I always tuned in for his commentary whether I agreed with him or not..........
Cancer is something that happens to other people until it happens to you.
I have had two surgeries and five weeks of daily radiation that left my back and my chest looking like cheap hamburger.
I had had surgery the previous year but this spring a slight pain developed near the incision. I went to my doctor to make an appointment. No appointment! He examined it immediately, did a biopsy within two days, a cat scan in a week and surgery two weeks after that.
So much for those who denigrate our health system as slow and inefficient.
We consider skin cancer a minor ailment, quickly discovered and easily removed. Yet it can take the form of melanoma, a deep, black and evil tumour. Mine was in the lymph glands where it can metastasise, spreading and ruthlessly cloning its malign presence in other parts of the body . Timing in cancer is everything and mine was discovered before it had embarked on its mission of death.
The toughest time for us was that between the cat scan and its hopeful finding. On that tense, uncertain weekend, a close family friend was due to visit. We decided to go ahead with it but also not to mention our problem. (In our long marriage, we always have approached such personal crises as our problem, not mine or hers.) Yet we both felt guilty about being untruthful and fearful that our guest would sense the problem and that something was being left unsaid.
We also decided to say nothing to our three daughters until we knew the results of the cat scan.
The summer of 2016 was perfect with day after sunny, warm day. Yet more than once the thought crossed my mind that this might be my last July, my last season of boating, my last sports car rally. Was it really worth fixing the shaky steps? Repairing the chimney? What about the planned new car? Would I still be here? If not, would my wife need or want such a big vehicle?
We cancelled a planned trip to visit family on the French River and friends on Manitoulin Island followed by a leisurely tour down Lake Huron to Sarnia and Windsor where we had lived for several years. Next year. Maybe next year...
There were other similarly morbid discussions, some of them angry. But they only have been deferred, neither ended nor settled. Any cancer patient has similar thoughts. Too often they are hidden or addressed with unjustified optimism but eventually met with grim reality. Uncertainty is a major symptom of cancer. You’re never certain you’re cured, even after the five year convalescence. Each sore or scab, pimple or scar, becomes an object of worry.
I am confident that my treatment has solved the immediate problem. Yet, as someone who believed that only “other people” get cancer, I now accept the reality that I have had it and that it may return. Or that a new, unrelated cancer could develop. Or is developing. A positive attitude is helpful but a realistic one is essential.
Cancer is an uncompromising enemy. It’s a battle to the death. There may be a truce. It’s called remission. But ultimately no quarter is given. You kill it or it kills you. Too often have I read that someone has fought a brave battle against cancer. Too seldom do I read of their victory in that battle.
I rejoice that I have had 82 healthy, happy years while many others I have known enjoyed not even 40 or 50. I am grateful for my past, hopeful about my future, but also realistic as I try to bend my mind to the new concept of short term living, of planning only by the day or week.
My treatments took place at the regional cancer centre of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, a modern, bright and busy building yet a place of much sorrow, sickness and suffering. There are wigs, walkers and wheelchairs on all sides. Yet the atmosphere is contagiously welcoming, bright and positive.
My only expense for the radiation was the cost of my hour long commute and parking at the outrageously overpriced hospital lot, the sole negative about RVH. But most days I found space at a nearby meter.
I can deduct parking, meals and travel (at a generous 55 cents a kilometre) from my income tax. In the United States, my treatment would have cost between 75,000 and 100,000 dollars, only a fraction of which would have been covered by insurance if I were one of the privileged few who have it.
I spent much time on the internet. There is a wealth of information and several excellent support and chat groups. What I found most offensive was a site which helps Americans “shop around” for the best price for their treatment. Radiation or a new washing machine. It’s all the same. That is an obscenity! I fail totally to understand why any American opposes “Obamacare” when a diagnosis of cancer is often an automatic declaration of personal bankruptcy.
RVH serves a large area from Parry Sound to the north part of the GTA. It simply is not possible to provide both the sophisticated and expensive equipment and the skilled and specialized professionals in every community. If a compromise had to be made by centralizing in Barrie, there was no compromise in the state of the art technology or the top notch quality of the medical staff.
Like all Ontario hospitals, RVH prohibits smoking. As a cancer centre, it certainly sees many cases of lung, mouth and throat cancer. Yet numerous patients, with the cadaverous complexion of advanced cancer, still limp and plod through rain and cold, in slippers and dressing gowns, pushing their IV bottles forward, seeking a smoking sanctuary on the sidewalk. It and the lawn are littered with cigarette butts, each as ugly and squalid as the repulsive tumours they produce. The pig-headed perversity of people is remarkable.
