Cancer vs. Craig

This page details my battle with terminal Stage 4 Testicular cancer

In order for me to fully understand what had happened to me after the brain hemorrhage I made a cancer timeline:

September 2008: We were in the process of buying my parents' business, The Car Care Center in Santa Cruz, when my mother got a bad feeling about it and told us to back out of the deal even after our loan had been approved and I had given my 2 weeks notice at FOX. That decision ultimately saved my life for I had way better health insurance through FOX than I could have been able to afford as a business owner. Plus many people from FOX donated some of their PTO (paid time off) and gave it to me so that they could collectively pay for another years worth of my health insurance. It paid off for me to be nice to my co-workers for they paid me back with life giving heath insurance for me.

October 14th 2008: Gage Vasconcellos was born at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz. 

October 18th 2008:  Sheryl and I brought Gage home from Dominican Hospital and picked up our oldest son Reis from his Grandmother’s house on our way home. Later that evening I got up to go to the bathroom and I peed blood.

October 19th 2008: Went to see my primary doctor and Sheryl's old doctor that she worked for, Doctor Conroy did an Endoscopy to see if there was a reason for the blood. He could not find a direct reason for it and declared the results to be inconclusive. 

October 22nd 2008:  We celebrated Reis' 3rd birthday amongst family.

October 23rd 2008:  I went to see an eye doctor about the pain I was having with my left eye. I had been taking a Vicodin in the mornings to reduce the headaches that would make it hard to function at work. I knew it was something bad when he left the room without saying anything besides "I will be right back." He went and got the other optometrist who shared the office with him. He wanted her opinion on what he was seeing. They both saw a mass on my left retina and could not tell if it was cancerous or not. He referred me to an eye cancer specialist in San Francisco, Dr. Char. 

November 2008: Dr. Char placed marker ring on the back of my left retina so that he could us a laser to kill the tumor on my retina, but it was not sitting right with him. He felt that I might have more going on than just this tumor. The doctors had discovered that I was already at stage IV testicular cancer with a very low percentage of survivability. I was not told the odds until after my treatments were over, that Dr Wong had given me a less than 5% odds of survival. Those odds would get most people to just give up and take the easier way out but not me.  

End of 2008:  Sometime around this time we had a benefit dinner where family and friends all attended and bought a plate to raise money for my family and I felt so loved that night surrounded by so many friends and family. Sheryl would drive me to Santa Cruz to get my chemotherapy treatment as an outpatient 2 days a week where I could come in for an hour and get my chemotherapy treatments. One day I threw up blood so I was immediately checked into Dominican Hospital where they did more tests and I was also given more chemotherapy. I also went it surgery to remove the source of the cancer, my testicles. I was released 5 days later and went back home.

February 22nd 2009: I was watching TV at home in Watsonville when I suffered a brain bleed when a tumour burst a blood vessel on the right side my brain which is called a 'hemorrhagic bleed'. The paramedics took me to Watsonville Community Hospital where the ER doctor said “sorry there is nothing we can do, prepare for the worst” Sheryl said “Hell No! You have him transferred to Dominican Hospital right now and have a surgery team waiting for him.”  That decision to not take what the doctor told her as the only option saved my life. Once at Dominican Hospital they did brain surgery to stop the bleeding which save me. I awoke a week or so later confused with no idea how I had gotten there or why I had 3 staples on the right side of my head. It was all so confusing why I could not move my left arm or leg. I had a feeding tube in my nose, IVs inserted in my arm and sensors all over my body. When I would ask the staff "What happened to me?" they would always respond "Your in the hospital and you are safe, please calm down." Of course that never answered my question of what had happened. It took me a few days to come up with my own answer, I said to myself 'I remembered that I was battling cancer and that it had spread all over my body.' Thus I came to the right conclusion that the cancer somehow caused me to have a stroke on the left side of my body.  A normal stroke happens when a blood vessel in the brain gets clogged and the blood vessel bursts, where as in my case a tumour caused the blood vessel to burst, where blood is toxic to the finite number of neurons that we have in our brains. The result has similar symptoms of a stroke or paralysis on the effected side but is called a Hemorrhagic Stroke. I was thankful that my domite hand was unaffected along with the areas of my brain associated with speech and long term memories.

