Homage to Our Podiatrist

Our podiatrist is avuncular. He is nice-looking with short white hair that sticks up. He has a Hungarian vizsla who is ageing (who does not come to the office). His staff unties your shoes and takes off your socks, and when the appointment is over, puts your socks on and ties up your shoes for you. The staff is like Mom and he is the avunc. His brother is in practice with him as well as another doctor who wears a yarmulke. Today there was a nun in the waiting room. Usually there is a rabbi. Our podiatrist will clip our nails. He seems happy to see me. He uses ultrasound and prolotherapy and has a fancy way of making orthotics involving gait, he doesn't just put your feet into a sticky substance to make the mold. He gives me samples of Biofreeze to massage into my achilles tendon. He believes in Vitamin B for circulation. In the waiting room is a plaque acknowledging his father's efforts in getting podiatry accepted as a bonafide part of the medical profession, complete with insurance reimbursement. The father and the two sons practiced together. Now it is just the two sons. Our podiatrist has two sons and one is in screenwriting and the other is in Israel. That son is fluent in Hebrew. Our podiatrist has that Jewish-Skokie accent that sounds almost like New York-Yiddish-inflected. He is comforting in his goodlooking-ness and uncle/fatherliness and his confidence. Most of all his confidence. He tries this then he tries that. He is calm about trying this then that, scientific method, tick this off, then that. Our podiatrist's synagogue is 50 years old and has had the same rabbi that whole time. On Rosh Hashanah our podiatrist threw his sins into the canal. Our podiatrist stands for stability and family and father-sonliness and Skokie, though he practices in Chicago. He seems to come out of an earlier time, when sons followed into their fathers' businesses, when it wasn't so hard to find people. By that I mean, people didn't stray so far from their origins. I do mean it was easier to locate people. They stayed where they belonged. I didn't stay where I belonged. But the podiatrist makes me feel that I have come into a place where everyone has remained for a generation a two, where they are settled but will move over for a newcomer or two. Where there is a place. Where there will always be a place.

Today's Harvest

Tomorrow I'll strut into the harvest room like an eager school girl waiting to check for all As on her report card. But this time I don't have to make an A. Heck, up until now, I've been well below average. All I need is a measly .3 million to pass.

I'll probably give Paula a call when I get the results tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for all of your prayers, positive thoughts, rain dances and crossed fingers and eyes.

No Sex, Lots of Drugs, a little rock'n'roll...

...that's life now. but at least i ain't on no macrobiotic diet. H and i went to this two-day Inspire seminar last week. Inspire is this nonprofit org that dishes out complementary cancer treatment (complementary, as in "in conjunction with," not meaning "free," but a lot of the stuff is free). so they had this two-day seminar about how to enhance life with cancer and cancer treatments. some of the stuff was good, but as far as the nutrition suggestions go--not our cup of tea. when you got cancer, the words "quality of life" come up often--and a macrobiotic diet isn't my idea of a good quality of life. they fed us this macrobiotic lunch, and it was like someone pulled stuff out of the dirt and served it up with beans and zero salt. fucking gross, man!

but today we had our one-and-a-half hour appointment with one of Inspire's doctors, and the cool thing is that she gave me free vitamins that Inspire especially formulated for cancer patients. free is good.

i'm taking a lot of drugs. it's funny how quickly the stash of prescriptions gets larger and larger. i have to take drugs that offset the side effects of other drugs that offset the side effects of chemo. i turned to H last week on our way into the drugstore and said, "i feel like we live here." our daily trip to the drug store.

anyway, with all these meds, i'm feeling alright. the doc today looked at my food, meds, and vitamins log and said that i'm doing better than normal because i'm doing the right things (despite my refusal to go macrobiotic). some of our friends got us some korean red ginseng extract, which looks like tar, but apparently does me a lot of good. so i mix it in with a soy chai latte a couple times a day, and it's pretty good. i've had enough energy to finish the manuscript of the book i'm editing, and i'm almost done with proofreading! i'm very excited to get this book done and out!

