The Mystery Bruise Joins the Mystery Leg Pain

I posted previously about my latest side effect which has been excruciating leg pain. Oddly enough, while the pain has been hanging around for a couple of weeks now, over the weekend bruises started to form exactly where the pain is. I now have a bruise that runs from the middle of my foot up the inside of my leg to my calf. 

I can remember nothing that happened to me that would explain such a thing, but such is life. If I was paranoid, I might think it's blood poisoning, but the fact that my infected toe is on the opposite foot makes that pretty unlikely.

Have I mentioned recently that I'm getting really tired of side effects? 

I'm getting really tired of side effects. 

Okay, Cancer Is Hard to Ignore

After numerous weekends of laying on my couch not doing much, this weekend I decided I would ignore my cancer and do something pointlessly productive.* Specifically, I would replace the cheapo kitchen light that came with the condo with some high-tech, efficient, and modern recessed LEDs. 

It's a fairly simple job: figure out the number of lights needed and where to put them, drill holes in the ceiling, wire in the lights, then take out the old one and patch the hole. It's a small kitchen, so I figured it would take me a few hours tops (patching and painting not included).

Yeah, no.

Having been raised on watts and knowing jack-all about lumens, I guessed at five 4" lights. I'd already measured out where I wanted them (with the help of BIL4), which was an adventure in and of itself in that everywhere I wanted a light there seemed to be a joist getting in the way. But adjustments were made and a layout determined. 

I have now determined that it takes a period of adjustment and accommodation to the idea of drilling holes in the ceiling before one actually starts putting 4" holes in said ceiling. All told, it took me about four hours to drill the five holes. Of course I spent most of that time moving bits of tape around and contemplating the layout.** And since I had places to be and people to see, drilling the holes was the only thing I accomplished on Saturday.

The job for Sunday, then, was to install the new lights and take down the old one. And it was here that the cancer reminded me that it can't really be ignored. To illustrate, here's how the day went:

1. Climb the ladder into the ninety degree attic and position the first light.

2. Climb down and check the positioning.

3. Rest for thirty minutes.

4. Climb back into the attic, nail and wire in the light, and position the second light.

5. Climb down and check the positioning.

6. Rest for forty-five minutes.

7. Climb back into the attic, nail and wire in the light, and position the third light.

8. Climb down and check the positioning.

9. Rest for an hour.

10. Climb back into the attic, nail and wire in the light, and position the fourth light.

11. Climb down and check the positioning.

12. Rest for another hour, then go get an espresso shake, and then rest for another hour.

13. Climb back into the attic, nail and wire in the light, and position the fifth light.

14. Climb down and check the positioning.

15. Rest for another hour.

16. Climb back into the attic, nail and wire in the light, and wire it all to power.

17. Climb back down and test the lights.

18. Bother the downstairs neighbor for access to the basement so the breaker can be reset.

19. Test the lights again.

20. Climb back into the attic to figure out where the wiring went wrong. Correct the problem.

21. Climb back down.

22. Bother the neighbor for a second time to again reset the breaker.

23. Test the lights again. Success!

24. Install all the lamps. Identify one with a missing bracket.

25. Drive to Home Depot to exchange the bad lamp.

26. Install the last lamp.

27. Finished! Well...

...except for the fact that a) I still have to deal with patching the old hole, and b) given my lack of fluency with lumens, it appears I may have overdone it a bit with the lighting. There are probably operating rooms with less light than my kitchen. So in the hopes that when the packaging on the lamps says "dimmable" it's not lying, I think I'll need to swap out my on/off switch for a dimmable one sometime in the near future.

In any case, what should've been about a three hour job turned into something like twelve. It reminded me of the nurse at Group Health telling me about the guy who was going through chemo while still working every day as a roofer. I can't even begin to imagine. Props to the cancer patients everywhere who don't have the luxury of short-term disability or an office job.

In case anyone's interested, here are pictures of my kitchen ceiling on Friday, Saturday and Sunday...

* Pointless in the sense that I didn't actually need to replace my kitchen light, but productive in the sense that I'm glad I did.

** Naturally, I wound up drilling the holes where BIL4 and I had originally laid them out. 

Happy Sunday

As I was leaving work on Friday some of my co-workers wished me a happy mother's day. I reminded them that my Mum had passed away, I no longer had a mother-in-law, I'm not a mother myself, I'm not married to a mother, and so Mother's Day doesn't really resonate with me anymore.

