An unexpected Urinary Tract Infection infection nearly brings life to an end

 The week of July 12 will be indelibly recorded in memory. Not my memory you understand. I have just been talking to Anne and Sandra to understand the sequence of events - because my memory of the way things happened leaves much just hanging. I don't know if it is the drugs or the side effects of the infection, but my memory now is much worse than it was before July 12.  

Unknown to Sandra and me, I was developing a bladder infection. We had pizza with a friend on the evening of Friday, July 10. Right in the middle of supper, after only one piece of pizza, I wasn't feeling well. I went to the bathroom and began to pass out. I was shortly taken by ambulance to Inuvik Hospital.

The bladder infection very soon started to get worse and I began to go into shock, rapidly affecting my cardio-vascular system, and my blood pressure continued to drop, to the point where the Inuvik Regional Hospital kindly requested my family to come, because I was dying. 

Sandra called my daughter Anne in Vietnam and told her what was happening; Anne decided to come home, and she arrived here in Inuvik on July 23. I was getting better, and she drove by the hospital so that I could give her a wave at the window of my hospital room. I was in recovery by then, and I was shortly able to be discharged. Anne and her friend Laura have kept me company from time to time, when they are available,

Life since then has been ok, but I have not been feeling well really. I am on a lot of drugs just to keep me going. Home Care drops in twice a day while Sandra is at work to make sure that I am all right. 

Well folks, I will let this do for now. Except to mention that I am to be put on another drug to bring about better pain control. My pain is greater than can be completely eliminated by the present prescription. So there we are.

Cancer has been foiled agaiin - by one pain drug

((Back to a new normal. I am on one drug after a few days, and the patches have been removed.))

Can you believe it? I wrote the above short sentence on May 28, three weeks ago. The one drug in question was Hydromorphone 2mg. Now - guess what!! I am now three weeks later on 6 drugs. That my friends is my new normal!! Six drugs in varied proportions at different times of the day. Here is the list:

Synthroid 50mcg - once a day, first thing in the morning; the purpose is to strengthen my thyroid
Dexamethasone - 4mg at 0800 (to give me an early feel good energy kick (and it's working!! Although it is an odd feeling to feel like you are on a high first thing in the morning))
Pregabalin - 75mg three times a day (for shingles pain on the left side, that I contacted more than a year ago as a side effect of the fateful radiation and chemotherapy (chemo for short)
Hydromorphone - 2mg - four (4) times a day - morning, noon, evening, bedtime (AND as a breakthrough, sometimes, like early morning, say 0300, when the pain has spiked for some unknown reason
Hydromorph contin - 9mg - slow acting (45 mg total - three times a day - morning 18mg, evening 18mg, late evening 9 mg)
Hydromorph contin - 3mg - slow acting (6 mg total - twice a day - morning 3mg, evening 3mg)

So there you have it.

Pain is vastly under control. My brain works again; Sometimes I was actually screaming in pain. Sandra will attest to that, and that I could not think past basic human needs like eating, sleeping, and going to the bathroom.

Now speaking of the bathroom. First of all, I will be on a catheter for the rest of my life. That is very likely since it is generally agreed that the risks involved in the known prostate operations are equal to or greater than leaving me on the catheter as status quo. 

Now, I'm thinking of some expressions that are going to have to change in my household. Apparently "hang on to your shorts" is a time-warp of "hang on to your hat." Since "hang on to your shorts" isn't kinda appropriate to the Arctic, and "hang on to your hat" is archaic - It goes back to the days when men wore hats, that's according to Mr Google - So here goes - in that same vane of "here goes nothin nowhere" I propose "grab your catheter" as an appropriate expletive or saying when quick action is recommended in the Malcolm household!

Another thing I have to do for the rest of my life besides wear a catheter. I have to have immunotherapy for the rest of my life too, which is an IV treatment of Nivolumab, a drug that came on to the market in 2018, i.e., quite recently. The guy who developed the basic premise for using drugs like Nivolumab to target and kill cancer cells got the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2018, only two years ago. This is where my immune system is trained to target cancer cells and kill them, leaving normal cells alone. For example, on July 7 of this year I will fly to Yellowknife to take an IV treatment of Nivolumab, and every month after that.

I hear you asking "why aren't you taking Nivolumab in Inuvik?"- and I can say that the same question is being asked at the Stanton Hospital in Yellowknife.

That's it for now folks.

Unexpected pain increase - cancer is a fickle companion

Hello from Yellowknife. This week I have met with an urologist who has agreed that I have an enlarged prostate that is hindering urination. So on Wednesday I had lighted scopes put through my urethra to view my bladder wall and my prostate, literally all in living color. I could see the enlarged prostate and the inflamed wall of my bladder where the catheter has rubbed against it, probably the source of blood in my urine from time to time, as seen in the urine bags strapped to me. 

So I am still wearing the bags until further notice - meaning that Dr Sarah Cook (rather than Dr Mansouri) will consult with the urological surgeons in Edmonton to see what must be done. Personally I hope that they decide to remove my prostate altogether.

