Where is Nathan??

So I’m studying Chinese again. I’ve joined in on a free class put on by our school that takes place once a week. It’s not enough to get me fluent in a matter of months, but it is enough to get me thinking about it again and get me back in the habit of studying again. Anyway, for your amusement, I offer you my first writing assignment ever (in Chinese). Enjoy.

[So I'm trying something here. For all my non-Chinese speaking (and reading) friends and family, I've translated my crappy little paragraph here. Hover over the Chinese characters for a translation.]

你好。我叫内森。我是美国人。今天我想谈谈我的祖国。美国是一个年轻国家。我们的美国有两百三十多年的历史。美国是一个很大的国家。几乎和中国一样大。可是人口比中国少很多。我是美国的南方人。我的家乡是阿肯色州的一个小镇。阿肯色的夏天非常热。常常达到四十多度。阿肯色的春天和秋天不长。美国的首都是华盛顿。阿肯色的洲府是小石。关于经济，我没什么说的。我觉得美国的经济是发达的。

好的，我说完了。

So there you go. Two years of living in China and I can put together a hundred and some odd characters that make me sound like a 5th grader. I’m so proud.

nathan

I’m sure that all of you who are close to my dad have gotten all the same updates that I’ve been getting, and hopefully you guys saw that he has started an “online journal” (some people call that a blog). But in case this is the only place where you guys would be able to hear about it, allow me to give you an update.

Everything in the past two weeks has kind of come in a blur so I’m not so sure what happened on what day, but Dad had the CT scan and the bone scan and they both showed that the cancer hasn’t spread anywhere else besides his prostate. So that’s good news. Then I guess they did a biopsy (I don’t watch many medical shows so forgive me screwing up the doctor talk) and found that the cancer is in advanced stages on the right side of his prostate. Now advanced sounds scary to me, and maybe it is, but surgery isn’t going to be required at this point. Cancer get something called a Gleason score, which is a number from 1 to 10, and Dad’s prostate scored a 7. Here’s how he explains it on his site.

Now this is where it gets a little complicated. The Gleason score is the sum of two different scores added together. They range from a 1 (which means the cells are fairly normal in appearance) to 5 (the cells hardly resemble normal prostate cells). The two scores are derived by calculating scores for the biopsy samples from the areas which contain the highest and second highest concentration of cancer cells (also known as the primary and secondary sites). The two scores are added together, and that gives you your Gleason score. 2 is low; 10 is high. A seven, according to the doctor, doesn't fit into any other grouping. Anything lower is usually subject to what's called 'active surveillance', or close monitoring. Surgery is also a more viable option at this point, as the cancer is usually well contained within the prostate. An 8-10 requires the most aggressive treatment, including chemotherapy, and may not always have such good outcomes. In my case, the 7 comes from the sum of 4 for the primary site and 3 for the secondary, which indicates that it is very different from normal prostate tissue, and therefore a rather aggressive form.

As I mentioned, a seven is considered as a group all by itself. The recommended therapy, at least in my case, is a combination of hormone and radiation therapy, both external and internal. I received my first Lupron Depot injection this morning. It is designed to shut down testosterone production, and begin to "starve" the cancer, thus shrinking the bulk, or volume, of tumor that will require radiation. I am scheduled to meet with Dr. Payne, the oncologist, on Tuesday of next week for a consultation and to set up a schedule for radiation therapy. Despite her name, I have heard she is a very good doctor.

So this is all still very concerning, but Dad sounds positive and so I’m a lot less worried than when I first got the news. So thanks to everybody for being so supportive, I (and my family) really appreciate the thoughts and prayers. If you want to stay updated, check out my Dad’s site at http://cjstilwellrn.blogspot.com/.

I just put up a post about our Christmas package, but I’ve got something that’s more important. I got this email from my Dad on Saturday.

