[Leica] health

[Jim Shulman]

My heart goes out to you--and I fully expect you and Dr. Ted to form the LUG
nonagenarian/centenarian photo club in seven years.

Best,
Jim Shulman
Wynnewood, PA

-----Original Message-----
From: LUG [mailto:lug-bounces+jshulman=judgecrater.com at leica-users.org] On
Behalf Of Herbert Kanner
Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2014 7:04 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: [Leica] health

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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