Books.

Marcus was thoughtful enough to send me The Emperor of All Maladies, which I had meant to get months ago, but with everything going on, it slipped the brain. I was barely into the book, tears in my eyes, thinking “yep, yep, yep” and identifying with so much. It’s a truly riveting narrative, and it’s what the very best books always are – an opportunity to learn.

One thing which really struck deeply home was when the author talked about how it’s difficult to think of cancer as a thing, it’s more on the person side, and that’s so true. I don’t think of my cancer as random cells happily cloning and evolving at the expense of the rest of me; I don’t think of it as a nebulous disease; I don’t think of it as a thing. It’s more like you separate, and there’s a shadowy self staring you down, a dark charcoal swipe of a doppelgänger, challenging you to wage war for your life, and cancer cells are much better at the whole evolution business than we are, which is why you get poisoned and radiated to what feels like an inch from death. All that said, and given the recent nightmare of treatment, I found myself profoundly grateful for the current stage of medical and technological advance when I read this:

The sixteenth-century surgeon Ambroise Paré described charring tumors with a soldering iron heated on coals, or chemically searing them with a paste of sulfuric acid. Even a small nick in the skin, treated thus, could quickly suppurate into a lethal infection. The tumors would often profusely bleed at the slightest provocation.

Lorenz Heister, and eighteenth-century German physician, once described a mastectomy in his clinic as if it were a sacrificial ritual: “Many females can stand the operation with the greatest courage and without hardly moaning at all. Others, however, make such a clamor that they may dishearten even the most undaunted surgeon and hinder the operation. To perform the operation, the surgeon should be steadfast and not allow himself to become discomforted by the cries of the patient.”

I’d dearly like to be able to go back in time and smack the fuck out of Heister, and a host of others. Misogyny seriously sucks, and boy, is it ever present in cancer treatment. It’s certainly lessened a great deal, but it’s still more than present. Sigh.

Anyroad, highly recommended, for everyone.

ETA: Feeling better, got my anger and FUCK ITs back. Yeah.

Rats: Cooperative and Kind.

© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

The photo is from when my beloved Chester was terminal, and all the other rats took turns caring for him, keeping him warm and letting him know he wasn’t alone. Phys.org has a couple of good articles up about rats:

Behaviour study shows rats know how to repay kindness.

Rats help each other out just as humans do.

Of course, none of this is news to those of us who are kept by rats.

What A Load of Shit.

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside a London cinema to protest against the cancellation of a screening of a film advocating therapy to "cure" people from being gay.

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside a London cinema to protest against the cancellation of a screening of a film advocating therapy to “cure” people from being gay.

This is a larger River of Shit than what’s been pouring from me the last two weeks.

The British anti-LGBTQ group Christian Concern is getting some press this week after a London theater cancelled a screening it helped organize for a new movie focusing on people “who are emerging out of homosexual lifestyles.” The movie, “Voices of the Silenced,” was promoted in an email this week by the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice, the parent group of the “reparative therapy” organization NARTH.

A 2016 trailer for the movie, produced by the UK group Core Issues Trust, compares those who advocate “ex-gay” therapy and their allies in other fields to enslaved Jewish people in the first century:

‘Voices of the Silenced’ remembers the Jews ripped from Jerusalem in AD 70 and brought to Rome to quarry stone and build the Colosseum. They were now the property of their masters. Filmed in seven countries and over 50 locations, our exploration compares the cultural captivity of the Jewish slaves in towns destroyed by the Vesuvius eruption in AD 79 with that faced by those silenced in the 21st century, people under an imposed state orthodoxy which reaffirms the ancient idea of pansexuality.

Oh, go fuck yourselves. Or someone else, then perhaps you could mind your own damn business. If someone wants to play at being hetero, there’s nothing stopping them, it’s not against the law, y’know. That does not cover up your blatant attempts at trying to squash all queer folk down so far you don’t have to think about them.

You can read the full story at RWW.

Frigg’s Day Mood.

A Perfect Circle – TalkTalk. I want that Octoheart.

You’re waiting (you’re waiting …)
On miracles (on miracles …)
We’re bleeding out (bleeding out …)

Thoughts (thoughts …)
And prayers (prayers …)
Adorable (crisis …)
Like cake in a crisis (in a crisis …)
We’re bleeding out (bleeding out …)

While you deliberate
Bodies accumulate

Sit and talk like jesus
Try walkin’ like jesus
Sit and talk like jesus
Talk like jesus
Talk talk talk talk
Get the fuck out of my way

Don’t be the problem, be the solution
Don’t be the problem, be the solution
Don’t be the problem, be the solution
Problem, problem, problem, problem

Cancer Chronicles 11: Home.

