Break out your dingy gray ribbons because November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month!

Hooray!

No, you will not see a Lung Cancer Awareness iPod or cute lung cancer apparel, or little lung cancer teddy bears. There will be no product tie-ins here. No NFL games supporting lung cancer, none of that. Not that I'd want it. The exploitation of a disease to sell product, or boost brand, or for any other financial gain just doesn't feel right. But what do I know?

• Approximately 219,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer in the U.S. each year – over 103,000 women and nearly 116,000 men.

• Lung cancer kills more than 160,000 people annually – more people than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined.

• Lung cancer is responsible for more than 28% of all cancer-related deaths every year.

• Smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer. Approximately 87 percent of lung cancer cases occur in people who are currently smoking or have previously smoked.

• Although the risk of developing lung cancer goes down with smoking cessation, a significant risk remains for 20 years or longer after quitting.

• Approximately 50 percent of all lung cancers (106,500) occur in people who have already quit smoking.

• Radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer, and the leading cause of lung cancer among never-smokers.

• More people who have never smoked die from lung cancer than do people from AIDS or liver cancer or ovarian cancer.

• Risk factors for lung cancer other than those from smoking include lung scarring from tuberculosis, and occupational or environmental exposures to radon, second-hand smoke, radiation, asbestos, air pollution, arsenic and some organic chemicals.

• Only 16 percent of lung cancer patients are diagnosed before their disease has spread to other parts of their bodies, (e.g., regional lymph nodes and beyond), compared to more than 50 percent of breast cancer patients, and 90 percent of prostate cancer patients.

• Roughly 84 percent of people diagnosed with lung cancer die within five years of their diagnosis, compared to 11 percent of breast cancer and less than 1 percent of prostate cancer patients.

• Less money is spent on lung cancer research than on research on other cancers. In 2007, the National Cancer Institute estimated it spent only it spent only $1,415 per lung cancer death compared to $13,991 per breast cancer death, $10,945 per prostate cancer death, and $4,952 per colorectal cancer.

I don't know what the numbers are for people who have never smoked, never been around radon, never been around asbestos, or never been around much smoke. Like myself. More research needs to be done.

Do the Chemo Stomp! on 12seconds.tv

I found out a few weeks after the surgery to remove the upper right lobe of my lung that Chemotherapy was recommended. I had a Stage 1b malignant tumor in my lung. Lung Cancer. It is not known how I got it. I don't know if I'm predisposed to cancer or what other factors I was exposed to that would have encouraged this growth.

After the surgery, the surgeon, as excellent as he is, did not think that I would need to have any other treatment, and seemed surprised when I told him that I was going to see an Oncologist the next day. In some aspects, he was correct. The surgery was successful in removing the tumor and the tests on my lymph nodes determined that the cancer had not yet spread. However there was one thing that was troubling. The tumor breached the pleural space between my lung and chest wall. It was a pretty aggressive tumor. I'm lucky they caught it when they did. 

It happened pretty fast at the Oncologist. He took me through my diagnosis and went online to show me what the most recent research said about my condition. It was very simple. I had 65% to 75% 5 year survival rate and a 2002 study showed that patients who were in the same situation as me and had adjunctive chemotherapy increased survival by 3% to 5%. However as the study continued, it looked as though there was no statistically significant gain in survival. It came down to a choice. Do I go through chemo for a possible 5% bump or not. My doctor put it plainly... "If it does come back and you know that you could have possibly done something to prevent it, how would you feel?" If it does come back, that's it, I'm more than likely a goner. It was a no brainer. Do the chemo.

I set up an appointment to with the infusion nurses to go over the procedure and side effects. They pretty much tell you every bad thing that can happen. Nausea, infection, shock, fever, fatigue, severe fatigue, etc. They tell you when to call the nurses and when to go to the emergency room. The main concern is fever. Anything over 101 is cause for alarm and probably warrants a trip to the ER. They also tell you to bring books, magazines, DVDs, your laptop, and any other diversion because you could be sitting there for a while.

I was to have four infusions over 12 weeks.  One every three weeks. I guess I was lucky because often times people get a lot more. They said I could have a treatment on a Thursday and be back to work the following Monday. Apparently people have no trouble with this. I was not so lucky. I tried this for a while, but the physical and emotional drain was overwhelming. I could get around between sessions and do most things, but it took twice as long and I needed lots of breaks. Work though, was pretty difficult. I'm not saying that a person going through chemo can't work, I did some things, but for me, I was at nowhere near the performance level I was used to. Granted I had slowed down the past year, probably due to the cancer, but I'm used to shouldering a lot. When I did go to work, I shuffled from meeting to meeting and stared off into space. After the second infusion I broke down a few times and just sobbed at my desk. I had no control over my emotions. But I didn't care, it felt good. My boss was more than understanding and let me take the time I needed. I'm still very grateful.

