Cancer could be so much worse

So remember a few posts ago when I went into detail about the treatment regimen I was on ? Remember the letters GIRCRT? No? "Recalculating..." When I was a teenager I spent hundreds of hours learning how to use a compass and maps or charts to navigate through the woods. Eventually, I learned how to apply the same skills - and even added a few others related to radio navigation - to learn how to navigate as I flew over  the woods. All of that skill is interesting, but it's almost as obsolete as Morse code now. The Global Positioning System - GPS - has supplanted many of these skills, delivering extremely accurate positioning on a variety of maps directly on our cell phones or smart watches. And with the ubiquity of GPS has come another technological wonder that has quietly been inserted into our lives; artificial voices that provide us with instructions. We've all likely encountered this phenomenon when we make a wrong turn and our GPS patiently tells us tha...

I am 80% of the way through my radiation therapy. My regimen  calls for 25 "fractions" of a total dose of  4500 centigrays  of radiation to be given each weekday, and I have just finished day 20. Time for an update! In my last post I mentioned how tired I am after radiotherapy. I wish could say that I'm getting used to radiotherapy - although trust me, I definitely  don't want to get used to it! - but the truth is the exhaustion is, if anything, getting worse. I still feel perfectly fine and normal after my radiotherapy session, and for at least two hours after I still feel pretty good. Then I feel like I'm swimming through oatmeal. The tiredness doesn't come on all at once. It's not like I feel like I was hit by a truck or fell off a metaphorical cliff or anything, but over the space of less than fifteen minutes I go from pretty much perfectly normal to struggling to keep my eyes open. Again, this is a weird sort of exhaustion. My brain is foggy, ...

In my last post  I went into a fair amount of detail about the mechanics of  my radiotherapy. I tried to dispel the notion that my radiation therapy involved radio active  therapy... But how cool would that be? Yeah. That cool. But... actually not really cool. A friend of mine had to undergo radioactive therapy for thyroid cancer just after the birth of one of her children. She was quarantined in a room and couldn't hug or even hold her baby while the radioactivity did its work. So - with all due respect to comic book characters - getting radioactivity sucks. Good thing I'm not getting radioactivity. So... what about the more human side of getting radiotherapy? What's that like? I thought I would take a little time to share some of the downsides of radiotherapy as I see it. Dropping my pants every day of the week I was asked to wear loose-fitting, comfortable clothes for radiotherapy before my first session. The reason stated is that radiotherapy can irr...

Okay; the title strays fairly widely into clickbait territory. The truth is that most forms of  radiation therapy - and specifically the form that I am getting - do  not  mean radio active  therapy . Sorry Morgan - no radioactive pee. Not now, not ever. While there are some cancers that are treated with internal radiation (otherwise known as brachytherapy) , I am undergoing external beam radiation therapy . A large machine called a linac (for  lin ear ac celerator) directs a beam of particles - protons in my case - into my pelvis to kill off any remaining cancer cells that might have been too small to see or appear on CT scan. Radioactivity would persist, only decreasing as it decays over time (often years or decades); the sort of radiation that I am getting stops the moment they turn off the machine. It's more like turning off a light switch; if I were being exposed to radioactivity it would still be bouncing around the room once my therapy was over. So....

"How are you doing, John?" We ask that question - how are you doing? - without even thinking. Most of the time it's a nicety; we don't really have an emotional investment in the person we are asking so don't really care what the response is. Usually they respond with something mild and banal - fine thanks , or something similar - and if they go into shocking detail we recoil and start looking for the exits. But since I was diagnosed with cancer, a lot more people ask me this question with a lot more intent than they used to. Of course people care about me. People care about other people - that's what helped us evolve and survive as a hunter/gatherer society. And I'm a generally good person that people tend to like. But here's the thing - I actually care about them, too. So now, when they ask how I'm doing, I actually answer them truthfully. For the most part, my response is something along the lines of "really good right now," but som...

"Are you scared?" The question came from the heart. It was as natural as breathing after nearly thirty-three years of marriage. My wife and I were out for coffee, talking about my diagnosis and how neither of us wanted  to go through this, but how now that we are we are determined to get through it positively. Just before this sincere question was asked she had suggested to me that I go back to my hometown to visit with my family before I start my radiation and chemotherapy. It's not that I didn't want to see my family - I love them and they are a source of tremendous strength and support for both of us. But I suppose it's safe to say I had a failure of imagination regarding going back to see them. It honestly just didn't occur to me as an important thing to do because I guess I'm being a little selfish right now. "Think about your dad though," she said to me. My father was an amazing man. He was not without faults, but he was humble an...

GIRCRT. Those six letters. It's an abbreviation. It's not even an acronym because you can't pronounce it. But those six letters are like a seed crystal around which the rest of my cancer journey will form. Let's take a few moments to unpack this protocol code's six letters and what they mean. GI:  Pretty simple; I have a gastrointestinal cancer so the general area of cancer treatment - GI - forms the start of my protocol code. R: Rectal. Also not surprisingly, this further narrows down the area in my GI tract that is affected by cancer because my primary tumour was removed from my rectum. C: Capecitabine . That is the drug that will be used as adjuvant therapy to eliminate any micrometastases that might have formed when cancer cells (from the blood vessels in the primary tumour or the affected lymph node that was involved around my rectum) flowed into my bloodstream and out to any other part of my body. These micrometastases can form anywhere, but most of...

I met both of my new specialists over the past few days. I'll get to those experiences in a moment but first I want to describe what it was like to be admitted to the provincial Cancer Agency who is providing my care. The British Columbia Cancer Agency  - under its hip new moniker BC Cancer - is responsible for cancer research and treatment for the citizens of British Columbia. One of the province-wide components of the Provincial Health services Authority (PHSA), BC Cancer operates cancer treatment centres throughout the province. This still requires a lot of cancer patients to travel to see their specialists or get their treatments, but in my case my closest cancer clinic was across town from where I live. A half-hour drive - maybe up to an hour if the traffic is bad - is the only barrier between me and my care; all services, treatments, and investigations are fully funded by the province. Well, everything except parking. Some people in this province get VERY upset that patie...