The bicycle ...

I was totally shocked to be told that I had a fractured neck vertebrae. "I don't have a broken neck", I said. "Yes, you do", replied the emergency room physician. During my first consultation with my orthopedic surgeon, I was told that I needed to be extremely careful with any physical activity. My C2 vertebrae was in an extremely precarious situation. Certainly, cycling was out of the question. A few weeks later I sold my one year old Giant Cypress bicycle to a dear friend who gave me twice what I paid for it. I used the money to help cover the costs to consult with a naturopathic doctor.

I discovered that I missed my bicycle very much. I kept telling my wife, Karen, how sad I was to have had to give it up. Neither my orthopedic surgeon or I had any expectation that my neck would heal as well and as completely as it has. I was overjoyed to be told that, with some care, I could resume something approaching my normal activities.

Karen and I have lived in the same apartment, very near Victoria Park for twenty-five years. For many of those years we attended the Victoria Park Crafts Fair, held every year in August. After a while though, the craft fair became much the same each year. One only has a need for so many floppy-eared stuffed rabbits, after all.

So, on the Saturday of this year's Victoria Park Craft Sale, Karen and I went around the neighbourhood checking out the yard sales instead. At one yard sale there was an old bicycle for sale for the princely sum of $10. I was very tempted to buy it, but Karen was dissuading me, and we ended up walking away. A block down the street I stopped and said to Karen that it was only $10 after all, and at the very worst, I could clean the bike up and sell it for $50. So, we went back and I bought the $10 bicycle and walked it home.

Over the next few days, I totally disassembled the bicycle and carefully cleaned each part and then re-assembled it. Underneath forty some years of dirt and grime there was a like new Eaton TruLine Glider 3-speed bicycle built at the Raleigh Nottingham factory in England in 1972.  Patterned after the Raleigh Superbe model and made for the Canadian market, it originally sold for $59.99 in the Eaton's mail order catalogue of that year.

It was virtually brand new, with absolutely no rust on its fenders and very little sign of any wear. I had bought an English made 3-speed bicycle, with rims made in France and a Brooks saddle to boot! For $10!!! All told, to date, I have spent a total of $103.80 on repairs and accessories. The only thing wrong with it was a pinhole leak at the valve stem of on of the inner tubes. At my local bike shop, I was told that the Brooks seat alone was worth at least $200. The bicycle itself is worth about $1000 in the collector's market. So this has to be the best yard sale find EVER! I plan to ride the bicycle around Victoria Park for the exercise and to help rebuild my muscle mass and stamina. I have decided to name the bicycle Emily.

These are her stories ...

In the beginning ...

During the first week of April, 2016, I was diagnosed with terminal stage four lung cancer. Here is the story of what led up to that event ...

For several months before Christmas, 2015, I had felt unwell. I knew that something was wrong, but I could not quite put my finger on it. At times there were aches and pains that came for several days and then went away. Pain in my lower right back. I drank cranberry juice, thinking it was a kidney infection. Pain in my mid-chest that was very severe when I tried to lie down or sit back up again. Severe pain and stiffness in my right shoulder joint that prevented me from raising my right arm above my head.

Just before Christmas, I felt a golf ball sized lump in my left buttock. I had slipped and fallen on some ice some days before, and the emergency room doctor assumed from this that it was a soft tissue hematoma. Except, it did not go away. Instead, it got larger, eventually reaching the size of a baseball.

Then one day, I woke up with a small lump on my left temple. It literally seemed to come on overnight. One day it was not there, the next, there it was. An ultrasound scan of this lesion was inconclusive and an appointment was arranged to have it surgically removed and biopsied. Another lump appeared on the left side of my mid-back.

The episodes of pain became more severe and persistent. All along I assumed that it was just the aches and pains of growing old. I was sixty-six years old, after all. And then, during the last week of March, 2016, I developed a severe pain on the left side of the back of my neck. It was incredibly painful to lie down or sit up. Those movements became almost impossible to accomplish. On the fifth day of this new pain, a new lump appeared on my upper left arm and I determined to go to the hospital emergency room the next day.

