Journal: News & Comment

CBC TV's 2006 cancer documentary

Carl at Navarik pointed me to last year's "Chasing the Cancer Answer" documentary on CBC TV's Marketplace program, and a recent update. Wendy Mesley, the host, was treated for breast cancer before producing the program (the banner photo is of her having a blood test).

I haven't watched it yet, but from the web summaries it does seem a little sensationalist. Nevertheless, it raises good questions about environmental carcinogens and the rising rates of some cancers.

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Not a recommended weight loss plan

One reason that my doctors didn't initially suspect I had cancer last fall was that, even though I had complained of various bowel symptoms, I hadn't lost any weight. I'd been pretty stable around 200 pounds (90 kg) for years, and still was.

Once I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in early January, however, that changed. I had to clear out my digestive system for a colonoscopy, and had numerous other tests. I cleared things out again for minor surgery in February, which removed what turned out to be another hunk o' cancer lower down in my rectum. Then we moved into numerous scans, biopsies, and eventual treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, which I'm still undergoing.

The result is that I've lost close to 20 pounds (9 kg) since Christmas. Compare August 2006 on the left to April 2007 on the right:

That's nothing compared to how much weight I lost 16 years ago, in early 1991, when I first developed diabetes and was unaware of it. Since my body couldn't process carbohydrates for lack of insulin, it started consuming itself and going into a state of ketoacidosis, which is like a super-severe, involuntary version of the ketosis people induce in themselves when on the Atkins diet:

Frightening photo of Derek by Alistair, March 1991

Back then, I plumped up again just fine once I'd been hospitalized for a week, started taking insulin, and began processing food properly once more.

This time around, after losing the first 10 pounds precipitously through February, I've stayed reasonably stable around 183 pounds (83 kg) over a couple of weeks now. My appetite is still good, but it's smaller, and my body is doing lots of extra work during treatment. Plus my blood glucose levels have been out of whack, and I've been adjusting my insulin accordingly.

Once this course of radiation and chemo ends in late May, we'll see if my weight comes back up as I wait for more surgery in late June. After that, who knows? But it would be nice if my trousers fit properly again around my waist. Even the ones I bought a month ago are feeling loose.

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While I love San Francisco...

...I'm glad I'm not a commuter there right now.

It's probably not a good sign that the interchange in question was called a "maze" by locals to start with.

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The vestiges of colonialism

CBC has an interesting short article on the last remaining territories of European colonialism around the world. Oddly enough, Denmark holds the biggest single chunk, because Greenland remains Danish territory. I didn't know it had such a cool flag either.

Once again, I slept most of the day today, so that's all I have to say for now.

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My day

The La-Z-Boy recliner on the left (super-duper plush, with motorized recline, variable speed and pattern massage, and heat) could be The Most Comfortable Chair Ever. If there's anywhere such a chair should live, a waiting room for chemotherapy treatment at the Cancer Agency is it:

Thanks to my wife for the photos, and to my parents for taking the kids overnight so that both she and I can crash out this evening and sleep in tomorrow.

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Why I'm not on Facebook

Years ago, people begged me to hook up with them on Friendster. I didn't. Then it wasn't the cool thing anymore, and it was just as well.

Next came LinkedIn and MySpace. Nope, I have nothing there either.

Now it's Facebook and Twitter.

Tell you what. Go over and join Virb now. It's where everyone will be next year after they've abandoned MySpace and Facebook, so you can get a good account name now—if you can find an invitation.

Just don't send me an invite. I have this thing about trying to keep my online existence stable, so if you link to something of mine, it will still be around in a few years. If I gave you my email address or ICQ account number in 1996, or my blog URL in 2000, it still works. I don't regularly create and abandon new blogs and podcasts, or delete them and start over. I like to have an archive that persists.

Sorry if I'm weird and not cool that way.

Therefore, if you want to know what I'm up to, I have this blog and my Flickr photos. You can even subscribe to them with RSS.

It's like magic, this Web thing.

UPDATE: It didn't take me long. By mid-2007 I was on Facebook, and by the end of the year on Twitter too. I find them both useful now, largely because I know so many people there. But still no Second Life or Tumblr or MySpace. I haven't completely succumbed. Yet.

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You never know what you're gonna get

Sleepy weekend, okay Monday, horrible Monday night (abdominal cramps and no sleep at all), long day at the Cancer Agency, slept all afternoon and through the night, feeling like a normal human being again today.

It's almost completely unpredictable, but there you go. Right now I'm not inspired to go into my usual long writerly analysis of it all. So if I blog infrequently or tersely in the next few days or weeks, I'm just tired. Man, sometimes am I tired. And sometimes I'm not.

