It Might Get Messy

When I was a kid, my parents occasionally purchased linens from a young woman who peddled door-to-door. She was absolutely fascinating—attractive, slender, intelligent, humorous…and born with bizarre little tyrannosaur-like arms, useless stubs on her shoulders. She drove her car, carried and displayed her samples, closed deals, and wrote out the paperwork with her feet only. She would come into the living room, sit on the floor, slip off her shoes, and go to work.

She was a victim of the “wonder” drug thalidomide, hailed in the 50s as something of a psychological equivalent of cortisone. Like cortisone, thalidomide had its dark side. Causing horrific defects in the genesis of limbs in the developing human embryo would have to go in that category.

I bring this up because I want to point out that no matter how much you think the universe is kicking your ass, it’s not.

First, the universe doesn’t kick asses. The universe simply IS. If your ass happens to be in the way of whatever the universe has on its schedule that day, it’s gonna get kicked. But don’t take it personally. Or is that “personal”? I’m never sure… .

Second, whatever is happening to your ass at the moment, it could be one hell of a lot worse. And in a fair proportion of the infinite number of parallel universes that might well be kicking around the adjoining time-space continua, it is indeed worse.

For example. Yesterday in the basement tunnels under one of the Johns Hopkins hospital facilities the radiation oncologist fired up the output on my PET scan. The Positron Emission Tomography technology is just awesome. Radiolabeled glucose from the circulatory system transfers selectively to metabolically active locations in the body—say, for example, malignancies. You get a striking three-dimensional image of active tumors as they slurp up the sugar and crank it into the physiological processors to generate more cancer cells.

The PET scan output was frightening even to me, and of course I have only the most rudimentary understanding of what the hell I’m looking at. But you can see two big primary tumors at the base of the mandible, larger on the left side. Then, the really scary stuff. The lymph nodes, salivary glands, and pituitary glands, all glowing in sharp silver relief. Anastomy [the spell-checker doesn’t like that word, BTW. But I do], the real horror of cancer.

There are many details, some good, some bad, visible in the diagnostics. We’ll cover those when the time comes. Along with the therapy—which promises to be difficult at best. Hell, even the preparation for the therapy is difficult, not to say disgusting.

For the moment, there is a parallel universe where these tumorous masses in my throat and neck were discovered 6 or 7 years ago. My radiation oncologist (or “rad onc”, as I like to think of her) says that in those old days (or maybe it’s “olde dayes”), they would have done serious surgery—removing not just my tongue and glands, but voice box and affiliated structures as well!

Holy frickin’ hell. I guess this IS serious. She says they try to avoid that kind of massive excision these days, combining aggressive radiation and chemotherapy with some final tissue removal just to clean things up. She says this lets most patients keep their tongues and voice boxes so they can function better than they might have in the past. She reports “I’ve done this 170 times and I’ve only lost two”. And I say “Wow. Two deaths on that many otopharyngeal cancers? That’s awesome!” And she looks at me quizzically. “No. Two TONGUES. Zero deaths.”….

…but I’m telling you this….if she DOES end up having to hack out my tongue, I’m not putting up with the “sorry, it’s medical waste” crap the gall bladder guy gave me. I will have that tongue fixed in formalin and preserved in ethanol (preferably some high-end brand of vodka with a colorful label) on a display shelf in my studio…..


Anyway. If you have a moment to stick around, visit the other nodes in this weblog network:


http://docviper.livejournal.com/
http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/
http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/


And thanks for stoppin' by!