I'm Clean!

I got the results of my PET scan back this week, and as far as that is concerned I’m clean of any further cancer. That’s one thing PET scans are used for, to detect cancer in the body, and nothing showed up. So nothing showed there, nothing showed up in my lymph, so as far as we can tell I’m clean of cancer. I’m down with that!

The only thing they’re concerned about now is the possibility of recurrence. To that end I’m taking part in a study that is looking at molecular markers in the tumor. In sixty percent of patients these markers are not present and those are considered at low risk for recurrence. If that be the case then all that is required is observation. I’ve been told by my surgeon that I’ll need a colonoscopy every year for the rest of my life, although after five years they may back off to once every other year. Oh well, it sure beats the alternative. I’m certainly thankful for the reprieve.

You know, when you get cancer you have a choice about how you’re going to approach it. Anything that I’ve ever read said that it’s better to keep a positive attitude about it as opposed to a fatalistic dread. Don’t get me wrong there’s always the mental battle, and it’s easy to spin an imaginary future that ends in death since cancer is terminal if not treated. When I was growing up getting a diagnosis of cancer was like getting a death sentence. Things are different today. People are beating cancer all the time. In fact, the vast majority of cancer diagnoses have survival as an outcome. So it would seem more realistic to keep that in mind as the outcome of your bout with cancer. The fact is you don’t know one way or the other what will happen if you’re treated. It’s you’re choice which outcome you will imagine. You might as well make the best of it.

Oldguy Reminisces – Part I

I mentioned in the last post that I’m a city boy. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan in the fifties and sixties. At that time Detroit was hoppin’ and poppin’ – it was the Motor City, Motown. It was the fifth largest city in the US, and Michigan was the fifth richest state in the union with Detroit leading the way. I was raised in the middle of a middle class, working class swath of the city where my friends fathers had jobs like produce manager, car salesman, insurance salesman, policemen, and low to mid-level managers for companies like Chrysler and Westinghouse. Most of their mothers did not work, their fathers could supply a middle class life style on a single paycheck. I didn’t know anyone whose fathers were unemployed.

My father worked for the city, a civil service job. When I was in school, his job was head operator at a power plant. Yeah, the city provided its own power for street lights and public buildings. The job didn’t pay as much as something comparable in the “private” economy, but it was a secure job and coming out of the Great Depression that fact was very desirable to him.

After turning sixteen, I always had a job. If it was pumping gas and doing oil changes at the corner Shell station when I was in high school, or working at the Ford Motor Company or a small machine shop in the neighborhood making parts for Chrysler, it was always possible to find a job. Of course, I was white, so I’m sure that helped. Maybe in the future I can get into the racial situation in the city (it wasn’t good, finally exploding in 1967).

I bring all this up to illustrate how far we’ve come from those times. Look at Detroit now. It’s lost forty percent of its population and is now considered the poorest city in America. Michigan has fallen to twenty fifth in wealth among states. I lay this at the feet of three men: Roger Moore at General Motors, Henry Ford II at Ford, and Lee Iacocca at Chrysler. It was they who made the decisions to move the manufacturing out of Detroit and Michigan to foreign countries and cut the American worker and his family off at the knees. If you want to look at what this neoconservative economic model that has been dominant for nearly thirty years is doing to this country, just look at Detroit. That’s where it is heading.

The rich don’t give a shit, and for some reason they are given the power to make the great decisions that affect everyone, including future generations. This is nothing short of aristocracy. If you’re rich and want a hyper class system in which the materially wealthy are privileged, then this is the way to continue to go. But if you’re like most of us and believe that people need good jobs to provide for their families, and have democracy in government, then we need to turn this back around. We need to stop buying into the rich man’s propaganda and the businessization of life. Thank goodness it seems the pendulum is at least slowing down, and may be about to swing back. Unfortunately a lot of damage has been done and there is probably some serious pain coming up. I hope you’re able to ride it out.

Oldguy Plants His First Garden

That’s quite an accomplishment for this city boy. I’ll get into the city boy aspect someday, but I have to say I’m proud of myself. It’s taken quite an effort to get it done, especially considering I’m coming off of major surgery so I can’t get too strenuous. Before all this latest stuff started happening we cleared out an area behind the small shed in the backyard for the garden. After reading Bill McKibben’s book, Deep Economy, and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemna, both highly recommended readings, along with Pollan’s new book, In Defense of Food, I realized I needed to grow my own food to ensure that I was eating something of nutritional value and without poisons. Frankly, I think what I have just had to go through is directly related to having been subject to the Industrial Petrochemical Agricultural Supermarket Fast Food Complex that has fed me the notorious Western Diet all of my Oldguy years. Let’s just say I see my garden as an act of independence and a middle finger to the powers that be.

Anyway, today we laid down a yard of potting soil and a yard of mushroom compost and tilled it under. Then we planted a row of red potatoes. My neighbor has a good crop of collards almost ready for a little harvesting, along with some snow peas beginning to climb, and some broccoli that’s flowering. We’ve also appropriated a six foot by twenty foot patch of the yard of the house behind me. It’s a rental that has a hard time keeping tenants and has been empty for months at a time, as it is now. So we just grabbed a piece in the far corner of the yard. You gotta love it, gardening as a rebellious act. We call them Alley Gardens, since they straddle the alley out back.

Cancer

It’s a pretty heavy word when it gets applied to you. It has a way of clarifying the thoughts.

When it was applied to me, I found I couldn’t deal with bullshit, didn’t want to deal with bullshit, and in fact, had the absolute right not to have to deal with bullshit. I only wanted the real deal around me. I had absolutely no interest in playing Let’s Pretend. I wanted reality and positivism around me. If I were to free myself of this plague, that seemed the best way.

Since I am the one with the cancer, it seems that I get to decide how I’ll approach it, thank you very much

“It’s cancer. I’m sorry…”

So said Dr. S two weeks ago after something like an emergency colonoscopy. On Jan 15 I had to go to the ER with some serious bleeding from where one shouldn’t normally see blood. It had been going on for a few days and seemed to be getting worse. Now we knew the reason why.

In a major way, the bleeding was an early warning that something was wrong. The doctors said that even though the cancer was present, it was too early to be bleeding like that. What was interesting was that the symptoms were nearly identical to that of my mother’s colon cancer of about two decades ago. Anatomically, it was in the same place and what tipped them off was what they called “early bleeding.” She had a sigmoid resection, took a little pill for a while and is now twenty years removed from the event.

On Jan 25, Dr Z performed the sigmoid resection on me. I have about twenty inches of incision down the middle of my gut. The nurses thought it cute that Dr Z went around my belly button leaving me that part of my anatomy. It seemed a rather large cut to me, but he wanted to be able to look around inside and see if it spread anywhere. It didn’t, and he says my lymph is clear. So things look good and I’ll be going to an oncologist this week to see what, if any, follow-up is necessary. I hear they are a cautious lot, so I’m guessing there will be a pill to take, but probably no serious chemo, for which I’m very thankful.

It’s all somewhat surreal to me. In three weeks, I have had cancer, had it cut out, and am now into the recovery period of some six to twelve weeks. Now I have it, now I don’t. Anyone besides me think that a bit strange?

It’s not like the first time I have had to face my own mortality. I’m not afraid to die. I’ve come to enjoy life and living and would like to stick around for a little while longer. Now, by God’s Grace, I intend to.