KILLING
CANCER
One man’s journey down the cancer trail….
By
Two-Time Cancer Survivor
L. J. Martin
Copyright 2010 L. J. Martin
Smashwords Edition
Wolfpack Publishing
PMB 414
1001 E. Broadway, #2
Missoula, Montana 59802
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN 978-1-885339-16-X
For pictures relating to this journal please see:
www.ljmartin.com/killingcancer.html
This journal is dedicated first to my
beautiful, patient, concerned wife, Kat, who prodded
and cajoled and encouraged all through these ordeals;
then to my docs, in both Missoula and Houston;
then to all those over the years who’ve fought
the good fight against this rotten disease and
sought alternative solutions to whipping it;
and last, but certainly not least, to my good friend
Mel McGowan, whose fight goes on, and whom I know
will win, for good attitude and mental
toughness are a good part of the answer.
Disclaimer
The author is not a physician or a health professional of any kind, he’s merely a survivor.
His first cancer was one which takes over 30,000 lives a year in the U.S., prostate cancer, the man’s cancer as breast cancer is generally, but not always, a woman’s disease, and as uterine and ovarian cancer is exclusive to woman.
The second cancer was squamous throat cancer, with a tumor located in the lymph gland on the left side of his neck as well as a primary tumor on the back of his tongue. A national survey says that only 16% of men between 65 and 70 years of age diagnosed with throat cancer will survive. The author looks at statistics with a skeptical eye.
There’s no way to be certain that any of the herbal or homeopathic treatments he tried had any efficacy on either of the cancers he had, and he utilized every medical professional he could to effect a cure, however, he was cured. The author is not proscribing or even suggesting that these herbal, diet, and homeopathic remedies are in any way to be a replacement for expert medical treatment, and is only offering a frank and candid look at what he did to overcome and cure his cancer, and continue his lifestyle for whatever that may, or may not, be worth.
He is, however, enjoying a healthy, active life today.
Preface
KILLING CANCER
One man’s journey down the cancer trail
June 2009
It started, this time, with a knot not much larger than half a child’s marble, just beneath the jaw on the left side of my neck. An infected lymph node…I hoped…however already being a cancer survivor I was not one to wait to see what transpired. Even though an infected lymph node is often associated with a fever blister, and I was just getting over my first blister in several years, I wanted to know for sure.
A call to a local head and neck medical center resulted in the typical: “The doctor can see you in five weeks.” I laughed, if a bit sardonically, not only thinking, but saying, “I could be dead in five weeks!” Didn’t help. Was I being a hypochondriac? I hoped so, but I was more than happy to be thought one for the piece of mind. But more so, I was convinced I had to be proven one by a thoughtful, professional, diagnostician.
If this journal helps you in any way, I hope it convinces you to be proactive about your health. It’s not some smiling receptionist at the doctor’s office who’ll have to go through the long, lonely, and oft times rocky road of your cancer. It’s you, and in the final analysis, only you, who’ll have to deal with it. If you take no for an answer, then you can only blame yourself if you don’t stop the monster in it’s tracks. And even if you get in to see the doc, be skeptical. I can’t begin to tell you how many stories I have of misdiagnosis. Medicine is a science, but it’s not a perfect science. It’s oft times an art as well. You want your doctor’s best educated guess, but you want it backed up with hard science if he/she, or you, have any doubt.
Doctor’s won’t be my primary audience for this journal as docs hate patients to self-diagnose and particularly to insist on tests docs think unnecessary. The internet has to be the bane of their existence, for too much information is spread so easily…of course much of it is erroneous.
And we all seem to be ruled by what the insurance companies or Medicare will pay for. Just because we, or even our doctor, believes a test is in order, the insurance company or Medicare may disagree, and worse, the doc may be influenced against even prescribing a test because he thinks they won’t pay. We have for some time—and I fear the problem will grow to horrid proportions in the future—been subject to bureaucratic medicine, i.e., bean counters dictating your care.