Now the key problem though is that my pain has increased exponentially since my last blog. I mentioned being down to two pills a day. Well now I am up to two pills every three hours and only barely holding the pain in check. Sometimes I have to take an extra pill or two in between regular three hour marks. Tuesday night this week my pain was absolutely incredible, and I actually screamed a couple of times during the night. The pain would cycle between 8 and 10 out of 10 in my Sacrum area with pain shooting down the outside of both legs. And with an added extreme jab like sticking a knife in me from time to time if I moved just the wrong way, and the wrong way kept changing from time to time! That night I only got three or four hours of sleep. I actually thought of Jesus on the cross, and for the first time in my life I felt that I understood his physical pain before he died.

So the upshot of that is that I have had new patches prescribed. My normal weekly patch change is Saturday, but now with the new fentanyl patches I have to remove the old patch, wait 12 hours for the old opoid drug to wear off, then put the fentanyl patch on and wait another up to 12 hours for the pain relief to take effect. So my family doctor Dr. Robson has the ER at Inuvik Hospital all ready to receive me tomorrow afternoon after our return to Inuvik from Yellowknife. So I will stay in Hospital so that the nurses can monitor my pain which will likely go through the roof during the 20 hours or so before the new patch takes effect.

The moral  of this story is that cancer is fickle, and always finds a way to keep up its attack. The doctors here at Yellowknife Stanton Hospital in the urology unit believe that my enlarged prostate could have something to do with the pain increase. How could this be? Well the tumor is at the S1/S2 position, and at the S2/S3 right near by are the nerves that interact with the bladder and prostate. So, those nerves might be now cozying up to the tumor and further exacerbating the pain situation.

So whereas I am planning on a fairly long future on this earth, there is no telling how accurate my forecast may be. The tumors could decide to start growing again. However, Sandra is very hopeful that going to a vegan diet will reduce all inflammation and actually shrink the tumors. So that is our next little experiment. 

So on that encouraging note, good night folks.

Hello my friend, hello!

I often think of Neil Diamonds song with the line Hello my friend, hello. It comes back to me very often so that is my title today.

Hurray for remission! Somehow I feel different about this remission. The fact that there has been no tumor growth in three months has been very encouraging. However, there is some fear that continuing monthly immunotherapy is absolutely necessary for continued good health.

My oncologist, Dr Mansouri in Yellowknife, believes that my Nivolumab immunotherapy every month is more important than the COVID 19 risk of travel Inuvik to Yellowknife for treatment. And its interesting that we now have flights to and from Yellowknife only twice a week because of COVID 19, instead of the usual seven days a week! So I may have some difficulty arranging my treatments down the road. My next treatment, including a special appointment with an urologist to determine what is to be done about my bladder blockage and swollen prostate, will be in early to mid May.

Actually, living with the catheter and urine bags strapped to my leg has turned out to be completely manageable. And the fact that I only need to take a pain pill twice a day is just great. I certainly don't look forward to a prostate operation but if that keeps the pain away and returns normal urinary function it will be just fine in the end.

I have been frustrated that my brain doesn't work well at all for the first half of every day, but --- I have written three poems since April 10. Writing poetry again is my sign of improved cognitive function overall. 

My 2014 poetry book Pine Cones and Small Stones had 108 pages, and I have written at least another book's worth of poems since then. But instead of publishing them in book form I am thinking of submitting a few of them to poetry publishing sites and competitions. I have two poems published now, one air combat poem Fear is a Ghost in the Night Sky at the British war poetry site, http://www.poetsandwar.c om/fear-is-a-ghost-in-the-night-sky/ and my cancer poem A Journey in the League of Canadian Poets publication 

http://poets.ca/2020/01/13/fresh-voices-19/  

Falling into poetry - finding a new world

I have recently discovered Caroline Kaufman's new poetry book entitled when the world didn't end, and I can really relate to this girl who has suffered from depression. I feel that I truly fell into her words, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland to find a strange new world. And through poetry, hers and my own included, I am finding a new world, where I can be happy and whole. 

On page 78 of Caroline's book I quote: I am surprised I am still alive, but I am grateful for it. That sums up my feelings exactly.

And I love this verse from Caroline's book on page 172:

every minute I have on this earth

is borrowed time.

I fought for it,

almost died for it,

and won it back

That describes my cancer experience exactly. I fought to stay alive in December 2015 when I was operated on, and it is true that I almost died but I did win my life back. Now going on 4 1/2 years later I am still living on borrowed time. But the cancer is in remission and with my bladder problems looked after, my pain is truly under control.

I want to emphasize that my recovery follows the path of Radical Remission as Kelly A Turner's book describes. Now, what is left to do is shrink the three tumors on my spine. And through Bruce Lipton's The Biology of Belief whereby through belief I can do healing wonders in my body, including shrinking of tumors. Lipton quotes Henry Ford's famous line on page 112 of his book: If you believe you can, or if you believe you can't -- you're right.

I recently purchased a neat book entitled Naturopathic Oncology: An Encyclopedic Guide for Patients & Physicians. In this book I find plenty of support for what I am doing to heal, particularly with regard to mistletoe subcutaneous injections which prime the immune system to work against cancer cells, and with regard to curcumin which reduces inflammation, and hence works against the impact of inflammation in encouraging cancer cells to thrive and grow. The book has two pages, 410 - 411, devoted to RCC, Renal clear Cell Carcinoma. It mentions that only 62% survive kidney cancer for five years. So it looks like I am in the 38% that go on living!

By the way, I should have said in my last post that one reason for my trip to Yellowknife last week was to take a CT scan of my sacrum area. That was done and the CT showed no growth of the sacrum tumor. So I am definitely still in remission, and looking forward to my new world of thriving in recovery by shrinking the tumors and getting on with life. I can then be considered as "cancer free"!!

