Cancer Journal

My mother deeded her body to the University of Iowa Medical School to be used as a cadaver for medical students.   There was a memorial service in Iowa City after my mother had died for all those  who had donated their bodies over the past year.  I found the service surprisingly affecting.  During the service, the poem I have copied and pasted below was read.  It was written by a student who used a cadaver in the anatomy course she had just completed.  Her name is Amy Marie Milligan and the poem is entitled "Anatomy Teacher".  I ran across it yesterday when I was going through stuff and decided to include it here.                           When I touched your hands, I touched the hands that had felt the chill of ninety-four                      winters, fingers that had stretched in the sunlight of as many springs. When I touched...

My wife and I went to live music the other night.  We ran into an old classmate of hers visiting from out of town.  He has been diagnosed with prostate cancer for four years with a Gleason score of eight, an aggressive form, just like mine.  He and I have a lot to blab about.  I tell him I've just started having hot flashes from the hormone treatment but that it's not too bad.  He says they will get bad and that he has bought four handheld battery operated fans he has left at various places around the house and that I will be happier if I get some too.  Nice things to get advice about. I tell him about Vitamin C infusion and he gets a look of concern and wants to know what the authority I rely on for designating this as an effective treatment.  Jeez, I don't know!  I can't rattle that stuff off!  I have a hard time naming the two meds I get from Mayo and sure can't come up with that other stuff.  He takes a dim view of high dose melatoni...

I had an appointment with the oncologist today.  Before that my PSA # was measured.  It was again too low to be detectable.  The oncologist considered the bone and CT scan to be nothing but good news.  If there had been a tumor someplace other than bones, the CT scan would have revealed that.  There was none of that.  The guy interpreting the CT scan thought he saw something new on the bones but the bone scan was the better test for that and it showed nothing of the sort.  All the bone scan showed was less than what there had been in November when it was last measured.  The oncologist said I get an A+ but noted that Jihadists and Cancer play the long game.  Actually, he didn't say anything about Jihadists.  That was me.   Horseradish came in the mail and it is definitely fancy.  Both ends were chopped off but the thing must have been 10 inches or more before it was chopped.  It came from Country Creek Acres in St Pete...

 The cancer friend with whom I visit during Vitamin C infusions infusions sent me a link to a fellow who promotes nutrition and life style changes to combat cancer.  Pleasant, well spoken man (his name is Chris Warp, his site, chrisbeatcancer.com) who formulates his case in a way I find 80% convincing.  He maintains that we terminal cancer patients have agency.  We sure may have done something to get cancer and we can do something else to get rid of it.  This is not the message of standard oncology which treats us as de facto hapless victims who can have our lives extended but can't be cured. He maintains that the oncologist's business model, its ongoing existence requires that approach.  This would put the well being of the industry over the well being of the patient who is simply to be the passive recipient of oncology treatment during the brief period of our continued life. Strong stuff.  I find it hard to square with my sense of what goes on a...

 I am waiting at Mayo Clinic for multiple testing today. It has been a while and I was greeted with warm affection by the reception lady.  That was nice.  Another ceiling light bulb has gone out in the waiting room but it is still plenty light in there.  (See blog #21)  A CT scan and a nuclear medicine bone scan is set for today.  There are two different tracks I am on in preparation; radioactive stuff injected into my system for the bone scan and I'm drinking a barium solution for the CT scan.  I don't know what one test tells that the other doesn't but I don't need to know--at least not right now.  I'll be interested in knowing what's going on in my bones.  In November, I had lit up places all over indicating tumor locations.  I'm hoping/(for a whole lot more dark.  I don't know if lit up means an active tumor or if it could include a dormant tumor that could start up again given the right conditions.  I have a meeting w...

  Mowing the Lawn I lived the first 14 years of my life in rural Alaska.  Life was not fancy in Alaska in the 1950s.  The land in front of our house (I don’t think it deserved the dignity of being called a yard) never felt the cruel blade of the lawn mower.  Priorities were elsewhere.   It wasn’t until the mid-1960s when my family moved to the Midwest (In Alaska, we paradoxically referred to it as “Outside”) that I came to know the angry drone of a four stroke lawn mower engine.  I didn’t love it then and I still don’t—either how it sounds or what it represents.  A taste for outdoor tidiness must be acquired at an early age.  I hear “No Mow May,” my heart gladdens.  My neighbor hears the phrase, a look of profound concern comes over his face.  Although our lawn does get mowed, we are haphazard and tardy.  I sense the effort of my neighbor not to pass judgement, good man that he is.  I drive out in the country and now and t...