An Interesting Road To Mortality

As one who chronicled a significant number of athletic seasons through a 47 year career in sports journalism and sports information, I have thought a chronicle of my “journey toward mortality” might be a worthy undertaking.

This is going to be way too long to be a Facebook post…as a matter of fact I am currently in Meta Limbo after my Facebook, Instagram and Message pages were all disabled around noon on Jan. 4 for “violation of community standards”. I am attempting to recover them so I can stay in touch with friends, but if I can’t that’s it for me with Meta. Those adventures will be detailed in a future post.

A little background: I have had some issues with sciatica, caused by a herniated disk. It got to the point in June that I could not finish a round of golf on two or three occasions, I had a orthopedics visit with Megan Sisbaro in May which led to a spinal MRI which in turn led to a visit with Dr. Nathan Mauser. Dr. Mauser and I had a very long conversation and decided that he would do a microdiscectomy (basically cleaning up the herniated disc in the L4-5) which would hopefully solve the sciatic issues. The sciatica was painful enough that I couldn’t even complete grocery shopping trips and would sometimes not even try to go. I had to be wheeled out of what is now Market 32 after crippling pain halfway through one trip. I could play golf with the help of plenty of ibuprofen and a TENS unit, but as the summer went on, the pain started really impacting my ability to play the game. I played a couple of rounds in August with RB Lawrence, Sam LaMacchia and Don Woods in Canton, but most of the time I was parked on the 19^th Hole at the Champlain Country Club…not that there is anything wrong with that! Of course we had the nicest September and October in recent history and I missed some of the best golf days of the year.

The beginning of the medical circus: Surgery was scheduled for October 19…but it never happened. A pre-surgical physical with my primary care person Susan Williams revealed an elevated white blood cell count. Follow up blood tests revealed a steadily rising white cell count. First referral was to Dr. Dennis Sanders, who was part of my mom’s medical team when she went through leukemia. Dr. Sanders ordered a series of blood tests and suggested the possibility of an infection or gastric issues causing the rising white cell counts. In a classic case of bad timing, Dr. Sanders went on vacation shortly after my appointment and subsequent blood tests showed steadily increasing white cell counts. When he returned and all the results were in, he thought we should continue to monitor and try to narrow things down further.  I was experiencing more pronounced symptoms: fatigue and sweating the primary among them, and Susan Williams suggested we get a second opinion. I met with Dr. Mansour Gergi on No. 22  and his diagnosis was leukemia. He had me admitted to the UVM Medical Center on Monday Nov. 25 and my room on Miller 5 was home for the next ten days. Day one included the installation of a pick line for IVs and blood draws and a bone marrow biopsy which helped confirm a diagnosis of AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia).

The initial treatments in the UVM Medical Center went well, and I tolerated chemotherapy with few or no side effects. A second bone marrow biopsy was done Dec. 20 and when the results were available on MyChart, I was somewhat encouraged. I was delighted when I met with Dr. Gergi on December 30 and he said the results were good enough to delay round two of the chemo infusions and have them done when I reached Florida.