It all started out with the pleura-liquid, simply some liquid around my lungs, slowly starting to attack my breathing. In the meantime my main cold and throat-infections disappeared and I stopped the poisoning medicine. It’s maybe not fair to call it poisoning, although in fact every chemical is in a way not natural to the body. The medicine I was using was a immune suppressor, aiming at a specific cell-division tactic of the cancer cells.

Not until my symptoms started to be seen as potential side-effects, we decided to first half the dose and then quit completely. There is, however, one thing bothering me. The reasons to start this medication did not all seem to be too valid anymore after a few weeks. We expected increased tumor activity, but the PET-CT did not show any progression. We expected the LDH Blood-value to go down, which it didn’t.

I remember the most difficult thing about running a project is knowing when to pull out the plug. When you prepare a new product launch and half-way the development stage you start to get doubts about a successful outcome, it is very very difficult as a project leader to recognize that and to take action accordingly. Even more so if the facts that you based the calculations on to get project approval have changed in the meantime. Dare to step out of your narrow-minded project reality every now and then and check the preconditions.

This is how I feel now about this experimental immune suppressor. Should I have been more careful? Should I have been more alert? Or is my oncologist right that despite of this extra medication the cancer started to show progression. I simply refuse to believe that. Call it naive or stuburn. Something inside of me is telling me that I have dragged it too long. So now is the time to recover and with every illness, recovery always takes way longer that actually getting a disease. This would mean just to be patient. Okay, I’ll try.

But the last three weeks were hard. My lungs were getting more and more under pressure and I started to be out of breath during the nights. This weekend was the worst, so I called in the hospital this morning and two hours later I was there for a check-up and pleura-drainage. In first instance I thought I would have to stay for a few days for the drainage, but my oncologist suggested first to do a small drainage on the left side, which was the worst (estimated 2 liters of liquid as opposed to 1 liter on the right side).

The punction itself was not that bad and took only 15 minutes. They took 1200 cc out, which means I just lost 1.2 kg of weight. Shit! A well, I have to realize that I still have another 2 kg of unfair weight in my body, holding up my breath instead of forming a nice cushing on my bud. Spiritually I am still there. I am convinced this is all shitty side-effects, winter-depression, flews and what every inconveniences are bother me is tough, but not scary.

Mentally though, I have to admit, last weeks were tough. Things were just going better and I had enough signs that the metastisized cancer is not in progression (which is a miracle or an accomplishment in itself). And yet, doubts came up about the reasons for the lung issues and the eating problems. I had to quit my diet, my stomach and intestines started to protest. This all might be directly cancer related. My oncologist is afraid of that too. But then I think he is the hammer looking at the world like everything is a nail. Not fair towards him to say that, but damned I hope I’m right.

So I am writing this entry while in the hospital waiting for over three hours to get an ambulance back home. I’ll be back here in three days for a PET-CT and a blood transfusion. Of course we’re all very anxious to get the results from the scan. Did it spread or is it dead? Or something in the middle, because I have not been overwhelmed with concrete medical conclusions over the last year. A spot means there is very likely a spot. Not a spot means there still might be a spot. And then picture the expensive machine and radioactive glucose they are using to get to conclusions like these.

Have I mentioned Hyppocrates before?

Joost

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