It Might Get Messy

25,000 years ago, people developed new technologies for working stone into knives, spears, and arrow points. These are the beautifully fluted and sharp-edged pieces that you think of when you think “cave man”. In the Americas, these tools are called “Clovis points”, and their dates are controversial. In western U.S., Clovis points date to 15,000 years ago and are in keeping with the transit of people across Siberian land bridges into northwestern North America. Similarly worked tools date from earlier times in southern Europe and possibly in eastern North America. On the latter evidence, a small cadre of archaeologists propose human origins in the Americas via coastal boats along Atlantic ice sheets from Europe. This “Solutrean Hypothesis” is controversial. Mainstream archaeologists still favor the Asian land bridges as the source of people in the western hemisphere. 

In fact, genetic and pottery evidence seems to point to multiple origins of people in the Americas. People in southwestern South America may have come from ancient Japan. People in eastern North America might have originated in Europe. People in western North and Central America could have come across Asian land bridges.

In addition, despite clear evidence of the extinction of large Pleistocene mammals in tandem with the spread of human beings, some archaeologists remain squeamish about “blaming” the extinctions on human overharvest. I am ambivalent on human origins, but the role of people in Pleistocene extinctions seems self-evident. Like it or not, people have been major determinants of ecosystem structure and function for a long, long time.

It all comes down to multiple lines of evidence. The more you consider different aspects of ancient culture, the more complicated the answers get.

It’s similar for cancer. There are multiple diagnostic tools clinicians apply to determining presence/absence, kind, and severity of malignancies. In my case, we now have several convergent lines of evidence suggesting that I’m no longer riddled with active tumors. But nothing definitive. 

Last week, I met with doctors after having the PET CT scan the prior week. Dr. H, my surgeon, is comfortable saying that I am “cancer-free”, based on the radiology and the fact that he doesn’t see tumor tissue when he runs the videoscope into my throat. But the knot on my lung (which is visible in the CT, but did not take up much radiolabeled sugar in the PET), and the fact of generalized uptake in my throat mean we need to monitor. I’ll have another PET scan in 3 months. That should give my throat additional time to recover from the radiation, and let us see what the lung spot does.

I also met with a new doctor—a “palliative care” specialist. This guy’s charge is to manage my pharmaceuticals. You will recall that Dr. T, the oncologist, wanted to get me off the dilaudid and onto something else. Dr. S (palliative guy) talked to me for a long while. Palpated my throat and neck. Peered into my mouth. And put me right back onto the same dose of dilaudid I’ve been on for months. 

So the upshot is that I am apparently and at least for the moment free of active cancer, and I have the opiates needed to keep me comfortable through the day. All in all, it could be a lot worse at this point. 

Next month, I’m going to try traveling. I don’t think flying is possible, given that I still have wrenching coughing fits that bring up towels full of increasingly thick and gooey mucous. We’ll have to drive to Amherst for the AEHS Fall Conference. Given the bottle of dilaudid, I’m pretty sure it won’t be a problem! Of course, I can neither talk nor eat, which are sort of the points of a technical conference. Oh well. I’ll have to see how much caustic humor I can generate with my little electronic erasable tablet and fast-as-lightning handwriting. 

Thanks for being here for me, everybody. This one and the one over at www.aehsfoundation.org will be the only updates this week. I’m getting stronger all the time. Who knows—I might make it to “functional human being” status yet. We’ll see.