Boobs On Ice™

Cancer Fatigue; It Feels Like Death

Most people don't know this but most days I live in one room. And it's not because I want to. Truthfully, I'm so exhausted that going downstairs three times a week is a treat. And an exhausting and humbling experience.

I'm not entirely alone but there's not a whole lot known about general cancer fatigue. WhyMommy talks about radiation fatigue. But I'm not undergoing radiation. Derek Miller talks about chemotherapy fatigue. At this point I'm not even healthy enough for mid level chemo, so that's not my issue.

But before long, good scientist that she is, WhyMommy was sure to get to the bottom of it and twitter-linked to this cancer patient and doctor last night. Finally someone else who recognizes that overwhelming wall of fatigue we're dealing with.

Martha Jane Poulson MD writes

"In an effort to be encouraging, many colleagues reassured me that many women with breast cancer continue with all their family responsibilities as well as work full time.

"Rather than helping me, this made me feel somewhat inadequate or lazy because I was so tired. It also led me to fear that my fatigue was all in my head and that if I could only get a grip on my emotion I would be more productive."

In a review or studies on cancer fatigue Dr. Oliver Minton,  a clinical researcher at St. George’s University of London was quoted as saying:

“Fatigue is difficult to treat as it usually has a number of contributory causes — many of which are not fully understood. Patients and professionals alike may consider tiredness as an unavoidable part of cancer treatment, rather than a problem to recognize and address."

Platitudes and Attitudes

Among other therapy, drugs can improve some symptoms of fatigue in patients, but apparently in most, doctors think fatigue is to be expected, thus do nothing to treat it aside from provide platitudes.

Before her death in 2001 Dr Poulson wrote in depth about the debilitating effects both fatigue and the attitude of her colleagues and care providers had on her system and her life

"While exercising or a nap may be helpful suggestions to normally fatigued persons, these may not be the solutions for cancer fatigue." 

Any Time at All

I was not prepared for this kind of crushing exhaustion three months after surgery but now discover that it is not only not unusual during treatment or but can occur at any time in patients with more advanced disease. That it could hit increasingly as it seems to, is a shock.

As Doctor Minton points out after having analyzed 27 studies of 6,746 participants that examined the effectiveness of certain drugs for relieving symptoms of cancer-related fatigue:

"It can hit at any time - even when they are free of cancer. There may be options for treating it at all of these stages,”

 

Read more about Jane Poulson in her autobiography, finished shortly before she died.

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Reference: Center For The Advancement Of Health. "Anemia Drugs And Stimulants Ease Exhaustion In Some Cancer Patients." ScienceDaily 28 January 2008. 31 March 2008 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080124203258.htm  

Acupuncture as Medical Preventative Measure

Cuddling with my kitties makes me feel better. I can't prove it - but I know it's so. And apparently I'm not the only one who finds one-time weirdo medicine like acupuncture helpful too. Yes, I've been researching to make sure I'm not totally out there.

An article in AARP magazine recognizes that at one time a cancer patient might have been thought "wacky" for seeking out something outside the oncologists' office to add to conventional therapy.

Years of research and observation on the impact of acupuncture and other components in what I call a stew of integrated care, now more medical professionals are seeing the value of other approaches to healing than those they've known previously.

In recent years top medical institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic, Columbia University Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Duke University Medical Center, and the Mayo Clinic, among others, have started or greatly expanded integrated-care programs for cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses, while increasing numbers of medical schools have begun designing curricula to train physicians in integrated medical care.

Already, most states can boast at least one major hospital offering integrated care. And smaller integrated-care clinics are proliferating in cities throughout the country.

The momentum is being driven, in part, by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which has funded more than 1,800 research studies at 260 institutions and which runs a consumer-information website that received 2.6 million inquiries in 2006 alone.

In my way of thinking however, neither the number of inquiries nor the people streaming into acupuncturist, massage therapists, nutritionists and yoga studios should be a deciding factor in whether cancer patients should be advised to seek out alternate forms of therapy.