H and i booked a cruise for next month. it's kinda silly because it goes from seattle to victoria to nanaimo back to seattle, so it's not like we're actually leaving where we live! but it's three days of nonstop eating and relaxing, and the price was really cheap ($179/person!), so it'll be a nice little getaway. i'm hoping that i won't be too miserable from the chemo that i'm having a few days before the cruise.

i won't be able to go to Pennsylvania for thanksgiving (the American one) like we wanted to because i have to stick around in case my chemo needs to be adjusted. so i told my family to not worry cuz the next time they see me, i'll probably be sporting a perky, bigger new rack. speaking of, we get to meet with the surgeon tomorrow for a consultation. so we'll see exactly how big of a rack i can get. then i can revise the title of this post.

Cancer Banter Upgrades

You may have noticed that I've recently added a sidebar with links to MCL and stem cell transplant-related sites. The stem cell transplant document is particularly enlightening.

And, thanks to fellow Pasadena blogger Susan Kitchens, I have a new and easy way for Cancer Banter readers to sign up for automatic updates. Just look for the box in the right sidebar that says, "Enter your email address." After you've signed up, Feedburner will let you know when I've added a new post. I've found that the Google updates come instantly, but it takes Feedburner a few hours to send out the alerts.

Mesothelioma Cancer Clinical Trials - New Chemotherapy And Drug Treatments

I read an article few days ago regarding the mesothelioma cancer clinical trials somewhere from the internet. The article was all about studies of new treatments in patients who are diagnosed with the mesothelioma cancer.

These treatments are most often new chemotherapy drugs, or sometimes surgery in combination with a drug treatment. Researchers perform a clinical trial when there is some reason to believe that the treatment under evaluation may aid patients. In general researchers perform clinical trials to determine whether a treatment works, whether it is more effective then existing treatments, whether the side effects are too severe to justify the treatments use, and which patients benefit most from the treatment. At any given time, there are usually between 15 to 20 active clinical trials throughout the world investigating new therapies for mesothelioma cancer. Researchers are conducting more than half of those trials in the United States.

While being treated for mesothelioma cancer, a doctor may suggest that a patient look into a clinical trial. Though this does not mean that the patient has no other hope, the patient should be aware of the risks associated with clinical trials. No one knows in advance if the treatment will work or exactly what side effects will occur.

Researchers conduct clinical trials in steps called phases. Each phase answers certain questions. Clinical trials are usually classified into one of three phases.

Phase I trials evaluate how doctors should administer a new drug (i.e. by mouth, injected into the blood, or injected into the muscle), how often, and at what dose. A Phase I trial usually enrolls only a small number of patients, sometimes as few as a dozen.

Phase II trials continue to test the safety of the drug, and begin to evaluate how well the new drug works. Phase II studies usually narrow the focus to a particular type of cancer.

Phase III trials test a new drug, a new combination of drugs, or a new surgical procedure compared to the current standard therapy. Researchers assign participants to the standard group or the new group at random. Phase III trials often enroll large numbers of people and may be conducted at many doctors' offices, clinics, and cancer centers nationwide.

The benefit of participating in a clinical trial is that a patient can receive a treatment that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve and they may be of substantial benefit. Additionally studies have shown that mesothelioma patients that participate in clincial trials tend to live longer and received better care than those who do not partcipate.

For more info regarding this Mesothelioma cancer clinical trials please visit here.

Swing Shift

Tomorrow afternoon I go back to my part-time job of harvesting stem cells from 1 pm to 5:30 pm at the CoH.

I'll have Monday's results when I report back to duty on Tuesday afternoon. We just need an additional .3 million to make the 2 million minimum, but Dr. Forman wants to get as many as possible for good measure.

Sadness, the Empty Room

We (I) spend time talking to B and S, telling them what they should do, in light of B's MS getting worse, in light of his falls from his chair, and my nattering and nagging fill the air, fill the space, takes the place of emotion. But when S talked about it last night, about B needing full-time help, or when I think about him in assisted living, I get overwhelmed by sadness. Yesterday he had a bad day, he could barely get out of bed. They realize how bad the situation is, and it changes the conversation. They finally see it as tragic and impossible as I do.