It occurred to me that I'm probably not the only one being excluded.  So to all the people who, like me, no longer have mothers, aren't mothers, aren't partnered to mothers, and so are generally excluded from the entire phenomenon of Mother's Day, have a nice Sunday. 

But I'd suggest saving brunch for another day...

Well That Explains It

Now I understand both the $100 billion cancer drug price tag and the fact that every time I turn around I'm hearing about someone else being diagnosed with cancer. 

Numbers from the American Cancer Society website: Men have a 1 in 2 chance of developing cancer in their lifetimes, and a 1 in 4 chance of dying from it; women have a 1 in 3 chance of developing cancer, and a 1 in 5 chance in dying from it. 

Of course, I couldn't find the breakdown by age range. I suppose it's possible that all of this is really a function of age and longevity -- i.e., if they live long enough, eventually everyone gets cancer. 

But still. 1 in 2 or 3? Pretty crappy odds when you think about it. 

$100 Billion

One hundred billion dollars.

Dr. Evil's latest ransom demand? Nope.

Russell Wilson's new salary? Nope.

The estimated cost of the 2016 presidential campaign? Nope (well, maybe...)

One hundred billion dollars is how much was spent on cancer drugs in 2014. $100 billion! That's some serious money. And recall that there are only an estimated seven billion people alive on the planet at the moment. How can seven billion people, most of whom are not living in the countries where cutting edge cancer treatment is happening, generate $100 billion dollars is spending on cancer drugs?

Oh, and by 2018 that number is expected to jump to $147 billion.* 

It's no wonder oncologists -- at least the oncologists who aren't making boat loads of money from cancer drugs -- are starting to talk about "financial toxicity" as the latest side effect of cancer. 

All of which just goes to point out that a philosophy degree was a really poor choice. In retrospect, I'd definitely prefer to be on the drug manufacturer's side, rather than the patient's, of that $100 billion equation.


* The numbers come from a medscape article a friend forwarded me which I'd link to but requires a registration.

I'm Not Fishing

Under no circumstances should this post be understood as my fishing for a greeting card (the time for that has long since passed), but I thought these were pretty cool.

There was an article in Slate today about a graphic designer, Emily McDowell, who survived cancer as a young adult and is now designing the greeting cards she wished she'd received at the time. As she notes in the article, it doesn't really make sense to send a get well card to someone who might not, while sympathy cards make it seem like they're already dead. So she's created "empathy cards."

They're all great, but at the moment these are my two favorites:

And since more and more people seem to be coming down with cancer,* I thought it would be good to pass this along.

You can read the Slate article here.

And you can find McDowell's entire collection of Empathy Cards here.

* I learned yesterday that another acquaintance I see at the conference I'm at spent the last year fighting cancer. 

How Cancer Treatment Is Like Graduate School

When I was in graduate school I took a class called Cultural Theory. As I recall, the reading assignment for the first week was something like 800 pages; and then the second week was 800 pages; and then the third. Long about the third week one of the students finally asked the professor question we’d all been thinking, “How do you expect us to read all this?”

His answer? “I don’t. But if you want to be academics you might as well get used to the fact that you’re going to be asked to do a lot more than you can actually do, and so figure out how to prioritize and make choices.”

For some reason this week’s new adventures in cancer treatment side effects reminded me of that. The new development this week is leg pain. And by leg pain, I mean it feels like someone is beating on my left leg, from knee to ankle, all night long with a stick. There’s no bruising, though a little bit of redness, but it hurts like hell if you touch it, hurts like hell when you put a sock on (or have a sock on), and generally just hurts like hell as a matter of course. 

Not my favorite of the side effects so far.

It’s starting to feel like cancer treatment is designed to give you side effects until you just can’t take anymore and give up; and the catalog of potential side effects is starting to seem less like potential side effects than all the things you’re eventually going to get, so you may as well just plan for it.

But I'm not a planner, and this is getting pretty old. 

I almost wish someone was coming into my bedroom at night and hitting me with a stick. At least then I could wear shin guards. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about the new mystery pain.