But measurable changes should make us think.

For example the relationship between stress and the way cancer progresses hasn't always been clear,  though it made sense that stress would be a negative influence.

In 2006 however researchers were able to pinpoint beta-2 receptors for the stress hormone adrenalin on actual tumor cells. There is now no question.

"Stress was advancing the cancer"

According to Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D. the director of M.D. Anderson's integrative medicine program the tumor grew a whopping 275 percent in stressed test mice compared with nonstressed mice, and metastasis (cancer breaking outside the confined walls of where it is and leap-frogging to somewhere else as well) was 50 percent higher.

"From this we can now speculate that stress affects cancer in humans," says Frenkel, of M.D. Anderson. "We don't have a pill for this—but we do have yoga, meditation, and guided imagery."

Another study, presented to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, showed that patients with stage-three pancreatic cancer who received a range of alternative therapies along with aggressive chemotherapy had a median survival rate nearly double that for similar patients who received the chemotherapy treatment alone.

This makes it only a short jump to acupuncture, which in my mind at least is a source of positive energy and stress relief plus a sense of being cared for and nurtured.

I'm not, as I always say, advocating any form of cancer treatment. But for right now, my personal blend includes not just a mastectomy, but acupuncture too. And animals, which is another subject indeed. It just stands to reason though, if I feel better I can heal better.

Resources: The Best Medicine
                 cancercenter.com
                 Universtiy of Tx MD Anderson Wellness Center
                 National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

September 2001: The Snowball Begins Here?

Research says that what kicks off the kind of tailspin I've been in for the past six months can be due to a sudden event such as accident, assault, or loss but more commonly happens when gradual build up of illness or other stresses on the physical systems break down the body's ability to adapt and cope.

Charles A. Moss MD writes

"The imbalance can occur in patients regress or decompensate. . . .(this) can occur in any patient and is not dependent on certain diagnoses or complaints, although it is more likely  in seriously ill patients. . .  often when there is a rapid deterioration in the condition of the patient.

But every life involves stress

On September 11, 2001 in a home about a quarter mile from the Potomac River in Arlington Virginia, I sat down on the end of my bed to put on my earrings and shoes before I left the house for Pentagon City where I planned to work on a contract.

I looked up and saw a plane fly into a building. I barely moved for the rest of the day.

My husband called to ask if we were safe. Co-workers had witnessed a plane thundering by their tall glass walled office building window south of the Pentagon. Soon acrid smoke was in the air outside the house, five minutes north.

My son called from his air base letting know that they were locking down and that he loved me.

A daughter phoned from an office near the CIA. Should someone pick up her two year old at daycare?

I woke up my youngest daughter. There was something she needed to know about.

It was her sixteenth birthday and smoke swirled around Manhattan on the TV screen. It was hard to make sense of it.

And in Washington that day was followed by months

Humvees with guns mounted on the roofs stood in parking lots, at intersections, along our tree-lined streets. People hugged service members they saw on the street.

Then more months went by as old Arlington door mail-slots were taped over and letter carriers wearing latex gloves dropped mail in baskets that were set out on front porches.

I lasted six months before leaving for a thirteen month sabbatical in Colorado. I painted. I wrote. I built a website, I learned to write HTML. I learned about blogging. I didn't see a humvee.

The world I knew had changed forever. And changed on a dime

The return to Virginia was a mixed bag involving a new home in a suburban location, one daughter starting college, another daughter and granddaughter moving back home.

Doctor Moss writing in the Medical Acupuncture Online Journal, discusses a physical situation very close to mine. He reports seeing in a variety of circumstances but all having one consistent theme: a high stress level

Who does that sound like

I come into the picture challenged with Fibromyalgia, a heart condition and an old injury that increases it's grip with the years. Living in a bedroom subdivision separated by highways from even the suburban town nearby I'm an hour away from husband's work and any real activities I'd be interested in. But that was nothing.