The worst part was the bone pain. I was given a shot the day after my infusion to boost the production of white blood cells and fight off infection. I think the stuff is called Neulasta. (Gee that sounds good! It's new and it will help me last!). This shit wreaked havoc on my bones. It felt like they were breaking from the inside. Like the worst growing pains. The pain lasted 3 days and even with Vicodin and Oxycontin I was super sore. I guess it doesn't affect everyone like this, but apparently it was better than getting an infection.

My hair started falling out after about 2 weeks. I would pull on it and strands would just fall out in my fingers. It was amazing. I first gave myself a mohawk and then when it looked like there was no turning back, I shaved my head. I recommend shaving your head before your hair falls out on its own. It lets you have some control.

My chemo sessions lasted 6 to 8 hours. I was given a bag of Benadryl then Carboplatin and Paclitaxel. It's a fairly simple and benign process. First you check in and are taken to an infusion room. For me this room was a pleasant, open space with about 8 to 10 leather reclining chairs lined up. Some people were already there by the time I showed up at 10AM. You sit down and the infusion nurse greets you and goes about trying to find a vein. After the second session and with all the blood tests I was getting this was a tricky prospect. I was poked 8 times on my third round because no veins were showing themselves. I imagine that they were needle shy. Once they get a good one, they set it up just like an IV. A bag of whatever it is they are putting inside you is hooked up to a pole with wheels. There is a tube that goes from the bag to a timed regulator. This controls the speed of the drip. Then there's another tube that goes from the regulator to the vein in your arm. After you're all hooked up, you just sit. And sit. You don't feel anything except maybe a bit of a burn from the Benadryl, but that doesn't last. Sometimes blood comes back through the IV and sometimes they have to wash it out with some saline. After all the hours and all the drips, they unhook you, tape you up, slap your bottom, and send you home.

You really don't feel anything right away. The next day is when I got that Neulasta shot, but nothing happens until the day after. This is when the bone pain starts. This is when you don't feel good. I got a sore throat, low fever, and nausea. But for me, the bone pain was the worst.

Then you just feel like you're living at high altitude. You are out of breath and totally fatigued. I remember trying to walk around and having to stop every 5 minutes. I remember losing my balance and falling over then using a cane for a few days. I remember trying to go to my kids' baseball and softball games. I remember looking like a freak. But most of all, I don't remember as much as I should. That's the troubling thing...

I wrote this in my journal while going through the process...

Infusion
They put bags of poison
in my veins
sat in a leather chair
stuck with needles
hard to find a vein
Infused with a syrup
that kills my cells
It makes me feel like
i'm living on a mountain
at 15,000 feet
hard to breathe
what the fuck is going on?
then my hair comes out in my
hand. then i'm bald
and sick.
It hurts so much to cough.
to breathe.
getting out of bed is hard.
But I try to be normal.
And live my life.
Because I feel it,
but I don't.
It's okay,
But it's not
Not until later do you realize
how rough it's been.
My brain has changed

Kizza me
I want to feel...

Let's kill him
so he can live
I've been resurrected!
Chemo is Jesus juice.
Thank you friends!

My next post will be about what has happened to me after Chemo.

Here are some links for reference. These are the sites my Oncologist used:

1. http://www.chemoregimen.com/
   
2. http://www.nccn.org/index.asp

Download: Immigrant Song by Bab

I play the Theremin on this. It's the only recorded evidence that I actually play the crazy thing. I've been digging around my servers and found it. If you clip the url path on this track, you'll discover all sorts of awesome music made by my friends and that I've helped to produce.

Pink has a lot to do with it. Pink is a very marketable color. People like pink. Pink sells. Pink is also a feminine color and breast cancer is a feminine cancer. Except that men can get breast cancer too. It's true, but I'll let that slide.

Who chooses these colors? Red is the color of blood, so let's make that the AIDS ribbon color. Ladies get breast cancer, so naturally it must be pink (I know lots of women who hate pink). Prostate cancer is blue for boys, and guess what the color is for bladder cancer... you got it... Yellow! I don't think the person in charge of these ribbon colors is very imaginative. Perhaps they are even a tad inconsiderate. At least the color for colon cancer isn't brown.

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. Quick! What is the color for lung cancer? Tick tick tick tick ding! If you guessed gray... then you would be half right. The official color for lung cancer awareness is "pearl". Is pearl even a color? It's sort of a wispy blend of white... wait! Kind of like SMOKE! They did it! They linked the awareness color for the most deadly cancer in the world to what everybody thinks causes that cancer. Yaaaaay! Fuck you person who thought of this. How about green for fresh air or light blue which represents, oh I don't know... FRESH AIR? Hell, the color of healthy lungs is pink... so why not pink?? Fuck you and your inconsiderate color bias.

