I heard today from the hematologist's physician's assistant (sounds redundant or at least like three people are involved) that my red-blood-cell count is now in normal range, so I don't have to get any more blood siphoned off for a while. I'll need to get my blood checked again at the end of the month. The condition I have is polycythemia vera. The hematologist said it's not from chemo, but who knows? It might be. It's a rare disease and so not studied much. It seems to me that if the chemo drug Adriamycin, which I was given, can lead to leukemia, and that PV can turn into leukemia, then chemo could cause PV. Or is that a logical fallacy?
At the same time I had my blood checked for red blood cells, I got it checked for Vitamin D level. I'd read about a study that links low Vitamin D levels with breast cancer recurrence. The oncologist's physician's assistant said that she was going to the conference where she would hear a presentation by the team from Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto that did the study. The tricky thing is that having high levels of D can be harmful, too. As Aristotle said, Everything in moderation.
Is it possible to have excess in moderation?
The odd thing is I'm looking all this up and it doesn't seem connected to me. It feels so abstract. Even the breast cancer feels like it happened to me but at a distance. Does this mean I haven't accepted that I had it? Have I been keeping up a wall of denial all this time? That doesn't seem possible. Or is it that I don't feel sick so I can't believe that cancer is lurking in me?
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