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About Me

I am Western New Yorker. I was born at Buffalo Children’s Hospital in 1969. I’ve lived in and around Buffalo, almost my whole life. I spent a couple years at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I’ve led an active life and enjoyed many outdoor activities our area has to offer. As a passionate artist, snowboarder, mountain biker and music enthusiast, I have crafted some great adventures over the years. I’ve worked with 40 million dollar manufacturing companies, ski areas, mom and pop’s and my own retail business over the past 30 years. Check out my resume and portfolio.

 

DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED.

Snowboarding is one of my favorite things to do. I knew something was up in February of 2020, when I couldn't balance well and fell over strapping in. It turned out to be the first of over 30 tiny tumors that had metastasized to my brain from my kidney cancer. The color orange (one of my favorites) is the ribbon color for kidney cancer support.

Many people ask me how they can help. As you can imagine, even with health coverage, the out of pocket expenses can be really steep. Please support my fight and purchase a Snowboard Greg sticker. Proceeds will be used to chip away at my ever growing balance with Roswell. Thank you for your support.

PAYPAL @paygregculver        VENMO: @GregCulver

September 13, 2019, I married my high school sweetheart at our favorite place in the area, Sprague Brook Park. It was a great day with most of our close friends and family in attendance. Many showed up on mountain bikes and the ceremony was held just off a trail that I helped build almost a decade prior. We camped and rode bikes most of the weekend until Sunday morning when I got rushed to the hospital.

Two days after the wedding I was told I had kidney cancer and they would have to remove my right kidney asap. They removed the kidney and the 2 tumors with it. They estimated the large tumor to be over 10 years old. The docs removed all of the cancer and I would have little adjustments to make, now having only one kidney.

Fast forward to February 2020. I started noticing a distinct ringing in my ears. I was having a hard time focusing and my balance seemed a bit off. Headaches followed almost daily. One day I was taking a break from the office and went up on the hill to do some snowboarding. I bent over to strap in and almost immediately fell over forward. Now I knew something wasn’t right.

I saw my primary doctor a couple days later. He though it may be sinuses combined with migraines. I got a prescription and was scheduled for some tests. The tests later reveled, through an MRI, a small tumor in my brain stem. That little sucker set up camp in the Pons area of my brain stem and was causing some chaos. Next thing you know, I’m scheduled for a gamma knife procedure to nuke the tumor. On it’s journey to my brain, the cancer dropped off a couple of friends. One in my lymph nodes near my lung and one near the original kidney location.

Now mind you, this was right when Covid-19 was starting to grip the world like something we have never seen. The gamma knife procedure was preformed in March and followed up by immunotherapy sessions. March 17th the ski areas went on lock down and the home quarantine period began.

 

Greg with lollipop
Greg at Roswell

Trying to fight cancer and the side effects from treatments is a big battle. Doing it during a pandemic seemed surreal. Working from home was exactly what I needed to distract my focus on the cancer. I could pour myself into projects and I was way ahead of the game for the upcoming season, if there was to be one. Unfortunately I was let go in July. So now I’m battling a cancer, that will most likely kill me, we’re in the thick of a pandemic and I’m unemployed.

The steroids I was on kept me up all night so I started drawing on my iPad. After a while I had quite the collection of cartoons, illustrations and sketches. Now it’s fall. The Buffalo Bills looked like real playoff contenders and the hype was huge. It gave us all something positive to focus on. I started creating Bills themed designs for my friend Mark. He was producing a variety of Buffalo football themed products and it was cool to see my designs put to use. I was also creating cartoons of popular people in the news. Anthony Faucci was one of my firsts, followed by a couple of Trump characters and of course, the Tiger King.

I was doodling one night and got the idea for Hot Wing Designs. The focus would be on chicken wing characters doing stuff people do in our area. Since I’m huge music fan, I was listening to my favorites and ended up doing a cartoon of Eddie Van Halen. Next thing you know I had almost a dozen guitar players.

My gears were now spinning and I thought about a freelance career. With my health limitations and appointment schedule, it made it difficult to hold down something steady. Currently, I’ve sent out over 80 applications for local and remote positions. I’ve got one call back and interview that went nowhere. SO, now I’m freaking out wondering how I’m going to make ends meet. I’m not the type to accept handouts so a home based business seemed like the best solution. Two local news channels got word of my struggle. I did Zoom interview’s with both stations and you can see the stories below.

