Free at Last Free at Last (Pseudo Free at Last)

Freedom; I am finally free from my prison (Stanford Spa) 11 days (FREED Monday Night) of sitting as a pin cushion. Still stuck in CA for several more weeks as this infection is treated with IV antibiotics in my apartment.

Note: to the public the "Free Jerrold" from the Stanford Spa campaign worked the hospital caved in :-)

Same old Song and Dance

I really have no idea when I will be getting out of this D_M hospital and am getting frustrated have gone AWOL twice now and probably will go for the hat trick soon (i.e. just put on my clothes and walked out for a couple of hours on the town) being in here since May 3 at this rate I will be hospitalized longer than I was for the transplant procedure.

Oh well back to my cell (hospital room)

Happy Mothers Day

Still in the D_M Hospital

Port was successfully removed, and a picc line was um successfully inserted to replace the port (after four painful attempts). We shall see what today brings.

Yep still here in CA (Stanford Hospital)

Yep still in my favorite place (Hospital)
making slow progress the around the clock antibiotics seem to be working but recovery from a staph infection is slow for a normal person let alone recovery for someone who just had a bi-lateral transplant less than 10 weeks ago.

Surgery today at 1000 PST to remove my port-o-cath should be routine and only take an hour, then I will get a temporary pic line place in my arm.

No talks on getting out of the hospital yet, my hope is to be out of here this weekend and back in TX within the next 2 weeks.

No Rick James ____ Still Hospitalized though

Had a long day and if I need blood/lab work done in the morn. I will set it off with the person trying to stick me, I guess you could say at 5AM with no sleep for days the Phlebotomist pulled the wool over my eyes as she stuck me multiple time to fill multiple blood draw tubes. In the morn or future like I have always done if I have a port and an active open IV line it WILL BE USED or I will be sending another Phlebotomist off in a huff with hurt feelings and a good tongue lashing :-) Rick James style don't take it personally blood draw workers of America.

Found out that my infection (in the chest muscle) is a staph infection so right now the plan is to treat it with antibiotics. I don't anticipate leaving in the hospital until at the earliest May 12/13 weekend time frame and we still have not even began to discuss release dates. TX plans have not been re-worked yet.

Still Hospitalized

It is Monday and I am still in the hospital with a pretty bad infection in my chest. I have now been stuck with more needles and had more biopsies than I ever wanted. Two needle sticks that I have had that really were not that bad was / were the fluid drain from my knees and the insulin shots I have to give me self in the stomach (in the grand scheme of things and after everything else they were not that bad.).

I don't have any idea when I will get back to TX now, as I am in an isolated room and have dealt with more doctors since I was admitted on Thursday of last week than I have dealt with all year (popularity stinks).

Hospitalized

Seems I couldn't get out of here without being hospitalized. I was admitted on yesterday with diabetic symptoms (probably brought on by all the medicine I take). I am hopping to be out of here today after more test (Jerrold going away party is tonight); also we are scheduled to fly back to TX Sunday morn Only time and more medication will tell.

Jerrold

LAST WeeeeK, LAST WeeeeK, "Rick James" LAST Weeeeeek !!!!!

LAST WeeeeK, a phrase I have sung since I finished playing football. Anyone that has been through the bumps and bruises of a college seasons knows the tune and the happiness that comes over you when you reach the last week of the season (enough said). This is the last week in CA "Ret-ta-Go" I think/ know I will recover better in TX as I will be on more familiar turf. Gotta run and get ready to pick up the wife at the airport so we can close out this last week and get back to TX.

Bell Lap

Time is quickly winding down for me in CA. Can't wait to get back to more familiar territory; not that CA hasn't treated me very well (along with saving my life) but I have to spread my wings and leave the safe confines of the Stanford Medical nest. Life goes on and I need some BBQ and Texas sports radio. May 6 looks like the day I will be touching down in Texas to bring closure to the journey I will be finishing.

Signs that I have been here far too long....

I think I have been here far too long, I can't take the Fif anymore some of my observations....

1. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.
2. You can't remember . . . is pot illegal?
3. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.
4. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the U.S.
5. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George Clooney.
6. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.
7. You can't remember . . .is pot illegal?
8. It's barely sprinkling rain and there's a report on every news station: "STORM WATCH."
9. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.
10. It's barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.
11. HEY!!!! Is pot illegal????18. Both you AND your dog have therapists, psychics, personal trainers and cosmetic surgeons.
12. The Terminator is your governor.

The Stars at night shine big and bright (clap clap clap) deep in the heart of Texas ......

Virus on the loose

It seems that a few of the heart and lung transplant patients that were transplanted around the same time as my procedure are catching RSV an airborne virus that is basically not good for people/patients in our compromised, weakened health conditions. I am really living like a hermit right now restricting my access to the other people in the apartment complex, and not even speaking with the sick ones on the telephone or e-mail either for that matter :-) e-mail gets viruses too. If I get this virus then it would be a 4/5 day vacation for me at the hospital in an isolated room get heavy antibiotic IV drips; all this helps to keep your system from going into rejection of the transplanted organ.

So hard to say goodbye (NOT!!!!)

Saw the old lungs today and it was an unemotional event of my behalf. I saw how bad the old lungs were and am even more grateful for the gift, the second chance I have.


Some pictures of the old lungs are below keep in mind they are already segmented and research has begun on them. The lungs were undersized and honestly speaking with the doctors they don't see how I could even breath. The holes or nodules you see in the pictures are the cancer nodules for the BAC.





Someone please fix my hat my hands are compromised I am a doctor now; or at least for the moment I am :-)

Bad lung segment, notice the cancer nodules that starved me for oxygen I was slowly and daily suffocating, which would have been a painful death (mentally and physically)

The whole lung set-up (and yes it is segmented and cross-cut already) the right lung is on the left side and the left lung is on the right side. The lungs were small for my body, blame it on the sickness.

My wife and I will stop in and visit Ralph right lung and Larry left lung one more time before the research gods have their way totally with them.

visiting the old lungs today

Today I will be visiting my old lungs to have a heart to heart with them. Check that I will be having a lung to lung (ha ha laughing w/out coughing) with them. I hope to have another session with them in a week or so when my wife is here to escort me back to TX.

I will look at the lungs, probably hold them but just try to figure out where we went wrong and why they (I) got sick, they used to be so strong but suddenly became so weak, without a proper diagnosis for years and finally no valid justification as to why or how I got BAC lung cancer; go figure some things will never be known; I am at peace with that lack of knowledge. MOVING Forward....

End in sight

Smooth sailing this week with all the doc visits. Planing to return to TX first week of May ready for some BBQ and normalcy.

5weeks and counting

Still recovering according to schedule (possibly ahead of schedule) which is good so maybe I can get back to TX sooner rather than later. Bronchoscopy at 1400 PST on Tuesday so I am up eating until 0200 PST since I must fast 12 hours before the procedure that lets the docs look at my lungs. More food..........

Doc visit

Doc visit this week went well:

• PFT (Pulmonary Function Test) went up to 71%
• Have been given the green light to drive
• Possibly may be able to return to TX before June '07
• No set backs so far

Broke a little sweat on yesterday

Broke a sweat at PT (physical therapy) on Tuesday but not much, the stationary bike made me drip a little (heavy stress on very little). The whole PT process was alot easier than I expected, I have been through worse PT when I was playing competitive sports. More PT today so maybe they will challenge me today :-) or I can just make up my own workout.

News Article: Palo Alto Daily News Story 4/2/07

http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2007-4-2-pa-dash-lungs


Monday Apr 2

Melissa McRobbie / Daily News

Jerrold Dash, pictured in his apartment near Stanford Medical Center on Sunday, is breathing easier these days, having received a double lung transplant at Stanford in early March. Dash had been diagnosed with lung cancer in February 2006. On the table in front of him is an apparatus that helps him measure his progress as his lungs grow stronger.
Dash gets second wind



Double lung transplant patient wins cancer fight
By Jason Green / Daily News Staff Writer


The 33-year-old Texas resident was delivering word puzzles to fellow patients awaiting transplants at Stanford University Medical Center when his pager lit up March 5.

At first Dash ignored it. But a stolen glance confirmed it was a local number. His heart was in his throat as he asked to borrow a phone.