In my case…no, I’ll fill you in on my current case when I get to that part of the journal.
I’m starting this journal while it’s my wife’s turn driving—we travel a lot, usually for much more enjoyable reasons, usually researching one of our novels, and each drives for a hundred miles while the other reads or writes, as I’m doing now. We’re on our way to the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, a two thousand mile drive from home in Western Montana. It’s been almost a two month odyssey from feeling a knot in the neck to pointing the car toward Houston.
Why two months? Why so far away to be treated? I’ll answer those, as well as other questions, as this journal moves forward. The basic reason is an odyssey to find the best health care in the world. But, who knows, maybe it’ll be my wife who has to finish this report as this is a disease whereby even the best may not be good enough.
For pictures relating to the author and his treatment see:
www.ljmartin.com/killingcancer.html
Chapter One
I think those two months aforementioned are critical if you want at be a cancer survivor rather than a cancer victim, so I’m going to belabor the past eight weeks, and the path leading through them, and through my prior bout with cancer and its aftereffects. The rest of this journal, after this historical intermission, will be written while I’m going through a rather intensive, both mentally and physically, treatment for squamous cancer, evaluated as a stage four by a couple of the docs I’ve seen, but stage three by most of them…and I choose to believe the latter, of course, as the treatment goes for a cure of stage three, and only “buys time” for stage four.
One of the lessons of this journal is not to wish for a thing too much, or for the exclusion of a thing too much, or either might just happen. In this case, I hated, in fact obsessed about, tongue cancer…and guess, in this my second bout with cancer, where my primary tumor turned out to be? A dear friend of mine died just one year ago from a head and neck squamous, one month from the time it was discovered. That was almost my undoing then, and gravely affects me now.
We’re all touched by cancer, the monster with many faces. I recently read that 41% of us will develop cancer at some time in our lives and many of those will die from the disease. So even though you may be healthy, and may think I’m only preaching to the choir here, I’m not. Cancer touches all of us; if not you, then someone near and dear to you. One might begin to believe that we’re doing something wrong in this wonderful country of ours?
My first bout with one of the serpents slithering from Medusa’s ugly head came sixteen years ago, at the age of 52. Had I been truly cancer aware, I would have been overly concerned about having a problem holding my water. I put the slight incontinence problem off to age…until while madly searching for a bathroom in an unfamiliar town where my wife and I were doing a booksigning. I hurriedly left the store with its unusable, out-of-order, restroom to find one that worked, and finally when I couldn’t hold it and watered my levis while still in the car, I desperately pulled into an alley. I concluded the job among the trash cans at the risk of being hauled in for indecent exposure. And I felt indecent, and worse. I had to wait until my pants dried before I could show myself in public again. Humiliating? You bet. An ominous sign? You bet.
But it wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, when I developed a persistent ear infection and a lesion on my arm, neither of which seemed to be healing, that I decided to go to the doc.
Dr. Alverez had a clinic not far from our condo in the central California city of Bakersfield where I was born and where my wife, Kat, migrated from a much smaller San Joaquin valley town. He’d been suggested by a good friend, because she knew his receptionist and she would get me in.
The clinic was full of Mexican field workers and their families and not being fluent in Spanish I felt a little out of place, however, it was clean and efficient appearing. And this wasn’t a big deal, an ear infection and a sore that wouldn’t heal and those symptoms hardly call for a visit to a major medical facility—I later concluded that my body was busy fighting bigger battles elsewhere, using it’s assets elsewhere, and ignored these less important interlopers. And I even later concluded that a big fancy office doesn’t necessarily mean the best care. I kept in touch with Dr. Alverez for many years, and although I haven’t spoken with him for quite a while, he still remains warm in my heart.
