I’m sorry, but I have a brief medical bulletin.
I went to the clinic today for a long-overdue checkup and examination. Frankly, I’ve been stressed about this upcoming visit for a few weeks. As the date neared, the stress got to me and I began to amplified some suspicious (okay, maybe imagined) symptoms and somehow brewed myself a major cancer scare. I went as far as take a car service to the clinic because I really thought the odds were decent that would be hospitalized and I didn’t want the BW to worry about retrieving my car.
I’ve been told by fellow survivors that simmering stress syndrome is more or less part of the cancer game and the best tactic is to try to get used to it because you’re stuck with it for the rest of your life. My friend and colleague in the Comptroller’s office, Andy Joseph, passed this advice to me after practicing it for more than 35 years before he finally lost his battle with lymphoma a few years ago. Not long before he passed, he told me he still suffered with it. Andy was one of those few people you meet in life who managed to get through this world without bullshitting. I often miss him.
I still predicted disaster on the way to the clinic. I was surprised at the warm welcome I got. I hadn’t been to the clinic – my “second home” for much of the past five years – since last April and was surprised by the warm greetings I got from many familiar faces. I felt better for a while, but the dread returned after they took my blood and I watched them zoom to the lab via pneumatic tube.
Upstairs, I waited just a few minutes before I was called in to the torture area where the doctors and nurses hang out. Bridget spotted me right away – and if you don’t know who Bridget is, you haven’t been reading this blog. “Your blood work is back already,” she said without preface.
“Oh no,” I said. “How bad is it?” (By now, I was sure I was a goner.)
Never one to kid around, my Bridget turned stern. She crossly said to me: “It’s not bad. You’re such a faker. It’s great!”
And it was.
There wasn’t a single sign of the big C. Dr. A, my big C expert, even used the word “perfect” to describe the blood workup and searched but failed to find a single enlarged lymph node. He pronounced me healthy and said I should immediately be given a flu shot and go to the fifth floor to have a $25,000 liter of harvested gamma globulin infused into my veins for 2½ hours.
But the news is good. I’m healthy. Really.
That makes it official - I’m an idiot. I’m pretty sure they’re going to suspend my medical license and this pisses me off because I’ll be less of a doctor than my surgeon friend Dr. Epstein, and I know that 50 years ago, when we were stupid teenage boys in Queens, Ep was at least as stupid as me. Maybe more stupid.
But read on – I actually had an idea. A good one. At least the two doctors and three nurses I proposed it to didn’t blow it off, which is something that medics love to do when a patient proposes a better – or even different – way of doing things. Ready? Try to follow this:
When I was first diagnosed, it was thought that my leukemia (chronic lymphocytic leukemia or CLL) was caused when cancerous lymphatic white blood cells became “super cells” and never died. (Normal lymphocytes live about three months.) That crowded the healthy blood cells out of the system. Not good.
But a few years ago, they found that wasn’t what was happening. They discovered they do – but they live much longer, about three times, or 9 months, longer. This little tidbit changed just about everything in CLL research land. Okay? Keep following.
Normal chemo treatments (protocols) last six months (basically two doses of poison given closely together one week, wait three or four and then start the cycle over again). The treatments have gotten more and more successful in killing CLL cells but almost always leave a few survivors. And the CLL cells have become better and better at hiding and avoiding the poison aimed at them. And if they do survive, they continue to divide and perpetuate the cancer. This where we are now. Chemo sharply reduces the extent of the cancer, but it usually comes back to be treated by another round of chemo that produces the same results – but usually less effectively. In other words, we can maintain CLL but not cure it. Curiously, despite these and other advances, typical survival rates have not increased. But they might be about to.
All right, get ready, here it comes:
A new study has just proved that CLL cells are especially vulnerable to chemo’s poisonous effects when they are dividing, which any rocket scientist will tell you they do at the end of their lives.
Therefore, here it is: Isn’t it logical to extend the CLL chemo protocol to nine months (at least as a start with low dosing)? Statistically, wouldn’t that give you a better chance percentagewise to get all the little bastards when they’re at their most vulnerable and cure this fucking blight of a disease? Doesn’t it make sense? Of course it does. Make it so.
Anyway, it’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. Wouldn’t it be a pisser if it turned out to be the answer?
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