Marie Curie was born in Warsaw in 1867. She received multiple degrees from the Sorbonne. Impoverished, she apparently lived on buttered bread and tea during her academic years, and was symptomatically malnourished. She was 29 years old when Henri Becquerel discovered the radioactive nature of uranium salts (he inherited a vial of same from his chemist father). 

Curie, her husband Paul, and Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903. In 1911, Curie received a second Nobel, this time solo, in chemistry for her discovery of radium and polonium (the latter named in honor of Poland). As an aside, it is worth noting that Curie’s daughter won the 1935 Nobel for work on the synthesis of radioactive compounds. 

Years of working with radioactive materials, and her cavalier attitude to same (she frequently carried a vial of radium in the pocket of her lab coat) did not serve Curie well. She was chronically weak and ill from radiation poisoning. She died at a French health spa of aplastic anemia, caused by a lifetime of radiation exposure. 

Radiation exposure has long lasting and severe effects. Tissue damage at the exposure site is intense. The tradeoff in cancer treatment is the destruction of DNA in tumor cells vs. the same (and other impacts) in affected healthy tissues. 

In my case, shockingly (at least to me), I am still not fully recovered from the radiation treatment last spring. On the PET scan a few weeks ago, my throat in general took up visible amounts of radiation tagged sugar, indicating the area has yet to return to baseline levels of metabolism. This is problematic because high metabolic rate is also indicative of tumors. We can’t rule out recurrent or residual throat cancer until my throat area is back to baseline metabolism.

I also continue to have an odd problem with my lips. The epidermis sloughs off in slabs, and the skin is chronically thick and rough. This issue is resolving, albeit slowly. For the first few months after treatment, my lips were continually cracked and bleeding. Now they’re more like severely chapped, although the radiation effects are different from standard chapping—the dead epidermis comes in larger and thicker chunks than simple dried skin. 

Anyway. I met with my new “Palliative Care” doctor this week. He went over my medications, of which I continue to require a bucketload. Dr. S generally approves my mix of prescribed and over-the-counter medicines. He had some suggestions about balancing my OTCs, but overall is happy with how I’m proceeding. 

As am I. I still sleep long hours, am weak enough so that a middling walk (with or without the dog) tires my leg muscles, spend most of my time in a reclining chair, and produce ridiculous quantities of thick, ropey mucous from my throat. The latter in particular is a social difficulty. It’s hard to interact with people if you’re hacking up mouths full of phlegm regularly. 

But even that is getting better, I think. My throat still feels funky—I’m not certain how to separate ongoing irritation from the “new normal” of a system that has been surgically rearranged so a slab of muscle and epidermis from my chest and arm nominally partition my airway and gastrointestinal tract. So I don’t function as well as before the cancers and associated treatments. On the other hand, I’m still alive. Which, at this point, is somewhat remarkable and cause for celebration. 

Thanks for being here, everyone. My love to you and yours. Talk to you next week!

References

These web portals are sources for the biographical and technical material in this week’s posting:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/radiation

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/becquerel-bio.html