No News Is Good News

I haven’t posted for a while because nothing is happening and nothing has inspired me. Nothing happening is a good thing. Things seem to be status quo. Status quo for me means continuing to get treatments, number twenty one this week, and, thankfully, tolerating them reasonably well. Tolerating them allows me to continue receiving them and since they are effective, that allows me to continue living. I’m tired and fatigued this week but that’s OK. As I mentioned previously my liver is the only place showing “hot” on the PET scan. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t cancer elsewhere. It just means that it isn’t active enough to show up. But the blood tests done this week show that my liver is still functioning well. I can’t help but wonder why it doesn’t make sense to try to attack the cancer specifically in the liver. So I reached out to the Cancer Institute of NJ again. They are one of a very few places using a relatively new procedure using SIR spheres, micro spheres that are injected directly into the liver, via a catheter. The micro spheres contain yttrium-90, a radioactive substance that irradiates the tumors while leaving normal cells relatively unaffected. SIR spheres have proven to be effective with metastatic (non-primary) liver cancer which mine is. Unfortunately, it seems to be used mainly for cancer that has metastasized from the colon. But there are similarities between esophageal cancer and colon cancer, including, I believe, the type of cell, adenocarcinoma. And SIR spheres have been used for esophageal cancer in some cases. One case in particular is with Richard Dickerman who was diagnosed with stage IV EC with metastases to the lungs, liver and lymph nodes in November 2004. His diagnosis matches mine. After undergoing several treatments, including SIR spheres, Richard has been free of all detectable tumors since July of 2006. Very encouraging. Special thanks to Richard’s wife Lois for all her posts to the ACOR mailing list which gave me the information about SIR spheres. There’s no guarantee that I’m a candidate for SIR spheres, no guarantee they would help, and of course there’s always the insurance complications. But I have to explore it. They haven’t responded to my email so next week I’ll have to resort to an old telephone to pursue it further. This was an especially good week for Travis and his wife Mandy. Travis took another giant step in beating this disease. I know they have a lot of people praying for them and they sure are helping. Today is Paul’s birthday. Paul is my late stepfather. Paul taught me a lot, including how to work with electricity around the house. I used that knowledge yesterday to replace an outdoor receptacle which was a good project for me since I could just sit in front of it without needing too much energy. Paul used to work without turning off the electricity. I considered that as a possible way to beat this disease by dying from something else. But I decided to stick around a little longer. Happy birthday Paul. Carry on. ___________________________________________