Cancer is a humbling experience. I know you’ve seen all those television commercials about being “empowered”, “fighting back”, “taking control”, “getting angry”. In fact, the only thing you’re bringing to the party is your immune system, and if that was doing its job you wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Beyond that, your tumors are what they are when you are diagnosed, and the state of the cancer care system is what it is. And the two of them are going to slug it out. And you are going to take the punches. From both sides. It’s kind of like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots but your robot is nonfunctional. Your role in the treatment process is to stand up and take the ongoing beating.
I bring this up because I had some kind of odd setback this week. On Monday I started feeling a little weak. By Tuesday I was seriously weak, and my muscles—what’s left of ‘em, which isn’t much—hurt. Tuesday I left the office early despite a crunching deadline, fell asleep at 4 in the afternoon, woke groggily at midnight, then passed back out until 10 Wednesday morning. Wednesday, when the deadline was REALLY crunching, I left the office at 3 and passed out at 6. Thankfully I had willing and competent backup. It’s now Friday morning and I’m at the law offices in D.C. where I need to deal with the deadline report. Feeling somewhat better, still not right.
Possibly I’ve contracted a virus. I doubt that my immune system is functioning very well at the moment. But I don’t have other symptoms. My thermophysiology is totally screwed up, but that’s been true for months now—ever since my weight dropped below 230.
That might be the key. The transition from tube-feeding to eating by mouth like a normal person is not going well. For one thing, my oral cavity is still somewhat dysfunctional. My tongue and teeth do not work like a well-coordinated team, making it difficult to get a food bolus roped, corralled, and behaving properly. Then, my throat is still sore, and my epiglottis lets a little portion of every swallow dribble down the respiratory tract vs. digestive. Also, the real fallout of having salivary glands destroyed by the radiation are beginning to manifest. Putting a bite of food in my mouth does NOT trigger that comfortable pre-digestive rush of of moistness. Rather, it just dries things out, making the texture of any solid or semi-solid food resemble shredded cardboard. Finally, by the time I manage to get 3 or 4 swallows of anything into my gut, my hunger abates and I can’t eat any more.
So I’m guessing the deal is that my weight dropped to damn near 190 lbs earlier in the week, my blood sugar probably cratered, and I passed out. So I’m rebuilding my diet again. Baseline is 6 cans, or 2400 calories worth, of United Nations emergency rations via gut tube. On top of that I have to add enough calories by mouth so that I can start to cut back the cans. Best bet so far has been milkshakes. Half a blender of ice cream with a big splodge of milk has a pretty high calorie content and I can choke most of it down. Had one this morning, despite having to leave for the train by 0600. I’ll do another one dinner time, after pumping in some cans (couldn’t bring myself to lock myself in a bathroom stall at the law firm to pipe it in. Instead I slurped diet Coke, ice water, and nibbled at some fruit. Lunch was nicely catered chicken, beef brisket, rice, vegetables, and salad. Couldn’t touch it).
Sigh.
It is now Sunday night. I am still as weak as hell, and my muscles and joints are universally sore. What the hell?!? I have no idea. Fortunately I see my oncology surgeon this week. He’s Chair of the Department and a full professor at Hopkins, along with his clinical position at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. All that an he’s a pretty young guy, 40-ish if I had to guest. High energy. Brutally honest, which seems to be (thankfully for me, I much prefer brutal honesty in all things in life) universally characteristic of the cancer people, at least the throat cancer people, at GBMC. If he can’t figure it out, he’ll call in the Radiation Oncologist, the Cancer Pathologist, or maybe an off-team House-like diagnostician. For all I know, maybe I’m supposed to hurt like this at this point.
But that really doesn’t seem right. It’s been something like 11 weeks since my last radiation/chemotherapy doses. I’m pretty sure I should be past the overt effects of same.
Or I would be, if a couple of the attorneys at Friday’s meeting in D.C. didn’t have relatives in pretty much the same boat that I am. One guy’s brother in law took 2 years to get back to where he could maintain his weight on an oral diet.