March 30th 2009: Maybe that brain bleed saved my life for I was transferred to UCSF Medical Center for a more aggressive approach to fighting the cancer where I would have the best doctors trying to help me stay alive. On my first night there my bed was not ready for me downstairs so I stayed in a bed on the "terminally ill floor" where people who have very little hope of beating their illness can rest/relax in a nicely nicely appointed room where they could watch TV on a 42" flat screen mounted on the wall ior look out at the great view overlooking the city. Once my bed was ready downstairs I was rolled down there where I shared a room with many other men who were also battling cancer. In my tiny hospital bed I had a small 19" TV mounted onto an articulating frame that I could position in front of my face or off to the side when I needed to transfer or eat. There were curtains dividing my bed from the other guys next to me. I was told that there were only men in my room. While I was there the doctors removed my bone marrow from inside of my hip bone and saved it so they could pump me with extremely high doses of chemotherapy, so high that it would even kill my good cells. After the chemo had time to do its thing they injected my bone marrow back into my system through my PIC Line to help stabilize the basic systems of my body. Once I had recovered from the first round I was told that it did not help and that the cancer was still growing. So the doctors talked with Sheryl and my two Parents where it was determined that they did the whole process a second time with a different form of chemotherapy. The amazing thing was that they didn't think would work, but Sheryl insisted that they do it anyways. During my 6 months at UCSF I began some basic physical therapy, mainly just walking up and down the hallway holding onto the railing on the wall. My physical therapist would actually kick my left foot forward with each step since I had no ability to move it. I had a brace made that would help me to keep my left foot straight and my toes up while keeping my ankle from twisting. I got back up onto my feet and carried my own weight for a while at a time to retrain my brain by making new pathways to my muscles. It also helped me to not get any skinnier for I am 6' 2" tall and I weighed 142 pounds at my lowest.

May 2010: Since Sheryl and I had 2 young boys to care for we all decided that it was best if I went to live with my Parents so she could just focus on the boys' needs. Plus I was still very weak and needed to be helped in and out of bed, along with on and off the toilet, given a shower and helped into/out of the car. I was being pushed around in my wheelchair and about all I could do was feed myself. I slowly found ways to care for myself and get stronger while regaining some of the weight that I had lost. I was down to below 142 lbs at the time I went home compare to 195 lbs before the cancer.

June 2010: while I was back at home with Sheryl and my boys we were on our way to physical therapy I had an accident. I was confused when what I thought I saw was Sheryl frantically calling me to roll down the wheelchair ramp towards her. Turns out she was calling our little dog, Mocha, who was actually under my wheelchair. I was still very easily confused and it didn't even dawn on me that I wasn't able to roll down the seep ramp on my own. So I rolled down the ramp, pulled my right brake lever to slow down which caused me to turn right, right into the house which in turn made me crash hard to my left. I flew to the left and landed hard on my left hip/shoulder 3-4 feet down onto the concrete. I heard the sound of a bone breaking and immediately felt an intense pain in my left hip. I knew instantly that I was going to the emergency room not to physical therapy like I was planning on doing that day. So I ended up back at Dominican Hospital again for surgery where they inserted 2 rods and a dozen screws to put my hip back together. After a few days I started to bear weight on it and about a month later I went home to live with my Parents again.

March 2011: I was at home one weekend when Sheryl and the boys went outside to play in the back yard and they left me inside alone. rather than me calling to have Sheryl help me out of the house I tried to walk down the steps by myself without my ankle brace on. My ankle rolled on me when I stepped onto the flat ground, I fell to my knees and when I hit my left knee onto the cement I broke my femur just above the kneecap. I did not know that I broke it for a few days because I thought I had just stretched my tendons in my knee really bad. But the pain got worse over the next week until I got it checked out. I was then in a leg cast for 6 weeks and again in a wheelchair.

September 2012: I am very proud to say that I am completely Cancer Free!!! No signs of any tumor markers or marks on my scans. Everything is as normal as it gets.

September 2014: Over 5 years out from my diagnosis I am still super healthy and there is no sign of the cancer. 

Summer 2018: I have been taking my dog Zoey on a daily walk and have been putting in 6000 steps a day on a regular basis. Since we live on the 2nd story of our apartment building I make an effort to climb as many flights of stairs as I can which sometimes confuses Zoey when we go up to the 3rd floor rather than stay on the 2nd but she has learned to just follow me regardlessly. 

I need to thank all of my family and friends for their support, financial help and for their prayers. Sadly my marriage with Sheryl did not survive the illness but I am thankful that she was there for me to make those tough calls that ulitayly saved my life, for which I am ultimately grateful for. We were together for 13 years but every person deals with hardships in there own way. Sheryl just could not deal with my disability even though I am back to 90% mobility she is still working to regain more. We were married for 10 years and we had some great times but I accepted that it was not meant to be.

Thank you all for reading my cancer story,

Craig