[Leica] health

Sat Dec 27 18:20:56 PST 2014

Hi Herb,
Well me Old Son you have to get better because on my 100th birthday day? May 27/ 2029! Yep 14 more years to go. We're having a full blown happiest wildest BD party you can ever imagine. And you are invited and lots of others! This is going to be the BD. party of BD parties ever held. WHY? 

1/ There'll be a band.
2/ A bar keep and well stocked bar.
3/ A Chef and fabulous food.
4/ Undertakers. :-)
5/ A line-up of free taxis for the drinkers! So they can drink and have a free ride home!:-)

At 6PM and the Vancouver weather forecast lady gives her birthday wishes and she says...... "Over there in Victoria on the Island, Ted Grant 100 today!"

READY???????

1/ "I fall over dead!" ( In my life planning I was only going to live to 100! :-)
2/ "UNDERTAKERS" whip the body away!
3/ "The BAND" begins to play wildly!"
4/ "BAR-KEEP" yells out... "BARS OPEN!!"
5/  "CATERER" yells out... "FOODS ON!"

And the party of the Century begins! :-) 

The above plan was put together many years ago with a few "shall we say...... "somewhat under the influence" friends celebrating I had survived a helicopter auto-rotation landing into the Arctic Ocean! Scared the hell out of me! :-) I was soaked because the door was off on my side so I could shoot while we were airborne! So when we hit I thought we were going to completely submerge. Fortunately the big inflated pontoons kept us up-right. But a bit of a wreck! :-( 

Anyway Herb, hang tough my friend as it's going to be one hell of a party and I don't want you to miss it!

All the best for a complete recovery!
cheers,
Dr. ted

-----Original Message-----
From: LUG [mailto:lug-bounces+tedgrant=shaw.ca at leica-users.org] On Behalf Of grduprey at mchsi.com
Sent: December-27-14 3:07 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] health

Sorry to hear about your health problems and complications.  I hope things start to get better for you .  Our prayers for you and your family.  Do not give up, as 100 is not that far off.

Gene & Chris Duprey

----- Original Message -----
From: "Herbert Kanner" <kanner at acm.org>
To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2014 6:04:07 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
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.

_______________________________________________
Leica Users Group.
See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information