Icky. Now that I’m back at work, of course, much of my time is no longer under my control. Hopefully I can keep slipping away when I hurt too much to function. Or Dr. H can figure out what the hell on Wednesday morning when I see him. At a minimum, I expect him to schedule my PET scan and neck dissection.
That’s the one truly silver lining in this otherwise sort of grey post-treatment rundown. No signs of incipient tumors in any of the places that Dr. Z says they should manifest if they are going to. You know I’ll do what needs to be done to save my life, but I sure as hell hope that doesn’t include more radiation and chemotherapy. You think I whined the first time through… .
Fresh material up across the weblog empire. Please surf on over to http://docviper.livejournal.com/ for a festive seafood dinner from the grill, http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/ for some movie reviews, and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ for a new essay on Armed Conflict and the Environment. Most of all, remember I love you all, and I’m grateful that you’re taking the time to read this stuff. Thanks!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
It Might Get Messy
I believe the theory of opiates is that as long as you are taking them to control pain, the psychophysiological cascade that leads to addiction doesn’t trigger. People in pain really need relief. In a sense, there’s a buffer between superfluous intake, which leads to addiction, and effective application, which doesn’t. This is why self-medication is possible—people don’t generally use more morphine than they need. They use enough to control pain.
My pain is pretty much reduced to a raw, inflamed patch at the back of my throat. Rather like the irritated sore throat you get with autumn pollen allergies. Hardly the kind of thing needing constant infusion of morphine derivatives. So I tried to go cold turkey. When I stripped off my fentanyl patches a couple days ago, I didn’t replace them. In the evening, I took a few milligrams of oxycodone and didn’t worry about it. By middle of the next day, I realized I felt like hell. Tired, cranky, headachy. Incredibly weak. Like I’d lost a month’s progress in recovery.
Took me several hours to suspect the lack of morphine. I popped a couple patches back on experimentally—Voila! Cheerful, strong and energetic again. So ok, either my theory about addiction vs. pain is wrong or I’ve just been on it for enough months to override the supposed pain vs. addiction threshold.
I think I have just enough patches left to try to wean myself without going painfully cold turkey. We’ll see.
Apart from adventures with pharmaceutical narcotics, I’m making some progress. Managing to eat reasonable sized bowls of oatmeal with blueberries, maple syrup, and yogurt for breakfast, although it takes a good hour to get the whole thing down. Not sure how that will work with my usual approach to breakfast, which is to take it to the office and eat while the computer boots up. Last night I cooked dinner for the first time in months, a big rice salad with red-cooked beef, roasted corn, avocado, assorted other vegetables, a garlicky vinaigrette and blue cheese on the side. Couldn’t eat any of it. My stomach capacity is rather low. One good meal a day seems like about it. This afternoon I’m munching on a hunk of toast smeared with liverwurst and whole grain mustard, this on top of the oatmeal breakfast. Maybe a breakthrough, huh? I’ll make some potato cakes with cheddar cheese for supper tonight. If I can eat a few mouthfuls, I’ll take it as a sign that I can maybe keep my weight up without injecting the U.N. emergency rations.
My weight’s dipped perilously close to 190 lbs. I have to admit it sure feels good to be slim. A lot easier on the system than hauling around 276, which was my peak weight a few years ago when I got serious about losing. I worked it down to around 240 on my own. That was sufficient, with exercise (5k a day on the road or 45 minutes of laps in the pool) to keep my blood sugar down without medication.
Still didn’t keep my blood pressure down. I would have thought that my new under 200 svelte figure would have functional blood pressure as a reward. But that may not be. I have to monitor closer, but when I did my last round with the doctors a few weeks ago, it was still borderline high. Maybe when I get back to exercise… .
Next big tipping point comes week-after-next when I go back to the surgeon. He’ll scope me (i.e., stick a fat wand up into my nostril, curl it through my sinuses and down into my throat, where he’ll poke around my throat looking for inflammation) and probably set a date for a PET scan and then surgery. I’ll keep you up-to-the-minute!
