Cancer could be so much worse

Ghostbusters was an absolute smash hit when it came out in 1984. I was just barely into my twenties and the over-the-top (for the time) special effects and campy comedy delivered by some of the brightest creative minds of the day were mesmerizing. It even had a very  catchy theme song  that reached #1 on the music charts in the US and Canada and stayed there for three weeks. And it is that song as well as a whole cascade of positive memories and emotions related to it that have been bouncing around my cranium the past few weeks. Let me start out by saying that I don't define myself by what I do at work. I much prefer to define myself by the relationships I have with others - my children, my wife, my family, my friends. That said, as a clinical pharmacist words and phrases like thrombolytic and fibrin sheath  are as much a part of my vocabulary as slime or ectoplasm  were to the writers of Ghostbusters. I use them all the time with other medical professionals bec...

The Battle of Midway was one of the most significant naval battles in history, taking place over four days in early June of 1942 just six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. Although outnumbered in terms of both ships and aircraft, the United States Navy prevailed, destroying all of the Japanese carriers and their accompanying aircraft (248 aircraft in total across 4 carriers) and one heavy cruiser involved in the battle. The US Navy lost one carrier, one destroyer, and approximately 150 of 233 aircraft in the battle. Sadly, 307 US servicemen were killed in the battle, with over 3,000 Japanese servicemen perishing on the opposite side. So... what does this have to do with me and cancer? On the face of it, a devastating naval battle that occurred 72 years ago has nothing in common with my cancer diagnosis and treatment. But if you dig a little deeper there are at least a few passing similarities. First off, I have often heard of people "battling cancer"...

This. All of this. Everything I'm going through and everything I've written here. This  is why screening is important. Prior to December 17, 2018 I had no idea that there was a tumour growing in my rectum. I was asked by my GP to undergo a very non-invasive but inelegant test - pooping on a stick - out of an abundance of caution. The only reason for doing a FIT on me was that I had already completed more than fifty trips around the sun, and after that many miles my hardware needs to be checked. That test came back right at the threshold for reporting a positive result. I could  have ignored it. My GP even told me that if I didn't want to be referred for further screening we could just repeat the test in two years. What would have happened if I had waited two years, I wonder... Two years earlier, my FIT result was half the value it was last year. Neither result were impressive. And ironically, my results are apparently more related to whether I am having a flare of my ...

I've never been more aware that I am being treated for cancer than I have been in the past month. Which is odd, given that I underwent major abdominal surgery to have 24cm of my colon and 25 of my (insert unknown number between 300 and 700 here) lymph nodes removed because they might  harbour more of the adenocarcinoma that was discovered during my colonoscopy just eight weeks earlier. After all, going through that surgery should reasonably have been the most significant ordeal I had gone through in my fifty-plus years of life, and at the time both my surgeon and I believed that the surgery was all that I would need. But then there was that one  lymph node... Okay then. My surgeon and I had discussed the possibility of needing oral chemotherapy for six months after surgery if anything was uncovered during postoperative pathology studies. One of my lymph nodes was positive for the same type of adenocarcinoma that had been uncovered during my colonoscopy, triggering my refer...