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Chemo crushed

I notice that weekends are kind of a washout now. With IV chemo on Thursday and the end of the week of daily radiation on Friday, my body goes into recovery mode and I sleep and ache and generally feel crappy most of Saturday and Sunday. Yet here on Monday, while still pretty tired, I feel a lot better.

I tell you, though, the video iPod my wife got me back at the end of 2005 is probably the best, most extensively used gift I've ever received.

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Dinoriffic

When I was a kid, I would have so loved Dinobase. Of course, there would have had to be a Web then, and there wasn't. (Via Pharyngula.)

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Dipped in metal

Thursdays are my intravenous chemotherapy days, as well as busy with the usual daily radiation and a meeting with my radiation oncologist, Dr. Ma, whom I met for the first time yesterday, even though he's been running my radiation care for several weeks now. Nice guy.

Last night was extremely weird. After late afternoon chemo, my wife and I had dinner at the local Cactus Club, including some genuinely awesome Szechuan beans, then I started to feel wiped out. I came home and was asleep by 8. I woke up a few times, one time ridiculously sweaty, another feeling like I'd been dipped in metal up to my chin (there's platinum in that oxaliplatin, after all). Felt pretty decent this morning, though.

Here are the past couple of days' worth of photos:

Check out the morning pill ritual.

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Artificially boosting page views by breaking up web articles sucks, and everyone knows it

Yes. Absolutely. 100%. I agree. I wish everyone would stop.

Multiple pages are okay in something like this splash screen gallery. Not great, but tolerable. But snipping up short articles into insane, ad-laden page chunks with one or two paragraphs per page? Sucks!

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How to get permission to take high-quality concert photos

Here is a stupendous blog-style post at Flickr from Thomas Hawk (via kk+) discussing how to get a photo pass, so that you're allowed to shoot high-quality SLR photographs of bands.

If I'm feeling up to it I may try something like that for the Police concert I'm already going to at the end of May.

It can't hurt to ask.

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Morphine is my friend

It has nasty connotations, of course, but taking a very low dose of morphine before I got to bed has finally let me sleep well, so I finally feel like a normal human being in the morning.

Of course it is also addictive and constipating, so I need to be careful. But for now, taking it at night has made me feel better during the day, and I like that.

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Started out bad, got better

I woke in pain, and had a shower, which was a bit humiliating for reasons I won't actually describe right now—maybe later. But a visit to the clinic, some radiation, and a visit with Dr. Usmani got me some additional medicines (yes, more damn pills and suppositories), which so far seem to be helping.

One of those pills is morphine. Yup, morphine.

I just took some, but I can't feel it yet. I'm hoping to sleep well for the first time in some time. We'll see.

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That weekend sucked

Poo talk today. Friday night I became constipated, which is one of the side effects of some of my medicines. I didn't really sleep at all. Saturday, after some medication, there was a relatively quick shift into something more like diarrhea. I slept almost all day while my wife took the kids out to their various activities. Last night was a bit better, but today I was still extremely tired, and did a lot more sleeping.

We went out for dinner with my in-laws, and it was good to leave the house. Now I'm exhausted again, but I'd say this is the best I've felt since earlier on Friday.

Weekends. Not so fun now.

I'm hoping for a better Monday, when radiation treatment resumes.

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HTML5 becoming realistic?

Web geeks are the only ones who'll care about this, but Digital Web has a great summary of the upcoming HTML5 and XHTML2 standards for creating web pages in the future, including why HTML5 is a better option. I sort of understood the issues before, but that article cleared it up for me.

Now all we need is some browser support for next-generation development technologies. If you don't build modern web pages, you might not even know that the basic coding infrastructure everyone is using is about eight years old, and could use updating for the way people want to make and use websites and web applications today.

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Go watch my first video podcast from Inside Home Recording

Right now I feel like crap, so go watch the Inside Home Recording 40th Episode—our first full-length video podcast. We just posted it.

Ouch. My butt.

In addition to the direct high-quality link above, you can find the video in two lower-resolution parts at Revver, YouTube and other video sharing sites too:

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Not much new to report

Things are okay so far, one day further in. No nausea, no more butt pain than usual (i.e. I slept fitfully, but I slept), a little tired, no more sniffles. In about half an hour I take another dose of chemo pills, with lunch, then have radiation again just after 2 this afternoon.

No big plans for the weekend, except more of those pills. It would be really nice if I could sleep straight through the night, but that hasn't happened for a couple of weeks now. Otherwise, game on.

I've been emailing with a guy in almost exactly my situation, just begun chemo and radiation this week, but in a suburb of Paris, France. He's 48, and both he and his wife have been writing to me about their experiences. His treatment is a bit different, but it's useful to communicate with someone on a similar trajectory, even if he is in another hemisphere.

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