"It was my doctor," he recalled. "He said, 'Well, we got you some lungs.'"

Since being diagnosed last February with Stage IV bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, a type of lung cancer that affects nonsmokers, the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics systems engineer had been hoping for that kind of good news.

"It was a little surreal," he said. "You prepare yourself mentally for it. But I still got a little shaky."

A day later, the diseased organs were gone and Dash was breathing more easily than he had in months. Now free of cancer and on the road to recovery, he hopes to return to Fort Worth by June, rejoining his wife, Rhonda, and their two daughters, 3-year-old Raegan and 1-year-old Ravyn.

"I couldn't believe it," said Rhonda, recalling the day Dash called her with the news. "I started jumping up and down, crying. One of my daughters knew I was talking to daddy and she asked me what was wrong with him. I said, 'Nothing. These are happy tears.'"

Although he's beaten cancer, Dash isn't pushing it out of his life. He wants to erase the stigma surrounding lung disease which, as he discovered, doesn't always affect cigarette smokers.

"First, we have to break down that stigma that you deserve lung cancer," he said. "Nobody deserves cancer. Nobody deserves lung cancer."

Dash's oncologist at Stanford, Heather Wakelee, appreciates his outlook. "Lung cancer is not just a disease of people who smoke," she said, noting that roughly 9 to 10 percent of men and 20 percent of women who develop lung cancer never smoked.

Dash also wants to be an inspiration to other late-stage bronchioloalveolar carcinoma sufferers. Transplanting lungs into such a patient is regarded by some in the medical field as a controversial procedure because "the odds of the cancer coming back are higher than not ... and Jerrold is aware of that," Wakelee said.

But for someone as young and fit as Dash, the procedure made sense. Before the operation, he was one of two patients with the cancer awaiting a transplant, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing's Web site.

"I don't want others to give up. I want them to take a risk," he said. "If you have a terminal illness, fight it. Don't accept the status quo treatment."

As strong as he sounds today, Dash acknowledged that he needed help getting through the ordeal. Prayer and the kindness of others gave him - and his family - the strength to hold on, he said.

Sue Passailaigue, for one, provided a place for him to stay in Mountain View while he waited for the call. She offers the condominium to patients such as Dash who need to be close to the hospital in case an organ becomes available. Donations of cash, time and household items help keep it open.

"Sue calls it the compassion condo," Dash said. "If the walls could talk, the stories they would tell."

Dash is now living in an apartment a stone's throw from Stanford University Medical Center and taking his recovery one day at a time. Physical therapy begins soon, but the former Winston-Salem State University fullback is already walking and doing flights of stairs.

In short, he has traded one focus, beating cancer, for another: getting healthy enough to resume the life he was forced to put on hold.

"We won't mind being a simple, uneventful family," said his wife Rhonda, who paused to smile. "We've had enough life-changing events. Sometimes boring is OK, we've found."

E-mail Jason Green at jgreen@dailynewsgroup.com.

ON THE WEB Read about Jerrold Dash's battle against cancer on his blog at 2newlungs.blogspot.com.

Uneventful weekend

The weekend was tame. We just ran errands for items for the apartment so it was good to get out despite the fact I still get a little ticked off at the glares (comatose gazes) I get when I am wearing my respirator breathing mask. I think to break-up the gazes I will make up some appropriate flash cards that will diffuse the situation :-).

Watched a movie on Saturday: Wild Hogs and it was pretty funny. It reminded me of the time I tried to teach some of my buds to ride an old motorcycle that I had when I was working in Rhode Island years ago.

On Sunday I shattered the two mile mark with ease, and finished off the walk with several sets of stadium stairs. I also began lifting weights today; nothing serious just fitness/resistance tubes working my legs ONLY.

Wrapped up another news article for the Palo Alto Daily News.
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2007-4-2-pa-dash-lungs

Recovery plans for Saturday 3/31/07

Not much in the works today. Trying to get in 2 or more miles, some stairs, maybe a few hills if my knees don't start to bother me. The rest of the recovery is progressing nicely (my words) I am 70% lung functionality right now and hope to see steady improvement possibly moving to at least 75% by next Thursday.