Fresh material up around the weblog empire. Don’t forget to stop in at http://docviper.livejournal.com/, http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/, and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ . Thanks for visiting!
My pain is pretty much reduced to a raw, inflamed patch at the back of my throat. Rather like the irritated sore throat you get with autumn pollen allergies. Hardly the kind of thing needing constant infusion of morphine derivatives. So I tried to go cold turkey. When I stripped off my fentanyl patches a couple days ago, I didn’t replace them. In the evening, I took a few milligrams of oxycodone and didn’t worry about it. By middle of the next day, I realized I felt like hell. Tired, cranky, headachy. Incredibly weak. Like I’d lost a month’s progress in recovery.
Took me several hours to suspect the lack of morphine. I popped a couple patches back on experimentally—Voila! Cheerful, strong and energetic again. So ok, either my theory about addiction vs. pain is wrong or I’ve just been on it for enough months to override the supposed pain vs. addiction threshold.
I think I have just enough patches left to try to wean myself without going painfully cold turkey. We’ll see.
Apart from adventures with pharmaceutical narcotics, I’m making some progress. Managing to eat reasonable sized bowls of oatmeal with blueberries, maple syrup, and yogurt for breakfast, although it takes a good hour to get the whole thing down. Not sure how that will work with my usual approach to breakfast, which is to take it to the office and eat while the computer boots up. Last night I cooked dinner for the first time in months, a big rice salad with red-cooked beef, roasted corn, avocado, assorted other vegetables, a garlicky vinaigrette and blue cheese on the side. Couldn’t eat any of it. My stomach capacity is rather low. One good meal a day seems like about it. This afternoon I’m munching on a hunk of toast smeared with liverwurst and whole grain mustard, this on top of the oatmeal breakfast. Maybe a breakthrough, huh? I’ll make some potato cakes with cheddar cheese for supper tonight. If I can eat a few mouthfuls, I’ll take it as a sign that I can maybe keep my weight up without injecting the U.N. emergency rations.
My weight’s dipped perilously close to 190 lbs. I have to admit it sure feels good to be slim. A lot easier on the system than hauling around 276, which was my peak weight a few years ago when I got serious about losing. I worked it down to around 240 on my own. That was sufficient, with exercise (5k a day on the road or 45 minutes of laps in the pool) to keep my blood sugar down without medication.
Still didn’t keep my blood pressure down. I would have thought that my new under 200 svelte figure would have functional blood pressure as a reward. But that may not be. I have to monitor closer, but when I did my last round with the doctors a few weeks ago, it was still borderline high. Maybe when I get back to exercise… .
Next big tipping point comes week-after-next when I go back to the surgeon. He’ll scope me (i.e., stick a fat wand up into my nostril, curl it through my sinuses and down into my throat, where he’ll poke around my throat looking for inflammation) and probably set a date for a PET scan and then surgery. I’ll keep you up-to-the-minute!
Fresh material up around the weblog empire. Don’t forget to stop in at http://docviper.livejournal.com/, http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/, and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ . Thanks for visiting!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
It Might Get Messy
I’ve been trying, really trying, to meet my daily calorie ration by mouth vs. surgically inserted feeding tube. I’ve been eating ice cream, ice cream with maple syrup, ice cream with whipped cream, whipped cream with chocolate, whipped cream with maple syrup, tuna salad with mayo, egg salad with mayo, tuna and egg salad with… well, you get the idea. Between my oral apparatus not yet functioning fully and my GIT used to 6 months of a few hundred mls of liquid food per day, it’s hard to get a full 2400 calories.
I gotta go make a milkshake.
Ok, that’s better. Big slug each of Breyer’s chocolate and coffee, a few crystals of decaf instant, heap of artificial sweetener (no sense re-triggering blood sugar problems just because I’m trying to learn how to eat like a human being), big glug each of heavy cream and milk. Delicious. Still hard to get down. After half a dozen swallows, the sore spot on the back of my throat starts to sting. With each swallow a tiny drip slips down my airway, and another perches annoyingly on my epiglottis. Sigh. I’ll get through a few hundred calories of it before giving up and going to take a pain killer.