The winter of my discontent

"The winter of our discontent" was made noteworthy and kind of famous, first by William Shakespeare and then by John Steinback. This is the winter of my discontent too. As I write I am down from Inuvik to Yellowknife for my monthly Nivo immunotherapy.

Today, April 09, it is snowing in Yellowknife, and I am wearing a urine bag and a catheter. So, in fact, I would call this the winter of my soul. Life has become cold and listless. Perhaps by writing here I can get my mind and emotions back on track. The catheterization came about because I guess for years I have not been able to empty my bladder and the pressure of the full bladder all the time was in fact causing the severe pain in the tumor on my sacrum. Now I only have to take a pain pill once or twice a day. Sandra is hoping, by us switching to a totally non-inflammatory diet, essentially a vegan diet, I can shrink the three tumors on my spine. So, fewer hydromorthine pain pills and I bet my brain will clear and I will be more like my old self.

Well, now the next day April 10, the sun is shining in a bright blue sky here in Yellowknife, and my optimism is certainly coming back. And it was so good to get a good night's sleep now that the bladder problems have disappeared.

I hope I am not repeating myself here. I am in a highest risk category for COVID 19, being Stage 4 cancer with a compromised immune system and 79+ years of age, and so Sandra and I stay completely at home these days. Our friend Chris in Inuvik gets our groceries, mail, and drug store stuff. One scary thing is that there are only 3 ventilators at Inuvik hospital and I am not top priority to receive one because of my Stage 4 cancer and age. So I have to really take personal care to stay alive.

Back to Inuvik tomorrow. I will send my next post from home.

The COVID 19 epidemic continues to rise - FAST

Happy Thursday. Our self isolation ended last Sunday. We tried to take a drive to Tuk on Sunday, but the road was closed to normal traffic when we wanted to go.

Well, we now have one COVID 19 case in Inuvik, but that person is self-isolating so no spread here. However, I am taking much more precautions. I am not going to go out, except in car. At 79 and counting, with a compromised immune system due to cancer, chemo, and pain drugs, I am a prime candidate for testing positive to the virus and dying of pneumonia.

Country-wide, according to today's New York Times, Canada has only 109 deaths, doubling every 4 days. the US on the other hand has 5,708 deaths, doubling every 3 days. We intend to tell our Illinois friends to be more careful because the state of Illinois already has 152 deaths, doubling every 2 days! Note that Illinois has almost 50% more deaths than the country of Canada. People in the US really don't want to stay home. I think it was California that hasn't even closed it's public beaches. The NY Times showed a beach really quite well populated.

I have great news! Great for me anyway. I have been on the board of a high tech company in the nuclear industry for the past about 15 years. The day before yesterday my phone rang late morning and it was the board Chair of that company. He offered me a contract (accepted of course) to tackle an engineering problem related to his company's power plant design. Why me? Because we have developed considerable trust over the years. And he hired me knowing that my short-term memory and some cognitive ability has suffered because of chemo and pain drugs. So I am quite delighted.

My required engineering texts are in a rented storage unit in Yellowknife, and they are all 40 or more years out of date. So I bought 2 books through Indigo-Chapters on line. One of them has already shipped, on Engineering Mathematics, but it is not the one I need the most, on Thermodynamics and Fluid Flow Dynamics as applied to power systems. My specialties in engineering have always been thermodynamics (the study of thermal energy in all its forms) and fluid mechanics (looking at how fluids, liquids or gases, flow in systems we use every day or in power plants).

I would like to think that this pandemic will bring people together in a helpful community-oriented way in the western world. However I was disappointed to learn, again from today's NY Times online that last month, March 2020, resulted in the second-highest month every for personal gun sales in the US. That doesn't bode for being helpful and community-oriented! Also, Dr Anthony Fauci, President Trump's medical adviser is getting death-threats. It is amazing that there are folks in the US, the fastest growing country for COVID 19 cases, who simply want everyone back to work to kick-start the economic engine, regardless of the threat to human health.

A good friend of mine is of the opinion that this pandemic will bring about a reset to society in the western world. It seems to me that it is really a boon for communication industries, since whole conferences are now planned using Zoom-related technology.

COVID 19 on the Rise

It has finally hit the NWT. There was a confirmed case in Yellowknife the second week of March - someone who had flown in from the south! Well guess what, that week of March 9 is when we were in Yellowknife for my treatment! So as soon as we were told about it yesterday we had to go into voluntary isolation for up to two weeks from the time we could have caught the COVID 19 in Yellowknife. So until next Friday the 27th, we have to remain in isolation. 

But no worries. Our friends here in Inuvik have already volunteered to do the delivery of groceries, bottled water, etc. Sandra and I are completely free of illness symptoms. In fact I have not even had one single cold since my cancer operation on December 6, 2015. So that is almost 4 1/2 years ago.

It feels strange to be in a high-risk segment of society, being in my 80th year, and suffering no coronavirus symptoms. I talked to my dear cousin Lillian who is just two years younger than me, living in the Vancouver area, and there have been five deaths to the virus so far. So she is quite concerned about staying at home, not going out and about any more than absolutely necessary. I am going to have to travel to Yellowknife every month for Nivo treatment as an absolutely essential travel. My next trip is scheduled for April 8 - 9, including a CT scan to make sure the tumors remain in remission.

