Drug Shadows

Pharmaceuticals are risky business. Having them prescribed and monitored by a doctor is a safeguard, but it doesn’t make them safe. I chose to be repeatedly injected with toxic R CHOP chemotherapy because, after research, I believed it afforded me the best chance of staying alive. I’ve won that bet in the short term as my [...]

International Prognosis Index

It looks like I don’t qualify for the Enzastauarin clinical trial. My IPI is too low, which turns out to be a good thing.
 
IPI stands for International Prognosis Index. It was developed 15 years ago by oncologists as a clinical tool to help predict the prognosis of patients with aggressive Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. In the Index, [...]

Live and Learn

We can’t control most of what happens to us, but we can choose to learn from the good, the bad and the ugly. 

Ignorance is not bliss, but ignorance of ignorance can be bliss. Those who reside in the certainty of simple pieties are often happier than those . . . who toss and turn in [...]

Clinical Trial

I have greatly benefited from the experiences of those who have had cancer before me and I would like to help others who will be diagnosed with the disease in the future. That’s why I recently asked Dr. Dax about any clinical trials I could join.
 
Clinical trials are “biomedical or health-related research studies in human [...]

Exposing Myself

I write for a living. It’s not a lucrative vocation. The percentage of writers who are financially successful is as miniscule as the number of amateur athletes who make it to the pros or the number of aspiring actors who become famous enough to attract the paparazzi. But people still play sports sans spectators or [...]

Twilight Zone

At 18 I saw the light (as told in the page Growing Up Catholic). In my middle years I did my best to serve the light (see Protestant Reformation). So how did I wind up at age 57 in the Twilight Zone?
 
To borrow a phrase from Kinky Friedman, I feel like a “Jehovah’s Bystander,” someone [...]

The Other Side of the Needle

I was in the oncology clinic last Tuesday for my fifth of six rounds of chemo. Our word “oncology” comes from the Greek onkos, meaning bulk, mass, or tumor and the suffix logy, meaning “potentially nauseating.”
 
The study of tumors includes diagnosis, therapy, follow-up and palliative care of people with cancer. Nurses don’t wear hats anymore, [...]

Survivor: Chemo

How about a new version of Survivor called Chemo Clinic? To qualify, contestants must have a white blood count between 3.5 and 10.6 KmcL and not be afraid of needles. They would have a series of toxic drugs injected into their arteries, after which they would compete at various tasks like:
 

Correctly pronouncing the concoctions [...]