CancerConnects

I’m part of an organization, CancerConnects, that puts me, a cancer survivor, in touch with those who have just been diagnosed with cancer and who need help.

Of course they need help.  Their lives are forever changed; everything is upside down; they have to re-think their entire future, and all the assumptions they made about that future – they are now all invalid.

And they are scared.

The thing is, cancer is more than just a physical thing.  Well, if it were just a physical thing, it would be much, much easier.  The physical thing is not great:  there’s the cancer itself, which steals nutrients from your body and wipes out organs, then there’s the treatments:  the surgeries, the chemotherapy, the radiation, none of which is what you would call fun; and then there’s the aftereffects:  the tingling in ones feet, the fatigue, the lobbing off of body organs, the loss of memory, and (hopefully not) – the pain.  And there’s more to that list, but suffice it to say, the physical stuff is not minor.

But cancer not just the physical stuff.  It’s the emotional stuff also.  We are trying to cope;  a bomb has gone off in my world, a tragedy has occurred right at my doorstep, and – guess what – it’s not happening to my neighbor or co-worker or distant family member (poor them) but someone much more important, very much more important at least to me:  myself!  And we are scared, because the unknowns in our average banal existence have multiplied exponentially, and we are on the part of the graph where the line is pointing nearly straight up.  Anything can happen, and my life can go in any one of many directions, and some of those directions end up in places we care not to frequent, like graveyards.

Of course there are tears, and sleepless nights, and sitting stunned in your car after a doctor’s visit, his assessment piercing right to your liver, yes, it is more than we can bear, but that doesn’t matter:  we have to bear it, because we really don’t have any other choice.  We don’t get a choice, where you check off the box for either Beach or Vacation to Caribbean or Cancer or Christmas, and decide, well, let’s try Beach, but it turns out that the Cancer box is checked off for you, and – no – it can’t be unchecked.

So it’s not all physical.  It’s emotional and mental, as mentally we have to get our head around throwing up and being poisoned for x number of months by our doctor who happens to have a lot of education in these matters, and it’s spiritual, as perhaps the reaper is at the door with his sickle, just like in the Hollywood movie, and if he comes for me – which he might – am I ready?  All these concerns are trite for many who live on the living side of life, where ones own enjoyment is the apex of what human civilization has wrought in the last 6,000 years of known history, but for those being wheeled down the hospital corridor to go under the surgeons knife or the couple crying on their way home from the doctor’s office – it is anything but trite.  They say in a sinking raft there are no atheists, and that may just be an old line that is said by those from two or three generations back, but would you really want to be such atheist in such a boat, with the water coming in?

In the midst of this earthquake just under our feet, there is – in the midst of the shaking – a mundane concern – really, if you think about it.  When life has just come to a screeching halt and hasn’t decided which way it will continue – or if it even will – to think about that almighty dollar and something as this-worldly as money, well – do we really have time for it?  Hey, my life is on the line, and this is not just any life – it’s mine!  And we’re going to think about money?

Still, cancer comes with its financial aspects, and in case you didn’t know, cancer is not cheap.  Through all these upheavals, you still have to pay the bills.  You have to support yourself.  Being out of work and operations and medical bills and co-pays and perhaps traveling to another city for a second opinion, and has anyone ever told you: you’re not going to get rich on disability?  No, you won’t.  Don’t worry about not getting rich – worry about keeping the roof over your head!  To that end, bankruptcy is an option – you who always paid your bills and your taxes, like a good citizen.  Well, regarding your recent hospital visit, insurance (in the vein of the movie Rainmaker) found a clause which is used against you, page 28 paragraph 4 section 2 of the contract, and – poof – there’s a bill for $200,000, and who can even understand a hospital bill, let alone pay it?

So not only do you get the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual pressures, but now your heading toward bankruptcy.  Thank you cancer!

