There it is. Not in black and white perhaps, but, in living, bruising, color. Even better… right?
So. I went in to Mad River Hospital on a Monday, August 24, 2009, for the dreaded colonoscopy I had been so assiduously avoiding. It was found that I had eleven colorectal polyps… abnormal tissue growths upon the inner walls of my bowel. The gastro-intestinal surgeon, Doctor Cobb, assured me that at least two, and maybe three of them, were cancerous. But. Of course, we needed to send them to the lab for testing to confirm his opinion. Confirmation came quickly. On Wednesday, the 26th, the lab confirmed that two of the polyps had reached Stage 3, which meant that they had penetrated the bowel wall and thereby entered into the lymphatic system which gave the cancerous cells that had been growing as polyps in the bowel access to the blood, the circulatory system, and thereby the entire rest of the body.
On Thursday, August 27, three days after diagnosis, a foot or so of my compromised colon was removed by Dr. Cobb. The ascending section, or, sigmoid colon, where the majority of the insidious tiny mushroom like monsters had chosen to gather was surgically extracted and the bowel re-sected, or, the two ends re-joined together… and walla! I was good to go.
Except for the troubling fact that the cancer had moved on. The surgery was, in fact, a terrific success! Dr. Cobb did a brilliant job. I had no post-operative complications whatsoever. The truth is… a few weeks later I was surfing on Oahu!! Just like nothing ever happened.
Except for the troubling fact… of Stage 3 Colon Cancer… Stage 3c in my case… life was good.
Holy Shit!!!
Cancer of any stage does kind of drop like a bomb on an otherwise placid life. But. Stage 3 and beyond… is particularly nasty. Mainly because, it opens the bleak door to the oncology department of modern medicine and the hell realms of chemotherapy.
My first oncologist, Dr. Mayer, or Meyer? was a petite, slender, elegantly dressed… nervous gentleman from the Czech Republic, or, Hungary? I was never quite sure. I was never quite able to understand a word he
said. His mind seemed painfully overburdened with complicated, difficult- to-pronounce-in-any-language-living-or-dead, highly forgettable, technical scientific terms. He was technically verbose in other words… suffering from an excess of grey matter… with the added benefit of a dense Hungarian-Czech… gobble-wobble-whoofer… accent. What he wanted from me, as I came to understand… was $120,000… cash up front… for a sinister, highly experimental, science-lab-inspired… “chemo cocktail”… that consisted of
5-fu+leucovorin+oxaliplatin
to be administered into a surgically-installed “vein port” by a motorized, programable “chemo pump” over successive periods of forty-eight hours yadda-yadda… This terrifying apparatus that I would have to wear strapped onto my body for approximately six months was suppose to have great appeal because of its deadly efficiency… “ease of operation”… its insidious modern convenience, in other words… and something about the magical, mystical… highly scientific… “double-blind” taste-tested, experimentally-flimflammed… percentage points of effing! glorious! efficacy, etc etc
Yeah, right.
I had already read about it… the latest and greatest triple-shot… the $120,000 platinum-based oxaliplatin… chemo cocktail with chemo pump… on line. In fact, the first thing I did after receiving the diagnosis of stage 3c colon cancer was…. to go on line… research all the angles…. try to determine… what my best shot would be… on a pool table… where some of the billiard balls… had been replaced by live grenades.
And what I had found out, after many sweaty days of careful study was
That the internet itself. Is a veritable… mine field for the mind… when it comes to cancer research, cancer studies, cancer testimonials…
CANCER CURES!
Oh yes. Lots of ideas, opinions, experts, clinics… natural home remedies, high tech final solutions… numbers numbers numbers… mind-numbing numbers
It all comes down to numbers, doesn’t it. Just like Hermes the Thrice-Great and the neoplatonists reasoned
How much are you willing to pay in the Grand Casino of Life to hedge fund your bets on surviving cancer?
Oxaliplatin… the $120,000 platinum ticket… will get you 2-3% better odds! That translates, after you do the unholy numbers, to possibly a few more days of life? Bell curves being what they are… Not really applicable at the individual level, but relatively speaking…. applicable in mass studies, which
And the risks involved with Oxaliplatin? Oh, well… you might not be able to feel with your fingers and toes for the rest of your life… permanent peripheral neuropathy. NEVER SURF AGAIN!!! But.
Who wouldn’t want to take their chances on a few more days of precious vegetative, spongiform… post-chemo life!?
That’s precisely how Doctor Mayer, or, Meyer, framed it for me.
WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO PAY $120,000 FOR A FEW PERCENTAGE POINTS THAT MIGHT TRANSLATE INTO A FEW MORE DAYS OF LIFE!?!
EVEN FOR ONE DAY!! he thundered discretely, muttered passionately
It was then, that I had to spring it on him. Not only did I not have health insurance to cover the outrageous costs of chemo at the time… I did not have $120,000 to spend on questionable science. From what I had learned after researching colon cancer myself on line
NOT A SINGLE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE DUBIOUS HISTORY OF MODERN WESTERN MEDICINE HAS EVER… EVER… BEEN CURED OF COLON CANCER BY CHEMOTHERAPY. THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF THE EFFICACY OF CHEMOTHERAPY WITH REGARDS COLON CANCER.
Lots of numbers… percentage points… studies here, studies there… more numbers… plenty of numbers arranged and rearranged as in a shell game… but, sadly
No solid, conclusive scientific proof… that the latest, greatest… most expensive chemo cocktail a la pump… is… alas… any more effective than
5-fu+leucovorin… delivered in bolus, administered weekly, the old fashioned way…by timed injection… by those intrepid chemo nurses
The standard treatment for colon cancer… for forty-plus years at the time.
The old “tried and true method”
Otherwise referred to in the industry as “5-FEET UNDER”
Cheers!!