Sandra is shifting us a bit further nutrition wise to a vegan diet. And it is not as hard or far out as I thought it would be. For example, I love pancakes, and yesterday I made wheat, oats and ground flax pancakes with avocado oil. Super delicious.

Sandra and all of her staff are now working from home. The work still has to be done. All of the counselling that her staff do will now be done by telephone. And no one knows how long this epidemic is going to last. It is not a good time to need counselling because nothing beats meeting face to face.
. 
This being isolated at home doesn't really bother me, since I love writing, and I have a library of books to read, with more on order. I give away as many as I order now, so our library remains pretty well  static with the size it is now. And we have a store of good DVD movies. Tonight before bed we are going to make our own popcorn and watch Casablanca, one of the best movies of all time I am told.

Hay House and Radical Remission

Hello again folks,

I love being in remission and I have been an avid listener/observer to the Hay House Publishing docuseries Radical Remission, which you too can view at https://www.discover.hayhouse.com/radicalremission/ but only until March 26 in this 2020 year.

Also, as you know, after taking responsibility for your own health, nutrition is a very important part of fighting cancer and getting it into remission. So I love a quote from Danielle DuBoise of Sakara Life which says: "JOY is a nutrient." As I look at the Radical Remission landscape and cancer recovery I so appreciate the aspect of JOY. A prophet of the Old Testament in the Bible named Joel had this to say about the importance of joy: "the vine is dried up, and the fig tree languishes; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: for joy is withered away from the sons of men."

Wow, that is so powerful. If there is no joy there can be no spiritual fruit. Joy must come first. Now, as I look at my life now, when I have gratitude, when I sit down and make a gratitude list, I find joy rising up inside my spirit. I become joyful. And that makes life so much more worthwhile.

Also, my cancer recovery has become a course of action. Knowing what to do to follow-up on the wonderful effective Nivolumab immunotherapy is one thing, but to do it with tenacity is another! And so I came across an action strategy called John Boyd's "OODA loop":

Observe, Orient (set yourself in place for action), Decide, Act! This flow chart is a picture of United States Airforce Colonel John Boyd's "viral strategy" for out gunning the enemy in the Korean war of the early 1950s. Using that strategy he and his pilots flying F86 Sabre Jets were able to outmaneuver much more powerful and faster Mig 15 fighter jets flown by the enemy. Note that at any point in the decision making loop your critical information provides feedback so that you can go back and repeat if necessary. 

I'm not sure how this centered typing thing got going so I don't know how to change it. Other than I will go for a new blog tomorrow. 

Bye for now.

Keep Calm and Carry On

I sit here with the soft snowflakes drifting down this cozy winter evening. A tremendous amount of snow this winter and my shoveling capacity physically is close to zero, so we have hired that work out a couple of times, and more to go, to keep our walk and driveway navigable.

I have always admired the British government for their attitude all through World War 2. Hence the title of my post as it relates both to the COVID 19 pandemic and my personal war to win the fight against cancer.

Thanks to all my dear friends for their comments at the end of my blog posts. you all mean a huge lot to me. Writing this blog certainly helps keep up my spirits for the health battle ahead. Although I am so fortunate to find myself very healthy in all other non-cancerous respects, and although I am in remission, the specter of Cancer, the big C, continues to dog me day and night. The drugs still make me very tired, but that is mitigated to some extent on days that I can get 10 hours of sleep or more. So I am not allowed to forget that although I have won a major battle, the cancer war is still on!

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in all professional things I had hoped to be involved in as related to permafrost engineering and talks at conferences, etc have been cancelled. Fortunately I only had one air travel booked and paid for, Air North return flight to Whitehorse in mid April. Air North would not give me a refund but rather simply put me payment amount into an account that I can use next time I book.

What do you think about this idea? The world is full of anger and misunderstanding and cultural battles, etc etc. This COVID 19 pandemic might just bring people together to fight a common enemy, an enemy that threatens to destroy the health of thousands all over the world. It will hopefully make us all more caring, more sharing, more neighborly.

At my ripe old age of 79 1/2 I am in one high risk segment, so I am being encouraged to stay home, and not to wander around town unless it is absolutely necessary. Sandra's boss Cynthia saw me in the hospital cafeteria yesterday and mentioned to Sandra that I should not come to the hospital unless absolutely necessary. Which is good advice especially considering that to some extent the hospital is a disease collecting facility as well as a disease treatment facility.

It is strange, waiting for the corornavirus storm to hit. It makes me feel like it did at home on the farm with a hailstorm and dark clouds on the horizon. Waiting and wondering when and where it would hit. Not if but when. 

That's all for now folks. I hope you all stay healthy. I guess we can't all stay one metre away from each other, or we will get pretty lonely at times!!

Partners in recovery

Cancer recovery is a lonely process. Most of family and friends want to help, but don't really understand. I am happy that right here at home I have a recovery buddy, our not so little (14 lb in weight) five-year old shih tzu named Hagar, named after a Viking warrior cartoon character of 20 years ago. Here he is in living color:

Although he is a small dog he has a bark that would frighten any intruder, so he makes a good guard dog. We don't have a door bell, and with Hagar we don't need one. He gives me an immediate alert when anyone comes to the door.

It is income tax season and my writing time has been shut down until I get all of 2019 financial stuff straightened away. I have some consulting work each year to account for besides my pension and Sandra's employment income.