The radiation treatment is quick and painless, administered by a gigantic machine called a linear accelerator or LINAC. It is gigantic in both size and cost. It aims a death ray at you, a closely focused but withering beam of high intensity x-rays that destroys cancer cells but also damages healthy ones. The process has been compared to gardening. The gardener (surgeon) may pull the weed (cancer), but inevitably there will be tiny seeds nearby, waiting to sprout, which must be eliminated with weed killer (radiation).
You are very carefully positioned on a gurney beneath the looming projector. In my case, a cast of my arm had been made during a preliminary visit and four tiny dots tattooed on my chest to co-ordinate the aiming of the beam, You feel much like a piece of meat on a butcher table, maybe even a condemned man on the execution gurney, as the huge device whirs and clicks and ponderously rotates into position before firing its lethal but invisible energy at you. It then rotates again and looses another blast at a different angle. I seldom have felt so alone, so vulnerable.
The process takes ten or fifteen minutes, much of it occupied in the minutely precise positioning of your body. After that the radiologists take refuge in another area to avoid exposure to the deadly radiation. You are monitored by a camera and a low level x-ray while they operate the immense device with a small keypad.
Although the treatment is painless, my face invariably began to itch as soon as I was immobilized. That’s not an effect of the treatment but of our perverse human body and a Murphy’s Law which states that if a part of your body is inaccessible, it will begin to itch. I soon learned to ignore the irresistible urge to scratch and found that if you ignored it long enough, grimacing and gritting your teeth, it went away, only to be replaced by an itch in a different and equally inaccessible area. But then, the same thing happens at the dentist.
The side effects of radiation vary widely, both with different people and with different areas of treatment. My concern had been fatigue, which could have been a problem on my long commute, but it didn’t happen. After about two weeks of treatment, the skin in the affected area became red, scaly, itchy and sore. It became much worse after the five week marathon ended. This proved to be the most difficult period of the whole experience. But in a month it had healed completely although the area is red and apparently will remain so.
I also had periods of deep depression. (I had suffered serious clinical depression some years ago.) But cutting down my alcohol consumption --- and I do enjoy a few drinks --- relieved that. With some imagination, a glass of white grape juice can be almost as enjoyable as my double scotch on the rocks.
Although I tend to be a “glass half empty” person, positive thinking helped greatly. My treatment fell during the autumn and each day’s drive was a glorious cavalcade of colour. I came to anticipate the morning mist and the dramatic clouds over Lake Couchiching, the broad vista from the crest of Highway 11 as Barrie came into view below.
I happen to be a lover of opera and the commute was a rare opportunity for two daily hours of uninterrupted Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Leoncavallo. (Puccini died of throat cancer, incidentally.)
So many bad things happen in the world. During my treatment, the Russians bombed hospitals in Syria and the improbable Donald Trump spit and spewed his bilious anger and hate. Yet so many good things happen here at home.
There is an army of volunteers, invariably pleasant and helpful people, who give freely of their time to help RVH patients and staff.
Adjacent to the cancer centre is Rotary House, a modern hotel like building that offers low cost but more than adequate accommodation for day-patients unable to drive because of their condition, bad weather or other problems. It also provides moderately priced, pre-packaged meals. The hospice is a joint project of various Rotary Clubs across the region. I didn’t require its services but the fact it was there and available to me was a great comfort.
In my community of Bracebridge, 97 kilometres to the north, and presumably in others, the Red Cross offers transportation to and from RVH by volunteer drivers.
None of us like hospitals but they are essential. It’s hard not to like RVH nor to admire its remarkable concern for patients. One small yet significant item is their punctuality. The RVH staff is professional, personable and punctual! If my appointment was for 10 o’clock, I was called at ten and sometimes even earlier despite the huge volume of patients in and out. On one occasion my treatment was delayed because of a malfunction of the machine. (The LINACS have dozens of interlocking safety features and sometimes, like a balky computer, they lock up.) The technician was genuinely concerned and apologetic about the brief delay while I was moved to one of the two other machines.
In another century we may have beaten the scourge of cancer. The RVH cancer centre may become as irrelevant as the Gravenhurst TB hospital, a facility that has outlived the disease it had been created to treat. In time we may regard disabling chemotherapy, radical surgery and deadly radiation with the same incredulous disdain we now have for the leeches and blood letting of an earlier century.
What is state of the art today often is seen as primitive witchcraft tomorrow. But until that happens, we should rejoice not only in remarkable facilities like the RVH and the outstanding people who treat us there but in our unjustly maligned medical system that makes both possible.
