WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!!

I am writing to update you on some exciting progress with Chemo Ninja. At some point or another, you have been supportive of my desire to create an organization that assists people currently battling cancer. You may have purchased a shirt or just been on the long list of people who I've talked with about it and what I hope to accomplish through this ministry. As most of you know, Chemo Ninja comes straight from my heart. My battle with cancer would have been financially devastating without the support of family and friends who loved us and were caring enough to give freely in our time of need. It is my intense desire to not forget the many difficulties faced at a time like that, and how it affects not just your medical bills, but medication costs, childcare expenses, loss of income, travel for medical care, etc. Christmas makes this even more challenging to these families. We have finally begun moving forward with the progam and I am looking to see who among you is willing to offer assistance to a family in need at this holiday season.

We are currently working in conjuntion with Let There Be Mom - www.lettherebemom.org - and they have found a local family that is battling cancer and in need of our assistance. How much we are able to help will depend on you! Kelli Rogers is a 25 year old leukemia fighter, and 3 weeks ago she received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. She is currently being treated in Charleston, SC and will be there during most of her treatment and recovery/100 days of isolation.

Kelli is a single mom who has recently started living back at home with her parents due to her illness. Kelli has a 5 year old daughter, who is lucky enough to have two older playmates in her cousins, 8 and 9 that are also living with Kelli's parents who are retired. Needless to say everyone is in a tough situation when throwing a battle with cancer into the mix. Kelli's mother is in Charleston helping take care of Kelli, while her father is here in Greenville making sure the kids are taken care of, getting them to school and taking care of their daily needs.

What we're asking is for you and hopefully your office's willingness to help provide various things for Kelli and the 3 children. There are definate needs that we would like to meet, and we would also like to help the family have Christmas as well. If you're willing to help, please respond to this email as soon as possible so that we can identify the needs that the family has (ie. clothing, food, care expenses), who can help and how. Here are the ways that you can help:

a- Sponsor a child's christmas (clothes, toys, etc)
b- Sponsor Kelli's christmas
c- contribute small gift cards to chain restaurants to help provide meals for Kelli and her mom while they are in Charleston for her recovery/isolation period
d- provide funds and/or gift card for some auto care expenses the family is facing

I know that helping others dealing with cancer is a mission that has been laid on my heart. I hope that you share this with as many people as possible and we are able to truly make this battle a winning fight. I would like to have all materials and funds in no later than December 15th. Thank you for your help in this mission. We will be filing our nonprofit paperwork soon, but unfortunately have not made it in time for this event, so current contributions will not be tax deductible. Thank you, in advance, for your willingness to contribute in some way!

Brian Bogle

Our Sponsor Family! Help us Help them!

I've been in communication with Let There Be Mom and they've helped us find a family to sponsor for this Christmas!  The Rogers family is who we'll be helping and I'm looking forward to seeing what we can do for them.  Kelli Rogers is a 25 year old leukemia fighter, and 2 weeks ago she received a bone marrow transplant from her brother.  She is currently being treated in Charleston, SC and will be there during most of her treatment and recovery/100 days of isolation.
 
Kelli is a single mom who has recently started living back at home with her parents due to her illness.  Kelli has a 5 year old daughter, who is lucky enough to have two older playmates in her cousins 8 and 9 that are also living with Kelli's parents who are retired.  Needless to say everyone is in a tough situation when throwing a battle with cancer into the mix.  Kelli's mother is in Charleston helping take care of Kelli while her father is here in Greenville making sure the kids are taken care, getting them to school and taking care of their daily needs. 

We're waiting on a some information back from Kelli and her family on how and where we can help the most.  We know that there will be some basic needs that will need to be met for the kids as they are still young and growing.  But we also know that Christmas is right around the corner and we want to help them have a memorable in a good way Christmas.  I'll be listing specific things we will be needing as we get them.  In the mean time if you are willing to contribute by means of money or gift cards that we can put towards helping the family for Christmas.  I know that clothing will be needed for the kids and for Kelli and I'll list their sizes when I have them all. 