Thirty-five Minutes

I am sitting in my hotel room in Tempe and, lacking anything better to do, started to read a book. Thirty-five minutes. Thirty-five minutes is how long I was able to read before my eyeballs completely shut down. I'm looking at the page and realizing that I can't make out any of the letters. It's all just a fuzzy blur. 

So naturally I stopped reading and turned on the TV. That wasn't much better. I can sort of tell from the voices what I'm watching, but I can't really make out the faces. Surfing past the basketball game I could see players running around but couldn't even begin to make out the score. And it's not that big a room. 

I'm only able to type this because I've got the disability function turned on and the letters are huge. 

I'm a monomaniac at heart, I'm the guy that watched the entire Daredevil series in three days, picks up a book at 10:00 to "read a chapter" and winds up finishing the book at 3:00 in the morning, or plays through a video game over a weekend. Thus, the fact that my eyeballs only work for thirty-five minutes is something of an issue.

I'm starting to think cancer (treatment) is like an accelerated aging process. It's hard not to see my grandma in all the crap I'm dealing with. 

But that's not my real problem. My real problem is what to do in a hotel room in Tempe, Arizona when you can't focus you're eyes on anything. There's only so long you can just sit and stare at the walls. 

Anyone Got a Good Name for the Season of Cancer?

I'm supposed to be packing for a business trip right now, but I hate packing -- even for fun trips. But packing for four days of seminars and networking, as useful as they may be, that I'll be putting off until the very last second (which was probably an hour or so ago). 

In any case, somewhere in all my procrastinating I realized that this is the trip that starts the countdown to my cancerversary. Last year the conference I'm attending was in Chicago, so I drove the Roadster there so Sib2 and I could take Route 66 back. And though I didn't know it at the time, it was on the trip to Chicago the symptoms that would reveal the cancer shifted into overdrive. 

So the next five weeks are the preliminaries leading up to my cancerversary on June 10 (which is when Group Health scanned me and found the tumor). I'm tempted to call this period "Lent" or "Ramadan," but those names are taken. So what do you call the five week period that, in retrospect, was the beginning of the end of your life?*

Aside, of course, from "depressing." 

I suppose, given the calendar, I could just call it "May."** Or how about "May(be) I'll Live for Another Year Since I Made It Through This One?" That's cheery. Well, sort of cheery. Though it doesn't quite roll off the tongue the way Ramadan does. 

I'll have to keep working on it. 


* Sorry to be melodramatic, but if you can't be melodramatic during the unnamed five week period marking the anniversary of your cancer diagnosis, when can you be melodramatic?
** May's sort of been ruined already. When I was a kid "Mayday" meant flowers, as Mum made Sib4 and I deliver flower baskets to our neighbors. Now it means lockdown, as Seattle prepares for the inevitable protests. 

I Feel Like the Toxic Avenger...

...but without the avenging. 

After a few days off the pills, my feet and hands were actually starting to feel okay. Sadly, it didn't take more than a dose or two to get me right back where I started. My feet are killing me, walking is becoming increasingly challenging, and I can barely button a button. It's not as bad as the infusions, but the effects of the Xeloda are starting to catch up with me. 

But what should you expect when you're intentionally filling your body with toxic chemicals, and then inadvertently adding more because it's too much trouble to find food that isn't itself largely constructed from toxic chemicals. 

I'm starting to think it's time for a detox. 

Part of this is pretty easy. I just have to go to the trouble to secure healthier foods than the items I've been choosing. And truly, that won't be hard. 

The anti-cancer toxins may take a little more work, but I don't think it's not doable. In three weeks I'll get scanned again, meet with my oncologist, and, presumably, start another round of pills. I'm thinking I'll take a break after that at least until I get back from the Spain leg of the GCW Tour. This would give me three weeks before the trip for my feet to recover, and then the three weeks of the trip drug-free. I could do with six weeks of cancer vacation.

Of course there'd be time for another round if I started the week before we left and continued taking the pills for the first week in Spain, but that just doesn't sound like fun to me. Shuffling across Southern Spain like a mutant turtle* is not really what I have in mind. The oncologist probably isn't going to be excited by the idea, but he's been pretty open to mitigating his treatment ideas to  meet my needs.

So assuming the scan doesn't throw any wild cards, I just have to finish this round of pills, plus one more, and then I can take a break from the toxins. 


* Not to be confused with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.