Pay attention to the warning signs your body gives you. With cancer you don’t want to wait and see. I did however wait my turn to see Dr. Alverez. The doc, whom I immediately liked, was attentive and treated my symptoms, each of which quickly went away in the next week. He gave me a complete physical, including running his index finger up my backside to palpate my prostate. This, of course, is SOP for a man’s physical exam and happened another half dozen times in the next couple of months. Having a twisted sense of humor, it was hard not to respond “yes, darling,” when asked to turn around and assume the position. He found no symptom with the finger exam, nor did any other examiner thereafter. But more importantly he recognized the threat and suggested a PSA blood test; a relatively new test at the time, common now. I liked him because he was attentive, and because he took on all comers, regardless of social status or of how deep were their pockets. He was a healer, in the fine old sense of the word.
It was a short few days when his office called and wanted to see me. He reported that I had a PSA of 89…not .089 or .89, but 89. I, of course, didn’t know what that meant, but I was damn sure going to find out.
I did know that he referred me to a urological surgeon for a biopsy of my prostate.
Experience is a wonderful thing…
it enables you to recognize a mistake
when you make it again. The definition
of insanity is doing the same thing over
and over again expecting a different result.
Chapter Two
Being a writer by profession, I’d often used the over-worn analogy of “as much fun as a root canal.”
A prostate biopsy is as much fun as a mouthful of root canals. But mostly because of where it’s located; it’s intrusive and embarrassing, but the slight pain is over quickly, and as with most medical procedures the fear of it is far worse than the actuality. That said, having a couple of large male hands working in your mouth is one thing, having them in your rectum is altogether another. Actually, the procedure’s done with a small tube apparatus that’s inserted into your rectum, then, when a trigger is pulled, shoots a needle through the wall of your colon into the target, your prostate, gleaning a few cells as a sample to be evaluated by a pathologist. Usually they take at least four shots, one to each quadrant of the prostate. Again, the procedure’s demeaning and humiliating, and a little worrisome.
The thought of perforating your colon, probably the least sanitary portion of your digestive tract, from the inside out in order to investigate other parts of your body is disconcerting to say the least.
One thing you learn quickly is to overcome all thoughts of demeaning and humiliating when you’re trying to save your life. It was three days before I learned that that was exactly what I was doing.
One of the longest times in your life is awaiting the outcome of a biopsy. But the outcome arrived. Prostate cancer. Not only prostate cancer, but a virulent form. Prostate cancers are rated on a scale called a Gleason. I presume that’s named after the lady or gentleman who developed the process. Gleason ratings are 1 through 10. Mine was a 7. Not the worst of prostate cancers, but considered well above the norm and very aggressive as prostate cancers go. That, along with the mere fact it was a cancer, was even more disconcerting. Frightening is a much more accurate word.
Once you overcome the shock of the result, then it’s time to reconnoiter and circle the wagons.
I knew something about prostate cancer, at least from a layman’s standpoint, as my father had died just three years prior to my diagnosis. What I knew of it was all bad. He died very hard, and even though I didn’t know him from the time I was seven years old until I was in my twenties, still, one is deeply touched by the loss of a parent. He liked John Barleycorn better than he liked us for those years, and for a few thereafter. My father and I got to be good friends in the years following, after he became good friends with AA, but it never quite leaves your mind that he wasn’t there when you were growing up…however, I wish I’d treated him better, spent more time with him, when he was ill. If actually having cancer teaches you one thing, it’s empathy.
But back to the problem at hand. Later, post prostate biop, I would have a cat scan, an MRI, and an ultrasound, which turned out to be another rectum invader. The ultrasound is preformed with a long tube, the diameter of a man’s index finger, attached to a cord which is in turn attached to a monitor and recording machine. To my way of thinking, it’s a little less than manly to have a long cylinder inserted in your backside…in fact there’s a term for men who participate in that as recreation. I found it way less than appealing and it will never follow my thoughts about, “what are we doing for fun today?” And of course, it’s demeaning and humiliating…again.
