Our cancer news has become pretty routine, so I do not expect to add any posts until after the New Year. I’ll put an announcement of Facebook when I add the next post. Thanks to all who stop by to check in, and best wishes for a great holiday season and a happy and productive New Year.
David
December 8, 2010
December 7, 2010
A Good Source of Oncology News
Take a look at the top listing in the sidebar to the right. I added a section with links to oncology information. The first site, OncologySTAT, provide lots of information including free access to journal articles. If you're serious about learning about cancer, I recommend taking a look.
David
David
Low-Dose Asprin May Lower Cancer Rates
Check out this article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/us/07aspirin.html?hpw. It looks like all adults ought to discuss starting a low-dose aspirin regimen with their doctor at their next checkup.
David
David
December 3, 2010
CT and Blood Test Results, Chemo Round 3
I completed my third round of chemo about two hours ago, and all went well. I feel good. I just wish I'd feel as good on Monday through Wednesday.
We saw my oncologist before chemo, and he reported that my blood counts, liver tests, and kidney function were all good. He also had results from a comparison of my recent CT results with the scans from September and from before my surgery. There was no noticeable change in the right thorax and no evidence of metastasis outside of it. Given that they could not see any clear tumor mass the last time, I take the findings as an indication that my disease is at least stable. The results strengthened the cancer patient's chief bulwark against despair--the hope that treatment will at least provide a meaningful extension of life.
Another few thoughts on the topics raised in yesterday's post on the "Why Us" question. I did not mean to imply in that post that the decisions we make do not have an impact on our lives, only that some events like an automobile accident, winning the lottery, or getting cancer are essentially independent of our actions. They are not part of some grand narrative. My understanding of how our actions affect the world and ourselves is consistent with the Asian concept of karma. My interpretation of karma is as follows:
1. The world in an extremely complex and interconnected entity.
2. Our interactions with the world, our decisions and the actions that we take, affect the decisions and actions of others, and those actions and decisions affect even others, etc.
3. We are impacted by the decisions and actions of others and those influences are at least partly shaped by our previous decisions and actions. Our decisions find their way back to us through the actions of others.
4. On the average, good or right decisions return good or right results. Bad or wrong decisions tend to bring bad or wrong results.
Think of a pond filled with many vibrating posts where each post represents an individual. The wave-like rings that flow out from my post strike and are reflected from other posts near me and interact with the waves produced by the vibrations of other posts. The resulting waves return to me. While the interaction of the waves and the posts is extremely complex, perhaps complex enough to preclude prediction, causality is still involved, and on the average, right action produces positive results and wrong action produces negative results. One person making right decisions in a field (families, communities, and nations) where most are making wrong decisions will not benefit the one making right decisions much, but as fields are transformed from being composed predominantly of persons making wrong decisions to fields filled predominantly with persons making good decisions, the quality of life improves. The difficult questions are how to identify good or right actions and how to promote right action.
David
We saw my oncologist before chemo, and he reported that my blood counts, liver tests, and kidney function were all good. He also had results from a comparison of my recent CT results with the scans from September and from before my surgery. There was no noticeable change in the right thorax and no evidence of metastasis outside of it. Given that they could not see any clear tumor mass the last time, I take the findings as an indication that my disease is at least stable. The results strengthened the cancer patient's chief bulwark against despair--the hope that treatment will at least provide a meaningful extension of life.
Another few thoughts on the topics raised in yesterday's post on the "Why Us" question. I did not mean to imply in that post that the decisions we make do not have an impact on our lives, only that some events like an automobile accident, winning the lottery, or getting cancer are essentially independent of our actions. They are not part of some grand narrative. My understanding of how our actions affect the world and ourselves is consistent with the Asian concept of karma. My interpretation of karma is as follows:
1. The world in an extremely complex and interconnected entity.
2. Our interactions with the world, our decisions and the actions that we take, affect the decisions and actions of others, and those actions and decisions affect even others, etc.
3. We are impacted by the decisions and actions of others and those influences are at least partly shaped by our previous decisions and actions. Our decisions find their way back to us through the actions of others.
4. On the average, good or right decisions return good or right results. Bad or wrong decisions tend to bring bad or wrong results.
Think of a pond filled with many vibrating posts where each post represents an individual. The wave-like rings that flow out from my post strike and are reflected from other posts near me and interact with the waves produced by the vibrations of other posts. The resulting waves return to me. While the interaction of the waves and the posts is extremely complex, perhaps complex enough to preclude prediction, causality is still involved, and on the average, right action produces positive results and wrong action produces negative results. One person making right decisions in a field (families, communities, and nations) where most are making wrong decisions will not benefit the one making right decisions much, but as fields are transformed from being composed predominantly of persons making wrong decisions to fields filled predominantly with persons making good decisions, the quality of life improves. The difficult questions are how to identify good or right actions and how to promote right action.
David
December 2, 2010
Why Us?
The other day, Cancer Couple received a comment from a mother of two young children in Australia who suffers from a difficult-to-classify brain tumor and whose husband is doing well after an autologous stem cell transplant for AML/APL leukemia. You see her beautifully written blog at http://coogeegoo.wordpress.com/.