Come this November, you will not see lung cancer iPods, or gift items, or pearl ribbons on Yahoo or Football games dedicated to the victims and survivors, or hardly anything like that. People with lung cancer deserve what they get. They did something, it's their fault, right? They brought it on themselves. Apparently my crime was breathing. The stigma of lung cancer needs to be eliminated. It doesn't matter how you get it, it's an awful, awful thing have. Most of the time, when you're told you have it, you're guaranteed to die within months. So don't think about it as a smoker's problem. It is not. It is not. It's deeper than that... Because of this stigma, lung cancer research funding is much much lower than other cancers. Because of this stigma, early detection in non smokers is very rare. Because of this stigma the stupid color for the stupid ribbon is not really a color at all.

The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation does a good thing. They use green and pink and totally ignore the "official" color. I like that. I think they get it. I support them and so should you. I find it interesting that most of the lung cancer or lung disease organizations reject the pearl thing. Even the American Lung Association uses red and blue. 

No matter what, if you can, please support breast cancer awareness this month. Even it means wearing pink things. We need to look beyond the marketing to what the cause is really about... stopping a terrible and deadly disease that affects people we love dearly.

My Happiest Moment... from beach on Vimeo.

In December of 2003, The Flaming Lips were asked to perform at the Yahoo! Year End Party in San Francisco. I worked for Yahoo at the time and had a minor role in getting them to play. Because of this I was able to be on stage during the performance in an owl costume that smelled like urine. It was during this time that I experienced one of the happiest moments of my life...

*UPDATED* shorter and better!

I dreamed making this last night, so I actually made it this morning. It's 2 minutes. Bon Appetit.

A Nice Trip To Disneyland by Negativland

enjoy!

This is Reebee's Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music from 1955 to 1978. I hope he decides to continue the chart. If not, I may take a crack at it.

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Reebee Garofalo

Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo! Inc. I have absolutely no insight into what the mobile or app strategy is. I try to avoid those conversations if possible, unless they want or need my help. Believe me I tried it the other way and it never goes anywhere.

I want a Yahoo iPhone app for all the things I do on Yahoo. Wait! Now listen carefully. I don't want one single app that does all that. No way. I want a single app that does one thing for each of the things that I do on Yahoo. There are already some, but it's not enough and I still don't see a cohesive approach yet. Toes have been wet too long so it would be good to see some action.

The reason is simple. The best apps fill a need. A need at that moment and time. Those needs are the same no matter if you are near your laptop or near your iPhone, you want information or you want to do something specific at that given time. The app user experience is perfect for this. They are tiny applications that, by definition do small things or provide some small service. This is what Yahoo is all about. Or it can be. Yahoo has done a great job (for better or worse) of creating "channels" of content and services. These meet specific needs and there's a lot that goes into them. The problem with them on the web site is that they always try to do too much. There rarely ever is focus to Yahoo! vertical properties. Some are better than others, but I'll just leave it at that.

The app infrastructure and expected user experience solves this problem. It forces the developers to create a very targeted and focused application. If done right, they expose the core of the service and let nothing much else get in the way.

Here are the Yahoo! Apps that have been built and are in the iTunes Store:

1. Yahoo! - this is the wrong idea. It tries to do way too much. You name it, it's in there. Hey! Just like Yahoo! Bah! This should be scrapped and broken out into several specific apps.
2. Flickr - This is new and it's on the right track. But it's missing key functionality and settings capabilities. First... that slide show at the beginning. I want to control who I see there. But it gives me the same random people from my contacts list. It's also pretty slow. Why cant I see my favorites? Why can't I favorite other images? And it crashes constantly. Good first step though. But I'd like to see a product roadmap. (iTunes keeps crashing on me while I try to get these links, so you're on your own now.)
3. Finance - I haven't tried this one yet, but from what I've seen, i looks really good. Speed is key though, so I hope it's as fast as possible.
4. Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football - I do use this. I got talked into joining a fantasy leauge with my pals in Yahoo Travel. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I see the fun of it. Oh! That reminds me, I need to check the stats for today's games. I'm in 3rd right now...
5. Yahoo! Messenger - I have it, but I don't use it. I'm not sure why because I use the desktop app all the time. I'll have to look into that some more.
6. Yahoo! Music - Really it's CBS Radio Music. I'm not certain how much LAUNCH there is left in LAUNCHcast. I should say that launchcast was way ahead of its time and was one of my favorite music things on the web. The only problem for me is that it was for PCs and not Macs. Always bogus.