I have probably said that I am doing some permafrost engineering for a wind turbine project about 10 km north of the Inuvik Airport. I am also planning to submit an Abstract and presentation to the Canadian Nuclear Society annual meeting and conference in May 2020 concerning the challenges of installing Small Nuclear Reactors, SMRs or nuclear batteries, in remote communities in permafrost areas. It is always necessary to keep the permafrost frozen when constructing buildings and other infrastructure in or on permafrost (permanently frozen soils with significant ice content). When permafrost melts it becomes very unstable and foundations collapse, so warm building foundations on permafrost must be avoided.

I was delighted several times over the past couple of weeks when close friends tell me that they enjoying reading this blog. I will keep it up.

You may remember how Winnie the Pooh was so concerned about his appetite and the size of his tummy because he didn't want to get stuck in Rabbit's hole - he talked about being concerned pound-wise which encouraged him to do his well-rhyming exercise. Well cancer-wise I don't need to worry about Pooh's problem, because my appetite is fairly low and steady and the fat problem has gone away (definitely not recommended as a weight-loss program). I am staying at 165 lb weight, constant now for the past two full months. That is the weight I was in high school!! 

And I am off the hook as far as exercise is concerned. I am still quite unsteady and in danger of falling when I am walking outside on snow and ice - problem is if I fall in the snow I may not be able to get up again, which is an uncomfortable problem today March 05 2020 when the temperatures are hovering around -30C! I look forward to summer when I can walk better and strengthen my legs, and increase my stamina. I get tired very easily these days and must have at least 10 hours of sleep each night to keep going.

My cancer is in permanent remission now it appears. I must go to Yellowknife or Edmonton every month for Nivo immunotherapy for the rest of my life to make sure that my spine tumors do not every grow again. I have a CT scan at the end of March as a check on recovery.

Crazy Cancer Recovery and Courage

Yes it is. Cancer is crazy. I never know one day to the next how I am going to feel.

General improvement all around, brain working fine. However dizziness and near fainting is still quite random. Today is one of those days. Early this afternoon I was quite dizzy so I measured my blood pressure resulting in 102/60. Now, that's low but shouldn't account for the dizziness.

I have been getting incredible inspiration from video talks by Kris Carr (see kriscarr.com) and her buddy Marie Forleo. As a result of these talks on all aspects of healthy living and cancer recovery with joy, and reading Kris's books with the catchy titles Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor and Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips written for young women cancer survivors in particular (as you can imagine putting the "S" word in the titles made them bestsellers very quickly) I have completely revised my approach to writing a book on my cancer recovery journey. I now realize that the book has to be hard hitting and easy to read - the stuff I have written so far is too dry and academic.

Oh by the way, here are a couple of photos. The first one is my writing nook tucked in at the back of the living room. 

The second photo tells the story of the Arctic in winter. Dark and bright snow, with the sun just below the horizon.

Just to give you an idea of the book I am writing, here is my intended pitch to possible literary agents that might be interested in representing me. I need to edit it with some new ideas in mind:

Pitch Slam – draft 3 Two paragraphs – 269 words, 100 seconds oral delivery.

My tag line: Cancer Survivor, Author, Speaker: Choose – Hope – Survive and thrive.

I am glad to be alive today. Twice in the past 4 years I was told I would die within 8 months from Stage 4 kidney cancer. My memoir’s purpose is to inspire cancer sufferers and their caregivers to seek longer life and find joy in recovery – to Choose – Hope – Survive. I use story-telling and poems to add to my writing style. I emphasize that you can combine cancer treatment with practical natural healing to survive terminal cancer and still reach your dreams. I know that’s true because I am here! I used the methods of this book in the face of aggressive Stage 4 Renal Cell Carcinoma and my two near-death experiences. Now for a short summary of the book.

Anyone who suffers from cancer can prolong life. If the prognosis is weeks or months to live, accept your feelings, challenge them and choose life – longer life. Don’t accept the mortality statistics for your cancer. You are an individual, not a statistic. Take charge of your own health. Choose Life. That very personal choice turns fear into excitement, enhances healing, and brings Hope. You will hear the birds and smell the buds of spring again! Then take the steps necessary to Survive. First, accept whatever the doctor prescribes – radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy. Then, find complementary alternative healing methods for your cancer – take ownership of your own health. There’s more. The power of belief is a clinical fact. If you believe you will recover, you probably will. If you accept the doctor’s prognosis of weeks to live – guess what – you will die within that time! So, remember: Choose – Hope – Survive and thrive!

And then, so long folks. Back soon.

Unhooked and ready to go!

Not unhinged I hope, but yes unhooked from the intravenous Nivolumab treatment at Stanton Territorial Hospital for another month. In March 2020, I will have to go through a routine CT scan administered by the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton as well to ensure that said sacrum tumor is not growing. I will also have to provide a detailed list of what vitamins I take and how much. 

They at Stanton Hospital know about the natural healing things that I do, including mistletoe injection three times a week, elk velvet to boost the immune system so it can attack cancer cells, and high potency Curcumin, the active ingredient of turmeric spice which has cancer healing and prevention properties. The doctors and pharmacists have no comment - their only concern is whether any of these things are likely to interact with their wonderful drugs in any negative way. That is a good thing to know of course.

