Dan York

The Hellacious Purgatory of Waiting

Waiting sucks.

There is no other way to say it. More polite phrasings simply do not convey the correct emphasis. Waiting sucks.

And now... we wait.

Two weeks ago we visited my wife's oncologist to learn what would be the treatment options for her breast cancer now that the mastectomy was done. Naively, we thought based on what we had heard after the operation that all we would really be talking about was whether or not it made sense for her to start taking a hormone drug, Tamoxifen, for the next five years. There are some various medical history issues that raised some questions about that... so we thought our discussion would be about that.

The oncologist at our local hospital sat down with us for what turned out to be most of 2 hours. She walked us through my wife's pathology report and started out talking about all the positive aspects of the report... but with an unspoken "BUT..." hanging out there... until the "but" was spoken... and a word we thought we'd never hear was voiced:

"Chemo"

We figured with the tumor rather drastically removed (since the entire breast is gone) and the sentinel lymph node coming back clear, we were done with any thoughts of chemotherapy.

And we may be... or chemo may be back on the table.

Unfortunately, my wife's tumor turned out to be invasive breast cancer and as such there is a danger that it could spread into other parts of the body and morph into other forms of cancer. The "sentinel" lymph node was clear, meaning that there was no sign that cancer was regularly spreading into the rest of her body... BUT... there is always the chance that a small amount of the cancerous cells could have already spread into her body and not left any sign in the lymph nodes.

The oncologist had an interesting viewpoint:

My wife will never have as little cancer in her body as she does right now.

It took me a moment to wrap my brain around that one. The reality is that with the tumor gone and with the sentinel lymph node clear, odds are that IF any cancer made it out into the rest of the body it is only out there in a tiny amount - and has not yet started to attack other cells.

So now is the time to do everything possible to kill it.

Hence considering chemo as an option.

Of course, the insanely frustrating aspect of all of this is:

There may be ZERO cancer cells in my wife's body!

They may in fact have been completely removed with the tumor. But there is no way to know... and it comes down to what level of risk you want to assume and how comfortable you are playing the odds that the cancer is gone.

Hence the waiting.

They are doing another round of blood tests and actual tests on my wife's tumor, specifically an Oncotype DX test, to help provide more data to determine whether chemo would really help fight the specific cancer my wife had/has. It turns out that for a certain % of women, chemotherapy really isn't that effective, for a certain % it is very helpful, and another % is in the middle of those two sides.

Into which category does my wife fall?

For that we wait... "7-10 business days" is how long the test takes once they get her tumor... and while you are waiting that seems like an agonizingly long time.

And so we wait.

And wait.

Stuck in an unwelcome purgatory... unable to make concrete plans for the next few months... unable to understand what our future holds... paused in a limbo where life seems to be on hold - even while the everyday life around us must continue.

Just waiting for a call that says the test results are in and we can sit down and start to understand what comes next.

Waiting sucks.

And so we wait...

Image credits: mag3737 and 25182350@N03 on Flickr.

Running Over 400 Miles And Counting...

Last week I passed a milestone in this little running adventure of mine. Per the "Nike+ GPS" app I've been using on my iPhone I crossed over 400 miles total that I've run outdoors and tracked with this app.

Not bad considering that my first full run was about a year ago, September 7, 2010, for a whopping total of 1.6 miles. Prior to that I'd mixed running and walking.

And I'm still incredibly amused by it all given that as I've mentioned before, I NEVER expected to be a "runner"!

Not in a million years.

Yet here I am. Not only enjoying running... but actually craving running and starting to get twitchy if I don't get a run in at least every other day.

Strange world.

I'd note, too, that this app didn't track all the running I did indoors on a treadmill over the winter. And there have been a couple of runs where the app malfunctioned... or where my iPhone ran out of battery power.

So my actual mileage is substantially higher.

But, hey, this is a good measure of my outdoor runs... and given that I'm running 15-20 miles a week now, I should be cruising through 500 miles fairly soon.

Fun stuff to track!

P.S. And if you don't believe that I wasn't a runner, read this post about how 40-year-old fat men can get up and run. :-)

Canada's Jack Layton Succumbs To Cancer - And Leaves An Awesome "Final Letter" to Canadians

Today is a sad day for our friends up north in Canada - Jack Layton, leader of the National Democratic Party (NDP), passed away this morning at the age of 61 after multiple battles with cancer. The Globe and Mail has a nice tribute to Layton and pretty much every Canadian media outlet is currently writing about his death. For those with no clue who he is, his Wikipedia entry provides a detailed background on his life and work.