In closing, she asked, “How do you deal with the "why us?" response that has no answer?” It is a question that I have given some thought to, so I want to share a few ideas.
Many behavioral scholars believe that humans have a built in sense of morality based on cooperation through reciprocity and punishment. It is in our nature to cooperate with others as long as there is reciprocity. I’ll help you, if you help me. However, because people sometimes cheat and do not reciprocate, we are naturally predisposed to punish violators. We have a well-developed sense of fairness that causes us to look for unfair behavior and seek punishment as a way of restoring fairness. An interesting article on the inborn morality of infants can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=infant%20morality&st=cse
I believe our fairness detector is activated when bad events occur in our lives, and we look for reasons for those events. We want to find the meaning of the events so we can determine if someone has cheated so they can be punished. I remember my mother saying, “It’s not fair” with reference to my father’s development of malignant melanoma. He was a good man who worked hard to support his family and was always honest and fair in his dealings with others. My mother thought it was unfair that such a man should have cancer when others who in her view were not so good did not. She was searching for equity in a context in which fairness/unfairness, right/wrong did not apply. Some events have no meaning. The world is an incredibly complex place, and things we see as both good and bad happen essentially at random. That is, they are not part of some overarching, goal directed process. There may be causes for the event, but they are essentially random at the core, like winning the lottery.
I know Jana and I asked the question, “Why us?” but it is a question without an answer. It is as if a meteor had crashed through our roof and struck us down. We know what happened. We can understand the injuries caused by the mass of a meteor crushing our bodies, but to ask why the meteor hit our house instead of someone else’s is a waste of time even though asking the question is a normal response to the situation.
It is reasonable to look for the mechanistic causes of cancer, but the more we understand the biology of cancer, the more it appears that while some actions can reduce our chances of developing cancer, the initiation of any given case of cancer has a random component. A person may choose to smoke and knowingly increase his or her chances of developing lung cancer, but the actual development of the cancer lies in the interaction between the carcinogens in the smoke and the individual’s genetic makeup and lifetime exposure to cancer promoting life events. My father and his nine siblings grew up on a farm and spent a lot of time working in the fields under an intense sun, but he was the only one to develop melanoma. The development of cancer is entirely deterministic but of such a complexity that the absolute prediction of who will and who will not develop the disease is impossible to know at this time.
So that is my answer, Coogeegoo. It is natural to ask the question, “Why us?” but as you noted it has no answer. Please keep writing on your blog. You have at least one person who is not a friend or relative who is interested in monitoring your progress against this challenge that you and your family have been given at such a young age.
David
In closing, she asked, “How do you deal with the "why us?" response that has no answer?” It is a question that I have given some thought to, so I want to share a few ideas.
Many behavioral scholars believe that humans have a built in sense of morality based on cooperation through reciprocity and punishment. It is in our nature to cooperate with others as long as there is reciprocity. I’ll help you, if you help me. However, because people sometimes cheat and do not reciprocate, we are naturally predisposed to punish violators. We have a well-developed sense of fairness that causes us to look for unfair behavior and seek punishment as a way of restoring fairness. An interesting article on the inborn morality of infants can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=infant%20morality&st=cse
I believe our fairness detector is activated when bad events occur in our lives, and we look for reasons for those events. We want to find the meaning of the events so we can determine if someone has cheated so they can be punished. I remember my mother saying, “It’s not fair” with reference to my father’s development of malignant melanoma. He was a good man who worked hard to support his family and was always honest and fair in his dealings with others. My mother thought it was unfair that such a man should have cancer when others who in her view were not so good did not. She was searching for equity in a context in which fairness/unfairness, right/wrong did not apply. Some events have no meaning. The world is an incredibly complex place, and things we see as both good and bad happen essentially at random. That is, they are not part of some overarching, goal directed process. There may be causes for the event, but they are essentially random at the core, like winning the lottery.
I know Jana and I asked the question, “Why us?” but it is a question without an answer. It is as if a meteor had crashed through our roof and struck us down. We know what happened. We can understand the injuries caused by the mass of a meteor crushing our bodies, but to ask why the meteor hit our house instead of someone else’s is a waste of time even though asking the question is a normal response to the situation.
It is reasonable to look for the mechanistic causes of cancer, but the more we understand the biology of cancer, the more it appears that while some actions can reduce our chances of developing cancer, the initiation of any given case of cancer has a random component. A person may choose to smoke and knowingly increase his or her chances of developing lung cancer, but the actual development of the cancer lies in the interaction between the carcinogens in the smoke and the individual’s genetic makeup and lifetime exposure to cancer promoting life events. My father and his nine siblings grew up on a farm and spent a lot of time working in the fields under an intense sun, but he was the only one to develop melanoma. The development of cancer is entirely deterministic but of such a complexity that the absolute prediction of who will and who will not develop the disease is impossible to know at this time.
So that is my answer, Coogeegoo. It is natural to ask the question, “Why us?” but as you noted it has no answer. Please keep writing on your blog. You have at least one person who is not a friend or relative who is interested in monitoring your progress against this challenge that you and your family have been given at such a young age.
David
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