So I call these dear people up that CancerConnects hooks me up with, and here I try to help.  The best thing is to listen and tell them that it’s all normal, that I’ve been through the same and know others who have also, and if I can make it all less scary, I’ve done my job.  They are all different:  the writer who suddenly had a mass in her lung, and now what; the Linux expert who traveled around the country helping enterprise-level clients with their systems and had it all going for him; he’s now getting a bone-marrow transplant, and is struggling to understand even half of what has happened to him; the two-time brain cancer survivor who has to sleep in his recliner for the last 12 years – yes 12! – because they went in through his sinus to remove the tumor; well he now has only one lung (remove that baby, the doctor said) and now has another spot now in the other lung, and he was a mentor for CancerConnects; now he needs a mentor!

These poor people, and I can go on.  My boss supported me during my first reoccurrence, letting me work through chemo, and I was deeply grateful for all her care and help.  The tables turned, however, a few months later when she got breast cancer, and not any sort of breast cancer; not the polite breast cancer but one that was extremely aggressive, and she had to kiss her hair good bye and walked around with her skin darkened from chemo and if you want to lose weight: well she lost weight, thanks to cancer; she who was so good to me, she missed work herself for not one but two operations!  Like that.

These are the people I mentor, and life has many ironies; today I mentor them, tomorrow they mentor me.  Who can understand this cancer journey?  What words could be used?  That is why we need each other.

http://www.brunstad.org

 

The Grinch that Stole Thanksgiving

This is a rant, so reader discretion is advised.

I like Thanksgiving.  I like the whole idea of it:  first it’s a great time to get together with ones family, and it is very relaxed.  All you do is eat hordes of food and the pastries are excellent, so what is not to like?  Then, even better: the whole idea behind having a holiday about Thanksgiving and being thankful – well, its one of the best things about America and this great country, at least to me.

The Great American Tradition: Thanksgiving

Enter the capitalist.  Never satisfied with a bottom line that is a bit thin and a populace of 318 million leisurely enjoying their day, he, like the Grinch, has to steal all the candy canes from under the fingers of little Cindy Lou Who, and all the bulbs on the tree must be put in huge black bags and shoved up the chimney.  I may have my holidays mixed up, but you get the idea.

Somewhere someone in a dark castle rubbed his hands above a crystal ball, and the idea entered his twisted brain:  we will create from the least of all the special days (it wasn’t even a holiday, just a day after a holiday) something called Black Friday, and the masses, like the sheep that they are, will follow, each year descending farther into the darkness and gloom of obscene consumer capitalism; we will.

And thus IT was born, like all evil, IT started small and without fanfare: one day after Thanksgiving deals were to be had, and the just-a-bit-more-overweight populace were strolling through the malls for an occasional bargain; then IT grew, and the advertisements became more prominent to the point they couldn’t be missed, and soon there were lines outside the stores, the stores that normally opened at 10 am started opening at 8 am and then further back to 6 am and back, back, back to midnight, and the deed was done.

But evil knows no limits, and boundaries that have stood since the Founding Fathers (or at least since Lincoln) are crossed, and Black Friday then started on – of all Days – Thursday – Thanksgiving Day itself – so now we could in all rights rename the bastard holiday Black Thursday, and the stores opened at 6 pm on this dark day, before the Thanksgiving dinner was even half digested, and the burps were still being heard – the consumerized public left their warms homes and families for the cold of the one mile long line, and bargains.

Sheep Waiting to be Shorn

It was finished.  The holiday destroyed.  The beautiful hair was cut, and the graceful condor crashed.  It was all commercialism now, and the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving counted the money, his heart still as small as ever, if not smaller.

P.s.   In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”  To learn more about a thankful life in God, see http://www.brunstad.org.

A Tale of Two Cats

On a subject less heavy, I will talk about our cats, of all things.

Mr Kitty, an Orangeman fan

We have two cats:  Mr Kitty and Melcore.  Mr. Kitty adopted us about six years ago; he showed up at our back sliding glass door and has been with us ever since.  He just moved right in, in his Mr Kitty way, and has become part of our family.   Some call Mr. Kitty cute, with his black and white tuxedo fur, but I’ve always held the opposite – that he is, yes, a killer.  In fair weather, it’s not uncommon for him to bring dead or half dead mice into our house or even a bird; walk outside our door and you can see the littered remains of his mass murder spree: a dead rabbit here or there, half a mole head by the driveway, the tail of some animal by the picnic table (the only remains left).