It never fails to amaze me that the North American pharmaceutical and medical industry is TOTALLY uncaring about natural healing. They even don't care how much sugar I consume, even though there is a huge body of research knowledge supporting the "sugar feeds cancer cells" fact.

The total pain control regimen is working pretty good. I have two Butran 10 patches, changed every week, topped up by Hydromorphone 1mg every four hours as needed. And it is usually needed. Sometimes the pain flares up and feels like being stabbed with a knife. I can take up to 4000 mg of tylenol/acetaminophen in a 24 hour period for sickness or pain, but not more than two extra strength (500mg) tablets at any one time. I have been taking a lot more than two at a time, so I will slow that down a bit, for the sake of future liver function.

Then there is Pregabalin 50mg twice a day to keep the shingles nerve prickles and pain in check, Tamsulosin 0.4mg, two tablets per day at night before bed to help with the urinary necessities, and Synthroid 25mcg two tablets per day. And last but not least 4mg tablets of Ondansetron, 8mg at a time, for nausea that is sometimes cased by the whole cocktail of drugs. The nausea is minimum if I drink plenty of water, usually two to three litres per day of good non-tap water.

Oh, I have been reading the proceedings of a conference on cell functioning, including cancer cells, called The Mitochondrial Summit which included many physicians and medical research experts talking about their patients and their research results on very many aspects of cell function. Mitochondria are tiny organelles in our cells that generate energy and heat in the body, and they help tell our cells when and how to grow or die. Heavy duty stuff, but I like to get to the bottom of how life is sustained and how cancer cells live and die. So if my mitochondria are doing badly because of body toxicity I feel drained, sluggish and down.

It is very interesting that here too, I read of physicians working with their patients recommending joy (going beyond happiness but being truly joyful) through journaling and meditation. That is so SO much in support of what I believe and what Kris Carr talks about in her training modules in personal wellness.

Well I think I have rambled on long enough. Have a good weekend everyone.

A beautiful day in the Arctic

It is a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon in the Arctic. The temperature is still cold, at -34C right now, but the brightness of the sun is a promise of spring in the not too distant future. And each day lengthens a few minutes a day. It is now 3 o'clock in the afternoon and the sun is just past its maximum height, just above the trees.

Although the NWT follows mountain time for economic convenience, being so closely linked with Alberta, it should be noted that the Territory actually goes a long way west as well as north, as you follow down the Mackenzie River to reach Inuvik. So much so that if you follow a longitude line down from Inuvik to the latitude of Vancouver, the intersection of latitude and longitude ends up away west in the Pacific Ocean, as far west of Vancouver as Vancouver is west of Calgary. So the sun is highest in the sky here in Inuvik at about 2:30 PM Mountain Time.

It is good to finally have a normally cold winter, so the ice roads are safe for heavy truck traffic, crossing the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers to reach Inuvik on the Dempster highway, then on to Tuktoyaktuk or Aklavik.

Although it is sunny today, we have just had a cloudy week of almost constant snowfall with the temperature continuing in the -30's. And the snow is not light and fluffy at those temperatures but quite dense and heavy. Sandra has been doing a lot of shovelling, and a good contractor friend and neighbor by the name of Randy asked his man on the machine to clean out our driveway so that Sandra didn't have to shovel that out too. It was wonderful to have that done free of charge.

My health is so precarious with all the drugs that I am on that I have little strength in my legs and I am dizzy enough to often be in danger of falling. Some of the dizziness is still a remnant of the accident and subsequent concussion. So that is my reason/excuse for not being the snow shoveller in the family. 

So this has been just a rambling post talking about our winter experience in the Arctic. Our 2010 Volvo doesn't mind the cold at all and starts well without the block-heater being plugged in down to about -30. Actually, last winter when the battery was a year newer our V50 started at -39 one morning without being plugged in.

We plan to drive south to Edmonton in the last week of July to get the car maintained, new rear brake pads, and a new battery, and a few other important checks. Here in Inuvik we have Fred as a great mechanic for ordinary maintenance such as oil changes and pointing out what needs to be done of a more serious nature.

It is a 3 1/2 day and 3,500 km drive from Inuvik to Edmonton, west and south down through the Yukon, to Whitehorse and down through northeastern BC into northern Alberta. So it is a drive we make only once every year or two.

We are debating about changing to a newer model vehicle, probably a Toyota. However, money is tight so we might stick with the Volvo for another couple of years. It is interesting that Toyota is the only imported vehicle that has enough reliability for the Arctic. My guess is that nine out of ten taxis in the NWT are Toyotas. The taxi drivers we know swear by them regarding reliability and economy of operation and maintenance.

Joy is a vital spiritual condition

Kris Carr (Kriscarr.com) is creating and emphasizing joy in January 2020. This is a great spiritual principle with which to start the first month of a new decade. 

A prophet that I admire once said that all of the fruit trees are withered "because joy is withered away from the sons of men." He brought it into the present tense, which gives it some urgency for change. Pointing out how necessary joy is before there is anything to grow and harvest.

Joy encourages gratitude, and gratitude encourages tolerance and patience. Even in this cancer-riddled life that is my lot today I have a lot to be thankful for. If I concentrate on thankfulness I can be tolerant and patient, and I can face any difficult experience with true acceptance.

My greatest challenge in my cancer recovery journey is pain management. I have to take a plethora (my new word for today) of drugs for pain and side effects. Some of the drugs are needed to address the side effects of other drugs!! 

