Third Chemo / First Immuno -- Team Tom is Awesome!

My last update was 20 days ago, so it's time for another catch up post on Tom and his cancer journey! Sit back, grab some popcorn, and don't get too comfortable -- we are talking about cancer after all. Things certainly can't be wonderful at the same time that they're miserable, can they? BUT THEY CAN!

𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: The tumors in my left lung are shrinking! I had a CT scan last Wednesday and the doctor gave me the good news.  All the chemo hand-in-hand with the blessings, prayers, thoughts, a little holistic medicine, and even the medicine Buddha mantra (thank you Sean) have resulted in visibly smaller tumors. The Uber Wife and I celebrated with some Costa Vita! 

Me and my cancer plush from Leala!

𝐁𝐚𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: I still have cancer, and it's not going to be easy to get rid of. Keep it coming! This is a long fight. The third biopsy yielded genetic results that were, as my doctor called them, rare and interesting. He didn't know what to make of them since typically most lung cancers have some relatively well-known mutation like ALK. Nope, mine manifested something called FANCG (𝑐.1642𝐶>𝑇, 𝑝.𝑅548*) – 𝑃𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑐 (𝑇𝑖𝑒𝑟 1–2, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐) and RET (𝑐.1063+11𝑑𝑒𝑙𝐶) – 𝑉𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑈𝑛𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑆𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (𝑇𝑖𝑒𝑟 3, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐). While ChatGPT gave me some mixed hope with FANCG, my doc let me know that it's nothing that could really be actionable. RET, well, this mutation was more like . . . well . . . not much research has been done with it, so, good luck?

𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: My doctor felt like I was still a good candidate for Immunotherapy and specifically a lung cancer trial turned lung cancer treatment called Checkmate 9LA (it was approved for use about 5 years ago or so). This will wrap in the immunotherapies known as ipilimumab and nivolumab alongside chemo. If it works, it has double the chance of sending my cancer into remission as my chemo did.

"HERE'S TOMMY!"

𝐁𝐚𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: I'm legitimately terrified of moving on by adding immunotherapy to my chemotherapy regimen. I read too much about it online, and I don't like the odds for developing an auto-immune disorder from this amazing cancer killing method. I guess it really comes down to a "would you rather" type of question: Would you rather have a chance of living the rest of your life with an auto-immune disorder or simply dying with cancer? I'll take being alive, please. Most people are fine, but you are rolling the dice. (is a hard +1 Constitution Saving throw for my D&D friends)

𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: I just got back from an amazing lunch at Santorini's Greek Restaurant at Farmington Station. My good friend Colleen bought me lunch, but only after she and my other hard-working buddies, Mandy and Hannah, entertained me through 3 hours of infusion at the Huntsman Center there in Farmington. My friends are calling themselves "Team Tom" and I am truly humbled by the love, kindness, and example they've shown me today. I have often said how lucky I am to have strong female role models -- my wife, my relatives, and good friends like these. So many kind and loving women in my life. Seriously! I feel blessed! Truly examples of how I would like to be able to treat others.

Team Tom in Tie Dye!

𝐁𝐚𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: I forget this a lot. I forget how blessed I am, and I end up sighing to the rafters in my bedroom, cursing the cancer inside of me and how stupid it all feels. How dumb I feel for having cancer. How much inconvenience it causes. The pain of it all. How it feels to be worlds apart from my fat-and-happy-Tom-days in Texas. I had it so good for so many years, how did I end up with this stupid crap in my lungs and back in Utah? I sometimes make the joke that I'm "Stage 4 at JT4" at my job here in Utah and I used to be "Fat and Happy Tom" in Texas . . . you know, just making, promoting, and playing games. THE LIFE! No, no . . . I am blessed. It's just hard to see it sometimes, and that's just one of my many failings. Thank you, role models!

𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: I was able to have some complimentary music therapy from the Huntsman Institute!  My social worker turned me on to a really cool benefit (if you can say there's a silver lining to having lung cancer) where I can get 6 sessions of music therapy. I sat down with Indigo and an intern and basically talked about my entire music history. (by the way, if you're interested and have a half hour of time to read it, you're welcome to read more here: https://tompurdue.blogspot.com/2021/08/music-history.html). I truly want to write an album of music called "Cosmic Radiation and Bad Luck," named after what my doctor said was the most likely cause of my cancer. I know two tracks that I want on it for sure. (I'm in the process of adding to a Spotify inspiration song list for the general vibe I want to go for: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1JGD472Z10LK5Zi77A59IL)

𝐁𝐚𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: I waste too much time playing video games to write music -- I should probably stop doing that, but man is Dune Awakening fun to play lately! I also dropped $12 bucks on a humble bundle deal that supplied me with 16 games that I've never played before. I'm doomed. (Not to mention all the great shows I still need to watch on Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Apple+, Prime, and on and on) It's nice to have so many distractions. First world problems at its best.

𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Speaking of video game distractions, I've started reskinning my 1up machine to look like an honest to goodness Ghosts n' Goblins machine! Looking pretty great! So fun to play the classic Ghosts n' Goblins whenever I want. I've almost bumped the previous owner's high score off of the Top Ten (yes, I know I could just reset the machine, but where's the fun in that? The initials TDP will crush any memories of there even being a previous CPB as number one!)

Love the goofy 80's fun graphics!

𝐁𝐚𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Man, the stickers that go on behind the screen and below the joysticks are going to be tough to place! I managed the sides and top easy enough though. eek! It's a lot of work, but I will see the project through!

~~

So really that's all that's been going on with me. I'm just trying my best to stay positive and really take in the words that you all have spoken to me: "If anyone can beat cancer it's you." Thank you for that vote of confidence! I'm taking it to heart and doing the best I can. If I boldly could ask for new thoughts, prayers, blessings, and mantras to focus in on my own immune system working to kill cancer with the help of immunotherapy and that my own immune system won't turn on me in the process, it would be more than I should ask for, and I appreciate it. 

𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬: Don't worry, you won't be blamed if my immune system does turn on me -- that'd all be blamed on my own Cosmic Radiation and bad luck. 😉

Thank you "Team Tom." If you made it to the end of reading all my nonsense, you're probably a new honorary member. We got this!

Dune Awakening -- Onward to the Endgame!

I've now been playing Dune Awakening for a couple of months. As for a gauge of where I am in the journey, I have completed the main story quest as far as I can progress it and crafted a mega-base, complete with an MK5 Assault Ornithopter landing pad.

You just fly down through the old Pentashield rooftop!

Inside ol' Tree Trunks McSkinny's base you'll find all the trappings needed to process Duraluminum. As for processing spice and higher-quality metals, Dylan and I combined forces and located our high-quality refinement machinery over at Skip Legday's base.  It's a relatively short hop over to his house from my place, so no complaints there from me.

Skip's old Dune Buggy Entrance before he widened it a bit.

The real fun in-game now seems to be tempting death in the Deep Desert. The mobs hit harder, and the grind is grindy-er there, which also seems to be slowing our interest in continuing to play this game. There are plenty of side quests and faction quests I could complete still, so I have plenty left to discover.

Speaking of that, I've really enjoyed doing the quests in this game. The storytelling has been fantastic, which is to be expected from a game based on an entire series of books and movies. It doesn't disappoint.

Sounds like a Friendly Necromancer's dream

What I also love about this game is how you can get into a meditative state while grinding away on whatever your next crafting goal is. It's that sweet Zen state where your brain shuts down partially while you mine ores, suck corpses of their blood, dodge worms while gathering spice, and finally craft that full set of sentinel gear you've been collecting.

It's a pretty sweet look. FYI puzzle solution for the Footsteps of the Fremen Quest in case you need it.

Hopefully the team of Skip Legday and Tree Trunks McSkinny can start farming a bit of the Deep Desert together. I'd like to get a set of the best armor in the game at some point, but on the other hand . . . just playing Dune to this stage has given me 137.3 hours of enjoyment. I'm good either way.

Happy Dueling!

Second Chemo -- With love and kindness, WE got this!

OK, y'all! I had my second chemo visit on Friday. My good friend, old coworker, KI Live co-star, and all-around amazing person, Leala Turkey, gave me a super awesome chemo buddy to take with me. I also had a warm blanket with me from my extremely kind high school friends, Alisa and Layne.

So much awesome bundled with this little dude!

While I was there, I had a great talk with my social worker, Sean, and signed up for some music therapy while I was at it. Kudos to Huntsman for putting a kind, human touch on a situation you don't want to find yourself in.

After chemo, I was able to chat with my musical ally, Adam Terry, at his record shop downtown in SLC. Make sure you drop by Fountain Records and support his local business.

Adam and his wife in front of Fountain Records in SLC, UT.

Today I got a great deal and used some birthday money sent to me by family members to purchase a Ghosts and Goblins 1up machine for the Goblin house. I just need to get new sticker art to theme it, and it'll be good to go. MORE GOBLINS FOR THE GOBLIN HOUSE! (Side note: Huh, I don't know if I ever talked about how we came to call our new house the goblin house . . . I may need to post about that)

This will definitely get a reskin.

The birthday biopsy went well ... other than spending 6 hours in the hospital and, unfortunately, losing my wedding band. That said, It was great to go to the spaghetti factory afterwards and keep the new, old birthday tradition alive with the Uber Wife and two of my sons. 

Oh yeah, also, it appears my pain meds are working so well that I didn't double over in pain after passing a kidney stone a week ago. Go figure, I seriously thought it was just a weird bladder infection, but nope ... it was a gross, little rock buddy that needed to evacuate my body.