I have no love for Mr Kitty but I respect him, and he respects me.  I respect him because – overlooking his ghastly psychopathic side – he is a fighter.  He often comes home with wounds on his back or side – whole areas of his skin gone, and we don’t know what he was fighting or how big it was, but surely this animal held his own (or went down fighting).  He will be gone sometimes for over a day, and we don’t know where he is or what he is doing.  He leads a double life, we suspect, and probably comes home when he’s tired of the brawls or the unending rampage against small animals.

He comes to us to sleep or to get some chow, and he is not above curling up on the couch with us, this O so cute killer of ours!  And he can be a bad kitty, getting up on the table or even sleeping on my printer, but like all cats, he cannot seem to learn.  Have you ever seen an advertisement for Cat Obedience School?  No, I doubt it.

Bad Kitty sleeping on my printer!

Cooly, Mr Kity walks around as if he owns the universe, and everything in our human realm he finds boring or trivial, and if you look at his Mr Kitty face, he looks like he has had many trials in life (of which we are one), and he seems piqued that he has to endure us.

Melcore is the opposite.  We bought him via a Cat Adoption program; we picked him, he didn’t pick us.  You would think he would be the most well adjusted animal you could find, but it is not true.  He is skittish, and runs off as if you’re going to beat him when you walk down the hallway and he happens to be there.  Melcore couldn’t kill a fly – not because he’s so humane, but because he’d be afraid of it.  He too goes outside and does something – what, we also don’t know – but never comes back with prey in his mouth, and always comes back looking for one thing:  chow.  He will scratch pitifully at the sliding glass door until we let him in, then will sit by his bowl with one arm up and bent, following our every move with his Melcore face, a pitiful clump of fur in the universe that needs food.  If he is not taken care of to his linking, he will go down the hallway and meow until someone gets up and does something for him, like feed him or let him out.  He will not eat anything but cat food, not even tuna.  Yes, he is a cat that will not eat tuna, and I think some brain damage has happened along the way.

Another bad kitty, sleeping near my electronic equipment!

He is a welfare cat and wants a handout.  He is our dependent.  Whereas Mr. Kitty could do without us, I think, and pencils us into his ever busy life of killing small animals, Melcore needs us to keep his little fat belly full, even though at the same time he might be afraid of us.  He does let us pick him up and is somewhat tolerant of the shinagins of our 9 year old boy, but, in the end, like all cats he will escape such human foolishness, and we will find him curled up and sleeping somewhere, and these days he seems to like sleeping on the clothes in our clean clothes baskets.

I’ve often thought that in heaven we will all be cats.  We’ll sleep on the windowsill in the sunshine and watch the world spin, get up to eat some chow and settle back down into our nap;  then, for some excitement, we’ll go outside and stalk a mouse – just for the fun of it.  It’s probably not the best analogy of heaven.  But I do think that, for our animals who both despise us and find a way to live with us, they have arrived.

The Rot

Today I spent a good part of my day in bed.  It was ridiculous. It’s like I got hit by a train, and was laying in the bushes waiting for an EMT to revive me.

It’s what is called cancer-related fatigue, and it is my nemesis. I sometimes call it “the rot.”  And it’s unpredictable; cause and effect don’t always go together.  I can do something and the rot follows;  sometimes not.  Mostly it just appears at the door when it decides it can just stop by, and it doesn’t even ring the doorbell before walking in!

All this is because of the treatments for cancer, and not the cancer itself.  The massive chemotherapy eight years ago can cause fatigue, but the six weeks of radiation were worse, and this is the real culprit in the fatigue story.  Why does radiation lead to fatigue?  They don’t know.

My body was generally assaulted, they said, and I believe it. I had a huge operation wherein I lost 30 pounds, besides the massive chemo and radiation that followed.  I kinda’ recovered from all this, but not really.  It actually took about four or five years for me to have enough energy to get through the day, though even then I was wiped out by 10 pm.  Still, it was an improvement – a vast improvement – and I remember telling my son Nathanial in the kitchen, “I have energy!  It’s like Christmas!”