Felt good enough on Friday to take the day off and go out to the Catoctin Ridge to look for copperheads. Didn’t find any. I did manage to get in a pretty good--almost too good—hike. By the time I’d gone a couple thousand meters into the woods and gained a couple hundred in altitude, I was completely lost and exhausted. Had to turn back to my sore muscles and a wheeze rhythm—walk 6 steps, crouch for 30 seconds, walk 6, crouch, 6 more, sit and pump water into the tube… . Talk about annoying. Except, it does make for very quiet woods stalking, something I find difficult when I’m at full strength. On one of my longer sit-downs, a waterthrush flew into the understory vegetation in front of me and picked insects off the branches for a good 10 minutes. Oddly, it was 6 or 7 meters up off the ground. I can’t recall ever seeing one off the ground in my 50 odd years of birding.
I visited my radiation oncologist earlier in the week. She palpated my throat, stuck an endoscope through my sinuses to poke around visually, sniffed my breath (did I mention she’s a very hands-on kind of doc?). She says there’s a mess of scar tissue all over the place, but she believes I’m clean of cancer. We’re gonna have to await the PET scan upcoming and the neck dissection to follow to be sure of that. But this lady doesn’t sugar-coat anything. I’m pretty sure if she didn’t have good reason to say so, she would have kept silent. So that’s good.
Got to see the hospital staff who were my all-day every-day buddies while I was being treated. Everyone was in a good mood. Only Tracy (of Tracy & Traci, my radiation technicians) was in, but she thought I looked svelte at 195 pounds. I suppose so. I’m pretty sure the last time I weighed less than 200 pounds was my freshman year of high school. No wonder I’m weak. My physiology isn’t used to surviving without a big honkin’ backlog of lipid deposit to call on for energy reserves!
Did I mention that cosmetically I’m pretty much a wreck? The surgeon is going to do some cosmetic reconstruction on my throat, which will look hollow when the big hunks of scar tissue are gone. I’ve aged noticeably, so instead of looking like a jovial overweight dork, I resemble a frail old-guy dork. Can’t go to the barber because the skin on my neck and scalp is still peeling from the radiation frying. So I purchased a hair clipper to do an interim buzz until I’m back in a regular grooming regime. If my first attempt looks wacky enough, I’ll a post photo for you next week.
Hang in there, everybody. Thanks for stopping by. There is new material up around the horn this week, and hopefully I’ll be able to keep on top of it for the next few weeks at least. So if you have a mo’, surf on over and visit http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/, http://docviper.livejournal.com /, and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ . Talk to you next week!
I gotta go make a milkshake.
Ok, that’s better. Big slug each of Breyer’s chocolate and coffee, a few crystals of decaf instant, heap of artificial sweetener (no sense re-triggering blood sugar problems just because I’m trying to learn how to eat like a human being), big glug each of heavy cream and milk. Delicious. Still hard to get down. After half a dozen swallows, the sore spot on the back of my throat starts to sting. With each swallow a tiny drip slips down my airway, and another perches annoyingly on my epiglottis. Sigh. I’ll get through a few hundred calories of it before giving up and going to take a pain killer.
Felt good enough on Friday to take the day off and go out to the Catoctin Ridge to look for copperheads. Didn’t find any. I did manage to get in a pretty good--almost too good—hike. By the time I’d gone a couple thousand meters into the woods and gained a couple hundred in altitude, I was completely lost and exhausted. Had to turn back to my sore muscles and a wheeze rhythm—walk 6 steps, crouch for 30 seconds, walk 6, crouch, 6 more, sit and pump water into the tube… . Talk about annoying. Except, it does make for very quiet woods stalking, something I find difficult when I’m at full strength. On one of my longer sit-downs, a waterthrush flew into the understory vegetation in front of me and picked insects off the branches for a good 10 minutes. Oddly, it was 6 or 7 meters up off the ground. I can’t recall ever seeing one off the ground in my 50 odd years of birding.
