Thursday, August 14, 2008

Slow Thursday

Still not feeling great. Lots of fatigue and some mild stomach cramps. I was considering going up to New York on the train to visit Phil and the gang but postponed it for another time.

Took Mike for his pre senior year haircut. He looks pretty darn good. Lots of his Dad's genes! He is set to start his senior high school year in 2 weeks. Rob goes back to college as a sophomore in about 3 weeks.

This afternoon we went downtown to the Baltimore Aquarium to hang out for a while. It's a really nice aquarium. We got to see the dolphin show. They are such incredibly beautiful and smart mammals.

Afterwards we walked across the road and had a really good dinner at PF Chang's. I must have had about 4 cups of hot and sour soup. Mmmmm.

Homeward bound to catch more Olympics on TV.

Our Union Newspaper

This letter from me was published in our union newspaper August 11th.

TRUST YOUR BODY

To my flying family:

On March 5th, 2008 I was unfortunately
diagnosed with lung cancer.
Just hearing the word "cancer" scares
the living hell out of me but hearing it
applying to me was totally overwhelming.
I will not bore you with the
details as I cover most of what's been
going on in my blog. Comments
greatly appreciated (or emails). All
my contact info is at the IPA
crewmember site.

http://asuskin.blogspot.com

What has sustained me through this
war/battle has been my family, friends
and, of course, my flying family, my
UPS management friends
and UPS (you all). The love, concern,
prayers and support has been positively
overwhelming.

The thing that I would ask all of you
is this. Trust your body. If something
(health issue) does not seem right or
persists please get it checked out. We
have tremendously good medical benefits
here at UPS. Use them! There are
way too many of us in this "Type
Alpha" career that think we are immortal.
Never happen to us. Well, I
was one of them and guess what? It
happened.

Warmest regards,
Adrian Suskin,
B757/767 CPT SDF

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Interesting news!!!

Wednesday was a somewhat slow day. I had a few things to do in the morning but then the fatigue set in. It was generally not a great day for me but pretty typical after the heavy chemo Monday. So glad this part will be over soon.

Let me give you some aviation information. As an Airline Pilot we generally all have Airline Transport Rating licences. These are issued by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). What validates this licence is our twice yearly physicals done by a FAA certified doctor. Essentially without a valid and current physical your licence is not valid and thus you are medically grounded. That is where I am right now. I am on long term medical leave from UPS.

I spoke yesterday to our union FAA liaison doctor. He is available for us to consult with and represent us when we need to apply for our medical reinstatement. He is an incredibly knowledgeable and wonderfully helpful man. He informed me that generally with chemotherapy the FAA requires you to be off of chemotherapy treatments for 1 year before medical reinstatement. Of course there could be some small variations to this but what that means for me is that I should not expect to be back to work until somewhere around August 2009. I wasn't quite sure how to react to this news but one thing the doctor reminded me of again. I need to get well first and then think of all of this. I know UPS thinks the same way and I certainly do.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Meeting with Dr. Erlich

Today was a bit of a rough day. I had really bad stomach cramps starting early this morning. As the day progressed it improved somewhat. The fatigue was pretty lousy today. Nothing a good rest couldn't take care of.

This afternoon we met with Dr. Erlich. It was a good meeting and he answered a lot of questions we had. So this is where we (oops I) stand as far as my treatments go. I have 2 more weeks of chemotherapy left ending on August 25th. I will then have a week off and then after some blood work, an EKG and a meeting with Dr. Erlich, I will start up on a once-a-day tablet called Sutent. We are not sure of the duration that I will be taking these tablets but I am sure the PET/CAT scans will have something to do with it.

Now off for a Schnitzel and rice dinner and more Olympics.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Chemo 1 (Round 3)

This morning I had my heavy chemo day. Silvie came down with me and stayed for 4 hours. I think it was a little tough for him as he saw the whole chemo treatment. Needles, tubes, drugs and all. For someone to see me all "hooked up" may be a little un-settling. The treatment went fairly quickly. Mary was her usual wonderful self. We did not meet with Dr. Erlich but have an appointment to see him tomorrow. We have lots of questions.

Silvie was/is a "star" and a true friend. We spent some quality time together and he was a great house guest to have around for all of us. He left this afternoon to go back to Zimbabwe. We will all miss having him around but I know I will see him in the not too distant future. Safe travels "boet" (brother in Afrikaans).

Let me also say thank you, once again, to all my flying family who keep up with my travails on my blog. It is amazing for me to see a map of the world on the computer and see where some people have logged in from. Anchorage, Alaska, Almaty, Kazakhstan, Beijing, China. What a thrill. It's hard to explain the camaraderie amongst professional pilots. Suffice to say, they are like family to me. Speaking of family..................I can't say enough about the love and support they give me on an hourly/daily basis. So I won't!!!

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Weekend Update

The work out pain is slowly leaving my body. It seems just my calves still ache a bit. All this just in time for Mondays chemo (3 drug day) to smack you down a rung or two!

Saturday we just lounged around the house. In the evening Silvie treated us all to dinner at an Indian Restaurant. Good curries. I ate quite well. Afterwards we went to Sandra and Neil to watch some Olympics. Got to see Michael Phelps win his 1st gold medal and a world record. Wow. Silvie was overjoyed when Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe won a silver medal in the women's IM. She beat Kattie Hoff of the USA (the favorite).

After a good nights sleep we had a really nice breakfast and then watched Manchester United beat Portsmouth in the Community Shield. What a great start to the season.

It's Rob's birthday today. So lots going on and lots of phone calls.

We took Rob to a restaurant in little Italy for her birthday. We then drove around the downtown area to show Silvie a bit more of Baltimore. Back home for Olympic coverage and Rob had a few friends over to hang out and swim.