But after seven months of chemo in 2014 and my operation in 2015, I’m back where I started;  sometimes I actually feel worse than then.  It’s not always bad; it comes and goes.  I can clean up the kitchen and be wiped out.  Do a bit of yard work and I am wasted.  It’s often not easy for me to be around people, as conversation requires energy, and I spend a lot of time alone in my room at home.  At our Church’s summer conference, I spent a whole day in the trailer, just going out to use the bathroom.  Stimulation gets me; malls are horrible, and children drain me.  Unbounded bursts of energy, and I find the door.  I will be in a store, and the floor will give out under me, and I have to sit down.  If its really bad, I feel dizzy.  Really, really bad, and honestly – I kid you not – my body aches with fatigue, and I feel like someone has beat it up with a baseball bat.

It’s all about energy these days.  A rich person can buy a car on a whim, and if he sees an expensive coat, it’s his.  It doesn’t really matter how he spends his money, since he has a lot of it.  A poor man must watch every nickle, and has to deliberate on whether or not to spend an extra 50 cents to get sprinkles on his ice cream cone.  Before cancer – those glorious energy-laden days – I was like the rich man with boatloads of energy; now I am the poor man, who has to spend it wisely, lest it is gone.

I met a woman in our Church years ago, who had gone through chemotherapy with breast cancer.  “My body is not the same,” she told me. “If I stay up a bit too late now, I’m wiped out for three days.  But I do manage to hold a part-time job.”  She also told me that I needed to “listen to your body,” and that has been very good for me.

All this is par for the course for a cancer survivor.  We are an indomitable lot.  We lose body parts and suffer with pain, but keep going.  Once my ophthalmologist told me about his wife who has chemo brain;  she can’t remember anything.  I shared an office for three years with a coworker whose upper spine collapsed due to a tumor while walking up to the main office;  he lived, but said, “every morning I put my pain in a box and then go on my way.” Then there’s a survivor I ran into who has to sit up in a recliner to sleep, as they got the brain tumor out by going through his nostril and messed up his sinus.  We could go on, an on.

And my lot isn’t so bad, but it’s enough for me, and that’s why God sent it.  I mean, I know a lot of people with physical difficulties.   I know people with bad knees, others whose hips hurt, still others with terrible back pain;  there are asthmatics and some with feet that kill due to plantar facia, still more whose head pounds with migraines and who have stomach problems;  their hands don’t work due to carpel tunnel, and their eyesight is bad;  they can’t hear and some have trouble pooping.  The list is endless, so I am far from the only one with something going on, but it’s mine, and it’s cancer-related.

So there’s cancer itself and living with the effects of the cancer treatments, but it’s better to live with the effects of the cancer treatments than not live at all!  This side of the grave, you can still have a development in God, so every breath is precious!  Now we have to put up with our bodies, but then not.  How wonderful that would be:  to have a body that never gets old or breaks down!  Can you image a flower that never wilts or a sunset that never fades into black! Surely, this is something to look forward to and worth some difficulties that we might have now.

http://www.brustad.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Not Be Thankful?

What I am about to say is the honest truth.

At about 3 am last night I got up to go pee;  the house was dark and just a bit cold, as we turn down the heat but, then again, we’ve had a great November – no snow and it being between 50 and 70 degrees during the day. Anyway, somewhere upon this journey from my bed to the toilet and back, it suddenly came to my heart to be thankful for Cyberknife.  I might have made fun of my robot friend in earlier blogs, but he (or she) has done a marvelous thing in my life:  eradicated the cancer in my lower left lung that, if let to grow, could do me in.  Not only that, but the procedure was a breeze, and the side effects nil.

Thankfulness to me isn’t like second nature;  it’s not even first.  We see the world through the eyes of our lust, and we always seem to want more and more, and nothing is ever right in just the right way that we want it to be. Never.  It’s a whole new world to go against this and say NO to it;  then light comes, and suddenly your life doesn’t look too bad;  hey – it actually looks pretty good and, with the right eyes, you see that everything is just perfect for you.  Then you can be happy.

I’ve recently thought that I am especially blessed, even with all the cancer stuff.  I have all that I need in terms of a house and food, and I have great, caring friends and family around me, great kids and teenagers (whose biggest fault is they keep wanting to eat), and on top of it all, I have a calling to be like Jesus.  What else could you want?