Seldom have I been so grateful to be a Canadian as during this difficult year.
https://t.co/Ba6W9p3C2s
Cancer is something that happens to other people until it happens to you.
I have had two surgeries and five weeks of daily radiation that left my back and my chest looking like cheap hamburger.
I had had surgery the previous year but this spring a slight pain developed near the incision. I went to my doctor to make an appointment. No appointment! He examined it immediately, did a biopsy within two days, a cat scan in a week and surgery two weeks after that.
So much for those who denigrate our health system as slow and inefficient.
We consider skin cancer a minor ailment, quickly discovered and easily removed. Yet it can take the form of melanoma, a deep, black and evil tumour. Mine was in the lymph glands where it can metastasise, spreading and ruthlessly cloning its malign presence in other parts of the body . Timing in cancer is everything and mine was discovered before it had embarked on its mission of death.
The toughest time for us was that between the cat scan and its hopeful finding. On that tense, uncertain weekend, a close family friend was due to visit. We decided to go ahead with it but also not to mention our problem. (In our long marriage, we always have approached such personal crises as our problem, not mine or hers.) Yet we both felt guilty about being untruthful and fearful that our guest would sense the problem and that something was being left unsaid.
We also decided to say nothing to our three daughters until we knew the results of the cat scan.
The summer of 2016 was perfect with day after sunny, warm day. Yet more than once the thought crossed my mind that this might be my last July, my last season of boating, my last sports car rally. Was it really worth fixing the shaky steps? Repairing the chimney? What about the planned new car? Would I still be here? If not, would my wife need or want such a big vehicle?
We cancelled a planned trip to visit family on the French River and friends on Manitoulin Island followed by a leisurely tour down Lake Huron to Sarnia and Windsor where we had lived for several years. Next year. Maybe next year...
There were other similarly morbid discussions, some of them angry. But they only have been deferred, neither ended nor settled. Any cancer patient has similar thoughts. Too often they are hidden or addressed with unjustified optimism but eventually met with grim reality. Uncertainty is a major symptom of cancer. You’re never certain you’re cured, even after the five year convalescence. Each sore or scab, pimple or scar, becomes an object of worry.
I am confident that my treatment has solved the immediate problem. Yet, as someone who believed that only “other people” get cancer, I now accept the reality that I have had it and that it may return. Or that a new, unrelated cancer could develop. Or is developing. A positive attitude is helpful but a realistic one is essential.
Cancer is an uncompromising enemy. It’s a battle to the death. There may be a truce. It’s called remission. But ultimately no quarter is given. You kill it or it kills you. Too often have I read that someone has fought a brave battle against cancer. Too seldom do I read of their victory in that battle.
I rejoice that I have had 82 healthy, happy years while many others I have known enjoyed not even 40 or 50. I am grateful for my past, hopeful about my future, but also realistic as I try to bend my mind to the new concept of short term living, of planning only by the day or week.
My treatments took place at the regional cancer centre of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, a modern, bright and busy building yet a place of much sorrow, sickness and suffering. There are wigs, walkers and wheelchairs on all sides. Yet the atmosphere is contagiously welcoming, bright and positive.
My only expense for the radiation was the cost of my hour long commute and parking at the outrageously overpriced hospital lot, the sole negative about RVH. But most days I found space at a nearby meter.
I can deduct parking, meals and travel (at a generous 55 cents a kilometre) from my income tax. In the United States, my treatment would have cost between 75,000 and 100,000 dollars, only a fraction of which would have been covered by insurance if I were one of the privileged few who have it.
I spent much time on the internet. There is a wealth of information and several excellent support and chat groups. What I found most offensive was a site which helps Americans “shop around” for the best price for their treatment. Radiation or a new washing machine. It’s all the same. That is an obscenity! I fail totally to understand why any American opposes “Obamacare” when a diagnosis of cancer is often an automatic declaration of personal bankruptcy.
RVH serves a large area from Parry Sound to the north part of the GTA. It simply is not possible to provide both the sophisticated and expensive equipment and the skilled and specialized professionals in every community. If a compromise had to be made by centralizing in Barrie, there was no compromise in the state of the art technology or the top notch quality of the medical staff.
Like all Ontario hospitals, RVH prohibits smoking. As a cancer centre, it certainly sees many cases of lung, mouth and throat cancer. Yet numerous patients, with the cadaverous complexion of advanced cancer, still limp and plod through rain and cold, in slippers and dressing gowns, pushing their IV bottles forward, seeking a smoking sanctuary on the sidewalk. It and the lawn are littered with cigarette butts, each as ugly and squalid as the repulsive tumours they produce. The pig-headed perversity of people is remarkable.
