The Litany Against Fear

I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. (Frank Herbert)

Monday, August 25, 2008

The Bitch is BACK!


On Thursday, July 31st I boarded a bus for an eye appointment. In the parking lot at the bus station I had a seizure. I was scared because my seizures are waking seizures and this one came in the middle of the day. Turned out it wasn't my epilepsy causing the problem. The CT Scan of my head done in the ER revealed a 3 cm tumor on the back of my brain. Doctors were optimistic. Just one tumor. Really clear margins. Right on the surface and in a non-vital area. Perfect candidate for surgery, so on August 11th they cut open my skull and pulled out about 99% of the tumor.

The recovery was surprisingly painless and within 4 days I was home and recovering well, at least physically. Emotionally and mentally I'm a little messed up. Brain not functioning at full capacity and I'm struggling with more than my usual amount of anxiety. Apparently, it's all very normal.

The Plan:
Despite this set back, the Herceptin has continued to keep the cancer in remission below the neck, so I'll still do that treatment every 3 weeks as usual. But what to do about my brain? In early September I will have 1 treatment of GAMMA Knife Radiation. Gamma knife is really fancy radiation that targets a specific area rather than the whole head. This is good because there is less chance that any damage will be done to the healthy parts of my brain.

The only problem is that there is no treatment at the moment to prevent more tumors from growing in the brain. They can zap it well and good but something MIGHT escape to do some damage. We already know there's some cancer cells floating around my body or they wouldn't have found a home in my head in the first place.

So I'm on permanent wait and see. Every 3 months I'll get new scans and I'll learn if I'm all clear or if I'll need more radiation. Spot treating is not ideal, but it is the best solution for the present. At some point I might have to radiate the whole brain, but Dr. Lee and my other doctors want that to be one of our last resorts.

That's that. The fight goes on. The cancer just won't die...but neither will I. HA!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Farewell to a Fellow Cancer Fighter

Ever since the Ted Koppel special "Living With Cancer" I was drawn to Koppel's best friend Leroy Sievers and his blog "My Cancer" on NPR. Leroy spoke so honestly and eloquently about what it means to have this disease, to fight this disease, to live with this disease. It felt good to read his posts about the humor and the horror of cancer and all else in between. On August 16th, 2008 Leroy Seivers passed away. The following is the obituary from NPR.

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Journalist Leroy Sievers, who covered wars, genocides and natural disasters in more than a dozen countries — and who chronicled life after his cancer diagnosis for NPR on-air and online — died Friday. He was 53.

In his radio essays, in his podcast commentaries and on the blog, My Cancer, Sievers addressed the polite silences that surround cancer. He described his early internal debates about whether it was worth it to buy new pants and shoes. He spoke frankly about his hope that he would live long enough to read the final installment in the Harry Potter series. (He did, reporting avidly on the 759-page volume in a blog post written late at night, immediately after he finished the book.)

"Leroy gave voice to a topic that we are very uncomfortable with — death and dying," McDonnell said. "My Cancer had a face and a heart and a smile."

Why Blog? Because 'No One Walks This Road Alone'
In May 2007, Ted Koppel hosted a three-hour, prime-time Discovery Channel documentary, Living with Cancer, in which he interviewed his friend and longtime colleague. In interviews before the documentary aired, many reporters asked Sievers variations on one basic question: "What do you get out of writing the blog?" He concluded one My Cancer post with an answer: "A daily reminder that none of us walks this road alone. What could be better than that?" Sievers blogged about his cancer almost every day. Even on days that he could "forget" about the disease, he argued, it was important that he share his reflections for the many readers who didn't have such a momentary reprieve.

Written by Shomial Ahmad