Lots has happened since my last blog update! We had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas break with family and friends. My parents visited from Washington for about 8 days over Christmas, and we had some friends visit us shortly after Christmas for a few days as well. It was relaxing and enjoyable to reconnect with family and friends, and to have several weeks to spend time with my family and to just enjoy being together.

The radiation machine I received my treatments in

On December 30, I had the first of 8 rounds of radiation, and completed the 8th round on January 11th. For the most part, I was spared the unpleasant side-effects that often come with radiation, save for an unbelievable amount of fatigue. After the first few radiation treatments, I was often so tired during the day that I simply moved from bed to couch and back again most days. Mentally and physically, it felt as though someone opened a spigot on my body and simply drained out all of my energy. Today, although I'm still feeling some of the lingering effects of the radiation related to fatigue, I'm certainly on the road to recovery and regaining a more normal energy level.

We are also incredibly thankful that my radiation oncologist was able to carefully target the radiation so that my kidney was largely spared from unintended effects of stray radiation. Initially, he was concerned that I might lose as much as 50% of my right kidney function due to the proximity of the kidney to the cancer tumors that needed to be radiated. Keeping my kidneys operating as well as possible is really important for me, as the kidneys are needed to process the toxic chemotherapy treatments that I'm also receiving for my cancer.

So far, the radiation seems to have worked remarkably well. The severe back pain I was experiencing due to the growing tumors in my back muscles and near my spine completely disappeared after only three rounds of radiation. I've been able to drastically reduce my use of narcotic pain killers since the radiation treatments have been completed, and I think I will soon be able to stop using them completely. This is a huge answer to prayer, and we are so thankful for the many of you who have been praying with us toward this result.

Today, I consulted with my medical oncologist at MD Anderson who recommended slight changes in my chemotherapy regimen based on the tumors that were non-responsive to chemotherapy in my last scans. Her recommendation is to drop the 5FU from my regimen and add a drug called Paclitaxel to the Irinotecan that I am currently taking. Hopefully, these drugs will work well together to continue to shrink the tumors in my lymph nodes and stomach. Sometime this week or next, I'll have a CT scan to provide a new baseline of where my tumors are, and then next Wednesday (January 25th) I will start receiving chemotherapy treatments again with the updated regimen.

Ever since my diagnosis, one of my greatest fears has been leaving my family in a poor financial situation when I die. Although I have a life-insurance policy, it isn't one that will provide for my family's needs long-term. (Honestly, who thinks to get a million-dollar+ life insurance policy before they turn 40?) Side note: If you are the main breadwinner for your family, and you don't have a life-insurance policy that will care for your family's needs long-term if something should happen to you, stop reading this and go get some life insurance right now. You never know what your future holds - please learn from my mistake.

Over the past several months, Melissa and I have been working together to start a small business that may be able to provide some income for her and the kids on an ongoing basis. After several months of research, planning, product testing, and negotiation with various product manufacturers, we have launched our first product for our small business, Sharktooth Brands.

For many years, I've used single-earbud headphones to listen to music and podcasts in bed as I'm falling asleep. I like a single earbud for this purpose because I can keep one ear on my pillow, and one ear with a bud in it without having a second earbud flopping around. For quite some time, I would simply buy cheap earbuds and cut one off, but I found that solution to be sub-optimal, as produced audio often has different audio coming through the left and right channels. 

I discovered several models of single earbuds on Amazon, some of which do the stereo-to-mono conversion necessary to ensure that all of the audio is heard as intended, even when listening through a single earbud. Over the years, I've purchased several of these single earbuds, but never found one that I really liked. As such, when Melissa and I were looking for our first product for our new business, we decided to try designing and manufacturing a single earbud that would overcome the deficiencies I experienced in the existing versions available online.

We were able to find a contract manufacturer in Hong Kong that would custom-design a product for us, and about three months ago, we began selling our version of a stereo-to-mono single earbud on Amazon.com. Sales of our product have been going well, and we're just a few months away from making a second order of units from our supplier in Hong Kong.

Interested in helping our new business?

If you're interested in helping our new business grow and improving our sales, one thing you can do is buy our earbud and write a review on Amazon.com. One of the primary drivers of sales on Amazon.com is the number and quality of reviews that an item has. If you think our single earbud is something  you might use, you can help us tremendously by purchasing one and writing a review. Here's how to do it to provide us with the maximum benefit in Amazon's search indexing algorithm:

1. Visit amazon.com and use one of the following search terms to look for our product:

single earphone

single ear headphone

single earbud

single headphone

With some of these terms, you may need to search through to the second or third page of results to find our product. In the search list, it will look like this:

Amazon listing for our single earbud

2. Once you find our listing, click on the product, and purchase it. Every time someone uses one of our top search terms and then clicks on our listing and makes a purchase, Amazon uses that information to associate our product with those search terms, and eventually, our product moves higher in the search results for these keywords and related search terms. Obviously, the higher we can move in the organic search results, the more likely people will be to find and buy our product.

Note: For those of you with Amazon Prime, you can purchase our earbud with free Prime shipping. If you aren't an Amazon Prime customer, you can still get free shipping: Instead of using the "Add to Cart" button, click on the link that says: "New (2) from $19.95 & FREE shipping " under the "Other Sellers on Amazon" link, and you'll find the option to purchase with free shipping for non-Prime users.

 3. A few days after your receive your single earbud, you'll get an email from Melissa inviting you to write a review of our product on Amazon. This is the most important step if you want to help our business grow. One of the biggest drivers of Amazon purchases is the number of positive reviews a product receives, so we're working hard to increase our reviews. Unfortunately, only about 2% of Amazon buyers actually write reviews, so even when you sell a large number of items, it takes a long time to collect reviews. When you get that email from Melissa, please click on the link and write us a review! Tell us what you actually think about the product, and if you can include pictures and video in your review, even better! Amazon buyers use these reviews to make informed purchase decisions, so the more detailed your review, the better!

NOTE: Please DON'T write a review for us if you don't actually buy the product and try it out. This is against Amazon's terms of service and could lead to our account being suspended, effectively shutting down our business. Further, Amazon's new algorithms basically remove non-verified reviews from the calculations used to determine a product's popularity and rank, so if you review our product without actually purchasing it, it won't really count for us, anyway. Also, please don't search for our product and view the listing unless you actually intend to buy it. This lowers our "conversion rate" (i.e., the percentage of people who purchase our product after viewing our Amazon page), and Amazon will move our product lower in the search results as a consequence.

We are excited about the possibilities for this new business, and we are actively looking for the next products we will offer in our Amazon store. Thanks in advance to any of you who decide to try out our product and write a review for us - we really appreciate it!

We also continue to be SO SO thankful for the many of you who continually pray for us. Please remember the following requests in the coming weeks:

• That the radiation treatments will prove to be effective at eliminating the tumors near my spinal cord and kidney.
• That the new chemotherapy regimen will shrink the tumors in my lymph nodes and elsewhere in my abdominal cavity.
• For strength and endurance as I return to full-time teaching this week.
• For strength for Melissa as she continues to bear a majority of the burdens related to running our household and caring for our children.