Seen with the right eyes, even the cancer stuff has been good;  even a blessing.  I don’t understand it all, but I do know that it’s helped me to wake up to what is really important in life.  You should read the chapter Soul and Barbed Wire in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, a book chronicling the Soviet work labor camps.  At the end of the chapter, he said (and I paraphrase), “Thank you work labor camp!  You have saved my life!”

A Soviet Union Work Labor Camp – Siberia

How can we understand that?  They stole the best years of his life, forced him into hard labor in Siberia and they (to give you an idea of the five star hotel he found himself in) had the prisoners take showers outside in cold water.  And yet, he thanks the camp.  Amazing!

We’ve heard the phrase to “count ones blessings,” but we don’t usually include cancer or hard labor in a Siberian gulag in that list.  How about not having money, or having a difficult time with one of our children?  Do we count any of the above in the list of the blessings we have received, and are we counting our blessings in a  human way, perhaps a way that makes sense to our eminently logical minds?

So these bad things happen, but perhaps they are not bad at all.  Who knows:  maybe they’re good!  A blessing! What makes them bad is when they are a catalyst for something bad that happens inside, and then we are bitter, or offended or envious.  Then they are bad!  But if the bad things are taken good inside, and seen as a very positive thing for our Christian development, then what can we say?  We have heaven on Earth, even if we happen to have enough trials to sink a boat.

Really, it’s all good.  Even cancer.  We wouldn’t want life to be too easy now, would we? People sometimes seem to reach the age of 45 and then go stale after that;  nothing ever happens in their lives that challenges them, and it’s the same routine day in and out, right up until the grave.  But all these tribulations, whether big or small, form us into something beautiful if we let them bring up ugly things from the depths – perhaps even unthankfulness – so that we can go against them and rid ourselves of them.  Forever.  Then we don’t lead a boring life!
Thank you, O robot with an ugly nose, and may you shoot your rays at many more to cure them by the hand of the doctor!  You have been very good to me, but, I must say, my wife with her beautiful nose has no competition here, and if I never saw you again, that would be ok !

http://www.brunstad.org

 

 

 

 

CyberKnife (Part III)

Hematology-Oncology Associates of CNY, where I receive my cancer treatments

Today was my last Cyberknife treatment, the third one of three.

How does it feel to finish your cancer treatments, you may ask.   I will tell you:  it feels great.  Now, these treatments were nothing like eight years ago (surgery, chemo and radiation) or last year (chemo and radiation) but it still feels good.  CyberKnife treatments this time around were like light beer or ice cream with no sugar;  they resembled the medieval medicinal remedies cancer is known for but were not the full torture, to be sure.

But it’s more than just a good feeling. When I walked out of Hematology/Oncology Associates (HOA) today, with the building behind me, I was walking away from one chapter in my life – however brief – and walking into another one.  You see, when you are first diagnosed with cancer or have a reoccurrance, the Earth stops spinning with a giant lurch, and the planets freeze in their rotations. Eight years ago when I was first diagnosed, even the stars showed their shock by failing to fall.  Then gradually, after about a year and a half, the Earth began to spin again, and the planets tentatively continued their rotation, and we were on our way out of the cancer world.

You can say the initiation into this world begins when the doctor tells you the statistics, and then you get to go home and try to get a good night’s sleep.  In this world, statistics are not your friend.  No, no, no, but that’s another story.

But we can say that this world is not like a high-school fraternity, but more like the Marines, and you have just signed the paperwork and taken the oath: “I pledge to fight my enemy on land, on the seas, with blood, sweat and tears…”  Then there’s boot camp, sitting in a recliner to make the experience of being poisoned so much more comfortable, and the radiation, where the four technicians who set you up leave the room so only you get blasted, and who can forget the operations?  Just to add a bit more to the experience, lots of time after the operation they juice you up with more chemo;  yes, with me I was just six weeks out of my operation and barely healed when they started chemo and radiation, and not any chemo and radiation:  they blasted me! (And I wouldn’t have had it any other way, as we were after that statistical advantage!)