All of the above, however, are part of most prostate cancer regimens, so you bite the bullet and grab your ankles, figuratively if not literally.
And of course, there were needles. Needles didn’t particularly bother me then, nor do they now. And it’s a good thing. I’ve probably had at least a hundred pokes, mostly for the determination of PSA.
MRI’s, on the other hand….
It wasn’t to many years later that I developed an acute case of claustrophobia. No matter how much I worked on my mind, on getting my mind right…you know, repeating “this is going to save your life,”…no matter how much I thought my mind was right…I’d still try and tear up a very expensive machine trying to evacuate that tunnel shortly after they rolled me into that much too small a space. Yes, you have some room if you are not overly large, but it felt like being mummified to me, closed in on me like the slamming of a crypt’s iron door. You might as well embalm me first.
As it turned out, later in life, when and if an MRI was necessary, I simply advised, “knock me out.” I had two subsequent MRI’s under that blissful condition.
To demonstrate how claustrophobic I was, a radiologist and good friend of mine gave me an injection which he said, “knocks anybody out.” When I remained wide-eyed, he gave me another. When I still steadfastly remained wide-eyed, he exclaimed, “I’ve never had to administer more than two.” And gave me another. This time, I didn’t even remember him pulling the needle out. The next thing I knew it was forty-five minutes later and I was trying to pull my boots on, but I had not tried to destroy his very valuable MRI machine, and the procedure was completed successfully, and, thank God, the result was successful as well.
But I digress. So, I had prostate cancer.
What to do?
Never be afraid to try something new…
remember a single, dedicated man
built the ark.
A team of experts built the Titanic.
Chapter Three
My newly acquired urological surgeon said, of course, “We must operate. A radical prostatectomy.” It’s common for surgeons to believe that “A chance to cut is a chance to cure.” And it often is the only chance. But I asked, what does that mean? A radical prostatectomy? And he said, to my great chagrin, after dancing around the potential results of the surgery for some time, and insisting that it was the only way to save my life, that it meant no erections and no ejaculations. I was five years married (after three years living together) to a very desirable woman who at forty-five—she looked thirty-five or younger—was seven years my junior, and we were still, very sexually active. We liked and were attracted to each other. Sex was a large part of our attraction. Both of us had been married before. I loved her and couldn’t conceive of living without her, or even with her without that part of our relationship. There had to be another option.
I’ve never been one to accept a single opinion, seldom in business, but particularly when it’s my life, or at even my sex life, that’s at stake. So I thanked the nice surgeon and said “I’ll get back to you.”
When I was first advised by Dr. Alverez of my PSA, which I learned referred to Prostate Specific Antigen, I turned to a relatively new resource, the internet. By the time my biopsy was reported, I had a one foot deep stack of information on prostate cancer. I certainly was no expert, but I was rapidly becoming an informed layman. Among many other things, I learned that there was a so-called ‘radical operation’ and a so-called ‘nerve sparing operation’ to remove the prostate and its parasite. There were also lots of other alternatives: cryogenics, implanted radioactive seeds, etc., etc., etc.
The radical prostatectomy removed all chance of a normal erection and both radical and nerve sparing operations removed the ejaculation as the prostate produced the semen that was the liquid carrier of sperm, produced by the testicles. I had, by the way, had a vasectomy many years before, already being the father of four sons from my first marriage—there was some speculation at the time that a vasectomy contributed to the onset of prostate cancer, but that notion seems to be dismissed. The nerve sparing operation could leave you with the blood supply necessary for a normal erection, thus making sex possible. That’s the good news. The bad is it also left you with a much greater chance for the return of the disease—return is probably the wrong word as it’s actually a greater chance of missing some cancerous cells, thus not solving the problem.
Even with the ability for an erection, what was sex for a man without an ejaculation?
Did I have a million questions? That’s probably a conservative estimate. What was the risk of a nerve sparing prostatectomy? If the risk was too great, would it be worth trading a short life and possibly painful lingering death for enjoying a sexual relationship for that short time? Was it even fair to expect my wife to continue to have sex with someone whose sexual organs were, or had been, infected with cancer?
