged by knife point or held hostage with a taunting knife slice. I'll forever have this scar in this very prominent area as a constant reminder. Right now I'm not too happy with my new look but I know in a few months that it'll just be a battle scar resembling the battle that I won. Craig says scars are cool and I'm trying to convince myself that I must be super cool with all that I have.

We Have a Plan

And I can breathe again ... ahhhh. I came home from work today and both Craig and I were taken by surprise by the picnic tablecloth adorned with paper place settings and a full spread of summer treats - hot dogs, potato salad, olives medley, raspberries and more. My mom had swooped in during the day and set up the whole thing - balloons and all and wrote us a big note on the back of a pizza box. So sweet. And there was a beautiful arrangement of flowers that just screamed encouragement from the Arts Council crew.

Really everything came together today. My amazing Dr. Dailey called me this morning and has me set with not just a consultation, but the biopsy procedure itself on Thursday morning. Tonight I got a call from the thoracic surgeon's nurse confirming everything and then even the surgeon himself - at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday. So thoughtful and so thorough. He spent 45 minutes going over all of my history and scans with a radiologist at the cancer center and got a good understanding of where I've been and where I'm at. I think the fact that I work at the hospital may have influenced this attention, but hey, I'm not complaining!

So here's the plan:

• On Thursday morning my mom and Craig are taking me into the hospital where we'll meet with the surgeon to go over the details further. He usually likes to do this in an advance meeting, but Dr. Dailey made it clear that he wanted this done soon and though the surgeon had no appointment openings for weeks, they were able to make a compromise.
• From there they'll knock me out with general anesthesia then right to the operating room.
• He will first make an incision at the base of my neck and send a scope down to look around. He'll then use his instruments to snag some of the lymph node tissue in question.
• They'll analyze the tissue under a microscope right there in the operating room.
• If it shows as abnormal tissue then he'll stop there, sew me back up and send that sample to the pathologist to analyze for cancer (or other) abnormal cells. If that's the case then I'll likely be able to go home that day.
• If it's analyzed to be normal tissue then it's onto plan b. He'll then make an incision by my left breast bone and will go in with the scope between my 2nd and 3rd ribs where he says there are many enlarged lymph nodes that he will be able to grab. This area is more delicate and the procedure more involved so if he has to go this route I'll be in the hospital recovering for a couple of days.
• Depending on whether surgery in the 2nd location is required, the surgery itself will be between 1 1/2 to 3ish hours.
• The tissues will be analyzed by pathologists and the hope is that we will have an answer as to what is going on in my nodes by Monday.

I am so happy to have a plan in place and that has really helped to alleviate my anxiety. I'm looking forward to this weekend and will be getting myself strong and ready for the big day.

In Flux: Cancer or No Cancer?

Getting a phone call from your oncologist on your office phone in the middle of the day is a little unsettling. Getting the call the day before you have a scheduled appointment with him to go over your PET-CT Scan results is a bit more worrisome. When you pick up and he tells you he'd like to meet with you to go over things ... and that you might want to bring along your husband or mom, that's really not a good sign.

I was expecting to receive the results of my first post-treatment PET-CT Scan on Friday, the 13th - "boldly" (in the words of my oncologist) scheduled on this superstitiously day of oddities. However, I got the news a day early after Dr. Dailey found some concerning results.

He called me at work. For a fleeting moment I thought (hoped) that maybe he wanted to alert me to something happening at the cancer center that I should include in the hospital newsletter. That faded quickly when he told me that he got my scan results back and had shared them with several colleagues in the cancer center, an expert pathologist, a noted thoracic surgeon at the hospital, etc. I know that you don't go around displaying perfectly clear scans across the hospital.

The long and short of it is that there is what is called a "hot spot" that appeared on my scan. It shows up in my anterior mediastinal tract (between my lungs) more toward my heart. "Hot spots" are how oncologists find if and where cancer is lurking in your body. I was "hot spotting" all over the place in my initial scan ... "like a Christmas tree" I believe the wording was. The good news is that this particular "hot spot" is only a centimeter large and it is the ONLY area of activity on the entire scan. The even better news is that the probability of showing a false positive on these types of scans is very high. The PET scan shows anywhere that there is high metabolic activity - something that cancer cells display, but also something that other tissue inflammation or swollen lymph nodes (without cancer activity) can display.

The area is too small to be able to perform a successful needle biopsy to pull out the tissue to test it in a minimally invasive way. The only way to know definitively if it is in fact rogue Hodgkin's cells that were able to withstand the 12 ABVD treatments would be to undergo a surgical biopsy. Because of the small size of the area in question and its close proximity to my heart and major vessels and the need to go through my chest cavity, the surgery carries quite a risk. My oncologist and the several other physicians across a wide variety of practices that he consulted agreed that surgery should be avoided until we have a clearer picture of the likelihood of this actually being the start of a Hodgkin's recurrence.

Naturally, this was not the news that I wanted to hear. Luckily, Craig was there with me. We met at the Avon office - there was no one else there but us and my doc - it was so intimate that he wasn't even wearing his typical white lab coat. It felt like meeting with an old friend who unfortunately was delivering what could be some very bad news. It was eerily dark and quiet except for the bright fluorescent lights of the room that we were in. It was late afternoon and Dr. Dailey took the time to meet with us, explain everything in detail, and answer, mostly Craig's, many questions as I just kind of sat there in shock. It took me back to my first day of chemo when everyone around me just sounded like the parents on the phone in Charlie Brown - "wah, wah wahhhh."

We are all hopeful that it is nothing. I am still fighting this upper respiratory cold/cough that makes me sound like someone on the other end of a 1-900 number. We're hoping that that might have something to do with the hot spot. That the infection could be causing the inflammation in my chest, causing it to light up with the diodes. However, I am so lucky that I have a doctor that takes things seriously and is looking at this scan thoughtfully and carefully. As much as he apologized for not being able to give the "all clear" and schedule a date for me to get this damn port removed that he knows I am anxious about, he told me that he just couldn't comfortably say: "Ah, it's nothing. We'll see you in a year."

So, the plan of attack is get me healthy - get this bug out of my system. I'm now on a new antibiotic, a 10-day course and am continuing with the prescription cough medicine. I'm trying to get lots of rest, maintain my healthy diet and keep up with the yoga and walking as much as I can. The hope is that by doing this, on the next scan, this little hot spot won't rear its ugly little head.

Monday I go in to get my port injected with a type of solution that will hopefully break up any kind of fibrous tissue that might be causing a blockage that is not allowing for my blood return as God forbid, I may be needing to use this thing a lot again. Then Tuesday I have a detailed CAT Scan which is going to take fine slice pictures of the area in question to try to get some better clues as to what it may be. Then, in 6-8 weeks I enter the narrow tunnel for another PET-CT Scan. If this reveals that the spot is still there (or even worse, has grown), then it's time to slice me open to get in there and biopsy a good chunk of the tissue. If it is cancerous, the next step is a high-dose chemotherapy regimen called "ICE" then onto an analogous stem cell transplant with a chemo cocktail of "BEAM" ... the science of all of that blew my mind and as Dr. Dailey assured us, to even think about it as this point is jumping the gun. Here's hoping for a false positive.

So now, my fate is awaiting the identity reveal of this one-centimeter hot spot. And, I won't know if I'm cancer-free anymore for another several weeks. What can I do but do everything to keep my mind off it, keep my body strong, and stay focused on the fact that it's got to be a fluke?