I found out this afternoon that I have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. I have a CT and bone scan scheduled for next week [April 10th - CT scan : April 12th - Bone Scan] to determine if it has spread anywhere beyond the prostate itself, so any decisions about treatment options are still pending until those results are known.

I was initially shocked to hear this and got really worried. But I know that prostrate cancer has a high survival rate. Anyway, prayers are of course appreciated so please keep me and my family in your thoughts. I’ll post updates as I get them, and if they need to be talked about.

Way back in November Elizabeth and I were dejectedly waiting for one of our few Christmases away from our family. I do love being in China, but Christmas without family is one of the few almost unbearable parts of living half-way around the world. To soften the blow we were eagerly awaiting packages from our families. And so with care and love, Elizabeth’s parents prepared a box full of Christmas goodies to comfort their poor lonely children living in a far-off Asian country.

As Christmas approached we grew more and more anxious to receive our Christmas goodness. I especially hoped the box would arrive soon as I knew it contained an essential element to upholding one of my most cherished Christmas traditions: watching It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve and bawling my eyes out like a tiny girl. As Christmas arrived there was still no sign of our gift box and I had to resort to the good graces of some of my fellow 老外(lao wai) who had happened to bring it along with them when they came.

So Christmas came and went and we were comforted by the aforementioned lao wai with a Christmas party and some home cooking, but there was still no package. A few weeks into January we really became concerned as we had already received packages last year with no difficulty and so we tried to find information about locating it in the China postal system. But as it turns out, this is an impossibility and everyone we asked about searching for it would give us a confused look and say “It can’t be found, but I’m sure it will arrive soon.” Not quite up to speed on tracking systems here in China. As the semester ended our hopes sunk lower as we were planning on moving and for a time we forgot that the package had still not come.

February finally came and we had our stuff packed up and we were ready to move to Nanjing and and we hoped in desperation that the package would just arrive and we wouldn’t have to complicate the situation by having to send it from city to city inside of China. But that option, as it turns out, would have to be exhausted and so we left some contact information with the office at our old school and told them to please keep an eye out for it. And so we moved to Nanjing and were far too occupied with the hassle of getting apartments and turning on electricity and getting setup and so we just chalked it up as lost and effectively forgot about it.

On February the 26th, as Elizabeth had started teaching and I was just about to begin my new job, we got an email from our beloved foreign affairs secretary saying that the package had finally arrivedin Hangzhou! Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! In the excitement a grim choice hit me. Do I really want put the thing back into the hands of China Post, or do I want to get on a bus all the way back to Hangzhou and get it myself. Hangzhou is only 3 hours away and so getting on a bus was quite tempting. But when we first got to Nanjing, money was tight and I was going to be starting classes in a few days and so we crossed our fingers and once again put our trust in the China Post.

The package was sent off on March the 4th and I was beginning classes and we were very excited to get it. Even though it was way past Christmas, Elizabeth had asked for some stuff that she was running out of and couldn’t get in China. By April we believed we had fallen victim to the China Post again. We had concerns about getting the address right (although we were using our work address, which I’m much more confident in than our home address), but to insure that the address was correct we had Amie in our old Hangzhou office call Maggie in our new Nanjing office to confirm the address. Surely a Chinese person speaking to a Chinese person in China couldn’t make a mistake about an address in China, right? As turns out this is right and it didn’t get screwed up. After we had lost hope again the package finally arrived…on April 4th!

Our long lost package had finally arrived and we were overjoyed to get it. The occasion was a little sad and a little funny. We opened it up to find our Christmas gifts, hot chocolate, candy canes, and an excellent Christmas movie. Tearing open my Christmas present like … well, a kid at Christmas, I got the best t-shirt! It’s the best one I’ve ever got since the last t-shirt Elizabeth’s mom gave me.

So it turns out that it was a Merry Christmas after all! So thanks to Mom and Dad Gordon for sending the package and sorry it didn’t get here sooner, but it was great none the less.