I like my new thought (new to me anyway) that pain is necessary for new birth. I can always find new opportunities, new experiences to be joyful in and thankful for, if I am willing to feel pain without giving up the fight to manage it. 

Maybe I am being too philosophical, but I really do believe that if I face pain with a positive attitude, then my cancer experience becomes helpful rather than hurtful. If I am successful in my cancer recovery efforts, then perhaps I can help other cancer sufferers who need encouragement.

Kris Carr and Inner Circle Wellness

Hello folks, 

I have joined Kris Carr's Inner Circle Wellness Facebook group and I am truly working on being the most positive cancer survivor I can be. If you search out more about Kris you will find out more about her cancer recovery journey. She is an amazing storyteller and her natural healing journey is very similar to mine, especially as far at nutrition is concerned, eliminating refined sugar and simple carbs as much as possible, and increasing vegetable/fresh fruit intake by orders of magnitude. If you search for her on the Internet you will find that she is now a 27 year survivor of an incurable cancer. She still carries the tumors, but they are dormant. That is very similar to my story. I will always have the tumors on my spine. The key to survival is to stop their growth indefinitely.

Kris has not mentioned injecting mistletoe, in my case Iscador and Viscosan, another similar product, three times a week at fairly strong doses. Actually I attribute my survival to mistletoe, and to eliminating as much as possible both sugar and milk (casein feeds cancer cells too). For some reason, only understood by cancer microbiologists, cancer cells thrive on the energy from sugars, but cannot metabolize fats. So almost all of my energy food is derived from fats and oils.

The concussion from that traffic accident is still haunting me. I must get at least 10 hours of sleep a night to encourage healing, but I am constantly somewhat dizzy and nauseous. This is  something new, not things caused by side effects of pain killer drugs. I am still wrestling with recording things for insurance purposes. My new hearing aid is on order so that's the main thing.

As far as pain killers is concerned what works for me is Butrans 20 patches and up to 8 extra strength Tylenol (acetaminophen) and only for the tumor on the left side of my sacrum. And I also have to take a drug to minimize the effects of shingles, which have exploded after the accident and the concussion. Stress really influences shingles.

Well, I am still happy to be alive today. 

An accident in ice fog at 40 below

After last week in Yellowknife I am lucky to be alive. Car accidents can kill as well as cancer. I was the only occupant and driving our old 1986 Toyota Tercel in Yellowknife at -39C (we used to call it the YK Limo!). I was driving slowly near the hospital on Old Airport Road. There was a lot of ice fog but all northerners are used to that. 

Anyway, I was rear-ended by a full-sized car at high speed. That was the loudest bang that I have ever heard. It pushed the back of my car forward a couple of feet, spun my vehicle around nearly 180 degrees, and mangled the front end of the larger car that hit me. I suffered severe whip-lash, and both the right side of my nose and my breast bone collided with the steering wheel on the rebound. My glasses flew off (I found them) and my right hearing aid launched forward and bounced somewhere off the windshield. The hearing aid is lost.

Lots of blood everywhere because of the impact on my nose. I am lucky it was not broken. I was taken to Emergency at the nearby Stanton Territorial Hospital by ambulance. I suffered some concussion, as evidenced by dizziness and vertigo that lasted about 42 hours. I was released about 6 1/2 hours later after X-rays and CT scans that revealed no fractures, just stretched muscles and ligaments. My nose is still very tender on the right side.

As I got out of my vehicle (I was able to stand, but barely) the other driver began shouting at me about why was I driving so slow, and all I could say over and over in response was "I am injured." At nearly 40 below everything freezes quickly. I phoned Sandra who was back at our quite nearby hotel to say I had an accident but was sitting in an ambulance so was OK. Then the battery in my phone went dead in the cold temperatures and I was unaware when she tried to phone me back. Momentarily two ambulances and an RCMP officer arrived on the scene and the interrogation began. The concussion really slowed my thinking and talking down and I could hardly answer their questions. But by that time Sandra had arrived, running down the road from our nearby Stanton Suites Hotel. She helped make my responses intelligible to the ambulance personnel and to the RCMP Constable.

Later on at the receiving station at the Emergency entrance of the hospital the police officer took my statement of the accident. He was very kind and considerate. I will be talking to him later this evening to find out where the old car was towed after the accident so that our Yellowknife friends can take everything out of what's left of the car that's of value before it is taken to the dump. That's where the YK Limo will end up after the insurance folks have done their investigation.

On the positive side, my immunotherapy session went well. A CT scan was scheduled for Thursday at 1:00PM to check on my very painful sacrum tumor. Then on Friday morning I found out that the CT scan showed that the tumor had grown about 1 cm in only one direction, and that the measurement was within the margin of measurement error. So they did not think the tumor was growing significantly, although it may now with a small enlargement be pressing on nerves causing pain.

I will be back to Yellowknife for the next oncology consult and immunotherapy shot February 6 - 7. So that's all for now.

The sun is coming back

Today is a great day because the sun peeped above the horizon today January 6, 2020.

That is the sun peeping up across the roof of the Inuvik hospital. It is a joyful time for people of the Arctic when the sun returns from its travels below the horizon for a few weeks in mid-winter.

Well, I will be publishing a cancer poem in a Canadian poetry magazine called fresh voices. Here is my poem, after review and editing:

A Journey

Diagnosis?

The words –

you have cancer,

put me on death row.