You can donate through the donate tab to the right of the screen or you can send checks or Gift cards to:
CNCA
33 Crossvine Way
Simpsonville, SC 29680

or you can call me if you have questions: 864-907-8371

Please help us help this family. 

Check It Out!

Well I got my shirt in the mail the other day thought I would share it with you. 

I've been playing phone tag with a few groups that would lead us to a family to help.  Hopefully after we develope relationships with some of these groups, helping won't be so hard.  I will let you know more when I do. 

Waiting on the Doctors office.

So I've spoken with the Doctors at the Cancer Centers where I was treated.  They've recently been purchased by the local mega hospital, so getting approval and patient information is a little more difficult.  I will call again tomorrow and see if I can get a name for some one to help.  If we are still coming up with nothing I'm going to look into some of the local churches and see if we can find a family to assist through there. 

Other news:  I spent 3 days at Greenville Memorial Hospital this weekend.  My wife had some pain in her right side and that we later discovered to be gall stones.  She had one lodged in a bile duct that was causing her a great amount of pain while also backing up into her liver.  Luckily the doctors recognized her condition being sever and they bumped her up to the front of the line.  Long story short, she had 2 different procedures in a 5 hour stretch.  She's recovering nicely.  A little sore, but otherwise doing well.  To those that have been praying for her and wishing well we thank you!

I'll keep you up to date on when and what is going on with the family we sponsor.

Finally!!!

Well after 8 years 3 months and one day from my original diagnosis of Testicular Cancer I am officially CANCER FREE!  This is the first time I'm announcing this to more than just a few close friends.  To be honest it feels really good, surprising though it doesn't feel as good as I thought it would.  I don't know if it just hasn't hit me yet or what.  I had a hard time talking to my wife yesterday without crying.  I've been a huge ball of emotion for the past week or so.  I'd watch something on TV that should have had a tag line to it like, "Cheesy proposal", "sweet soldier welcome", or a Folgers commercial and I'd tear up.  I've been waiting for this day for so long and now that it's here I guess I wish I felt more happy excited than I do.  Right now I'm dealing with a more understated relief.  I know much of what I just wrote seems to contradict itself but it really is how I feel; one huge contradiction. 

I wil be purchasing one of my own shirts from my Chemo Ninja Store, Smile I'm Cancer Free is the shirt I'll be picking up.  I'll post a picture of myself in it when it comes in. 

I'm excited to see where life will go from here, it seems like a little bit of a new beginning being that I no longer have cancer hanging over my head.  I've already started eating better, and I'm trying to get back into the gym.  I was going to try and do a weight loss a thon but I didn't want to call out people to do that.  But I'll keep you posted on my progress. 

Other news is that I spoke with my oncologist yesterday and we're working on finding a family to sponsor for this Christmas.  Once I have the information on who we'll be helping I'll release more details.  Ideally they won't know that we're helping until I can present them with a gift card to cover Christmas for them. So please stay tuned, as a minimum I'd like to see us raise $1000 for the family.  Please contact me if you're interested in helping.

Thanks so much for your support and horray for me for being Cancer Free!

Chemo Ninja Cancer Assassain Softball

Well it's official we have a Softball team, with Jerseys and everything.  We are sponsored by the Howard Law Firm as our primary sponsor on our Jersey and our banner.  We are also sponsored by the Tropical Chicken Grill, you can find links for both of those places on my previous post, please check them out!  Our first game as Chemo Ninja wasn't an overwhelming success but we did show signs of greatness.  I hope we can continue to improve. 

I'll continue to post and let you know how our season goes.  Our larger hope with the Chemo Ninja team is to bring more attention to the cause and what we hope to do.  Again our hope is to raise money to help families that are battling cancer, and help with some of the financial issues they are facing.  I go this month for my 5 year check up.  My lab visit is this Friday, my CT is next Tuesday and then my Doctors visit is the 23rd.  Assuming everying checks out I'll be considered Cancer FREE!!  I can't wait for that day. 