Please take some time to check out my website and all of the work I’ve done over the years. Maybe you or one of the people in your network, could benefit from some of my work.

Thank you all for the support.

UPDATE: June 2021
Unfortunately my latest MRI revealed another tumor. This time it’s in my left Parietal Lobe. Immunotherapy is has just about erased the cancer in my torso but because of the blood brain battier, it does not treat the cancer in my head. The doc’s at Roswell will be using gamma knife again to treat this tumor. Luckily it’s not as risky as the brain stem tumor from last year. The scary part is that it grew to  size (3mm) in less than 6 months and they can’t figure out the source.

UPDATE: November 2021
Well, here we are again. Renal Cancer has now metastasized to my brain for a third time. They nuked it with gamma rays on Nov. 17, 2021. Now we play the waiting game again.

UPDATE: January 12, 2022
So I basically started off the year by getting Covid. My loss of smell and  taste were the first signs. I’m fully vaccinated so the effects have been pretty manageable except the exhaustion. I’m already tired from the cancer and treatments, so what’s a little more tired? Roswell postponed my treatments and scans until I’m cleared of the Covid. Ugh. New scans will show whether the 2nd and 3rd brain tumors have responded to the radiation treatment. Fingers crossed.

UPDATE: March 31, 2022
Treatments are continuing every month as well as MRI and CT scans. The latest CT showed that my Paratracheal lymph node grew from 7mm to 12mm. If it hits 15mm they are going to have to regroup and evaluate my treatments. I’m hoping I don’t have to get the combo treatment again.

UPDATE: August 4, 2022
They have found a 4th, new tumor in the left side of my frontal lobe. I’ve gone through 28 cycles of Immunotherapy and the toxic effects are slowing getting worse. I’m scheduled to have another gamma knife surgery on August 25, 2022. While the treatments have the spots in my torso stabilized , they do not pass through the blood brain barrier that surrounds your brain and spinal cord. The plan moving forward is to stay on treatments until the side effects become too much to bare, or until I croak. They’ll shoot each new brain tumor with gamma rays as they form. I should be green and angry by the end of the year.

UPDATE: November 10, 2022
Just had my 5th brain tumor blasted with gamma knife radiation on Nov. 3rd. It’s been a rough ride. I finally broke down and agreed to an appointment with a psychologist. Glad I wasn’t in too bad of shape. The appointment was made in August with the earliest slot in November. I won’t mention the practice, but it was a huge waste of time and once again made me feal like a billable rather than a patient. It was hard to come to the decision to go in the first place. Once I arrived for the appointment, I was bombarded with a slew of redundant paperwork. I feel like clerical duties once performed by staff are now my responsibility. I first met with a male nurse who went through my info quickly and spent more time talking about current events and his life story. I was then pushed over to a MD. The visit was less than 15 minutes. The MD wrote a script for anxiety medicine that I said I didn’t want and then referred to another practice??  Of course, he wanted to follow up in a few weeks, another billable appointment.

This is most definitely a racket and I’m sick of it.

UPDATE: September 5, 2023
Wow, sorry for taking so long to get back to this. Time flies when you’re flirting with disaster. Since I last logged in, a lot has changed. Let’s see where to start, ok, Hot Wing Designs. My sticker offerings have increased exponentially. The purchase of the printer was clutch. Now mind you, there are some days I want to chuck it out the window but the freedom and control it gives me over designs is fantastic. There are now over 150 stickers in my catalog. Pop-up events is where you really get to have some fun selling stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love the stream of Etsy orders I get, but festivals and shopping events is where you get to talk to people and that is half the fun. The Buffalo League hat collection has expanded and I’ve recently added leather patches and flat brim hats.

Ok, now the elephant in the room. I’ve still got stage 4 cancer. There have been a total of 7 metastasis to my brain to date. During the last gamma knife procedure, they shot #6 and #7 in the same session. One of them was in the pons area of my brain stem again. My reaction to this 6th procedure was not good. My head hurt, my balance was screwed up, I had no energy and my breathing and heartrate were whacky. Messages and calls to Roswell went unanswered so I called Dr. Metchlar at Dent. They rushed me in and right away he was thinking edema from the radiation. He put my on a card of steroids and by the next day I was feeling much better. I stopped receiving Immunotherapy treatments in May. All of the recommendations and online publications say do the treatment for 24 cycles then stop. The drug should have already trained your cells by then. Any more could create havoc with your organs. My doc at Roswell pushed my to 38 cycles. Jenn and I agreed a summer vacation from treatments would be nice. Within a week a could feel the difference. My skin felt better and wasn’t so inflamed and itchy. My over all energy level went up a little. It’s been real nice. Obviously the new brain Mets weren’t in the plan but unfortunately that can’t figure out why they keep forming. Another thing that has them stumped is my spinal fluid pressure. It’s twice what it’s supposed to be. To be continued.

