TheBanyanTree: Sweet Tooth

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Oh, my, it’s Cinco di Mayo!  St. Paul’s celebration is considered to be the
10th largest in the country!  I never go, but my son does.  The weather is
kind of iffy today, it’s not raining, but it’s not sunny either, and it’s
certainly not warm.  It’s a busy weekend around the city today, and I’m sure
people will be out and about no matter what.

I have to put off doing fun spring things like going to the Farmers’ Market,
hiking, and riding my bike until I get organized.  I have to convince
Medicare that Ray does NOT have insurance through his job.  If I can’t
convince Medicare that Medicare is Ray’s primary insurance, then none of his
bills will be paid.  I’m waging a battle with incompetent Medicare customer
service people who snap their gum while I’m talking to them and give me bad
information.

Someone made an unauthorized transaction with our checking account, so we
had to open up a new account and we are going through all the hassles that
come with changing bank accounts.  We’ve had to contact our employers and
social security about our new account for direct deposit as well as other
venders for automatic withdrawal information. Plus, I feel naked without a
debit card or real checks.  Well, this situation keeps me from spending
money, I guess.

Besides the endless paperwork, I get to cut grass for the first time this
spring.  We’ve had some rain and some sun, so the grass is happily becoming
green and growing tall.  Everything looks scraggly, so it’s time to drag out
the lawn mower and get the lines straight again.

We finally have word on Ray’s treatment for lung cancer.  We saw the
thoracic surgeon on Wednesday.  While we were cooling our heels in the
waiting room, a chemo patient came in with her friend.  There was a huge box
of sweet rolls on a table for the patients.  Ray took one, because he’s
always hungry now.  And the chemo woman’s friend took one, too.  Well, the
friend must weigh a good 300+ pounds, so she certainly didn’t need the roll.
She must have gulped it down in two bites!  Then she started talking to her
chemo friend about her diabetes and her blood sugar count.  OK, I thought,
you’re excessively obese, you have diabetes, and you’ve just consumed at
least 300+ calories of sugar, how can you say your blood sugar count has
been “normal”?

I asked Ray as they left the waiting room for the chemo woman’s treatment,
“Who’s going to die first?  The woman with cancer or the woman who is
grossly overweight?”

The thoracic surgeon is a young whippersnapper doctor.  He looks like he
hits the gym on a regular basis and probably runs most days, too.  Ray’s
pulmonary test wasn’t very good.  Ray’s lungs are wracked by emphysema and
he has fibroids in them, too.  The doctor had Ray climb a flight of stairs,
but Ray could barely do it.

The doctor showed us Ray’s PET scan and we could see the tumor hanging out
at the top of Ray’s left lung.  It’s isolated, but the doctor couldn’t tell
if it was attached to Ray’s rib or not.  He said if he did surgery, he might
have to remove a couple of Ray’s ribs.

But he wasn’t going to do surgery.  He felt, with Ray’s bad lungs, that Ray
would have a 10-20% chance of NOT surviving the surgery.

To be honest, I was glad, because I remember how awful it was when Ray had a
lung biopsy four years ago.  We almost lost him that first night after
surgery and his recovery took weeks.

The surgeon made an appointment for Ray to see the radiation therapy
physician.  The appointment was set for the next day.  The first thing the
doctor said when he saw Ray was, “You’re not fat!”  Evidently, for this type
of radiation, the patient is placed in a frame, and if they’re too heavy,
they won’t fit into the frame, and they can’t have this type of
high-powered, highly focused radiation therapy.  The moral of the story,
obviously, is not to eat sweet rolls while waiting for the doctor to see you
so you won’t get fat.

The type of radiation therapy Ray is going to have is called stereotactic
body radiosurgery lung cancer surgery.  Obviously, it’s not surgery, but it
essentially will do the same as surgery without the trauma.  The high
powered, accurately focused beam of radiation will change the tumor’s DNA so
its cells will stop reproducing.  From what I’ve read, this type of
treatment has a good success rate for stage one lung cancer.

Ray’s simulation appointment, in which they will measure his body, make a
body mold for him, and calculate the position and the amount of radiation
needed will be on May 23.  The doctor told him to allow about two hours for
this appointment.  Ray will have five to seven radiation treatments over a
period of three weeks.  Each treatment will last around an hour.  The
radiation itself will be about 20 minutes.

The doctor said there usually aren’t any side effects from radiation other
than a burning where the most intense radiation is going into the body.  Ray
had to stop radiation treatments when he had throat cancer because his whole
body was turning into an itchy, burning rash.  The doctor felt this wouldn’t
happen now, because this radiation is much more focused.

That’s it, a synopsis of the highlights for this week.  It’s good to have a
plan, a plan that won’t affect our lives too much.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com

Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever
to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
~Elizabeth Stone