As it turned out these and the other 999,997 questions were moot.
One of my favorite stories:
At his retirement party, a man was approached by his son, who said, “Great that you’re retired dad. Are you gonna go fishing?”
“No, son, I’m thinking about going to law school.”
When he quit laughing, the boy said, “Pop, law school takes three years. In three years you’ll be 68.”
The man placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and looked concerned, then offered. “Gee, son, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
The boy looked satisfied, then the man added, “by the way, sonny, in three years how old will I be if I don’t go to law school?”
Chapter Four
When I returned to the urological surgeon for the “follow up” he said flat out that no surgeon would agree to a nerve sparing operation when my PSA was so high.
For most of my early life, the first twenty five years of my working life, I was a salesman. Even though I was a licensed real estate broker, building contractor, and appraiser, and was active in those disciplines, I still considered myself a salesman, and was proud of the fact. I had long lived by the proposition that nothing happened until someone sells something. Sales drove the engine that was and is this great free enterprise system of ours. And salesmen, at least the great ones, don’t take no for an answer. And I also knew that even experts don’t always arrive at the same conclusion. Medicine, as I said, is a science, but also an art. Art, many times, in fact all times, is subjective.
Of course I wanted to live, but I wanted to live a full life with my beautiful, sexual, wife, who, by the way, was rapidly becoming one of the nation’s leading writers of woman’s romantic suspense and historical romance. Romance was never far from her mind. And, after long consideration and many conversations with her—even with her repeating time and time again that all that was important was that I stay alive—I was willing and eager to take the risk…if I could find a surgeon who would perform the nerve sparing operation.
When I walked out of that first surgeon’s office, I made up my mind that one opinion was certainly not enough. I certainly was not the first cancer victim to want a second opinion. I was going to go to the best, at least in the west, and I’d listen and learn, but I would make up my mind quickly as time is the enemy of one with a cancer diagnosis. All the while you’re trying to make up your mind what tact to take, your cancer is consuming both oxygen (so I’d been told) and glucose at ten times the rate of normal cells, and growing without consideration of other structures in your body.
I was not, however, going to jump into the common solution (the first thing a doc tells you to do) without having the facts.
The first fact is that doctors, like all of us, don’t like to lose. They much prefer to err on the side of caution. And to those who aren’t willing to gamble with life, even if it’s someone else’s life and/or quality of life, caution is the only route to take. Not a bad approach, and it undoubtedly saves a lot of lives, but how much quality of life?
I’ve always been, admittedly, hedonistic. I’ve always looked at life as a great trip, and you might as well take the high road. Work hard, play hard, make some money from hard honest work, and have some fun spending it…and maybe save a little for your old age so you won’t be a burden on others. When I first proposed marriage to my wife, Kat, I did so with the proviso, “We may not make a lot of money, but we’ll have a lot of fun.” And that self-serving, gratuitous attitude, unfortunately, followed through with my dietary habits. Why self-serving? I ate what pleased me, not what was serving my health. Why gratuitous? There was no payment, no health benefits from my diet, or at least very little.
The fact was my hedonism showed in many ways. I ate, and drank, what I wanted, and didn’t eat what was merely good for me. We enjoyed lots and lots of red meat and had wine with every supper, I loved fried foods, and we usually met with friends for a few drinks every Friday.
We didn’t have much money when I was first diagnosed with cancer, but we did have health insurance, which expanded our options. I didn’t have to take potluck when it came to being treated. I had recently made a little money in the real estate business, prior to plunging into the writing life, and, thank God, my wife was a much better money manager than I. It was thanks to her much more conservative approach to life that we had health insurance. We’d both ventured into the writing business, which is about like saying we were depending upon hitting the lottery. We’d had some publishing success, but it was yet to translate into real money; still hand to mouth. I was not unaware that I owed her for her good sense in insisting on health insurance.