Like a mutant chicken nugget sitting inside my body

And finally, you can add burning dry eyes and itchy beard and hairline to the list of side effects from this chemo. Eyedrops and drinking more water will help remedy that though.

Anyway, so far so good. Thanks for reading and keeping me and my family in your thoughts and prayers. With all your help and kindness, you know WE got this!

Happy dueling!

My Musical History Part 5 -- Fountain AVM, Synthwave, and Industrial Re-born

Hey all! I know Blaugust is going on, but I took inventory of everything going on in my life and came to the conclusion that I'm not participating this year. That said, there were a few posts I wanted to share. It's been four years since I posted about my musical history, and I have more to talk about now!

If you've been keeping up with my blog ever since 2021, you'll already be familiar with most of this information. If not, please enjoy these previous Music History posts I made. (Side note: I edited part 4 a bit, because I felt like some of it really belonged more here in Part 5.)

• Part 1 -- The school years
• Part 2 -- The industrial era
• Part 3-- The early dad years
• Part 4 -- Wizard101 and beyond

Music History Part 5 -- Quarantine, Adam Terry, Synthwave, and Industrial Re-born

The world smacked me upside the head, and my music bug was about ready for a rebirth . . . COVID and a quarantined reality solidly hit everyone in 2020. I was staying home and with extra time on my hands. My buddy at work had a group named Bueno Sueno and they had just released a song called Lost in the Shine. I convinced him to send me the stems and flexed my remixing muscles with a mix I called the Tom Purdue Shimmer Mix. 

That remix set off a bug in me, and I started remixing or remaking some deep cut songs that were meaningful to me in one way or another. Before I knew it, I had a whole playlist of remixes and remakes on YouTube:

• Cetu Javu's Fight Without a Reason (Lifestyle Remix)
• Morrissey's Now My Heart is Full (Bunny Love Remix)
• Cabaret Voltaire's Code (Wah Guitar Mix)
• The Cure's Night Like This (Deeper Still Mix)
• Decussion Council's (yes, my old high school band) Don't Stop (Everyone Hang On Mix)
• Tom Purdue's Bit by Bit (2020 Mix)

I wrote about all of them in this blog post from June 2020. As mentioned in that blog post, I formulated a plan to release a lathe print vinyl record with a very small print run . . . 4-5 copies through a company called American Vinyl. When I got the records back, I thought they sounded horrible. I hadn't mixed the songs considering volume levels and how they would actually play on a record player. I threw them in the garbage can in disgust.

My wife, on the other hand, who is much smarter than me, saved them out of the garbage can and instead stashed them in a secret spot that I would only find later when we were moving from Texas back to Utah. (which . . . is a story all unto itself.) Turns out it was mostly the fault of our bad record player at the time. There were a few sub-bass hits on the Don't Stop mix that were just too low and distorted a bit, but that's it. The record sounds great.

Not the white album, it's a Quarantined Mix Record from Tom Purdue!

For real though, the life as a rock star wannabe had become nothing more than a dusty, distant 30-year-old memory up until 2021 when a great guy named Adam Terry contacted me over Instagram holding both my Darkest America and Freeze tapes from back in 1990. "Are you this Purdue?" 

Now THAT's a rare sight you don't see . . . ever!

It's like everything from back then unlocked all over again, and we had a great conversation about the good old days. With Adam's help, the hope of actually releasing some old music of mine on his label, FountainAVM, was now a possibility! He asked to hear more of my stuff and I flooded his Dropbox with hours upon hours of old music I had recorded on tape.

Adam was fantastic! I've never had anyone dump so many hours of their life just dedicated to listening to my music. Honestly, the real help from Adam has been feeling like someone actually cared about me as an artist enough to reach out and help me dust off the old tapes. While there may be a lot of sadness and regret from the past, his simple act of reaching out kind of unplugged so many things that I had bottled up over the years. That alone was appreciated.

From all that, Adam curated two albums of music.  The first was just released last year. As discussed in this post:

"My new "old" album was released today by FOUNTAINavm. This album titled "An Ant Survives A Rainstorm" is a curated collection of music and sound experiments from 1987-1992. 

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/48BCYYiga5NhXQazkiEfFg
• YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXLA48sh7Gc&list=OLAK5uy_mdH2ddwRDk234I3YRfrAGNFCq4f9BCbLk

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, I was writing hundreds of songs on my old Ensoniq EPS, Peavey DPM, and Kurzweil K2000S keyboard synths. A few years ago, I came in contact with Adam Terry from FOUNTAINavm, and he asked if he could listen to my collection of nine, 60-minute-long old audio tapes I had made of unreleased music from my youth.

