Tag Archives: Science

The Chemo Diaries: More Summer Fun

July 27, 2015Cancer, Fear, Health and Wellness, Politics, Reasonadenocarcinoma, Cancer, Chemotherapy, Education, Fear, Health, ingredients, journalism, Lung Cancer, misinformation, paranoia, poison, Politics, Reason, Science, Sense, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Aside from my ever diminishing veins, the infusions during maintenance continue to be easy and relaxing. I guess I am lucky in that way — I know people who have different cocktails that they have various reactions to, from rash to fever to nausea on one end and flat out groggy sleep on the other. During these Alimta cycles, I am in and out fairly quickly and my biggest complaint is not having enough time here with the heated massage chair and my morning coffee to, uh, get any real work done…

Two infusions ago this chemo drug appeared to really mess with my digestive system, but it cleared up just in time for my scheduled CT scan and did not recur with the following round. The assumption now is that I simply caught a stomach bug that lingered for a couple weeks. The whole repressed immunity thing has been on my mind lately, and not just because what probably should have been a 24 hour virus took me 14 times longer to purge from my system.

Although the ensuing three weeks were relatively symptom-free (steroids make me irritable, mess up my sleep for three or four days and make me an emotional raw nerve; the chemotherapy wreaks havoc with my joyous time travel into the land of teenage acne, but even these things seemed to lessen somewhat), the issue of immunity and, more specifically herd immunity, was thrust back front and center when we brought a new kitten home from the pound. Continue reading The Chemo Diaries: More Summer Fun →

The Myth of the Wellness Warrior

July 23, 2015Cancer, Health and WellnessBlogs, Cancer, Chemotherapy, commercialism, communication, consumerism, Education, Fear, food, Health, ingredients, journalism, Lies, misinformation, paranoia, Reason, Science, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Please note, this is Part One of a series. Click here to jump to Part Two or follow the link at the end of this post. Part Two contains some very important information that greatly expands upon some of what is raised here.

Somehow I managed to miss the name Candice-Marie Fox when I was going through earlier research on foods that are claimed to cure cancer, of which her pineapple diet ranks as one of the more ludicrous. Through the grapevine, I learned of this diet yesterday and immediately I wanted to find out if there was anything plausible about it. Certainly, pineapple is healthy to eat and it is often used for digestive issues due to its enzymatic activity, so I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. Of course, I did not expect that there would be an actual cure in there, but maybe I could ascertain some actual benefits to the diet that transcended my initial skepticism. I was excited about this possibility; less so about discovering one more person preparing to cash in on a faux cure.

Image from www.medicalnewstoday.com — Pineapple is good for you.

A quick Google search brought up hundreds of articles online about how this woman, Candice-Marie Fox, a former model (always in the lead of the story), beat “Stage 3” or “Stage 4” (depending on the article) thyroid cancer by “ditching her husband” and eating a diet dominated by pineapple and other fruits. As is often the case in this sort of story, even as it is translated into multiple languages, the text is almost identical from web site to web site. And most of those articles can be traced back to a source in that British rag called the Daily Mail — not exactly a solid, investigative news source.

A few other “news” outlets picked the story up. It makes great click bait, after all. But fascinatingly, these actual news stories manage to get a whole bunch of facts wrong. Which is not surprising, as the former model herself seems to trip over her own facts many times, even in interviews on other web sites after her celebrity began to grow.

Continue reading The Myth of the Wellness Warrior →

Let’s Talk Nutrition!

July 19, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reasonadenocarcinoma, body, Cancer, Chemotherapy, Education, food, Health, ingredients, Lies, Lung Cancer, misinformation, paranoia, Reason, Science, Sense, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Doing research on Cancer, you cannot help but stumble across about a million web sites (not to mention books, those old things) ready to inform about all the ways that food and supplements can either prevent or cure the myriad of cancers out there. So I thought I would do everyone a solid and break down the Truth About Nutrition and Cancer right here. I’m not a doctor, nor a nutritionist, but I am a human being who eats, takes his vitamins AND has cancer! Kind of makes me an expert, just don’t look at this as medical advice. (The info here is good for people without cancer, too, because everyone wants to be healthy!)