I visited my radiation oncologist earlier in the week. She palpated my throat, stuck an endoscope through my sinuses to poke around visually, sniffed my breath (did I mention she’s a very hands-on kind of doc?). She says there’s a mess of scar tissue all over the place, but she believes I’m clean of cancer. We’re gonna have to await the PET scan upcoming and the neck dissection to follow to be sure of that. But this lady doesn’t sugar-coat anything. I’m pretty sure if she didn’t have good reason to say so, she would have kept silent. So that’s good.
Got to see the hospital staff who were my all-day every-day buddies while I was being treated. Everyone was in a good mood. Only Tracy (of Tracy & Traci, my radiation technicians) was in, but she thought I looked svelte at 195 pounds. I suppose so. I’m pretty sure the last time I weighed less than 200 pounds was my freshman year of high school. No wonder I’m weak. My physiology isn’t used to surviving without a big honkin’ backlog of lipid deposit to call on for energy reserves!
Did I mention that cosmetically I’m pretty much a wreck? The surgeon is going to do some cosmetic reconstruction on my throat, which will look hollow when the big hunks of scar tissue are gone. I’ve aged noticeably, so instead of looking like a jovial overweight dork, I resemble a frail old-guy dork. Can’t go to the barber because the skin on my neck and scalp is still peeling from the radiation frying. So I purchased a hair clipper to do an interim buzz until I’m back in a regular grooming regime. If my first attempt looks wacky enough, I’ll a post photo for you next week.
Hang in there, everybody. Thanks for stopping by. There is new material up around the horn this week, and hopefully I’ll be able to keep on top of it for the next few weeks at least. So if you have a mo’, surf on over and visit http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/, http://docviper.livejournal.com /, and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ . Talk to you next week!
Friday, July 8, 2011
It Might Get Messy
Indeed. For a longer time than anticipated. For years, I’ve been telling my kids that my generation will be the last one to die routinely of cancer. This turns out to be a misconception based on ignorance and naivety. Don’t get me wrong. Cancer treatment has advanced spectacularly in the past 20 years, and looks to advance exponentially over the next 20. The F1 generation may be too soon, though. Maybe it’ll be THEIR kids who don’t die of cancer.
“Cancer” is a rubric for an enormous range of physiological difficulties. Some cancers are caused by spontaneous mutations, some are triggered by environmental causes, some, like childhood leukemia, by insufficient immunologic challenge early in life (i.e., keeping kids away from numerous relatively benign childhood disease microbes makes their immune system ineffective when leukemia begins) [1]. Some, perhaps many, cancers will have relatively simple and painless cures via emerging technologies such as molecular engineering, protein chemistry, and nanotech therapies. Others will grind on as they have for millennia, taking lives prematurely or controlled only by painful and debilitating treatment methods. And of course there’s the conspiracy theory—that “big pharma” and “big government” know how to cure cancer, but suppress said cure out of greedy self-interest [2].
There is hope, however, that one of the worst-case scenarios in my personal case could end up being complicated but not flat-out tragic. A story circulated on CNN this week [3] about a guy in Europe whose nasty malignancy required excising his larynx. An artificial larynx, custom fit, was constructed of flexible polymers. Then the prosthetic larynx was put in a bath with some stem cells harvested from the guy’s marrow. The stem cells built a film of tissue around the prosthesis, which was inserted without difficulty (article says he successfully coughed two days after the reconstruction surgery) and, since it was genetically appropriate, his immune system did not reject it.
I’m assuming that if Dr. H decides my larynx needs to go, they’ll grow me a new one.
I’ve been back at work for a couple of weeks now. On the same three day cycle I’ve been on throughout and after treatment, I get acutely week, feel like hell, and have to leave early for a nap. Plus my mornings are pretty hungover, a consequence of the pain killers I still need and difficulty getting the amount of sleep I also need. So I usually arrive late at the office. But at least I’m around to GO to the office! That, and the fact that I am just beginning to be able to get yoghurt, applesauce, and undiluted canned condensed soup into my GIT by mouth are enormously encouraging.