Adam selected several songs from the collection, and I poured through my old floppy disks to find these tracks and re-record them for this project . . . MOST of them. A couple songs had been lost to time, and we just made do with the old recordings we had. 

Adam curated an interesting selection that's different from my usual sound. I'm happy with the result. I've enjoyed riding around in my car late at night listening to An Ant Survives A Rainstorm and hope you would too.

Thanks to FOUNTAINavm for releasing this music and thanks for listening!"

While discussing old music with Adam, we also started discussing new music (well new music to me), and he turned me on to the Minimalist Wave Tapes project, so I started listening to it plus some old formative, meaningful music to me from the 70's - 90's like Kraftwerk, Boards of Canada, Yaz, Thompson Twins, and the Psychedelic Furs. After baptizing myself in all this music and having recently remade Bit by Bit for my Quarantined Mixes, I realized I could make a synthwave album of my own.

The end result was Red Pinto Hatchback, released in 2021. I actually made two posts about this one. One about the making of the cover art, and one about the album release itself. As I stated in that post:

". . . So many formative "musical" hours were spent driving around in my old Red Pinto Hatchback in the late 80's, listening to music, that it felt very apropos to immortalize it as my spacecraft in comic book form.

A futuristic blast from my musical past

I paid for the distribution of this album through Distrokid, so you can find it on all kinds of sites now, including YouTube, iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, Tik Tok, and more. That's right, you can make a Tik Toks using my music. CRAZY!

. . . The reactions I've been getting from friends and family have been pretty fun to watch. One of the first people to contact me was my old musical ally, Sean. He played guitar on both of my Industrial albums and I played drums on a few of his tracks.  I hadn't really heard much from him for years and he hit me up in DMs to let me know how fun it was to hear my music again and that it brought back a lot of great memories.

Even my sister-in-law was doing the good work and being proud of me, sharing the music around to her friends, and I have to say . . . promoting music is the hardest part of the process, and probably the part I tiptoe around the most. I know people get tired of hearing artists hype up their latest works because I also get tired of it when I see it myself. Making the music is challenging and fun but promoting it and not being annoying at the same time is a delicate balance that I'm trying to swing."

After a couple years, my music interests had successfully reignited, and I was trying my hand at collaborating and failing at it a bit, save for one special collaboration. Talks with Adam about making Beat Tapes on old school audio tape gave me a great idea for making a collection of songs. As stated in my post about about Rotted Leisure Rooms:

"Over the past year and a half I started amassing a small collection of grooves that needed a wider audience than myself. I had three songs that came out of creative suggestions from my oldest child. Two more that spawned from discussions with old friends. Another that came from chatting with an old underground musical idol of mine from when I was in high school. And a handful of others that were just collecting digital dust. Out of all this comes my latest release titled "Rotted Leisure Rooms."  

Rotted Leisure Rooms is available online for you to listen to and download, but I also went old school and made a handful of audio tapes on beautiful, dungeon-brown-colored cassette. Truly, if you have a Walkman, I'd love to get my music in there for you to enjoy on your new walk down old memory lane.

No school like the old school

I have to talk a bit about the title track to Rotted Leisure Rooms. It's a gritty industrial piece that features the synth work of David Kane. Back in 1988 I was watching 120 minutes on MTV when a song called Baby Doe Rules by David Kane's Decay of the Western Civilization came on, and I recorded it on VHS tape. I asked every record shop I could find in Utah if they had it so I could listen to more, and no one knew what I was talking about. 

Eventually I transferred the song off of VHS tape to audio tape so I could listen to it in my car. It was a rare track that no one knew. I think they played Baby Doe Rules only a handful of times late at night on MTV, but there was something about the raw sampled, industrial goodness of this track that in a way gave me permission to do the same. It was truly an inspirational track for me.

Just a year and a half ago, I found David Kane's website while remembering how influential this song was to me, and I reached out to tell him how much I enjoyed it. We traded several e-mails back and forth and somehow I convinced him to collaborate with me on this track. I've enjoyed our chats and getting to know him better. Truly the best thing to come out of me making this music has already happened, and that was getting to collab with David."

So . . . that catches us up to August 2025 and there's been a lot holding me back once again: Losing my job, moving back to Utah, learning a new career, and being diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer. I have lots of ideas for music, but haven't pursued them. I'm stuck once again.

I'll snap out of it soon though. Adam Terry has been chatting me up again about releasing another collection of music -- he's just been busy running a local record shop in Salt Lake and pouring his whole life into it.  If you're in Salt Lake, go checkout Fountain Records. It's a great shop. Support local folks like Adam and his wife, who are both simply awesome. It's a cool scene in there for sure.

Here's to the future!

Thanks for reading along with my musical history. There's still a lot of blanks here and things I missed, but I'd need to pen an actual autobiography instead of 5 blog posts to really get it all down. 

Happy Dueling!