All posts by Jeffrey Poehlmann

Rejecting Research Is Never a Good Option

Business, Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , , , , , , , , ,

As a person living with cancer, I get suggestions all the time to look at non-medical treatments. By this, I mean mainly nutritional or holistic approaches that are meant to directly replace the use of “Western” medicine. Each suggestion comes with an anecdotal reference to someone who was “cured” by these methods, which range from the clearly bizarre to sensible health choices. Digging deeper, of course, reveals that every verifiable success story includes the use of early surgery or extensive chemo and radiation therapies.

And none of them, so far, have applied directly to my particular brand of cancer.

It doesn’t bother me so much to

Continue reading Rejecting Research Is Never a Good Option →

Wartime Bad, Peace Good

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , ,

We all have our daily battles. For me, these often have included little things, like holding my shit together while my daughter danced in front of the mirror instead of getting dressed for school or brushing her teeth. Lately, my battles have expanded to getting a deep breath after climbing the stairs, or getting up from a chair. Or just standing in a corner, leaning against a wall. Thankfully, that sort of battle is still relatively rare for me and only lasts a short time, but they remind me of how unimportant (or maybe very important) other battles have been–not in the fighting, of course, but in the experiences around them.
Continue reading Wartime Bad, Peace Good →

Never Underestimate the Power of a Good Title

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , ,

So I have been ruminating on the title of my future memoir. The one I’ll be writing about this experience with cancer once it has run its course. Or rather, once its course has been run. I come solidly from the camp that appreciates having the title up front. Not that I’m opposed to changing it once the work has been completed, mind you. But I like to start every work with a few solid words that guide its development. The title, to me, sets the tone and theme and gets the ball rolling. Until that ball hits a wall or gets stuck in a corner or something, and then the title can be chucked right out and replaced. But still…
Continue reading Never Underestimate the Power of a Good Title →

Pain Is Bad For You, But It Is Better Than Malaise

Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , ,

When I woke up this morning, one of the first things I noticed was that laughing was painful. It wasn’t much of a surprise, as I had an incision at the base of my neck just at the bone, where tubes had been stuffed under the skin yesterday. And I had also had a bronchioscopy, so my throat was expected to be sore. But the grogginess and woozy feeling of the previous evening was thankfully gone.

Day after lymph node biopsy: http://youtu.be/ZbiCjcuTBh0
Continue reading Pain Is Bad For You, But It Is Better Than Malaise →

Denial Is a Dirty Word (and just bad for you)

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , ,

People have been talking to me a lot lately (and not surprisingly) about the power of positive thinking. These tidbits of wisdom have come from medical professionals and laymen alike. And it is true, positive thinking is quite useful. On the other hand, it does not mean ignoring the facts or believing that everything will work out without taking appropriate action. Without a hefty dose of pragmatism in the mix, putting on a sunny face and ignoring the reality of a situation is just another form of denial, and denial leads down a dark and dangerous road.
Continue reading Denial Is a Dirty Word (and just bad for you) →

Going In: Better To Go Facing Forward

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , ,

Today will be my second biopsy. This one, targeting soft tissue which can hopefully be used to extrude good DNA samples of the nefarious cells, will involve the removal of a lymph node from the side of my esophagus. It is a fairly routine, minor surgery, and I am excited to get it taken care of.

It also means that I get to pause with the tests for a while! And though I might miss getting that peek inside from each new scan, I am sure that I will have plenty of more opportunist in the near future. So I’ve got that going for me.
Continue reading Going In: Better To Go Facing Forward →

Getting from Point A to Point B, More Fun than Being Stuck at A

Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , ,

There is a lot to be said for knowing where you are going. And even if you can’t know the destination, at least knowing the path you are on.

When I first began wondering what was going on with my health, I suspected that I was merely dealing with fallout from a steroid treatment that I had taken for a shoulder injury. The steroids had left me wiped out and susceptible to whatever viruses my daughter was bringing home from school…and I spent several weeks fighting off whatever respiratory illness had dripped in my lap. Once the “colds” began clearing up, I had a few small infections that seemed to persist in my nose and finger. At that point, no one suspected that the nose infection was actually a weird little ingrown hair, but I was getting more concerned that the shortness of breath I had begun to experience was a result of walking pneumonia. The initial diagnosis was a probable systemic staph infection, but I was sent for a chest X-ray just to be on the safe side.

And that was when I suddenly no longer had an obvious path.

The X-ray identified a 3cm mass

Continue reading Getting from Point A to Point B, More Fun than Being Stuck at A →

Negativity is Positively Not in Your Best Interest

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , , , , , , , ,

I had a few other titles for this post sliding around in my brain. After getting up and down to move the cat out of my daughter’s bedroom a few times, this is the only one that had stuck, so I’m going to go with it in spite of the cheesy wordplay. Partly, that is because it is also an accurate summation of my perspective.

Today is November 7th, 2014. It’s a Friday. And it is a good day.

Yesterday, after three-odd months of waiting and questions and test after test, I finally received a diagnosis from  my doctor regarding why I haven’t been feeling precisely top-drawer recently. It turns out that, in general terms, I have Stage 4 Lung Cancer. More specifically, I have Adenocarcinoma, which is a non-small cell form of lung cancer, and it has spread from the 3 odd centimeter mass in my left lung to a few lymph nodes and eventually down to my hip bone. And I am so thankful to have this diagnosis. Not because I am pleased to “have cancer,” which would be kind of perverse, but because now I know what I am dealing with and I can get on with it.
Continue reading Negativity is Positively Not in Your Best Interest →

Cheap Wisdom: Not Worth Anything.

Health and Wellness, Politics, Reason, , , , , , , ,

I love Yogi tea, and that can be an actual endorsement. It is good tea. But their little tags with “wise” little quotes can be ludicrous.  Take the one I encountered this morning: “True understanding can only be found through compassion.” Really? So you can only encounter something by first engaging with itself? Or what? When you

Cheap wisdom on the label of a tea bag
More meaninglessness from America’s most trusted source of wisdom.

realize that compassion MEANS the attempt to understand, not only does it become clear that the quote lacks any substance whatsoever, but that it is also backwards. And this is indicative of cheap wisdom, the intent of which is never to actually encourage thought, but rather to encourage passive acceptance. It  becomes insidious when applied toward broader social aims, and is a tactic routinely used in politics as well as commercial advertising. Continue reading Cheap Wisdom: Not Worth Anything. →

Alien Abductions: Not So Healthy

Fear, Health and Wellness, Reason, , , ,

While reading The Skeptics Guide to the Paranormal, I was stunned to find a list of the common indicators that one has been abducted by aliens, only to realize that I could check off virtually every item. Anecdotally, it appears that the aliens have done an extraordinary job of both wiping my memory AND accounting for my lost time. I have also deduced that, by the standards required of numerous historical non-scientists, I am almost certainly the victim of numerous hauntings. And yet a part of me remains wary of either of these near-certainties.

Continue reading Alien Abductions: Not So Healthy →