Still, having cancer brings mortality into sharp focus. Here’s a good “end of the road” game. Who would you trade your life for? I don’t mean family and friends, we’d all go there. Is there someone in history whose life was cut short that you think could have accomplished so much that if you had the choice, you’d let the Fates take your life in place of that person’s? I thought of some of the obvious ones—Martin Luther King Jr., JFK, Jimi Hendrix. John Coltrane. But you know, they all changed the world with the life they had. Possible they’d do much more with more time, but they already had given us more than we had before. For me, I’m thinking maybe Buddy Holly. I listened to the 6 disk compilation Hip-O Select put out a few years ago on my office commute this week. In 200 recorded tracks, Holly made it clear not only that he was a genius, but he was gonna change the world. For the better. The potential for good will, humor, and music that died with him is a tragic loss. If I had the choice, I’d think very hard about taking a seat on that plane in his place. If I’ve managed to make a few dozen people’s lives funnier and more interesting, Holly would’ve done the same and more for millions.
The message isn’t morbid. It’s that we all have that kind of potential. Most of us don’t realize it. I suggest we kick ourselves into gear every day and make things funnier, fairer, and better for as many people as we can. That’s a good practical use to make of the knowledge that we ain’t gonna be around forever!
Remind me to tell you about the time I met a guy who played with Holly in Clovis, New Mexico. I got a photo of his photo playing with Holly and the Crickets, and I got him to autograph a napkin for me. Awesome, no?
PS. I’ll have all the weblogs updated this weekend. As the weekend goes by, check out http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/, http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/, and http://docviper.livejournal.com/. By Sunday night there’ll be good new material up at all of them. Thanks for stoppin’ by. Y’all are keeping me alive!!!
Notes
[1] An interesting and readable summary of causes and cures of various cancers is Mel Greaves’ 2000 book from Oxford University Press “Cancer: the evolutionary legacy”.
[2] For the conspiracy theory (of COURSE there’s a conspiracy theory) see http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/cancercure050405.cfm . For a compact debunking, http://www.cancersolution.tk/2011/05/conspiracy-theory.html .
[3] Link to CNN article is http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/07/trachea.transplant/index.html
Clearly there are amazing implications of this technology far beyond larynx cancer.
“Cancer” is a rubric for an enormous range of physiological difficulties. Some cancers are caused by spontaneous mutations, some are triggered by environmental causes, some, like childhood leukemia, by insufficient immunologic challenge early in life (i.e., keeping kids away from numerous relatively benign childhood disease microbes makes their immune system ineffective when leukemia begins) [1]. Some, perhaps many, cancers will have relatively simple and painless cures via emerging technologies such as molecular engineering, protein chemistry, and nanotech therapies. Others will grind on as they have for millennia, taking lives prematurely or controlled only by painful and debilitating treatment methods. And of course there’s the conspiracy theory—that “big pharma” and “big government” know how to cure cancer, but suppress said cure out of greedy self-interest [2].
There is hope, however, that one of the worst-case scenarios in my personal case could end up being complicated but not flat-out tragic. A story circulated on CNN this week [3] about a guy in Europe whose nasty malignancy required excising his larynx. An artificial larynx, custom fit, was constructed of flexible polymers. Then the prosthetic larynx was put in a bath with some stem cells harvested from the guy’s marrow. The stem cells built a film of tissue around the prosthesis, which was inserted without difficulty (article says he successfully coughed two days after the reconstruction surgery) and, since it was genetically appropriate, his immune system did not reject it.
I’m assuming that if Dr. H decides my larynx needs to go, they’ll grow me a new one.
I’ve been back at work for a couple of weeks now. On the same three day cycle I’ve been on throughout and after treatment, I get acutely week, feel like hell, and have to leave early for a nap. Plus my mornings are pretty hungover, a consequence of the pain killers I still need and difficulty getting the amount of sleep I also need. So I usually arrive late at the office. But at least I’m around to GO to the office! That, and the fact that I am just beginning to be able to get yoghurt, applesauce, and undiluted canned condensed soup into my GIT by mouth are enormously encouraging.