When I visit the Doctor I will see if there is a family I can help in some way.  I don't know how much information they will release if any at all.  I think worst case senario we can find one family and at least raise enough to make Christmas a little more enjoyable.  As soon as I figure out how to work a paypal account on here I'll have it available for donations.  In the mean time please feel free to send money directly to us.  33 Crossvine Way  Simpsonville, SC 29680.

I have another planned on fund raiser coming up but I will be working out some things before I announce it so please stay tuned.  Until then here are some better shots of the jerseys!



Chemo Ninja is Growing

Well being I haven't been incredibly active in keeping up with the blog I can understand people not knowing what all is going on. So let me tell you.  Starting tomorrow night Chemo Ninja will be appearing on the softball field at the Golden Strip YMCA, at least on Thursday nights.  We've managed to attain our first 2 sponsors!  I would like to take this time to say thank you to The Howard Law Firm from here in Greenville, and The Tropical Chicken Grill.  These two places will always be linked to on our sites and represented on our marketing as a thank you for being the first to help us along the way.  I'll post some pictures soon of the Jersey's and the Banner.  Please help us help others.  We'll need money and other items as we move forward.  Let us know if you're interested in helping.  Thank you again for all your support!

I recently had a friend who just completed treatment for Testicular Cancer and I wanted to share his story.  I asked him to tell me a little bit about it and here it is.  Here he is sporting some Save the Twins Gear!

Cancer story of Jason Bergeron.


Today I am three weeks finished with chemotherapy and there doesn’t appear to be any cancer left according to the latest CT scan. Lord willing; I am cancer free and healed.

I am writing this on the tail end of the four month trial of dealing with Stage IIc metastatic testicular cancer.

I went into the hospital on April 24, 2012 with serious abdominal pain thinking that the worst case scenario was appendicitis; best case was a bad case of gas and the embarrassment of being a wuss. After taking some pain medication and receiving a CT scan the doctors informed me that they had found a tumor in my abdomen. It was located behind my stomach and sandwiched in between my aorta and vena cava, two of the largest blood vessels in the body and ended up measuring 4cm x 3cm x 8cm long. The doctors could not tell much from the CT scan and could not narrow down any of the possibilities on what the tumor might be. It was not good news any way you looked at it. I had an MRI done later that week to try and learn more about the tumor. We met with two surgical oncologists the next week, both of which were puzzled by the CT and MRI scans. We decided to have Dr. Steven Trocha at Greenville Hospital move ahead with treatment. Because they could not conclusively tell what the tumor was, and that tumor would need to be removed ultimately regardless of what it was, we opted to have surgery to remove the tumor. I had this surgery on May 15, 2012 and it was probably the worst part of the whole ordeal. It was a major surgery due to the location of the tumor. My incision runs from the bottom of my sternum to an inch or so below my belly button. They had to get into the center of my body so although none of my GI tract was operated on, it was shifted and moved around a good bit. The tumor ended up being attached to the vena cava but was removed without damage to the vein. The surgery was successful and the tumor was sent to the pathologists. I spent close to a week in the hospital recuperating and another hard week at home until I was feeling ok. The muscle wall of my stomach is still healing and sensitive to a degree almost four months later. Skin heals quickly but it takes months for muscle and connective tissue to fully heal.

We learned right after the surgery that the tumor was mostly dead or necrotic tissue. This blew my surgeon’s mind as he had never seen anything like it unless radiation or some other specific treatment had been given to kill the tumor. To have a tumor die like mine did, on its own, is highly unlikely and really unexplainable except as a miracle (which is what we believe). Because this was so unusual, it took the pathologists a week and a half to dissect the tumor and issue their report. They ended up finding a small piece of the tumor that was still viable and were able to determine that it was metastatic testicular cancer. This had been a possibility from the beginning but neither of my testicles had any real noticeable growth on them. Looking back, it probably would have been smart to have an ultrasound done on my testicles to rule it out and know more before the surgery, but there’s no sense in second guessing things at this point. They found and removed the tumor and nearly a month after going into the hospital for the first time, we finally know what we were dealing with.