The cold grey iron foe

lurks

just behind the door,

a hide-and-seek monster

with a face of darkness and dismay.

Waiting

for the ax to fall,

for the pale bloodless skin of death

Cancer – evil incarnate,

trails a long black cloak,

smothers each victim.

Sexless – not man or woman,

outside time and space.

Yet – wind and oak whisper,

cherish the mistletoe,

a mystery healer.

Choose life, hope –

believe and thrive –

each day a blessing 

So there you have it. I hope that you can relate to it. I intend to write more poetry about the effects and feelings brought about by cancer.

Gratitude for life and cancer in 2020

I never know how to start a blog post. But this one is easy. I am grateful for life - I came close to losing it a few months ago. .

I am grateful for cancer, because cancer taught me gratitude for life, and convinced me to be joyful in each new day as it comes one day at a time. It taught me to savor the cold north wind, the bright hope of spring, the joy of a summer breeze, and the pungent bright autumn when many things prepare for a long winter's nap. 

I am grateful for my friends. Life gets pretty lonely without a few friends who stick with me through thick and thin. And I am especially grateful for my family, my daughters and my spouse and my extended family in recovery. I am also grateful for little Hagar the shih tzu pooch who never leaves my side during my illness. He simply will not let me get depressed, always insisting that he is too a part of my family!

I am not grateful for the present leadership of our great country to the south of us. I am distraught by the warmongering of Mr Trump, as he starts the new Year with an assassination of Iran's top military leader, but I see no way that it can be stopped. I tend to be quite conservative, but I cannot condone an act of violence of the kind that starts world wars.

Enough politics about war. But I do have a little war poem I would like to share with you. Here it is:

Futility of War

Fire and blood

Signature of war and pain

Blood in the trenches

Fire in the sky

As warriors plummet to earth

Wings broken, doomed

I have submitted a cancer poem for publication. I will give you some details in a later post, after I edit the poem tomorrow and have it accepted in final form. If I am going to be a writer this year, then I must be less afraid of rejection and submit my work as often as an opportunity is presented.

On Wednesday the 8th of January I leave for Yellowknife for my monthly shot of Nivolumab to keep the Stage 4 kidney cancer at bay. Sandra and I will do a bit of shopping too for things that we cannot get here. We have an old 1986 Toyota Tercel in YK that starts in all weather. It is parked at 3916 Ragged Ass Road, a house that we own that is rented out to a super good renter. So every time we go to Yellowknife we have transportation.

Sandra has just given me a quotable quote attributed to Isaac Asimov: "I write for the same reason I breathe. Because if I didn't, I would die." That applies to me too. 

As I am sure you know, Isaac Asimov wrote the best science fiction in the last century. I am in awe of the breadth of his published writing, in many fiction genres as well as nonfiction works to make many aspects of science intelligible to the ordinary citizen. In keeping with his scifi prowess he has an asteroid and a crater on Mars named after him. I take Asimov as one of my writing heroes, because he was not afraid to write about absolutely anything that interested him.

Some revelations and a difficult start to 2020

I would like to start this January 3, 2020 blog with very best wishes to all my faithful readers of my writing efforts, and all the new readers that I hope for in the New Year. We have a new decade ahead of us and may you all thrive during 2020. 

My only New Year's resolution is to write something every day! I hope that I can keep it.

The revelations in the title are that on the first day of the new 2020 decade Sandra and I very belatedly decided to look up all of the side effects for the many medications that I am taking for cancer recovery. I have been having many things change in my daily life, such as: drowsiness, very unsteady on my feet, dizziness, dry mouth, mild nausea, constipation, weight gain, variable appetite, headaches,etc. I have been worried that these things are indications of cancer progression.

Lo and behold, these are all expected side effects of the two main medications I am on, namely Pregabalin for the shingles nerve pain and Butrans 20 (Buprenorphine) for the cancer-generated pain in my lower left sacrum area. The other drugs I am on have similar side effects. So the worry about all of these effects being cancer increasing, cancer spreading, etc are not right at all. All of my present ailments (but one that I will mention below) are not caused by cancer, but by the drugs that I am on.

The one nagging thing NOT caused by the drugs is increasing pain in my lower left sacrum tumor. Not a fun way to start the New Year. Twice over the past three days the pain has increased very close to 10/10 intensity, lasting for hours at a time. Now, that could just be a natural progression of the tumor's presence, or, the tumor may be growing. I will be going to Yellowknife next week for oncology consult on Thursday Jan 9 and nivo (Nivolumab) treatment on Friday the 10th. I have asked the Cancer Coordinator to request another CT scan sometime during those days to see if that tumor is growing.

Today marks the first day of Inuvik's 3-day Sunrise Festival, celebrating the return of the sun, with huge bonfires down on the ice of the Mackenzie River, with lots of food, and singing and dancing. We have had one full month from December 5 through to January 6 when the Sun does not come up at all. Of course we have the sun just below the horizon during the day so we have a beautiful twilight, sunrise/sunset that drifts across the sky from about 11 am to 3 pm (if the sky isn't cloud covered, that is, and we do have a lot of cloud cover).

This is a photo taken from our deck on December 7, 2019 at about 12:30 pm showing that we have twilight, not darkness.

This lower photo shows how the sky looks when the sun first peaks above the horizon in the first week of January. In this case it was January sunrise in 2015.

Right now, as I write, it is 4pm and the dark of night has returned.