About the time that a patient receives a diagnosis of CanCeR, or any other crazy disease/condition/illness/mutation that sets the mind into panic mode, someone is going to be hot after a diet to improve things or search out a cause in the previous diet for where things went terribly wrong, or otherwise look to Nutrition for answers. And, just as inevitably as Nutrition will be sought out for those answers, the InterWebs will provide volumes about why whatever the patient had been eating was the cause of his or her maladies, or perhaps what the patient had not been eating, but whichever the case is there will most certainly be a solution/cure for whatever ails said patient in the form of an ingestible, potentially (or at least allegedly) natural substance. And, by gum, this is in spite of the fact that Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex have conspired to keep the valuable information a secret (which is why it is available on thousands of non-academic, ready to sell you something web pages).

And this is when I point out something obvious, which many individuals fail entirely to pay attention to while distracted by the conspiracy theories being thrown at them: even when the information is being “given away for free,” the site you are visiting is almost certainly selling something. Continue reading Let’s Talk Nutrition! →

Clip Show: Cancer Edition 2

July 8, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reasonadenocarcinoma, Blogs, body, Cancer, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Fear, Health, Lies, Lung Cancer, misinformation, paranoia, positive approach, Positivity, Science, Sense, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Welcome to another Clip Show! Here are some things that were lingering in open tabs for a while that I intended to use or share, but haven’t found a proper post within which to do so. I encourage you to click the links and explore, watch the videos here and enjoy. Hopefully there is something for everyone.

I don’t normally reference Fox News as a source of reason, but here is a great interview with actress Maura Tierney discussing her experience with chemotherapy:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/09/26/er-star-maura-tierney-debunks-chemo-myths-after-breast-cancer/

Continue reading Clip Show: Cancer Edition 2 →

Scanning the Options

June 29, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reasonadenocarcinoma, body, business, Cancer, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Health, Lies, Lung Cancer, poison, Science, Sense, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Today I had the pleasure of going in for a CT scan, which I mean literally, as in I enjoy the experience. It is a brief scan, takes less than fifteen minutes in the actual room, but for some reason I always find it quite relaxing. The parts leading up to the scan aren’t quite as comfortable. Like choking down the solution that will make me light up from the inside…

Drinking a barium solution — Getting Radioactive

Drinking barium sulfate has become somewhat less disgusting since they introduced the mochaccino flavor, it’s true. One of the ladies in reception noticed my second bottle of the morning during my check-in and mentioned that she heard it was “pretty good.” I told her that “more palatable” was a better description, but it is admitedly a huge leap over the nasty flavors offered just a few months ago. Just one additional way in which science is continuing to earn that motto, “better living through chemistry.”

And the fasting; I hate the fasting. Not that I can really complain about four hours between 6:30 and 10:30 in the morning — since these are my usual hours between breakfast and my late-morning snack, I got off easy today. My scans are usually a bit earlier and I can’t sneak a meal in, but today I got lucky. That’s why, I suppose, I was in an especially good mood upon arrival. Continue reading Scanning the Options →

Clip Show, Cancer Edition

June 10, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellness, Politics, Reasonbody, Cancer, Chemotherapy, Education, Health, journalism, misinformation, poison, Science, Sense, video, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Every now and again, I come across some great video or article that I want to incorporate, but it doesn’t fit into the current post I am writing. Chemo brain being what it is, I usually just forget about these tidbits of juicy knowledge, but once in a while I copy the link for later.

Now, because I am in a sharing mood, I present this recap of what you would have otherwise missed from my browsing history…

Ladies and gentlemen: the Clip Show, Cancer Edition!

Tom Brokaw’s stirring interview on NPR’s Fresh Air:
Continue reading Clip Show, Cancer Edition →

Integrative Medicine, Positive Care and Negative Ramifications

May 14, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellness, ReasonBlogs, body, business, Cancer, Chemotherapy, commercialism, communication, consumerism, Education, Health, Lies, misinformation, poison, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, Science, Sense, toxins, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

If we, as a society, could allocate just an additional $120 million each year toward research and development of new cancer treatments, that would seem like a great idea. Because there is a lot of money out there already directed at existing therapies, running clinical trials of proven concepts and supporting the refinement of effective treatments already in existence, it also seems like a great idea to take this $120 million and direct it toward new concepts and approaches that are not yet mainstreamed into Western Medicine. This is the reason, I suspect, that over the past twenty years or so, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) has morphed into Integrative Medicine and has been granted enormous research subsidies and acceptance within many mainstream health institutions. Allocating even a mere $120 million is a huge responsibility, so it also seems like it would be a great idea to carefully vet the areas on which the funding will be spent.