Let’s hear it for Sister Morphine.

The photo I couldn’t upload on Wednesday.

Home. When you show up for your labs/oncology visit/chemo, this is something you don’t want to hear: “Your labs are terrible! There is no way in hell you’re getting chemo today! You need to be in hospital.” :Considers running away again: “I’m going to stop meeting you like this if you keep putting me in hospital.”

Yes, I was very dehydrated, severe diarrhea for 12 days will do that, and I am not a good fluid intake person. The main trouble was that my liver enzymes were through the roof. Uh oh. My oncologist pinned his hopes on a possible bile duct stone, as I’m lacking a gallbladder. I doubted this was so; outside the constipation/diarrhea combination, I had no abdominal pain. Turns out this was so, a scan showed everything normal in that area. So, if this is chemo induced, I get kicked out of the trial, and switched to ‘traditional chemo’. I didn’t want to just do that, and neither did my oncologist, because there could be a couple of other factors: my obviously over the top reaction to the miralax, and the acetaminophen in my regular pain meds, which was quite increased from normal dosage due to very increased pain.

The GI doc and a couple of others who came to visit on Wednesday kept asking me about acetaminophen, specifically Tylenol, like I swallowed half a bottle every day for a hobby or something. So for now, I’m not taking anything acetaminophen based, gone over to morphine, my liver count was trending down very quickly, and the diarrhea has finally slowed down, so next week I’ll do chemo infusion two, just the same, stay off the acetaminophen for the following two weeks, then we’ll see what the labs say. Hopefully, I’ll be able to stay in the trial. I think I’ll probably win ‘exasperating patient’ of the year.

What is clear is that I’ll have to do all the stuff right from the start, low fiber diet, lots and lots and lots of fluid intake. My ostomy end is still not working, so I’ll need to see my surgeon again, too. I’ll admit to being somewhat afraid of the latter, because if I hear ‘hospital’ again in the next week or two, I might start screaming. I hate being in hospital, but I will say, for someone who hates it as much as I do, the nurses are always happy to see me, because I’m not the miserable asshole with them or any other medical folk. I always engage with them, and turn my humour to ‘extra high’, and I never ever have cause to complain about my treatment.

On Wednesday, I didn’t have my MRI scan until evening. Pick up arrived around 6 pm or so, and when I wandered out to the hall, there was a large man, dressed all in black, bristling with gear, looked like a cop, which took me aback a bit. The gurney was black, with enough straps to please a mad insane asylum director. I looked at him, looked at the gurney, and said “I wish I’d known, I would have put on my super villain outfit.” So, I got a ride in an ambulance to the MRI center. My first time in one, kind of interesting, and a nice break from hospital boredom. I was happily drugged for this scan, so I was able to lie still without much pain.

Odd things: my veins, which have never been what you call cooperative (I’m a roller), seemed to go on full strike on Wednesday. In the morning, getting my labs done, the needle goes in, nothing. The needle gets moved about quite a bit, nothing. Took about 20, 25 seconds for blood to show up. We had a good laugh about that, because it was really fucking weird. Later, in hospital, it was one blown vein after another. Much much later, talking with my oncologist, he was annoyed my port wasn’t used. So, I enquired about that (I had completely forgotten about the port myself.) One of my nurses told me they stopped using ports, because when they used them for everything, labs and IV, the rate of infections went up, and they got all the blame for it. Naturally, they weren’t happy about that, so they just quit using them. Can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to blamed for that either, especially when every precaution possible is taken.

Thursday was one very long day, into evening, of sit, wait, and try to deal with deadly boredom. I wasn’t released until late evening, and I had to fight a bit for that, so by the time we got home, it was very late, and I swallowed some morphine and collapsed. Still not feeling great, but I’d much rather feel lousy at home. Jayne gets seriously unglued when I go missing, so I had to spend some time with him; he thought I smelled funny. The rats were all “oh Great Rat, serving wench, you are home! Feed us all the good things!” Grace and Vala just stared at me, then the empty tea dish, glaring at my compleat nerve at not being around to make sure they had their tea and pastry.

So, things should get back to normal here, for at least a while. One lesson learned: even on a routine visit, toss the packed duffel bag in the car, along with the secondary computer, cords, all that crap…just in case. Normally, I’d just toss it all in the car and leave it, but we’re still in below zero temps here. That can’t go away soon enough.