After having an ultrasound and confirming that I did have cancer in my right testicle, we moved quickly in meeting with our surgeon, an oncologist who would handle the chemotherapy, and a urologist. I had the orchiectomy and port for the chemotherapy done on June 1. After the big surgery, this one was no fun, but a walk in the park relatively speaking. This surgery went well and confirmed that there was cancer and that mine was 98% seminoma and 2% terratoma. We learned that it’s not uncommon to have several types of cancer.

The doctors originally thought that my cancer was 100% seminoma and were planning on a 12 week regimen of chemotherapy using two drugs, etoposide and cisplatin. When we found out that there was some terratoma in the mix, it moved my cancer to the non-seminoma category. As a result of this change, my chemotherapy was changed to a nine week regimen of etoposide, cisplatin, and bleomycin. Three full weeks of the etoposide and cisplatin every day with two weeks off, and bleomycin every Tuesday. We really tried getting a second opinion before the chemo started and didn’t have much luck on our own because things were moving so quickly but got confirmation on the decision when our oncologist talked to Dr. Einhorn in Indiana who pioneered much of the current treatment of testicular cancer. He confirmed that we were doing the right thing. Some doctors shy away from the Bleomycin because some of the side effects are worse than the others but Dr. Einhorn felt it was right to add it and that the benefits outweighed the side effects. It was the worst of the three but I did not have some of the more serious side effects like serious lung damage. I started my chemo on June 11.

The chemo experience was not fun but not terrible. I believe that the drugs they give you to counter act some of the side effects have really improved over the past years. I received steroids and anti-nausea medication with every treatment and also used the prescription anti-nausea/anxiety drugs with good success. It was hard knowing what to expect starting the chemo and I quickly learned that it was dangerous to set expectation on how I would feel from day to day. It really was a roller coaster with some decent days and bad days. The full weeks of treatment were the worst but the bleomycin seemed also to be unpredictable on how it would make me feel. I would usually feel decent for a day or two after treatments but feel worse on the third day when the steroids would stop working. I was able to work some days but took most of the time off.

I finished the chemo on August 7 and still have some of the lingering side effects three weeks later. My finger tips and the bottom of my feet are still sensitive and hurt, my stomach still feels funny like it up in my throat sometimes, my hearing is still a little funny, and my energy level is still not back to normal. This may not sound great, but I feel like I’m doing wonderfully, all things considered. They say that it can take months to fully heal from the damage that the chemo drugs do to the body. I am feeling better every day and getting ready to start the GHS moving on program which will include a 12 week work our program to help me with gaining my strength and endurance back. I am looking forward to it.

This has not been a fun experience and I wouldn’t have wished it on anyone but my wife and I feel blessed in many ways. Testicular cancer is one of the more treatable cancers with typical cure rates of 96-98%. We ran into many people who were dealing with more serious and sometimes terminal cancers. This made us very grateful that my situation was not worse. We also were blessed by God in too many ways to count during this time. From the miracle of killing the tumor in my abdomen and keeping the cancer from spreading any further, to the hundreds of people praying for and loving us, it was an incredible time. I know that God will use and has used this time in my life to shape me and mold me into a better person. Isn’t it funny that we are most affected by the trials and the difficult times in our lives? We don’t like them or want them, but they do have a grand purpose in making us the people God wants us to be. 

Saw this on Reddit

I saw this on reddit and thought it was worth sharing. 
Article

Chemo Ninja Shirts are doing pretty well, but could be doing better. Please forward my site on to others. If you're interested in a shirt you can also message me with an order and I'll set stuff up to get something sent to you properly. the zazzle site is faster at the moment though. If you have a Chemo Ninja Shirt please send me a picture of you in t and I'll post it on the site!

Just in case you didn't realize just how important they are.