Still, having cancer brings mortality into sharp focus. Here’s a good “end of the road” game. Who would you trade your life for? I don’t mean family and friends, we’d all go there. Is there someone in history whose life was cut short that you think could have accomplished so much that if you had the choice, you’d let the Fates take your life in place of that person’s? I thought of some of the obvious ones—Martin Luther King Jr., JFK, Jimi Hendrix. John Coltrane. But you know, they all changed the world with the life they had. Possible they’d do much more with more time, but they already had given us more than we had before. For me, I’m thinking maybe Buddy Holly. I listened to the 6 disk compilation Hip-O Select put out a few years ago on my office commute this week. In 200 recorded tracks, Holly made it clear not only that he was a genius, but he was gonna change the world. For the better. The potential for good will, humor, and music that died with him is a tragic loss. If I had the choice, I’d think very hard about taking a seat on that plane in his place. If I’ve managed to make a few dozen people’s lives funnier and more interesting, Holly would’ve done the same and more for millions.
The message isn’t morbid. It’s that we all have that kind of potential. Most of us don’t realize it. I suggest we kick ourselves into gear every day and make things funnier, fairer, and better for as many people as we can. That’s a good practical use to make of the knowledge that we ain’t gonna be around forever!
Remind me to tell you about the time I met a guy who played with Holly in Clovis, New Mexico. I got a photo of his photo playing with Holly and the Crickets, and I got him to autograph a napkin for me. Awesome, no?
PS. I’ll have all the weblogs updated this weekend. As the weekend goes by, check out http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/, http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/, and http://docviper.livejournal.com/. By Sunday night there’ll be good new material up at all of them. Thanks for stoppin’ by. Y’all are keeping me alive!!!
Notes
[1] An interesting and readable summary of causes and cures of various cancers is Mel Greaves’ 2000 book from Oxford University Press “Cancer: the evolutionary legacy”.
[2] For the conspiracy theory (of COURSE there’s a conspiracy theory) see http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/cancercure050405.cfm . For a compact debunking, http://www.cancersolution.tk/2011/05/conspiracy-theory.html .
[3] Link to CNN article is http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/07/trachea.transplant/index.html
Clearly there are amazing implications of this technology far beyond larynx cancer.
Monday, July 4, 2011
It Might Get Messy
My tumors are characteristic of heavy tobacco use. The docs are all shocked to learn that I’ve never smoked, chewed, or dipped. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been risk-free. Behavioral risk factors for oral cancers include consumption of beverage alcohol. I’ve also habitually used alcohol-based mouthwash more-than-daily for nearly 50 years. In fact, since I was in my mid-twenties I’ve had a tendency to get low-level gum infections which I fought by swishing mouthwash nearly continuously for days on end. I was doing that for the pain in my mouth right up to the point that the cancer was diagnosed.
Oh. I’ve also chewed betel nuts [1]. Admittedly it was only for a week, when I worked with big game hunters on Guam 24 hours a day. They chewed to keep themselves wired and got a kick out of turning me on to chewing. Betel had recently been made illegal in the U.S. When I got to airport in Honolulu to head back to the east coast, I remembered I had a pocket full of slivered betel nuts and was chewing them pretty much full time. I had to ditch them in a wastebasket before I went through security.
I saw my surgeon earlier in the week. He took one look into my throat and said “ok, so, it’s still a mess in there. I won’t be able to see a thing for weeks. Make an appointment a month out.” It was still a productive visit. I’ve been trying to wean myself off pain killers and other drugs. He said he expects I still need pain killers. That was a relief. I’ve been feeling like such a weenie, thinking the pain should be gone and here I am still hurting. Dr. H says it’s a minimum 10 weeks, and usually more like 12, for the radiation impacts to cease. Apparently the residual radiation is still killing cells and playing general havoc with mucous membranes and other tissues. My lower lip is constantly sore and shedding skin. I imagine when it heals up I’ll be free of the residual radiation effects.