On the morning of March 31, 2016, I presented myself at the emergency room of the Dr. Georges-L. Dumont University Hospital Centre at 10:00 o'clock in the morning. After I described my symptoms, a CT scan of my neck was done. At 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, the results of the scan came back. The scan showed that my C2 vertebrae was badly eroded and had actually fractured. I was told that I had a broken neck, placed in a neck brace, and admitted to hospital.

After five days of various CT scans, biopsies, and other tests, it was determined that I had advanced stage four lung cancer. I had well over twenty lesions, including the originating lesion on my lower right lung, and a lesion on my kidneys. All of the superficial lumps that I had were cancerous. There was cancer in my right shoulder joint, and in my mid-spinal column, as well. A lymph gland was surgically removed, and a tissue sample was sent away to an advanced cancer laboratory in Ottawa.

I was released from hospital and basically told to go home and die. I had a life expectancy of maybe sixteen weeks at best. At this time, my medical care was handed over to the Dr. Léon-Richard Oncology Centre which is affiliated with the Dumont Hospital. 

There, I was first seen by a radio-oncologist, who recommended a series of five radiation treatments be done immediately over the next five days, focusing directly on my C2 vertebrae. The hope was to stop further deterioration of the bone, and perhaps promote the bone to heal. After six weeks, another CT scan was done of my neck. It showed that the situation had actually worsened.

At this point, my C2 vertebrae was only three millimeters thick at its narrowest point. My orthopedic surgeon said that it was virtually certain that I would need to have my top three vertebrae fused together in order to stabilize the situation. If the C2 vertebrae broke completely, I would become a quadriplegic, at best. At worst, I could stop breathing and die. It was decided that I should keep wearing the neck brace, and to wait six weeks and do another CT scan and review the situation at that time.

Six weeks later, a new CT scan revealed that the fracture had completely healed and the vertebrae bone had regenerated! The orthopedic surgeon said that he had not expected the vertebrae to heal. He had never seen this type of fracture heal itself before. He immediately sent me for a series of five x-rays taken with my neck in various positions. These x-rays revealed that the vertebrae was indeed very stable, and I was given permission to gradually stop wearing the neck brace. This was miraculous to me!

After the radiation treatments, my care was given over to an oncologist. I was given an initial round of standard chemotherapy, to which I responded well. In the meantime, before the second round of chemotherapy was scheduled, the results of my biopsy came back from the advanced cancer lab in Ottawa. It was revealed that I have a rare, aggressive late-stage non-small cell lung cancer. One percent of persons with this specific cancer have a gene mutation that allows for a targeted drug therapy. I have that gene mutation.

Xalkori (Crizotinib) is an anti-cancer drug acting as an ALK (Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase) and ROS1 (C-ROS Oncogene 1) inhibitor, approved for treatment of some non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) in the United States and some other countries, including Canada, and is currently undergoing clinical trials testing its safety and efficacy in anaplastic large cell lymphoma, neuroblastoma, and other advanced solid tumours.

After twelve weeks of taking Xalkori, new CT scans show that most of my cancerous lesions have disappeared, and the few that remain have been reduced in size by ninety-five percent. Quite remarkable!

There has been some nausea and vomiting, but the most problematic side effect has been dysgeusia, which is a very unpleasant sense of taste which causes a loss of appetite. Since I am responded extremely well to this drug, it was decided to continue with it, but only taking it every other day, in order to diminish the unpleasant side effects caused by the dysgeusia.

Since I was first diagnosed, I have lost a total of forty-five pounds. Currently, my appetite is good and I am gaining weight. I now have a much increased life expectancy. I recently acquired a bicycle, which I plan to use to exercise and regain some muscle mass and stamina. This blog is the ongoing story of that bicycle, me, and where we go from here.