YOUTUBE VIDEO UPDATE SCRIPT 1.23.24

1.) Sorry it’s been so long since my last video.

2.) Still stage 4 renal carcinoma. (Kidney Cancer)
Metastasized to my brain over 35 times now. The first ones were treated with gamma knife individually. My late summer MRI revealed 16 metastasized spots they could shoot with gamma knife over 20 new spots that had to be treated by whole brain radiation. Whole brain radiation is usually the last resort to control brain mets. It comes with a bunch of side effects that have made life a bit challenging at times. Brain fog, horrible taste in my mouth, dizzy and more. Luckily those effects have been slowly going away. My doctor at Dent has been flustered trying to figure out how this keeps ending up in my brain. He ordered up an MRI of my lower back, hips and pelvis. Unfortunately that revealed metastasize spots on some of the bones on my pelvic area bones, and specifically my sits bones. Most bike riders know about sits bones and will understand why this is such a slap in the face.

These new developments forced me to ask the point blank question of how long do I have? It’s one of the first times I saw Dr. George get real serious. He said “Plan for spring and maybe not summer, my guess is about 6 months.”
That was in September.

Because of the new mets, in new locations, I had to start Immunotherapy treatments again. This time though, they prescribed a daily pill. Cabometyx is a fairly new pill that is supposed to work in conjunction with my intravenous treatment (Opdivo). It is so toxic that Jenn cannot handle the pills with a bare hand. After 2 days on the pill, I felt like I was on my to the undertaker. It was horrible. I couldn’t eat, focus or hardy speak right. I went from the bed to the recliner and slept the most of 10 days away. I decided to quit that pill. No matter how much time it may have given me it would be miserable. This is the sickest I’ve felt and the closest to death I’ve felt since I started this journey in 2019.

3) The power of Nature
On the way home from one of my appointments, we stopped at Dank, one of the first legal dispensaries in Buffalo.

I explained that I needed something that would give me some motivation and energy during the day and something else to knock me out at bedtime. The associate there was amazing. I ended up with gummies from a NY company. Ayrloom offers Orchard Sunrise gummies that are amazing. They are infused with B3, B6 and B12. 2:1 THC/CBD.

So I stop taking the cancer pill and replaced it with the Orchard Sunrise gummies. I take one 10mg gummy at breakfast, lunch and dinner. After the first day I was amazed. I had energy. The brain fog lifted and I felt amazing. I was working my butt off in the studio, jamming out to good tunes and felt part of productive life again. While these may not be fighting the cancer, they are giving me an unexpected & awesome quality of life.

4.) Quiet House
Piper started college this year so our house got much quieter. I miss having her around but so happy she is blossoming into a young adult finding her way. I expect great things from this one. She had to have her hip fixed again. Crutches and a hip brace is what she got blessed with for the winter break.

5.) Ride or Die
What a crappy start to winter. I’m really not supposed to be boarding or mountain biking. Ugh. Riding a bike has kept me somewhat sane over the years and snowboarding is where I usually found Zen. I’ll sneak out and make some sweet old guy turns sometime this season.
Bikes. Riding, Racing and doing bike events has been a huge part of my life. Swallowing the jagged pill of no mountain biking has been incredibly difficult to say the least. So, I made a compromise and traded the mountain bike for an electric town cruiser with racks. It won’t be the same as mountain biking but at least I’ll be able to peddle around town and explore some of the great bike paths we have in WNY.

6.) Hot Wing Designs and Buffalo League Hats

There’s one, there’s another one. Whether its stickers or hats, my brands are really getting some traction. I ship Etsy sticker orders out almost everyday. The Buffalo League Hat Studio got an upgraded press allowing me to create new stuff and better quality hats. Freelance jobs and commissioned artwork has kept me super busy, just the way I like it. No rest for the wicked.

 

 

Greg Culver on WKBW
Greg Culver on WKBW
Photo of Greg Culver racing at Cross in the Park.
CROSS IN THE PARK