Made it out to the Eastern Shore thanks to Dan and Liz, and got to see Paul and Linda back visiting from Australia, Mike and Laura, and others in the circle. After 3 hours of basically sitting on my butt, I was exhausted and had to return home. Sigh.
The longer this stretches out, the more worried I am about ongoing quality-of-life. Not that I’m ungrateful to be alive at this point. There are at least a couple of ways I could have screwed this up so that I wouldn’t be here tonight to write this. But my swallowing apparatus is painfully crippled, and it’s possible that that’ll be permanent. With one of my largest salivary glands gone, my mouth alternates between being too dry and running with thick mucous. The docs claim the latter should go away with the radiation residue, but I’m not so sure.
But no sense in whining. Thanks for stopping by. I have not updated the other weblogs. I have good material for all of them, I just haven’t made it over to do it. I’ll come back here and leave a note when I get the others up-to-date. Thanks!!!
Notes
[1] Mel Greaves, in Cancer: The Evolutionary Legacy (Oxford University Press 2000) says chewing betel quid is associated with oral and throat cancers in India. I was chewing just the betel nuts, without additives such as cloves, tobacco, and weirder medicinal plant products. And oddly, I got the opposite effect from the locals, who claimed betel was a stimulant. I actually found it soothing and sedative. Of course, we were working pretty much 24 hours a day for a couple of weeks, so sleep and general collapse into sloth were natural trajectories for my physiology.
Oh. I’ve also chewed betel nuts [1]. Admittedly it was only for a week, when I worked with big game hunters on Guam 24 hours a day. They chewed to keep themselves wired and got a kick out of turning me on to chewing. Betel had recently been made illegal in the U.S. When I got to airport in Honolulu to head back to the east coast, I remembered I had a pocket full of slivered betel nuts and was chewing them pretty much full time. I had to ditch them in a wastebasket before I went through security.
I saw my surgeon earlier in the week. He took one look into my throat and said “ok, so, it’s still a mess in there. I won’t be able to see a thing for weeks. Make an appointment a month out.” It was still a productive visit. I’ve been trying to wean myself off pain killers and other drugs. He said he expects I still need pain killers. That was a relief. I’ve been feeling like such a weenie, thinking the pain should be gone and here I am still hurting. Dr. H says it’s a minimum 10 weeks, and usually more like 12, for the radiation impacts to cease. Apparently the residual radiation is still killing cells and playing general havoc with mucous membranes and other tissues. My lower lip is constantly sore and shedding skin. I imagine when it heals up I’ll be free of the residual radiation effects.
Made it out to the Eastern Shore thanks to Dan and Liz, and got to see Paul and Linda back visiting from Australia, Mike and Laura, and others in the circle. After 3 hours of basically sitting on my butt, I was exhausted and had to return home. Sigh.
The longer this stretches out, the more worried I am about ongoing quality-of-life. Not that I’m ungrateful to be alive at this point. There are at least a couple of ways I could have screwed this up so that I wouldn’t be here tonight to write this. But my swallowing apparatus is painfully crippled, and it’s possible that that’ll be permanent. With one of my largest salivary glands gone, my mouth alternates between being too dry and running with thick mucous. The docs claim the latter should go away with the radiation residue, but I’m not so sure.
But no sense in whining. Thanks for stopping by. I have not updated the other weblogs. I have good material for all of them, I just haven’t made it over to do it. I’ll come back here and leave a note when I get the others up-to-date. Thanks!!!
Notes
[1] Mel Greaves, in Cancer: The Evolutionary Legacy (Oxford University Press 2000) says chewing betel quid is associated with oral and throat cancers in India. I was chewing just the betel nuts, without additives such as cloves, tobacco, and weirder medicinal plant products. And oddly, I got the opposite effect from the locals, who claimed betel was a stimulant. I actually found it soothing and sedative. Of course, we were working pretty much 24 hours a day for a couple of weeks, so sleep and general collapse into sloth were natural trajectories for my physiology.
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