[Leica] health

[bjq1 at mac.com (Bernard Quinn)]

Herb,

I am twenty years younger than you. I can not imagine what it must be like 
to be 93, on the biggest holiday of the year and to just have been handed 
what for any of us would be a devastating diagnosis. I am sure that I would 
feel that my life has evaporated, that my friends are gone, and that there 
was little in front of me but trouble. It would not surprise me at all to 
learn that you felt this way. 

Please hang in there and please do not give up. Where there is life there is 
hope. Fighting may not guarantee a victory but giving up is almost certain 
to result in defeat. No one knows the future and it's not over until it is 
over. 

Cancer sucks. My wife has survived three bouts with two different kinds of 
cancer. One day at a time is the only way to fly on this particular airplane.

I wish you well and all the best on this journey.

Barney 


Barney Quinn, WK3Z
C: (301) 775-1386
H: (301) 654-0938

> On Dec 25, 2014, at 7:04 PM, Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org> wrote:
> 
> Since everyone regards LUG as family and reports their health issues, I?ll 
> throw mine in. This won?t be real short, because the details are 
> interesting.
> 
> In 2001, my PSA jumped and I had the uncomfortable needle biopsy via 
> ass-hole. Of nine needles, one picked up a couple of millimeters of malign 
> cells which were pronounced to be aggressive. I then had many sessions of 
> what is misnamed ?Intensity modulated radiation therapy?. Actually what 
> happens is the source of the radiation rotates in a vertical plane around 
> the patient and during the rotation, the shape of the beam is modulated by 
> a diaphragm of tungsten fingers so as to always concentrate the radiation 
> on the desired site. One time, I was really scared because the treatment 
> was delated due to a computer crash, and when I asked what the computer 
> program was housed in, they said Windows 2000.
> 
> Every year since, my PSA was checked and my prostate poked by the 
> radiation oncologist.
> 
> A couple of months ago, I felt a sore muscle in my left thigh; I just 
> thought it was a pulled muscle, and Naproxen relieved it. But just one 
> day, it was so sever that I was limping, so I thought it would be a good 
> idea to go to my primary care quack and check it out. When she pulled my 
> leg outward, I yelled ?ouch? and she ordered a hip X-ray to be done on my 
> way out.
> 
> By the time I got home, there was a frightful message on my answering 
> machine. I was to go asap to the Stanford Hospital site in a neighboring 
> city (Redwood City) where an appointment had been set up for a CAT scan. 
> Then I was to drive straight to the Main Hospital at Stanford (Palo Alto) 
> and see the same radiation oncologist. Also they were setting up an 
> appointment, probably for the next day, for a radioactive bone scan.
> 
> The radiation oncologist showed me the X-rays and Cat scans on his 
> computer screen. First there was a large lesion on my left femur. Then 
> there was a bunch of little dots in my lungs that were not there two years 
> ago. I said I was appalled. He said he was appalled. He then opined that 
> my hip was about to break, that he checked that an orthopedic surgeon was 
> available on or immediately after the weekend, and that the quickest way 
> to get admitted to the hospital was via the emergency room. He had his 
> resident wheel me there.
> 
> Well, on the way in, the rent-a-cop confiscated my Swiss army knife, and 
> when it was apparent with a packed ER that I?d be there for a while, I got 
> around to phoning my wife. They were so packed that I had to wait until 
> there was a free bed.
> 
> After the routine things, mainly a blood draw, an orthopedic guy showed 
> up. He said that there was no danger of a fracture, that I should go home 
> and have a normal weekend, and that an appointment had been made to see an 
> orthopedic surgeon on the following Tuesday. I guess it was probably 
> thirty years since the radiation oncologist had learned to interpret that 
> sort of X-ray.
> 
> On that day, my wife went along for moral support. Interestingly enough, 
> all three of us in the room had something in common: doctorates from the 
> University of Chicago, mine in physics, Lee?s in biochemistry, and the 
> surgeon whatever real doctors get. The latter spent most of the forty-five 
> minutes teaching me how to read the X-ray, primarily why it showed that 
> there was no current risk of a fracture. When I inquired about either 
> surgical support of the bone or just drilling to get a sample for a 
> biopsy, he said that the risks outweighed the benefits. He said it was 
> probably metastatic prostate cancer, slow-growing, and tending to deposit 
> bone. Next appointment in a month with immediately preceding X-ray to 
> assess fracture risk.
> 
> I finally got to see a medical oncologist. She indicated that this kind of 
> cancer without PSA rising is very rare, but does happen. She felt that we 
> had to know what we were dealing with, and if the surgeon reported that 
> there was no way to get a sample with a needle, she was going to make the 
> assumption that those dots on my lungs were not an infection residue but 
> were the same tumor, and one of them was very accessible to a cat scan 
> guided needle.
> 
> I?m waiting for that and will keep you posted. I?ll be 93 in June. I doubt 
> that I?ll make 100.
> 
> Herb
> 
> 
> 
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
> 
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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