ALL CLEAR!

From the Wife:

Well, Marco's Birthday came and went, and now his is officially the BIG 4 0.

The morning start with a carrot cake Kray had gotten him (his favorite) and gifts. The thoughts in our minds where more like -- oh no today is the day that we go to COH, have a CT Scan and doctor appointments to determine if he is still cancer free,
two months after the surgery to remove the tumor that was on his diaphragm.

We hate these appointment because anything can happen or it sends us on a damn rollercoaster ride with your heart in your mouth or it sends us to orbit on the greatest feeling ever that you are beating the shit out of cancer (but on guard no less).

We always remember not to let our guard down. Marco's appointment would not be till later in the evening so I had already forewarned DLP that if all hell broke loose at the doctors we would come home, and if all went well we would take him to eat somewhere to celebrate. Since we have to be conservative with $, we chose not to take him to one of his favorite resturants in town. With that in mind we had no idea how it would play out.

Finally he had his CT Scan done and we met with Dr. Grannis.

I swear it seemed that no matter what the doctor tells you - good or bad - I think we still have that confused, puzzled look and "what did you just say" look as the doctor repeated: "The CT Scan is all clear with no concerns of any kind. Cancer free" Oh my word..... I thought as tears start to fill my eyes...then as he examines Marco he says that he is really glad that he is looking so good after his surgery.

So he asked the magic question..."How do you feel"? Marco answered "Good, I have been doing things here and there trying to test my limits". Then doctor said "Ok, that sounds good...I think you can go back to work".

WHAT! We were not expecting to hear this soooo soooon, especially me.

That just took me over the edge.....sniff sniff and a clear of the throat. As the doctor left the room Marco let out a big sigh and you could see that a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders.

The whole time all I could think of was - We need to celebrate his 40th and this good news we just got! We are taking him to Todai ! Marco had the biggest beer and we all ate till we couldn't eat no more. It was delicious and we even made a toast.

Great news! Now get the hell off the rollercoaster and move foward through the park of life.

We are all very excited...we don't know if the Phase III Trial has anything to do with it but we will take this good news anyway.

We love you! Marco you are an awesome fighter...keep up the good work.

Look who is turning 40!

From The Wife:

Today Marco is turning 40. Seems like just yesterday we were running around our neighborhood. Time has gone by so fast...I have know Marco since we were 9 or 10 and I have to say from the first time I saw him we clicked somehow. We were together for a couple of years and broke up a couple too. But at the end we came back to each other ...yeah, I know cheezzy, right, but it's true.

Marco hasn't changed much in the 30 years that I have known him. He is still pretty much the same. Always there to lend a hand, to lend an ear, to give advice and always a great friend to be around. He has accomplished a lot in these 40 years of his life.

What do you write for someone who is turning 40? I have already given some insight to his life and what he has done these couple of years. Maybe it should start with cheezy stuff? I think everyone loves cheezy so lets start with...

Marco is a wonderful husband and father. He has accomplished lots. He is witty, funny (sometimes), but his humor could use some help! Sometimes his jokes suck but he means well I guess...I tell him after one of his jokes not to quit his day job because he wouldn't cut it as a comedian.

But sometimes (notice I said sometimes) he can make you piss your pants, of the shit that he comes up with, especially at his age 40 (oops! that number just keeps popping up).

Well this morning I asked him if he felt any different he said "No" then I asked if he felt like he grew up overnight and he said "No, I still feel like a ToysRus kid."

I think celebrating 40 and still feeling like a kid is great.

Honey, I hope you enjoy your day today! We love you!

Not your average Quinceañera...

We are back from a great 15th birthday celebration for DLP.
We started with a surprise for DLP at the Sahara Casino where they had a NASCAR Café and SPEED the Ride, then we got our room and when it was almost 3:30pm we started to go get something to eat and we realized that all of our shoes were missing. We spent about 45 min. looking for them all over the hotel, car and even went in to the luggage hold at the hotel and found nothing. We had to go on a store hunt....I am not kidding you when I say 20 min. later we see TARGET and it saved our lives. We finally had our shoes to wear to the opera. We all got ready and headed out. Machini in his suit looking handsome as ever with his phantom mask I made him. DLP and myself wore the mask that we made especially for DLP's special occasion. Everyone loved to see Machini and after a while I should have started to charge for every picture that was taken with him and all the women. He was loving every famous moment. He was too cute.