Yes, that is the experience, and then you walk out of HOA for the last time before the next reoccurrance, but hopefully forever.  It’s like you’ve done the time you’ve enlisted for and now are discharged honorably – honorably as long as you didn’t shrink back from the treatments or wave the white flag, saying “No more.”  You return to civilian life, and can enjoy watching the moon once again spin around the Earth and take walks, go to movies, get together with friends and in general live life – this wonderful thing called life!

So it is a good feeling.  Twice I’ve gotten dragged back into this cancer world.  The first time I went seven years with nary a thought about some rogue beast growing on my insides.  I had been discharged from this cancer world and, with eight children, I didn’t have time to think about cancer.  I was just too busy keeping all the balls up in the air in my life to give cancer a thought, and I didn’t.  I was so immersed in my life, I forgot I was ever in cancer boot camp.  Had that ever happened, I wondered if the thought ever did come to me.  It was eons ago, my life had changed so.

So, you can imagine my shock when my first reoccurance happened, and suddenly I was dragged back into the chemo chair and felt so awful, what had happened eight years ago seemed trivial by comparison.  How did I get here again, I wondered?  It was like fighting in the South Pacific in World War II, only to be told in 1963 that you had to go back to that same island beach against the same enemy, and storm it all over again.  As you trod through the water with your rifle in hand a second time, you might ask, “How did I get here again?  I thought we won this war!”  That is how I felt in the chemo chair.

I will spare you the details of my second re-occurrance, but we get dragged into the cancer world and get released only to get dragged back into it again.  It’s all against our will, but it’s also all in God’s will.  So I felt pretty great leaving HOA today after my three measly CyberKnife treatments.  They may be measly, but they still involved the cancer beast and – if the Lord wills – there will be no return.

 

http://www.brunstad.org

CyberKnife (Part II)

Today was day 2 of my CyberKnife treatments.

Lest you think Cyberknife is like other medieval cancer treatments, it is not.  Only an hour, no IVs or vein getting, no knives or poison;  it’s great.  They even try to make the experience nice for you.

Exhibit #1:  the drop ceiling that you look at during the treatment has a beautiful sunset image spanning over the nine tiles;  there must be a light behind the opaque image, so it’s all lit up.  So while the robot moves from spot to spot and zaps you with high-intensity radiation, you can gaze at a beautiful sunset. What could be better?

Exhibit #2:  Then there is the music.  Yesterday Dominick informed me that I could bring my own music CD to treatments.  I didn’t have to listen to the Eagles greatest hits anymore, like yesterday.  Again, what could be better?  But I had to chose my music well.  What is appropriate music to have playing while being zapped by a robot: that is the question.  Classical?  Pop?  Regee?  I didn’t want anything too jivy, as I was hoping to get some rest during my hour-long treatment, so I had to consider the question from many angles.  Something smooth, but I didn’t want elevator music, or and I didn’t want something so smooth that it put me into a deep sleep, with a snore.  “Hey, wake up,”  Dominick would say.  “Treatment’s over!” and he has to slap me twice on the cheeks to rouse me.

Then there’s the question of the robot itself.  What would the robot like?  If you’re a robot doing your job, like a construction worker on a site, what would you want to listen to?   Heavy metal?  Acid Rock?  Rap?   Then my mind floated into other areas, and further questions arose:  what if I played something like the Beatles, and the dang thing started swerving back and forth when it zapped me;  or if I played “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees, and the machine disco danced across my field of view?

Questions, questions.  I eventually just settled with a mix of soft pop with a modicum of musical talent baked into a soft beat, and some stupid lyrics about love or something, plus a bit of Dylan.

Other sundry items:  I asked Dominick how much I would have to spend if I wanted to buy a Cyberknife machine and put it in my garage.  He again looked at me funny and laughed, this time getting my sense of humor.  I explained that perhaps we could use it to zap the fleas off the cats, or if kid in the neighborhood swallowed a marble: zap, we could blow it away with one beam right in my own garage.  He said we would need about 7 or 8 mil, and that is out of my price range, I told him.  Too bad.  It could be a Church fundraiser.

Well, that was the medical part of my day, but there is another sundry item I just remembered.  We talked to a lady in the waiting room who had had CyberKnife treatments, and she said they billed insurance $100,000.  Is it true?  I wouldn’t doubt it.  I had my J-tube changed a month ago – a five minute procedure, and they gave me a box with three plastic tubes – and eventually the bill made it to me.  The five minute visit was $240, and the box with plastic tubes was $270.  I called them and told them this was racket, but no dice.  Lets just say you can’t fight city hall.