What would I do different

My wife and I had a conversation with a couple last night that are going through their fight with testicular cancer. He’s already had a lymph node dissection, and is scheduled for an orchiectomy for this Friday. They know he will start chemo thereafter but not exactly sure of the schedule of when everything will start. In speaking with them it reminded me of all the things that I’ve spoken too in this blog and all of the things that I haven’t. So, I’m going to attempt to speak to some of those things over my new few entries. Hopefully, if you’re starting your fight you may have some more information that lets you know what’s coming down the pipe. Now remember that every battle is different and that everyone’s body reacts differently. So my experience may be different than yours but it doesn’t hurt to know the possibilities of what you may experience. The number one thing I would do over, or different, if I had to do it over again would be to ask, no BEG for a port! Now I’m not a person who likes needles to begin with so when my doctor told me that the treatment period was so short that a port would be overkill, I like most people took my doctors word for it. Now don’t get me wrong I love my doctor, but between the effects that took place with my veins and the total number of needles, there were some days that seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. Come November it will be 5 years since my last round of chemo. I’m finally starting to see some veins resurface in my forearms. The veins that used to reside on the inside of my arm at the elbow have been MIA since October 2007. They used to be beautiful veins, I would walk in to get blood drawn and the tech’s face would light up with just how easy their job was going to be. Now, they play, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to see who has to try and find something that works. For the last almost 5 years the only place that’s been working regularly for blood draws have been my hands. Now I never had a port so I don’t know the pluses and minuses of a port, if you do have experience with one I’d love for you to comment and let us know. What I do know is that if you have a port you won’t have to sit and get stuck 9 times in one sitting letting them dig in your arm with a needle looking for a vein that they can use. The 9 times only happened a few times, but those days really suck! The biggest long term issue with the veins is you will have to continue to do CAT scans and other IV related activities throughout the course of your life, and for people who don’t deal with cancer patients regularly; I’ve found that they aren’t always the most talented at finding and hitting useable veins. If your phlebotomist is under the age of 30 be wary. I’m not saying they aren’t capable but you will want the most experienced person in that office working with you. I was able to stump the best at the offices I’ve visited over the last 5 years. Chemo nurses are typically the best I’ve been around. So for that Thank You!

SLOW COMPUTER

Believe it or not I started writing this post 2 weeks ago. Apparently I do a horrible job of maintaining my Laptop. Between trying to open the computer and getting to this site to write this post it has taken approximately 2 weeks and over 2 hours tonight to get to this point. I recently have had a few people in or around my life have a cancer scare or two. Personally I have been battling a sever sinus infection, bad enough that my general practitioner had me do some blood work to make sure it wasn't something more. Good news is I'm only full of mucus and crusted mucus. Sexy I know! I have a friend who's 9 year old daughter had to have a spot removed from her scalp, we should get her results soon so be praying for her. And there's one more guy that I've recently been told is possibly dealing with a similar situation to what I have over the last 8 years. I'll let you know more as I hear more. In the mean time I'll be getting this shirt for my fellow testicular cancer patient. Gone But Not Forgotten

Race for the Cure in Columbia Testicular Cancer Team

Guest Blogger David Haas

How Weight Management Helps Cancer Patients Everyone wants to live a cancer-free life, right? Unfortunately, for some people, this just isn’t possible. Even the healthiest people can get blindsided with a cancer diagnosis. You may have never smoked, but you could find out that you have lung cancer. You may get regular checkups with your doctor and then find out that you’ve had breast cancer. You just never know. What do you do when you find out you have this horrible disease, though? Many people let it overtake their lives. You don’t have to claim defeat, though. Add exercise to your daily routine and you’ll start feeling better than you ever thought possible. Most people know that being overweight is a huge threat to their health. It’s no different when it comes to cancer patients. In fact, it’s worse to be overweight when you’re battling a disease. The body doesn’t run as efficiently as it can when you’re carrying too much weight and it can’t fight off an illness to the best of its ability. Being overweight or obese raises your risk for disease, makes it harder to fight it off once you have it and raises your chances for the disease coming back once it’s gone. People who achieve and maintain a healthy, lean body mass have much less a risk for cancer than their overweight counterparts. Being in a healthy weight range also lowers your risk for other serious diseases, like diabetes and heart disease. Engaging in regular physical activity is one major step towards monitoring your weight. In order to lose weight, you’ll need to engage in both cardiovascular exercise and resistance training or weight training. Many people skip weight training because they don’t want to gain pounds in the form of muscle, they want to drop weight. However, building muscle can actually help you burn calories more efficiently and help you lose weight in the long run. Replacing fat with muscle isn’t the same thing as gaining weight and many cancer patients actually lose muscle while they’re undergoing treatment. If you’re struggling with cancer or are dealing with treatment for mesothelioma, you’re probably exhausted, both physically and mentally. This disease can be extremely taxing on your body and you may have barely enough energy to go about your daily activities. Even when it feels like you simply can’t exercise, you still should, even if it’s light exercise. In the long run, working out will increase your energy, not zap it.

