Houston Marathon, Rice Owls Basketball, and that Bad Guy From Indiana Jones

It’s Monday morning, and I’m writing this from the hotel room while my lovely wife sleeps a few feet away - trying to type quietly here. We got to Houston late Saturday night (better deal on flights that way), which put us in prime position to go check out the Houston Marathon on Sunday morning. 

When we left Dr. Chien last week, I told her I’d be tracking her on the app from afar, but we did one better and showed up on the course! We saw her at about 25.5 as she was nearing the finish - weren’t exactly sure how we’d find her as we’ve only seen her wearing a hospital mask - but the app gave us her bib # and the crowd was pretty sparse at that point. She recognized us, and I’m looking forward to chatting with her about the race during my appointment later today.

After the marathon, Becky and I got back on the train to head to “Rice Village” which is the college town (Rice University) right next to the Texas Medical Center where MD Anderson is located. Becky was interested in getting nails done, etc., and I shopped around for sporting events I might be able to attend. Turns out, Rice was tipping off against Charlotte as soon as we got to Rice Village, so I jumped online and got a courtside ticket for $20. Great game (Rice lost by one) and a fun experience.

Anyway. Today’s appointment starts at 1:30pm and, from what I understand, it’s going to be a review of all my tests/scans from last week (they are who we thought they were!), an explanation of the drugs I’m starting tomorrow (I have a pretty good idea of what they do), and a short trip to pick up a prescription (two floors up) for a BTK inhibitor called pirtobrutinib (more on this later). Then, it sounds like they’ll admit me into the hospital for the night (where I’ll watch the Houston Texans playoff game), then start destroying cancer tomorrow morning.

Since I was diagnosed with cancer in October 2024, I have repeatedly told the disease (often out loud and laced with expletives) that it has chosen the wrong body to invade. I’m too smart, too fit, too optimistic, too resourceful, and too resilient. It picked the wrong guy or, to quote the really old guy from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, “he chose poorly.”

For those unfamiliar with that movie (you’re missing out), Indiana Jones is trying to find the Holy Grail, and there’s this Nazi dude who keeps following him. The Nazi has to choose which of the dozens of cups is the actual grail, thinks he knows for sure which one it is, picks the wrong one, and dies gruesomely. Here’s the scene:

This leukemia that’s floating around in my blood and bone marrow is about to learn the same harsh lesson - it chose poorly.

They Are Who We Thought They Were

 Good ol’ January 6th. I’ll spare you my thoughts on this historical date, choosing commentary on yesterday’s testing/scans in its stead.

There was a blood test, a false alarm hey this guy’s potassium is emergency-level high, an EKG of sorts, a nuclear medicine (!?) appointment with a former UM football player, a CT scan, a followup with the wonderful Dr. Chien, and a lovely dinner with my wonderful wife who was with me the whole time.

The results of all this, you ask? To quote longtime NFL coach Dennis Green, “They are who we thought they were!” It’s the same disease that we’ve known about since 2024 - chronic lymphocyctic leukemia with an 11q and 13q deletion. This is great news, because we’ve got a great gameplan to handle that starting next week. 

When I first met Dr. Chien in 2024, I had run the Seattle Marathon the previous day, and was pretty darn nervous. She put my mind at ease, informing me that they have a clinical trial at MD Anderson involving a state-of-the-art combination of proven drugs that are extremely likely to drive me into a complete remission that will last for years, maybe decades, maybe forever. This is still the case, and I learned yesterday that, should I ever relapse (the cancer returns somewhere down the road), there will almost certainly be even better treatments available for me. So we’re pretty goshdarn optimistic about this whole thing.

To say Dr. Chien is wonderful would be an understatement. Beyond her leukemia knowledge and experience, and the fact that she will officially begin saving my life next week, Kelly Chien is a delightful conversationalist and an avid marathon runner. In fact, she’s running the Houston Marathon this Sunday. Great doctor-patient match.

Sean vs. Leukemia

 January 5, 2026

Cancer Treatment Blog #1 - How we got here

It’s 7am here at the Hyatt House Hotel in Houston, TX. My first appointment is at 9am today (blood test), followed by a slew of other testing appointments - CT scan, etc. An ideal scenario, believe it or not, would be to learn that everything is exactly the same as when I was tested a little over a year ago at the same place. The same being I have chronic lymphocyctic leukemia - deletions 11q and 13q - and that I’m an otherwise healthy dude.

So how did we get here? In October of 2024, shortly after I completed a 20 mile training run (getting ready for the Seattle Marathon), it was brought to my attention that I had a lump on my neck. This lump was accompanied by a few others, so I got them checked out, and it turns out they were (and are) swollen lymph nodes due to an accumulation of malignant blood cells. 

I’ll probably never know what caused this (my doctors tell me it’s caused by “bad luck”), but at some point in the late 2010s/early 2020s, one or more of my B cells (the white blood cells responsible for fighting viruses) got some wires crossed, mutated into a cell that was missing a couple chromosomes (11q and 13q for me), then started making copies of itself. These copies continued to slowly copy themselves until I got the aforementioned swollen nodes.

The cancerous cells, on their own, are harmless - they just sort of float around in the blood and lymphatic system and effectively do nothing. However, these sons of guns don’t die like they should, and when they continue to multiply, they start to crowd out space for the other healthy cells that have essential jobs - fighting disease, repairing, carrying oxygen to vital organs, etc.

So that’s what’s happening to me now. Those malignant cells have gone too far, they’re getting in the way of the good guys, and it has come time to wipe them out. That’s why I’m here in Houston, getting all this testing done today, so we can decide definitively what we’re dealing with, and then give it hell next week January 12.