Here are more Yahoo! Apps I'd like to see.

1. Yahoo! Movies - I use Y! Movies all the time. Give me showtime, give me reviews, give me box office numbers and I'm good. Added bonus would be the ability to share a showtime with someone to get an agreement on a movie. And I'll forgive you if you put in ticket purchases.
2. Yahoo! News - A pure news app. I think it's pretty straight forward as long as you bury the crap about Jon and Kate and The Hills or whatever. I want news. Local, National, World. Financial, Sports, Technology, Opinion, would be a bonus. Make it simple, use images only when necessary. Again, this has to be fast!
3. Yahoo! Sports - Oh man this would be awesome! Scores, live game day action, video, news, team reports, etc. But I would actually take this one step deeper. I wouldn't do a single app for all sports, I'd do a separate app for single sports. NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc. That would kick ass. Focus!!
4. Yahoo! Shopping - Search, quick price compare, ability to save the product to a list for later. Buying links would take you to the merchant through the browser.
5. Yahoo! Travel - I know a little about what's going on here, so I won't say anything, but check this out to see a peak at the direction. http://m.travel.yahoo.com/?_ym=1 (best viewed on an iphone of all things!
6. Yahoo! Mail - The iphone mail app is pretty good. But Yahoo knows mail better than almost anyone. We should have our own app. It should be super fast and should try to avoid the Y! Mail embedded applications that seem to be showing up if possible. It should handle photos and video really well though.
7. Yahoo! Local - c'mon! This has to be done. Yelp and Trip Ad visor are eating our lunch. This is the perfect platform for local content. I'll stop there because I'll get frustrated.
8. Upcoming - Find events nearby, post content about that event during the event based on your location, add events to the service by taking photos of fliers.
9. Yahoo! Games - Create a package of most popular games on Yahoo! games for people to play. Not focused, but very Yahoo. Then start breaking out and making (or commissioning) unique games for the iphone.
10. Feed reader - I know we don't have one, but why not build one and marry it to My Yahoo or something. This could also be part of the news app. It could let you add your own sources or choose from a selection, etc.
11. Video status updates - This would be a great way for people to update their friends and share their lives on  their lifestream on Yahoo. Geo location would be awesome here too. Your profile image could change and be their latest video update! There should be a time limit on these though... a few seconds I guess... oops conflict of interest. I'll stop.

There's a ton more ideas. But I'll end this now. I think a very important part of these apps would be the seamless integration with the real/live corresponding sites. The amazon app does a great job of this. Check it out. But these apps should provide lots of hooks back to the main site for later use. List creation, uploads, sharing of content, bookmarking to read later, etc. The site and the app should work seamlessly. This builds brand, engagement, and business.

It would be great if then Yahoo would take the app concept to the web site. So each vertical can be structured and developed like an app would. Focused, simple, effective, helpful, informative, convenient, fast. beepp!

This is the first time that I've felt a little safe since the surgery. It's a new page. I can maybe start thinking ahead. I have a future.

My doctor (Dr. Wu) is awesome. We talk about gadgets and the web and the Yahoo! / Microsoft search deal and iPhone apps before we talk about cancer. I told him about the post chemo side effects I've been experiencing. Chemo Brain and the like. The side effects include:

• Numb feet (especially toes)
• Numbness and pain in my fingertips
• Difficulty focusing
• Inability to multi-task
• Memory loss
• Difficulty writing and spelling
• Difficulty speaking
• A general brain fogginess
• Confusion
• Frustration
• Depression
• Anxiety

He said that what I'm experiencing is common. There hasn't been a lot of research about life after chemotherapy. Everyone has been focused on killing cancer cells and there hasn't been as much attention on what survivors experience. Now that there are more cancer survivors it's becoming a little more clear what chemotherapy does. Basically more people are saying the same thing so doctors are starting to take notice on a collective level. I'm feel okay about living with these side effects. It's not known how long they'll last, but I'm willing to live with them. Dr. Wu said I have a "new normal".

The new normal. Basically life is not the same. I've had cancer, I'm missing a lung, and I've had chemotherapy. My life is not like it was a year ago. That "normal" no longer exists. My new normal includes this trauma. Now what do I do about it? Dr. Wu said it is like a person who has had a leg amputation. The person can either stay in a wheel chair or can get up and learn to use a prosthesis. The latter is much more difficult and can be painful, but a transformation happens. The person has learned to live as best they can given the circumstances.

I'm not totally certain yet, but I think my new normal means that I take things a little slower. I do less. I simplify. I think it also gives me a clear opportunity to shift my focus to my health and well-being. I look inward more. I don't take on too much. I breathe.

My new normal is to breathe. Deep breaths. Because I can. My new normal is to live the best I can given the circumstances.