That's all for now folks.

Copy of the orginal DFW news Article

In 2007, Jerrold Dash resolves to: Live to see 2008. Find a way for his family to be together. Promote organ donation and break the stereotypes associated with lung cancer.

By Mitch Mitchell

Source: Fort Worth Star-TelegramCredit: STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF

WRITERTuesday,January 9, 2007Edition: Tarrant, Section: News, Page A1

The Lockheed Martin Aeronautics systems engineer is 33 and approaching the first anniversary of his cancer being diagnosed. For the past six months he has lived in a Mountain View, Calif., apartment awaiting a double-lung transplant at Stanford University Medical Center. Dash’s wife of four years and his two young daughters live 1,600 miles away at the family’s south Fort Worth home.

"Cancer doctors are well-versed in what they do, but they don’t give you a lot of hope," Dash said in a telephone interview. "I’m not supposed to survive a year, and I’m definitely not going to be around after five, is what they told me."

Dash and his wife, Rhonda, were racing toward the good life when he began complaining of night sweats, sleepless nights, constant coughing and fatigue. Doctors suspected allergies, asthma, bronchitis, but none used advanced X-rays to screen for lung cancer, Dash said. He was working toward a third master’s degree when the cancer was diagnosed Feb. 1, four years after symptoms first appeared.

He is one of two patients in the United States with his diagnosis who have been approved by a transplant program, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing’s Web site.
Dash says the fact that he has never smoked and was athletic and health-conscious delayed his diagnosis.

He’ll never be able to pinpoint the cause, but he is convinced that secondhand smoke and pollution are two of the likely culprits. He pours out his anger at smokers on a blog that he began in September.

"I am not crazy, deranged, I am just mad as hell. I am mad when I fight for breath and I see smokers lighting up not caring where or in what direction their second-hand smoke goes. In California, there is no smoking in the restaurants, businesses, stores ... however, that does not stop smokers from lighting up right outside of the entrances to such establishments. It physically hurts me to have to walk through this stuff."
— Dash’s blog, Oct. 16

Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth, Baylor Medical Center at Southwest Fort Worth and Lockheed all went smoke-free this month. Arlington banned smoking in restaurants, some bars and many other public places as of New Year’s Day. Fort Worth city leaders have scheduled public hearings this month and next on further tobacco restrictions.
Dash, who worked for tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds for two years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, said even stronger measures are needed to protect nonsmokers from the byproducts of tobacco.

Against the odds
About 10 percent of people who have lung cancer have never smoked, according to David Weill, head of Stanford’s Lung Transplant Program. It is one of the few U.S. programs that transplants organs to cancer patients, Weill said.

"Usually, transplanting with cancer doesn’t work. The chance of getting cancer after the transplant is pretty high," Weill said.

And while the odds of Dash’s cancer returning after the transplant are about 50 percent, the chances are small that any recurrence would be fatal, Weill said.

"I think in life we have two great vices — fear and failure. ... I have over the last several months conquered my fear of death. No one lives forever. It is in knowing that I will one day die as an old man that I am able to live without fear and try to take advantage of every moment I have. Failure is not in my vocabulary. Athletes don’t fail." — Dash’s blog, Oct. 27

Tamara Crawford, a co-worker at Lockheed, said Dash informed her of his diagnosis about a year ago while he was being tested at a Fort Worth hospital.

"I said that doctors can get the diagnosis, but they don’t know the final outcome," said Crawford, an aeronautical engineer at Lockheed who had attended classes with Dash at Southern Methodist University. "Then I walked back to my car and cried."

A former fullback at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, the 5-11, 235-pound Dash has struggled to maintain his weight. He lifts weights nearly every day and says chemotherapy — rat poison, he calls it — makes him hungry, weak, sleepy and angry.
"I had to call the cops today at the hospital to get three die-hard smokers out of the no-smoking area so that cancer patients didn’t have to go through a cloud of smoke while trying to get into the cancer center," Dash wrote in an e-mail Dec. 28.

Dash communicates with his family daily by phone, e-mail or webcam. His wife, Rhonda; their 3-year-old, Raegan; and 1-year-old Ravyn huddle around the computer to share news of holidays and routine events. The trio last visited Dash in California on Thanksgiving.