DLP was looking so elegant and all dressed up.....let me tell you, I had to hold my tears back to many times. She would of thought that was cheezzy.

The Phantom of the Opera in Las Vegas was just AMAZING! We couldn't believe how beautiful and great it was. We are still talking about it.......Marco didn't want to have anything to do with the Phantom so he waited for us as he watched NuNu. He was his side kick for the night and Marco loved every minute of it ........due to the fact that "quote" "unquote" He was a "chick magnet" we were all laughing as he was tell us how all the girls thought NuNu was so cute and of course I am sure Marco loved the attention too.

We all froze our asses off in the pool, here we thought that in 100 degree weather the pool water would be at least somewhat luke warm but boy were we surprised....the first one to jump in was DLP and you would of thought just by looking at her face we should of stayed out of the pool and I do believe she did say it was hella cold, but we all ignored her. The next one in was Machini and again looking at his shivering teeth. Marco just plopped right in and no it didn't stop there I decided to jump in as well because by then Marco was already on his way over to throw water at me and I was going to get wet anyway so yes I did jump in. Hell-a-cold was not the word I wanted to use. It was so cold that I could feel the metal in my hip getting cold.....Marco looked like his body was going in shock and out we went within 5 min.

We laughed all the way to the room. I don't know what we were thinking at the time ...it had to be all the smoke in the casino I guess.

All in all we all had a great time on our outing....hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Week Two of Phase III Trail of AP23573

Marco has been doing ok so far with no side affects that he can notice thus far. The only may be he gets a little tired and sleepy the first two days after he starts to take it.
The surgery area is healing really well and the pain level has gone down with some of the soreness but there are times that it hurts more than others.

His hair has grown out and his skin has color now.....I love to touch the hair on his head it feels like a baby kitten. Its sooo soft. It started growing fast when he was at City of Hope for his surgery then it just stopped growing, he just had his hair cut last week and it looks good now, cause he started to look like he was out of the 70's show.
It's nice to see that he is looking better now a days.......he even walks a little faster and hardly holds his left side. The sneezing is the worst to see him do I think, cause then you do see that it hurts to do that. AHHHHHH Chew! Ya, did you just have a visual on that cause if you did you would see how that would hurt.

Just wanted to share some exciting news about DLP...our baby girl will be turning 15 this Monday. Yes, I did say baby girl, she will be our baby even if she is 80 years old. Maybe won't be able to sit her on my lap at 80 but she will still be our baby. Well enough of that. Everyone who knows DLP knows she is known to change her mind of what she wants to do for her B-Day and will text everyone on the countdown to her B-Day.

So no NASCAR party this year! Thank you in part to Marco's family she will be attending her first opera in Las Vegas to see the PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and has invited Machini and I.
This is the part where you are probably asking yourself what happened to Marco. Marco will not be attending this event due to a lack of appreciation of the OPERA. Basically he can't stand the singing in the movie or here at home when we all sing. He basically said HELL NO I'm going to see the Phantom of the Opera , you are all out of damn mind. HaHa it makes me laugh even when I am writting it. We will take picture to show you later.

Marco will now be on a two week follow up then will be on a 4 week follow up and will be under a watchful eye with CT Scans and xrays. So if anything shows up it will be caught on time.

Just a reminder SARCOMA AWARENESS is July 18 thru July 26. August 2009 will be the OCEANS OF HOPE in Mahattan Beach,Ca maybe we can make it out this year! That would be fun I think.

I also would like to invite our friends and new friends from the fundraiser to read and post a comment. Marco reads the blog everyday. Thank you to all again for everything you do!

Superstars at Griffith Observatory

From the Wife:

Today is the 4th dose of AP23573...Marco has been doing well under the treatment. Of course we don't know if he is taking the real deal or the placebo pill. We hope and will believe that he is taking the real thing. Today is also a month and 7 days that Marco has been "cancer free" since his surgery to remove the tumor from his lung on May 11.

Marco has been doing ok and has been trying to do things outside the house....here are some examples:

Monday- The Griffith Observatory:

This trip was nice we got to tour the whole museum all three floors and took full advantage of the beautiful view from up there. Its amazing (it was overcast but nice). The view at night was spectacular. We said we would go back to be able to look through the telescope on a clear day. The pictures above show you some of the things we did.