Suddenly, it came to me that I was not indestructible. Life was suddenly not quite the lark I’d taken it for. The lark had flown.
So, the hunt for a surgeon who’d perform a “nerve sparing prostatectomy” was on. And hunt we did. USC, Stanford, Scripts, University of San Francisco, and eventually UCLA. At the same time we were visiting these university hospitals, I was on the internet looking for new innovative solutions, hoping against hope that a less invasive solution, less sexually destructive solution, was available. And there were lots of new things being done, but none of them with a track record of success that would satisfy us. I was also on the phone talking with major medical facilities all over the nation. Nothing hit my hot button.
On calling UCLA, not far from our home in Bakersfield, I was assigned a surgeon to speak with. Dr. Erlich had just expanded his practice from pediatrics to adults. He had small hands, which he’d have to have to operate on tiny children (or at least so I thought), and working inside the body is tight work, and he was very intelligent and quick witted. He understood my need to retain some sexual function, and agreed to do the nerve sparing operation with the proviso: “We’ll see what we can do when we get inside.” Which was all I’d ask anyone to do, and I hadn’t ask any of the surgeons for more than that. He was the only one who’d even broached the possibility of sparing some nerves and blood supply. All the other surgeons (I think it was seven by this time) had said unequivocally they’d only do a radical prostatectomy.
The ultrasound I’d already received showed the cancer protruding outside the prostate, a protrusion described as the size of the first joint of the thumb. Not a good sign for it not having metastasized to other organs.
Your friends love you anyway.
Chapter Five
The surgery was scheduled for two months, November, at the UCLA Medical Center, a teaching hospital as were the other university hospitals. Losing my prostate was to be my happy Thanksgiving…and saving my life was surely that.
So now the quest was to beat the cancer into submission as best I could, and that, to me, meant the best diet and exercise regimen I could accomplish.
I had been a cook all my life, having started cooking at the ripe old age of eight. My brother, Rex, and I were raised by my mother after my dad found John Barleycorn a better companion than the three of us. Mom had to work. My brother, four and a half years my senior, decided that we would cook so she didn’t have to when she returned after a hard day’s labor. I can’t tell you how impressed I was when he (with my help as dumb labor stirring his mix) made a cake. It was our first attempt at pleasing her with even a piece of a meal, and she was so pleased (being a great mom she at least acted as if she was) that we decided we’d cook dinners, and often did. My brother is still an excellent cook, and I ended up cooking my way, as a cafeteria fry cook for fifteen hundred hungry students, through college (at least until I had to leave my junior year). I’ve had a couple of restaurants in my day and cooking has been both a vocation and an avocation.
Cooking anything was not a particular problem for me. However, changing my diet from the BBQ to the juicer was a major transition. During my study of the disease, I decided that diet was a major factor in the cause of cancer, and still believe so. I decided that the fastest way to pack my body with the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and other nutrients it needed was to juice—using a kitchen appliance to remove the juice from fruits and vegetables—and juice I did. I bought a Jay The Juiceman juicer and consumed 70 ounces of fresh juice everyday. The basis of what I did was carrots and apples (at Jay’s recipe pamphlet’s suggestion), which gave a decent flavor base to whatever else I added…and I added damn near everything that graced the green grocer’s shelves. Beet’s, turnips, rutabagas, peppers, ginger, etc., etc. I used so-called organic items if I could find them, but that was before the serious craze for non-toxic foods. If it was edible and had some liquid, I shoved it in the juicer. I also became much more faithful at going to the gym. I stayed very light on the red meat and stuck with fish and chicken. In a month I felt as strong as a bull. I’d lost those ten extra pounds and was down to fighting weight. If only I could meet the cancer in a back alley and get it on…unfortunately cancer is a sneaky underhanded bastard and doesn’t fight fair and seldom out in the open.