Raegan "cries for him. She misses him," said Rhonda Dash, an environmental investigator with the state. "She always asks when we can go back out there for a visit."
Ravyn was only a few weeks old when her father received his diagnosis. For her, Dash is a man inside the box.
"She calls the telephone Dada," Jerrold Dash said.

Timing is crucial
Jerrold Dash hasn’t been to Fort Worth since September, when he attended the funeral of his mother-in-law, who died of lung cancer. If he leaves the Palo Alto area, his name will be removed from the transplant list. That policy is driven by the short shelf life of lungs — a mere six hours after being removed from a donor. Transplant recipients must not venture more than four hours from the hospital because of the time needed for a pre-surgery work-up.
Dash completes his assignments related to the Lightning II project by telecommuting from one of Lockheed’s California offices.

He is working on a third master’s degree — this one in systems engineering, having earned graduate degrees in organizational management and computer information systems. He completes course work at Southern Methodist University by watching DVDs of his classes. His classmates graduated in December, but he is one class and one paper short of fulfilling his degree requirements.

Yet some things, he knows, are more important.
"From the time I graduated from college up to now, I did everything I could to benefit my career; a career I do not feel I will ever get back on track again. However, I am not sad to see my career take a backseat. You have to find a balance in life and prioritize the major things in your life. The things that are important to me are being able to wake-up and see another day, my GOD, and my friends and family."
— Dash’s blog, Jan. 2

SECONDHAND SMOKE

Secondhand smoke causes 35,000 to 45,000 deaths from heart disease every year. An additional 3,000 otherwise healthy nonsmokers die of lung cancer each year because of their exposure to secondhand smoke, according to the American Cancer Society.
The Environmental Protection Agency has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, a substance that is known to cause human cancer.
Find information online about lung cancer and secondhand smoke at Medline Plus at medlineplus.gov or at the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp
ORGAN DONATION
As of Dec. 29, more than 94,600 people were on a transplant waiting list; more than 22,000 received transplants in 2006, and nearly 11,200 donated organs.
To ensure that your decision to become a donor is carried out, sign up at www.texasdear.org.
Indicate your wishes on your driver’s license or state ID when you apply for or renew it. Tell relatives that you have decided to become a donor.
Find information online at Donate Life America at www.donatelife.net, the United Network for Organ Sharing at www.unos.org or LifeGift at www.lifegift.org.
Contact Jerrold Dash through his blog at 2newlungs.blogspot.com.
SOURCES: American Cancer Society, Donate Life America, United Network for Organ Sharing
IF YOU GO
The public is invited to comment on recommended changes to Fort Worth’s smoking ordinance during 7 p.m. meetings hosted by the city:

Jan. 16: R.D. Evans Community Center, 3242 Lackland Road
Jan. 22: Handley Meadowbrook Community Center, 6201 Beaty St.
Feb. 1: Southwest Community Center, 6300 Welch Ave.
Feb. 12: North Fort Worth Baptist Church, 5801 N. Interstate 35W

Mitch Mitchell, 817-548-5411 mitchmitchell@star-telegram.com

Walking Increase

I picked up the pace and got just over a mile and a half in today; along with a healthy dose of stadium stairs.

I think my weight is stabalizing (I lost 34 pounds in 3weeks)

Jerroldism: lessons learned so far.........

This whole ordeal has taught me a lot:

I have hopefully learned through all this more patients, and also every setback is not really a setback at all it is a setup for better things to come and just allows you the opportunity to grow the tools you need to get to where you need to be in life, love, and FAITH.

Health News

The initial pathology report is that all the junk (cancer.... BAC) was contained within my poor ol' lungs. This is good news as they have not noticed or noted any nodular activity. In short I am cancer free and hoping some good data will be gathered from the pending research that will take place on the ol' windbags.

Longest Mile

Sunday got out walked a mile around the Stanford track. The walk took a little longer than I thought but I made it through. It took a grand total of 23 minutes in lane nine so in the first lane I probably would have shaved 3 minutes off my time. I think I may try two miles this weekend when the weather warms up.

Pictures after the mile and while I was doing the stadium stairs.