The radiation treatment is quick and painless, administered by a gigantic machine called a linear accelerator or LINAC. It is gigantic in both size and cost. It aims a death ray at you, a closely focused but withering beam of high intensity x-rays that destroys cancer cells but also damages healthy ones. The process has been compared to gardening. The gardener (surgeon) may pull the weed (cancer), but inevitably there will be tiny seeds nearby, waiting to sprout, which must be eliminated with weed killer (radiation).
You are very carefully positioned on a gurney beneath the looming projector. In my case, a cast of my arm had been made during a preliminary visit and four tiny dots tattooed on my chest to co-ordinate the aiming of the beam, You feel much like a piece of meat on a butcher table, maybe even a condemned man on the execution gurney, as the huge device whirs and clicks and ponderously rotates into position before firing its lethal but invisible energy at you. It then rotates again and looses another blast at a different angle. I seldom have felt so alone, so vulnerable.
The process takes ten or fifteen minutes, much of it occupied in the minutely precise positioning of your body. After that the radiologists take refuge in another area to avoid exposure to the deadly radiation. You are monitored by a camera and a low level x-ray while they operate the immense device with a small keypad.
Although the treatment is painless, my face invariably began to itch as soon as I was immobilized. That’s not an effect of the treatment but of our perverse human body and a Murphy’s Law which states that if a part of your body is inaccessible, it will begin to itch. I soon learned to ignore the irresistible urge to scratch and found that if you ignored it long enough, grimacing and gritting your teeth, it went away, only to be replaced by an itch in a different and equally inaccessible area. But then, the same thing happens at the dentist.
The side effects of radiation vary widely, both with different people and with different areas of treatment. My concern had been fatigue, which could have been a problem on my long commute, but it didn’t happen. After about two weeks of treatment, the skin in the affected area became red, scaly, itchy and sore. It became much worse after the five week marathon ended. This proved to be the most difficult period of the whole experience. But in a month it had healed completely although the area is red and apparently will remain so.
I also had periods of deep depression. (I had suffered serious clinical depression some years ago.) But cutting down my alcohol consumption --- and I do enjoy a few drinks --- relieved that. With some imagination, a glass of white grape juice can be almost as enjoyable as my double scotch on the rocks.
Although I tend to be a “glass half empty” person, positive thinking helped greatly. My treatment fell during the autumn and each day’s drive was a glorious cavalcade of colour. I came to anticipate the morning mist and the dramatic clouds over Lake Couchiching, the broad vista from the crest of Highway 11 as Barrie came into view below.
I happen to be a lover of opera and the commute was a rare opportunity for two daily hours of uninterrupted Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Leoncavallo. (Puccini died of throat cancer, incidentally.)
So many bad things happen in the world. During my treatment, the Russians bombed hospitals in Syria and the improbable Donald Trump spit and spewed his bilious anger and hate. Yet so many good things happen here at home.
There is an army of volunteers, invariably pleasant and helpful people, who give freely of their time to help RVH patients and staff.
Adjacent to the cancer centre is Rotary House, a modern hotel like building that offers low cost but more than adequate accommodation for day-patients unable to drive because of their condition, bad weather or other problems. It also provides moderately priced, pre-packaged meals. The hospice is a joint project of various Rotary Clubs across the region. I didn’t require its services but the fact it was there and available to me was a great comfort.
In my community of Bracebridge, 97 kilometres to the north, and presumably in others, the Red Cross offers transportation to and from RVH by volunteer drivers.
None of us like hospitals but they are essential. It’s hard not to like RVH nor to admire its remarkable concern for patients. One small yet significant item is their punctuality. The RVH staff is professional, personable and punctual! If my appointment was for 10 o’clock, I was called at ten and sometimes even earlier despite the huge volume of patients in and out. On one occasion my treatment was delayed because of a malfunction of the machine. (The LINACS have dozens of interlocking safety features and sometimes, like a balky computer, they lock up.) The technician was genuinely concerned and apologetic about the brief delay while I was moved to one of the two other machines.
In another century we may have beaten the scourge of cancer. The RVH cancer centre may become as irrelevant as the Gravenhurst TB hospital, a facility that has outlived the disease it had been created to treat. In time we may regard disabling chemotherapy, radical surgery and deadly radiation with the same incredulous disdain we now have for the leeches and blood letting of an earlier century.
What is state of the art today often is seen as primitive witchcraft tomorrow. But until that happens, we should rejoice not only in remarkable facilities like the RVH and the outstanding people who treat us there but in our unjustly maligned medical system that makes both possible.
Seldom have I been so grateful to be a Canadian as during this difficult year.
https://t.co/Ba6W9p3C2s