The Big Update

I’m sure you have recognized that I have not updated my website since April.  A lot has been going on in the last few months.

May

In May I stopped my trial oral chemotherapy because I had a 9 day stay in the hospital.  I went to the hospital because I had horrible back pain and I was having trouble eating. While I was in the hospital I was only allowed to have 2 full meals. Thus, I lost a lot of weight. The Dr.’s found out that I had some blockage in my bile duct and they wanted to put in a few stints to open the blockage. The blockage was not allowing my liver to extract my bile into the intestines. I finally had 2 stints put in the bile duct by using the ERCP procedure.  The stints made everything feel a lot better and my liver labs were back to normal.

June

After I was discharged from the hospital my Doctor’s and I decided that we should take the opportunity to find a new chemo trial.  So I continued not to take chemo through the month of June.  Next thing you know it, I found myself back in the hospital because of pain in my ribs.  After some test my liver was still functioning well, but it looks like that I had some gull bladder stones.  Plus the doctors gave me some pain medication to help me function throughout the day.  I was only in the hospital for 3 days, but during those 3 days I became very excited and at peace with the next decision that I was about to do.

Just a few days after the June hospital stay was Fathers Day.   Bahar’s mom invited my family to come over for a Fathers Day dinner.   My Dad, Aunt BJ, & Stan came up from central Illinois and we had a great time together.  Later that night, I proposed to Bahar! FINALLY!

The proposal

I proposed to Bahar through a photo album. The photo album consisted of all the pictures of the adventures that we had during our relationship. At the top left hand corner of each page I wrote “ W-I-L-L Y-O-U M-A-R-R-Y M-E-?”. At first, she didn’t see the written proposal, so I had to show it to her and she began to cry and said “YES!”.

I didn’t have a ring ready for her at the point in time, but I had an idea of what I wanted to give her. I wanted to give her my great aunt, grandma, and my mom’s diamond ring. She loved the idea and we finally got the ring made and now she can’t take it off. She loves the ring so much. I’m so happy too.

So the next step is the WEDDING.

We decided that we wanted to get married before November and the holiday season.  We are ecstatic, happy, honored and excited to be a part of Wish Upon a Wedding.  We can’t believe that we were selected by Wish Upon a Wedding to help us organize and manage our wedding. They are an amazing organization that is out there to help couples that are going through hard times because of a disease. There aren’t too many organizations like this out there and we flabbergasted that our wish was granted.

To learn more about the company and to read our wish application please visit this website (Seriously you should read it is really good):

http://wishuponawedding.org/nick-and-bahar-have-been-granted-a-wedding-wish/

New Chemo

After 3 months of no chemotherapy I was finally was able to get into a new clinical trial. Most of the people on this trial are in France. I’m going to be the only person in the United States that will be on these new drugs.  My blood work and liver labs are doing great and are under the regulations for the study.  I started the 2 new oral chemotherapies.