The climb up is always worth it because the view from the top is so gorgeous!! My Journey to Beat Cancer.
.... sent to me by Jean to brighten what had been my darkest day.
"I am thinking of you and praying for your white cells and platelets to go forth and multiply!!!"
This cancer is officially known as SCC Anal – Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Anal canal. That’s right ... Ass Cancer! (my mom hates it when I call it that. But so what? LOL It makes it easier to joke about. :)) Not the most pleasant thing to talk about but it’s rare, hard to detect and usually discovered in late stages with a poor prognosis when discovered late.
You might say to yourself, “squamous cell carcinoma”, isn’t that skin cancer? Well, yes it is. And as a visible skin cancer it’s quite easy to treat and very curable. But leave it me to get “skin cancer where the sun don’t shine!”
Isn’t that what Farrah Fawcett died of? Yes. Farrah had this same cancer. Actually, that makes it much easier to talk about ... but also more tragic in reality. Sadly, she declined standard protocol for this cancer and she went to Germany for some alternate, herbal therapy that allowed her cancer to progress to Stage 4 which metastasized to her liver and ultimately killed her. Farrah made a fatal mistake. I won’t do the same.
How did I get this?? Isn’t this cancer associated with HIV, HPV and smoking? Yes, those are all risk factors for this cancer. No, I am not gay, I don’t have HIV, nor do I have HPV (but I may well have been exposed to it at some point in life and never known it) and no, I don’t practice deviant sexual behaviour (sorry to disappoint! LOL). And no, I have never smoked – but my father was a 3-pack per day guy and died at age 45 of a heart attack. I don’t have any risk factors for any cancer, let alone this one! As my GI specialist says “sometimes shit just happens”. Lucky me. Parent’s – VACCINATE your children with Guardasil to help prevent cancers such as this and the related cervical cancer!!
“If you can get brain cancer from talking on a cell phone ... did I get ass cancer from wearing a thong!??” ;)
What is the treatment? 6 weeks of chemoradiation –c alled the Nigro protocol. This is concurrent chemo and radiation where the chemo acts simply as a turbo booster for the radiation. It enhances the effectiveness of the radiation to eradicate any remaining cancer cells. Treatment starts on Feb 1 (close enough to Ground Hog Day!) and goes until mid March – with an ultimate goal of staying healthy enough to complete treatment without interruption. 6 more weeks of winter ... and then spring arrives.
IMRT (Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy) is a new type of radiation that varies the amount of radiation delivered to the cancer site, to help best protect the non-affected areas while maintaining the efficacy of the overall treatment. By using this type of treatment, my hip joints, urinary tract and other organs should be spared from permanent damage caused by the radiation beams. It’s sort of like wrapping the ends of the turkey legs in tinfoil so they don’t get overcooked! (metaphors rule the world, don’t they??):)
The effects of chemo and radiation continue long after the treatment stops and apparently the 8 weeks following the treatment will be some of my worst days. Metaphorically - “April showers bring May flowers”. :)
Will I lose my hair? Probably not. Well, not my head hair! :D Or as Brian says "you may not be in Peru but at least you'll have a Brazilian!"
But my friend (awesome friend extraordinaire!) Simon will! Simon is shaving his head in an amazing show of solidarity for me. And while some of my bald friends (!) have offered to do the same thing ... Simon is not bald and has an affection for his hair in the way that most women do! This is big! ... and I appreciate it so much.
What are the side-effects? As the doctors all say “each person is different and the side effects vary in degree across everyone”. At a minimum, I will suffer the standard nausea, fatigue, diarrhea, mouth sores, severe radiation burns to my lower abdomen, genitals and butt. Radiation will also destroy my ovaries (no kids for me, darn!), loss of sexual function and it will severely reduce my ability to produce bone marrow. I don’t really care about the side-effects because they are a far better choice than the only other alternative – full removal of my lower GI track and the permanent use of a colostomy bag. As Dr Wong says “99.9% of patients choose chemo-radiation treatment”!
What is the prognosis? Well, again this varies. But in my case, I’m pretty sure I’m already cured! :) The global rates are about 60% disease-free survival and about 80% overall survival but this can vary significantly with staging and treatment. I’m very lucky to only be stage 2 and to have the best treatment possible. My prognosis is WAY better than 60%!
They say (“the infamous, unnamed, unaccountable “they” who are responsible for so much folklore and urban myth” but whoever “they” are .. they are undeniably wise!), that dogs can detect cancer in people long before it’s evident to us or even to the doctors.
It was mid July 2009 and my life was its normal hectic self. I was winding down my relationship with my company and I felt good about getting out of a “job” that wasn’t challenging for me because my soul was not in it. I had just committed to helping a fledgling “clean tech” group kick off a new book , and I was planning on taking a year off to figure my life out (spending at least 6 months in Peru to work some of my friends I had made there earlier this year) and kick-start myself into starting my own new business.
It was July 14th and as I headed into the kitchen to let the dogs out and make coffee, I couldn’t find Graffiti. It’s actually not that unusual to have to go find him to make him go out in the morning – he is definitely NOT a morning dog! But I found him at the bottom of the basement stairs unable (unwilling) to stand up. He had a panic-stricken look on his face ... as if he didn’t know which way was up. I carried him (all 70 lbs of him!) up the stairs and outside. He was petrified. I called the vet and took him in right away. Vestibular Neuritis. Some infection of his inner ear that affects balance. On closer look, his eyes were darting back and forth as if watching some imaginary fast-paced ping pong watch without every moving his head, and his head tilted severely to the right. They gave me some antibiotics and said that it should clear up in about 3 weeks.
The very next day I had my first symptom of this cancer.
I discounted it and chalked it up to stress, doing too much ... or maybe just an anomaly.
2 weeks later ...
Graffiti continued to get worse. His coat got brittle and dry and then started falling out like mad! He starting losing weight and his head tilt while quite cute, was not improving. His eyes didn’t align and he seemed to have lost his vision and hearing in the left side.
I got my second set of symptoms of this cancer. But Graffiti was my priority.
My vet counselled me to expect that Graffiti had a brain tumour and to prepare for that inevitability. I was dumb-founded. And horrified. How could that be?? All of this got me thinking of my own health and how I needed to get some answers about me, too.
As I started to get tests and attention on to my own issues, Graffiti started to rally. He started to hear again, he began to eat, he had a bit of spring in his step and he started to wag his tail again!
On the day after my surgery, when I was bed-ridden, Graffiti jumped up onto the bed to snuggle with me! This was a dog that the week previous was unable to walk up or down stairs! Graffiti was effectively cured that day ... and he proclaimed me to be so, as well!
As I continue to get more results and to continue to get better after surgery ... I learned this week that the surgery did, in fact, get all of the tumour and I am currently cancer-free – Graffiti continues to prove that while one of us had cancer – it wasn’t him! He has gained back 10 of the 12 lbs he lost, his head tilt is completely gone, this eyes line up, his hearing and vision are back, his hair is growing back and his tail wags non-stop!
Graffiti knew on Dec 11 that I was cured ... but it took the doctors until Jan 21 to know the same thing!
Graffiti will be with me as I go through the “insurance” of chemo-radiation but I truly believe in the power of DOG! And I truly believe that when Graffiti tells me that I’m cured – I really am!
On a side note: if Graffiti was able to “know” that I was sick with ass cancer and detect it ... does that mean when he goes around sniffing people’s butts (and dog butts) that he is simply giving a free medical test?? :D
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