I sometimes like to think of my current condition as “shitty puberty.” Not that puberty is a fun ride for anyone, but this experience seems like a cut-rate version. Instead of well thought out, illustrated “what’s happening to my body?” books and parents talking to me about things I don’t want to hear about, plus […]
Category Archives: Cancer
Of Nouns and Pain
I am way overdue for an update and there are multiple posts to be made. Today’s topic is in the header. First: no tumour marker news. The cancer centre at Jewish General was a mad house yesterday* and the blood tech somehow forgot to do a test for thyroglobulin. It’ll likely be another two weeks […]
Foggy Middle
So we enter week six and things are a little unstable. The good news–very good news–is that my tumour marker is down to 10, from over 40 when I started. The bad news is that the hand pain hasn’t abated. It’s different from day to day and I seem to have good days and bad […]
Hypersensitivity Phenomenology, or Touch-and Learn with Hand-Foot Syndrome
So I appear to have the “hand” part of hand-foot syndrome. It’s a relatively mild case, as hand-foot syndrome can be so bad that it’s painful to touch anything with your hands or impossible to walk. In my case, it’s just in the hands. I’ve got the tight skin, tingling and burning, and extreme sensitivity […]
Week 5: Good days, bad day, side effects
I saw my oncologist again on Thursday. Things continued to be good so I was promoted to 20mg. My tumour marker in my blood is a tiny bit lower than last time but no magical drop. Because I told him about my skin peeling off and being bummed to lose a callous, I also learned […]
Onto Week 4: Let’s Kill Some More Disease
I saw my endocrinologist on Friday. I’ve nicknamed him The Terminator, because he kills disease. I’m told the usual scenario is that the neck surgeon is the hard-core one, and the endocrinologist is touchy-feely but it goes the other way in my world. Anyway, my tumour marker was down again over the previous week, so […]
Today was an unusually good day
10 days on the drug and my tumor marker (thyroglobulin level in the blood) is already down. Today was my “hobby” day at Jewish General — 5 hours in total for a variety of tests and waiting to see the oncologist. It was a short meeting but he seemed unusually pleased at the effects of […]