I never had the privilege of meeting Jack Layton, but certainly knew of him and read about him / saw him on TV all the time. When we lived in Ottawa, Ontario, from 2000-2005, the NDP was first led by Alexa McDonough with Layton taking over the leadership reins in 2003. Given that as Americans living in Canada we couldn't vote, we didn't have any direct connections to the political activities going on... but as a hardcore political junkie[1], I was fascinated by the Canadian political system and how very different it is from ours.

After moving back to the US in 2005, I've tried to keep up with what is going on north of the border. It's actually quite hard given that our mainstream media here in the US pays almost no attention to what's going on up north. My main news conduit actually has been through the Canadian friends I follow on Twitter and Facebook... their links have kept me up-to-date with what's going on in Canadian politics.

And so it was that I followed the rise of the NDP and their amazing success in the 2011 election with the NDP becoming the official opposition party for the first time in history.

And while it was known for some time that Layton was ill, the finality of his passing certainly has shocked a nation.

Layton's final letter to Canadians, though, is what is also getting a great amount of distribution today. The 2-page letter is available online for all to read and continues the positive tone he always seemed to promote. I was naturally drawn to his language relating to people fighting cancer:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer

The letter goes on to talk of Canadian politics, of the youth of the country, and a great final section to all Canadians.

He ends with what I'm sure will become a widely quoted/tweeted/retweeted/posted text:

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

Indeed!

R.I.P., Jack Layton. Thank you for all you did for Canada and through that for the larger world.

P.S. And as a long-time sci-fi fan, I admittedly have to respect a politician that can be found (circa 1991) wearing a Star Trek uniform! ;-)

[1] Hey, I live in New Hampshire... it's hard NOT to be into politics!

Image credit: mattjiggins on Flickr. It turns out that this was also chosen as the official portrait used on Layton's Wikipedia page.

A Monday Morning Reminder About Those Best Laid Plans...

It's Monday morning. For me, summer is effectively over. My vacation week ended yesterday. It's time to get back into the flow of work and life and get out there and kick some serious _____. I was up early and went for a 5K run this morning focused on speed and came in just over 8:30/mile even while pushing the jogger stroller the whole way.

I had all sorts of blog posts planned... I knew I had to run out to Staples to get a printer cartridge so that my fax/printer/scanner could fax out a document (a rant for another day!)... but I expected to be up in my home office around 8:20am pounding away on those blog posts.

Then... I made a critical mistake.

I handed my used-and-theoretically-dead inkjet printer cartridge to my 2-year-old to carry into Staples because she wanted to "help".

Other parents or those interacting with toddlers reading this undoubtedly know what is about to happen...

HOW MANY WAYS CAN YOU SPELL "FAIL"???

Leave it to the 2-yr-old to discover that yes, indeed, the cartridge did have some ink in it... and to get that ink ALL over her hands... and on her clothes... and subsequently on my hands....

Oops.

So there I was at the checkout counter using some Purelle and paper towels they had to attempt to clean up the major parts of the mess. The cute little hands you see in the picture here are after most of the ink was scrubbed off... but back at home where I could use some more aggressive soap.

As it was all unfolding, I felt myself starting to get agitated and anxious because I had all these plans! I had things to do, articles to write, messages to send... I could feel my blood pressure rising even as I externally was calm and patient.

And then I breathed deeply.

And reflected that this is the reality we all live in...

life happens.

You can plan all you want... you can make incredible plans, in fact... only to have them derailed by some little action, perhaps by your own action as it was in this case, or perhaps by circumstances outside your control.

The measure of ourselves as people is how we choose to react to those changes to our plans and what we learn from those changes.

In my case, I just sighed and went about the actions of trying to clean up all the ink... (and I made a note to myself that it's probably better NOT to let the wee one hold "dead" ink cartridges ;-)

XKCD's Brilliant - And Sad - Comic About Cancer...

Someone recently pointed this XKCD comic out to me and it is both brilliantly done ... and hits home at the tragedy of where we are at as a society with cancer:

The scary part is exactly what the strip shows... you don't know if or when it may ever return. :-(

And yeah... F___ Cancer!