Tag Archives: wellness

Dinner With Friends: A Healthy Recipe for Healing

Cancer, Health and Wellness, , , ,

As in all things, it is important to remain grounded and retain good humor. While I have been fortunate enough to have a supportive family, I have found that one particular activity has been especially effective in reminding me about who I am and what I aspired to as a younger man. I don’t do it often, but it gives me a chance to largely forgo maudlin conversations and getting sucked into pseudo-therapy or endless medical recommendations or even just additional reminders of what I am dealing with every day. I position this, in spite of (or perhaps because of) its relative infrequency, at the top of my list of desirable, repeatable events: dinner with old friends.

The friends referenced need to be of the “knew you when” variety. While dinner with new good friends is terrific (or coffee, or whatever friends do when they are just hanging out these days), such new friends are likely in the thick of it with you right now. It’s a different vibe. Spending time with them is great, meaningful and hopefully supportive in the best ways. But they cannot bring with them that sense of history, served best by those who you have not seen much of in years or at least long enough not to be deeply associated with the current process of therapy, from diagnosis and beyond.

This evening I had been out to dinner with four college roommates with whom I remain in touch and who still live locally (at least when their jobs don’t have them in some more exotic locale). The timing was great, as one just flew in from overseas yesterday and another is flying out tomorrow for the East Coast and the third, nearly on par with the travel obstacles, drove in from the Westside of LA to meet with the rest of us downtown. The locale was a

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Scanning the Options

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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 →

Why I Kept My Cancer Private

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In this age of social media, some people might question why I kept quiet about my cancer treatment for as long as I did. There were some very simple reasons for me — in spite of the fact that I was writing a blog about it the whole time. (If you are learning about my experience for the first time, that link is a good place to start reading after you are done here.) Essentially, however, I wanted to keep my personal life separate from what I felt might otherwise define me in the eyes of others. This was a short-term issue, I realized, because at some point the nature of living with an inoperable cancer is that it does define much of a patient’s life, regardless of how much one might prefer otherwise. So I decided to try the slow roll out of information and, to be quite honest, it has served me well (and I also think it has been good for many of the people in my life, too).

When I received my initial diagnosis, there were certain people, mainly family members, who already knew that I had some health issues that were being investigated. In addition to my immediate family, there were also my employers and maybe one or two other people who had to be in the loop, and I knew I would tell these people right away when I had all the information.

As part of my research, before I had any solid diagnosis, I had already gone through pretty much every possible scenario in my head and followed up online to gather information on what any potential diagnosis would mean. Along the way, I also discovered that
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Clip Show, Cancer Edition

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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:
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Integrative Medicine, Positive Care and Negative Ramifications

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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 →

Embrace the Bad Stuff, It’s Good for You

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

Nobody likes slogging through the shit. That’s pretty safe to say. But sometimes it must be done, whether we like it or not. If there are going to be hardships, we are told to look for a “Silver Lining,” as though our upside-down umbrella will magically fill with pennies. In the shit, those pennies might be damn near impossible to see.

Many people retreat as a first resort. Hide from the problems rather than face them. I would go so far as to suggest that such behavior is basic human nature: fight or flight syndrome, where running from danger is our first instinct — until we are cornered. The problem with health issues such as Cancer is that, whether one wants to admit it or not, the patient is ostensibly cornered before there is even a proper diagnosis. So any flight that may be attempted is not only in vain, it is illusionary. Being the ostrich may offer a temporary sense of calm to some people, but it also does nothing to help move through the difficulty and onward toward a better existence.

Self-help gurus and the proponents of countless “programs,” and also probably my mother at some point, have said that we grow through our challenges. In truth, it is the struggles in life both big and small that build what we call “character.” That nebulous term applies Continue reading Embrace the Bad Stuff, It’s Good for You →

Not Dead Yet, No Matter What You May Have Read

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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.

image

 

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?

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Narratives Matter, Beginning to End

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On the heels of a recent discussion on changing the Narrative of Cancer as a means to enable better communication and understanding with regard to the hundreds of cancer variants, I came across a very interesting article on a closely related topic: changing the Narrative of Dying. Far from being a depressing or downbeat approach, the article discusses the need for reevaluating our collective understanding of the “end of life” process in order to facilitate a healthier and happier means for saying our goodbyes without forgetting that, until the last moment, we are all still living and participating in this world. It touches on some important ideas, pivoting about the notion that our system, our society, marginalizes and fears death and, more specifically, the process of dying. Yet, death is as much a part of our existence as birth.
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Anger May Be Cathartic, But It Is Still Bad For You

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Being honest about our emotions is not always easy. Add a chronic or terminal illness into the mix and things always seem to get tougher. Sadness, self-pity (or loathing), denial, depression and, of course, our friend Anger, all come out to play.

Emotions can bubble up unexpectedly, violently, or simmer beneath the surface. They can trip a person up, derail a perfectly calm and pleasant morning, confuse everybody in the room and change just about any dynamic without a glimmer of grace or sense of appropriate timing. Emotions run counter to that thread of logic that many of us cling to for sanity, bubbling and popping and roiling all over our bodies like some adolescent’s acne. Yet, quite unlike the exquisite release of a properly ripe whitehead, venting our emotions can be done in decent company and in a healthy, scar-free manner — as long as anger does not get the upper hand.

The first thing to realize is that we are not fully in control of how we feel. We can work on our frame of mind constantly, quite successfully, and still not be 100% in charge.

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The Chemo Diaries Round Seven: Maintenance Begins

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Last Wednesday I had another CT scan to see how the initial six rounds of chemotherapy played out. On Friday I finally got around to looking at the images on my computer, whisking through cross sections of my body to try and get an idea of what was going on in there. On Sunday night I finally remembered the web site to check for the imaging results so I could read the reports. Then on Monday I went in to consult with my oncologist about what the reports actually meant and to verify what the next phase was going to be for my treatment.

We had anticipated that the tumor would likely not be gone. The previous scan in February had shown a distinct reduction in the tumor size, but not an overwhelming reduction. It seemed highly unlikely to me that it would shrink away in less than two months. So seeing it present on the scans and reading in the report that it was, at best, only marginally smaller was not a huge surprise. I was happy to read, however,

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