Just thought ya'll might find this funny. I'm trying to be consistant writing here but life is always getting in the way. Had a friend who went to a work out for the cure type thing this past week end and passed out some Chemo Ninja Cards. He wore a Chemo Ninja shirt and apparently had some interest in the info. Hopefully we'll see some traffic on this and the www.zazzle.com/chemoninjastore sites.

New Project

So if you don’t already know I’ve been working on a project that is helping us raise some money. At the moment I still need lots of helping promoting it but I’m sure it will get there. At the same time I’m developing a business plan so that we have a clear cut goal for the immediate future and for the long term.

The Project I’ve been working on is www.zazzle.com/chemoninjastore which is something that was a little broader based than strictly making the group visible to testicular cancer survivors, which is and will be our primary focus. However not everyone is interested in supporting testicular cancer with ribbon testicles on their chest, yet. And yes I could have gone a little safer and just done a normal ribbon thing and said it was for testicular cancer but that’s boring and already done anyways.

Chemo Ninja Cancer Assassin is something I created that I think spans the entire spectrum of cancer patients. You can’t tie him to just one thing but it gets you to look at the site that has a decent number of Save the Twins logoed shirts and other testicular cancer related themed shirts. The array of shirts allows us to ease into view instead of just testicle ribbons up in your face. At the same time being the age group that falls victim to testicular cancer is younger I thought the Ninja would be more appropriate.

Chemo Ninja represents the battle that each of us must fight to survive. Ninja’s fought by all means available to them, as all cancer patients do. On that same token, if a ninja was unsuccessful he gave his life in the battle. Ninja’s are all about honor and completing the goal. The goal of every cancer patient is to win the battle and be cancer free, so I can’t really think of a better representative for the fight against cancer. Samurai was close but doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I'm Back

Ok. So I’ve been sidetracked for the last 2 years 8 months and 3 days, but I’ll say this. I really was busy! In my first post on this blog I stated that I was starting a new job. During that two weeks of training I had plenty of time to do some writing and get some, be it very little, information out. Well once I started that job I found that continuing my second job was still necessary. Needless to say working 90 hours a week to take care of your family doesn’t leave a lot of room for writing blog entries.

I’ve kept the dream alive though. I know there is still a huge amount of information missing in the public eye about testicular cancer. I’m still working on figuring out on how to get all the pieces moving in the right direction but at least they’re moving now and not stalled out.

I’m no longer in the job that I started in June of 2009, thank goodness. Nor am I still working a second job to cover everything, WOO HOO! In February of 2010 I started with a company I had been laid off from 15 months prior but I decided to take the risk and I’ve been there continuously for 2 year 2 months and things look great for the future. I just got back from a 6 month stint in Afghanistan and which has made a huge difference in taking care of a lot of the financial issues that came from going through cancer and the treatments to cure it.

Now granted I was working 12 hour days 7 days a week, there wasn’t much to do after that time frame was up so I started focusing on this again. Biggest problem was that I on the company network in Afghanistan there were very few sites other than work related things we had access to including blogs and any other social networking sites. Now there was an internet provider out there that I could have used, but I’m cheap so I didn’t get it.

Stay tuned I’ll tell you what we’re looking at moving too, if you haven’t already heard.