Here is some amazing news: the actual amount of government funding for research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2015 and 2016 has reached $369 and $378 million annually, according to the National Institute of Health. This should be a Golden Age of Medical Advancement! Sizable annual funding being made available outside of the mainstream of modern medicine must be the answer to why there has been no definitive Cancer Cure.

Only it isn’t. And the reason is Continue reading Integrative Medicine, Positive Care and Negative Ramifications →

Not Dead Yet, No Matter What You May Have Read

May 4, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellness, Reasonadenocarcinoma, body, Cancer, Changing the Narrative, Chemotherapy, communication, Critical Thinking, Education, Fear, Health, journalism, Labels, Lung Cancer, paranoia, positive approach, Positivity, Reason, Science, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

A person I know quite well — and with whom I recently have had several lengthy conversations about my current state of affairs — offered an interesting appraisal of her understanding of my health and well-being to my wife. She said, rather unceremoniously, that she had expected me to be dying. In fact, she seemed quite surprised (and possibly a bit put off) by how healthy I appeared. Turns out, I have news for her:

I’m not dead yet.

In fact, here I am, looking quite well (and dare I say “dashing”) in my new progressive lenses picked up today to aid my aging eyes. True, after over 15 years of having a stable prescription, the chemotherapy seems to have begun affecting my vision ever so slightly, at least in the first couple of feet. So this minor side effect has required me to jump straight into trifocal territory. Aside from the minor “swimmy” effect of turning my head side to side while looking through the “mid-range” section, these are actually quite amazing. But that isn’t really what this entry is about, so I’m going to move along.

The thing that most startled me, and which I actually took some offense at, was the notion that a person who is not stupid managed to ignore virtually everything that she had been told about my condition, the state of cancer research and, perhaps most importantly, why statistics do not tell a whole story, or often even a remotely correct one. And what did this person rely upon to make up her mind about what I was going through and my prognosis for continuing life?

Continue reading Not Dead Yet, No Matter What You May Have Read →

The Chemo Diaries Round Six: Cycles End, Cycles Begin

March 23, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellnessadenocarcinoma, body, Cancer, Chemotherapy, communication, Education, Fear, Health, Positivity, Reason, Science, Sense, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

Going into the final round of what I term Phase One of my treatment, I am reflecting a bit on two coincidences that have given me plenty to ruminate on. One of these is the fact that of one of my high school friends who I have not seen in far too many years informed me recently that her spouse is also going through chemotherapy and, interestingly, was just about a week ahead of me in the treatment schedule. The other coincidence of merit this week is that my neighbor will be starting her own chemo treatments at the same time I go in to complete my initial run of this badass toxic cocktail before moving toward a kinder and gentler maintenance schedule.

Neither of these coincidentally timed treatments are for the same cancer, which would have been too weird for believability anyway, and we probably won’t share identical side effects across the board or react too similarly to the drugs, but there is still a commonality of experience that cannot be denied. My friend from high school is one of those rare and thoughtful people who is cursed with the right balance of kindness and patience to really place herself in the center of care giving. It feels weird saying this, but I would not wish that upon anyone, as great a gift as it is. This goes back to my issue with patient guilt, perhaps; I feel lacking when I cannot help those suffering worse than me or I feel guilty about not suffering as much as them, and this extrapolates to me not wanting others to suffer as a result of my condition or being forced to take care of me. Continue reading The Chemo Diaries Round Six: Cycles End, Cycles Begin →

Cancer Statistics Show Hope, But Statistics Are Still Bad For You

March 16, 2015Cancer, Health and Wellnessadenocarcinoma, body, Cancer, Education, Health, misinformation, Reason, Science, wellnessJeffrey Poehlmann

So… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have now begun releasing survival rate statistics for patients with invasive cancer. And it appears to be pretty good news, especially for prostate, breast and colorectal cancer patients. Across the board, however, patient longevity has been on the rise and the one thing that the statistics do make clear is that what they term “survival rates” are increasing.

I am not a fan of “survival” as a description of continuing to live while dealing with cancer. Along with statistics in general, this sort of terminology paints a narrow and misleading picture Continue reading Cancer Statistics Show Hope, But Statistics Are Still Bad For You →

Just Bad for You

Saving you from yourself