Saturday Adan called Marco to join in on a baseball game with all the guys....so I asked if they expected him to play and he laughed saying that Adan was counting him in but Marco told him he was on disability and still recovering and would not be able to play. Adan said um...so your suspended for drug use too. Marco laughed and said yeah. So we ended up going and Marco was the umpire/scorekeeper. Yeah, that went well....At times I think Marco would zone out and I asked him if he mentioned to them that he still had some chemo brain. Marco laughed and said no but I should have.

We like to see that he gets out and enjoys himself. Marco still has pain along with soreness and some day's its more than others. It's all part of the recovery...it will take some time.

Monday he will have his one week follow up for the AP23573 treatment with blood work...I will let you know if anything comes up.

National Cancer Survivor Day 2009

From the Wife:
We were invited to attend National Cancer Survivor Day yesterday at City of Hope. This was our first invite that we attended. The invitation was nice and it described a survivor..... a survivor is one who has been diagnosed with cancer, is dealing with cancer or is in remission of cancer, but I truly loved this description and I agree with it 100%. A survivor is on who deals with cancer day in and day out for the rest of their lives.

There was a very nice banner and everyone was asked to write a message to our survivor on a balloon and place it on the huge banner. We were then asked to continue into the resource center where Marco was greeted and was acknowledged with a medal for being a survivor. We continued to walk in and there was another greeter offering a goody bag to the survivors only, it had a T-Shirt, one raffle ticket, and some information to take home.

We submitted our raffle ticket. The girls from Positive Images were there with models wearing wigs and scarves. There was another table with an author of Writing for Wellness and she was explaining her book and told us about the class that she gives at City of Hope for writers. We told her about DLP submitting an essay for a contest and was very much interested in DLP and she invited her to part take in a class.

She also told us she was a two time cancer survivor herself and she told us that she had written this book about her personal experience with cancer and she also had other writers' poems and experiences. She believed that if a cancer patient has a good support team of family and friends, survivors would live longer than if they had no one. She was very nice and it was interesting talking to her.....Angels of Love were there too, giving out angels, which were handmade.

It was a very nice event they had for all the cancer survivors at City of Hope.

Finally we got to do something else since the kids are now on vacation..we are so proud of our kids. DLP just go her report card and she did great, she will be a sophmore in August and little Machini will be a BIG boy and will be heading out to the First grade...wow.

We were able to go to the movies to see Night at the Museum. It was great to have the whole theater to ourselves.

Update.....Marco has been recovering very well though he still has some soreness and slight pain. He is doing ok. We are still waiting for the result to come back from the outside lab where all his test and blood work have been sent to determine that he is a good candidate for the Phase III Trial. The waiting is nerve-racking. I guess just waiting to see if he is or isn't going to have a chance to participate in this trial.

This just in.....hot off the press as of 15 min. ago

We got the call from City of Hope it's a go....Marco will be a participant in the Phase III Trial he will be starting on Monday, June 15.....very excited with this news.

Sign on the bottom line

From The Wife:

This week we went to City of Hope to have the consultation on the AP23573 Phase III Trial.

Dr. Chow explained and told us all that would happen in this trial. Marco needed to have blood drawn and a CT Scan done the next day. These tests will be sent to an outside lab to look at and determine if Marco is eligible to continue with Phase III of AP23573. As soon as the results are back from this outside lab we wll be getting a call with an appointment to have Marco start his treatment.

It was funny the whole time that we were in the doctors office talking and seeing Marco sign all the paper work, consent forms, HIPPA forms and all of what needed to be signed before the treatment is given: The positive feeling in that room was overwhelming. I kept telling Marco that I could feel that he would be the one to get the real "pill" and not the "sugar pill". I think the mind is a powerful thing and at times I find myself hoping and sending positive vibes to Marco to have some good energy go his way.

Marco has been doing well. He is still in some pain but most of the soreness is in the surgery area. He is looking good. He was able to sit through a Dodger game on Monday night up until the 7th inning which was great. I am very glad that Marco is doing better.

I will let you know when his appointment will be to start the AP23573 treatment. Fingers crossed that this pill will be the one to hold off the sarcoma cancer in a lot of patients. Cancer Sucks and it needs to be nipped in the bud.

The Wife