So that’s my second day of Cyberknife treatments.  Afterward I went to a service for a wonderful woman, a good lady, who was the mother of one of my good friends.  Then home, and life with eight kids once again ramps up, with all that that entails.

One more treatment tomorrow, and I exit the cancer world, hopefully forever – unless I get dragged back into it again against my will (but per God’s will)…we’ll just live life for now and let God figure out the details of my future.

http://www.brunstad.orgg

 

 

 

 

 

CyberKnife (Part I)

Today was my first Cyberknife treatment, and all told it went fairly well.

Angela and I got to my cancer center at 9:30 and waited a few minutes, then were led into the room where IT – the robot – lived.  It was bigger than I thought, towering over me easily but still tucked in it’s downtime position, like a bird with its beak hidden in its feathers.  Dominick, the technician who runs the machine, showed me a tight-fitting vest with black and white stripes down the front – just like at Alcatraz – and dangled three electrodes in his hand, explaining that these electrodes would be attached to the vest and would help Cyberknife to track my breathing.

All this is very cool as the procedure lasts and hour and, of course, during this time I have to breath.  So the tumor is a moving target for the robot, and this robot happens to be shooting super high intensity radiation at the tumor so: we don’t want to make a mistake, now do we?  But I guess it doesn’t.

There’s two white receptors on the ceiling across from each other, and these take a continuous x-ray of me;  I have $50 worth of gold in me to mark where the tumor is, and these receptors track the gold marker.  On the third, open side of a four sided imaginary square was a large, white bar;  this, Dominick said, would track my breathing.

Pretty high-tech.  I asked if there was a robotic nose scratcher, as I’m sure my nose is going itch during the procedure.  It always does.  I imagined a small robot strapped to my forehead, and when I said, “Left nostril”, it would extend and scratch. Dominick looked at me funny when I asked all this – as if no one had ever asked such a question – and, being a professional, said that, no, there is no robotic nose scratcher.

We began the procedure and the choice of music wasn’t what I should have ever agreed to: the Eagles, Hotel California and all their hits, but I got through it, as well as the treatment.  I’m laying there still as a cucumber on a plate, watching this thing move around and hum at me;  it has several joints on it so it can rotate every which way, and it decides to move up above me and hum, then down to my side and keeps on humming; then it moves way up and cocks it head and hums more, then moves way down below me and to my left and keeps humming.  Of course, I can’t move, so with my eyes I watch this thing point it’s nose at me (and it does have a nose, but not as cute as my wife’s!) and, at one point, it had poor robot etiquette and was about six inches from my nose and, still humming, and I can see small markings on the things nose, and in the background is the Eagles crowing out, “you can check out but can’t leave.” All this is far from comforting, especially since all through it I can’t move a muscle, nor do I.

Suddenly when we’re into the eighth or tenth Eagles greatest hits the robot decides it’s had enough.  I notice it moves high abobe me and pivots back into its sleeping positiom, putting its nose back into its feathers.  This is a good sign, and the Eagles music is gone too.  The lights go on, and Dominick comes in and says that we are done.

When a test is done, can we count the joy?  I’ve never had a test that I wanted to go on.  I’ve never said, “This test isn’t long enough!  It’s only 15 minutes and I was hoping for 20!”  No, with me at least, I’m always happy when the test is done and the technician says the implement of torture has been withdrawn, whatever that implement is.  “Torture” might be a bit too strong a word for this session, but after an hour: do you know how it feels when your delicate cranium skin falls asleep on the right side – and only on the right!  It’s not like the rack in the middle ages, and I’ve had worse, but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that!  I should mention that other body parts had fallen asleep with no seeming logic behind them, (like, why the right cheek) and lets not forget that we are an hour on the table; so, yes, it’s always happy when the technician finally says, “It’s over.  You can sit up.”

And that was my Cyberknife day!  There’s supposed to be minimal side effects to Cyberknife, but I did have fairly brutal fatigue in the evening (that is one potential side effect), but more about that later.