Then comes 2008. A client doesn't pay me for Social Media work done in July and August. He later dissolves the company and begins another. A stroke comes in September. Invasive Cancer diagnosis in December. Swift surgery that's supposedly ridding me of cancer with, the surgeon claims, only a 7% risk of recurrence.

Less than 24 hours later I'm out of the hospital, but totally unprepared to be. It's four days before Christmas.

Maybe it's all been a shock to my system

Two months later I get the word from the oncologist that based on my medical file and current statistics hard core Chemotherapy is out of the question in my physical condition and the level 2 chemo I'd be a candidate for would only decrease the chance of recurrence by about 3.5%

Worse news: I've got a 19% chance of being dead in 10 years from something other than cancer and if I'm alive I've got about a 50/50 chance of having a recurrence.   

Meanwhile, Doctor Moss writes

"...In a person with energetic resilience, the imbalance can frequently self-correct with any well-designed acupuncture treatment that effectively brings balance to the energetic system. However, when the depth of the imbalance prevents a response, the (more intensive) treatment is required.

So far we've tried the initial acupuncture treatment twice, once with more dramatic success than the second but both surprisingly positive. In between the two I've had a follow up procedure with rotten results - which is why my clinician decided to go back to step one and do the H/W treatment step one from the start.

Maybe the treatment is simpler. Maybe I need to be taken on a cruise to Alaska, sent off to a spa, left in a cabin in Colorado, cuddled, swaddled, rocked, or sedated just to keep from adding to the overload.

 

Somehow - I don't think insurance pays for that either.

 

Charles A. Moss MD is in private practice in La Jolla, California, specializing in Medical Acupuncture, Integrative Medicine, and Family Practice.  A frequent lecturer in Five Element Acupuncture for Physicians,  he is a founding member of the AAMA.                

Charles A. Moss, MD  La Jolla, CA 92037  619-457-1314

Your Neighbor's Home Remedies

“If there’s any illness for which people offer many remedies,’’ says a character in Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” “you may be sure that particular illness is incurable.’’…

I think Chechov, by way of his character, have a great point in this line. I've noticed that since I've gotten cancer only a few people offer me remedies.

Naturally - because the ways to fight cancer are fairly well known.

On the other hand when the complaint is fibromyalgia, a systemic, chronic, incurable illness, everybody and their brother have suggestions. Except the doctors that is. They're with me. There's no curing fibromyalgia. I'm on my own.

So here I'll try to stick with focusing on cancer, though my lousy immune system and being exhausted is what's really holding me back from being much better than I am. 

On the other hand, cancer may be easier to tackle than the other factors that make for a questionable quality of life, hard to believe as this may be.

Acupuncture, Looking Back

The week after my first acupuncture treatment, here's the overall report. And YAY, it's very good.

Disease Happens

I found this amazing woman; Annie the Knitting Heretic who writes about my emotional life, as if she were living it. But she's not. But them again, she kind of is.

The details aren't the same. But the feelings? The fears. The hopes. Like me, Annie's husband Gerry has cancer, Multiple Myeloma in his case.  She stopped by my blog to comment one day and I then went to read hers. Am I glad I did.

She says:

"God, I get sick of explaining this.

'We are a society that is in denial.  When folks ask about Gerry and I explain the disease and the prognosis, the response is, "Don't believe the worst!  Have Hope!  Things can change!"  Lovely sentiments, but I believe they're being said more for the benefit of the cheerleader than for our benefit.

"I don't think we ARE believing the WORST. We're being realistic. Yes, things CAN change, and we both hope they do. Desperately.

"But hope is expensive. The energy and concentration it takes for us to make each day as rich and full as possible - to get everything out of life that we can - just about saps our resources. There isn't a lot left over for hope (false, or otherwise) so we just live realistically and - yes - hopefully. But we don't base our lives on hope . . .

". . The fact is, disease happens. Sometimes it shortens life. It sucks, and it's unfair, but it doesn't have to ruin - or even diminish - a life. We don't spend every day shopping for caskets, but we also have a realistic outlook on where our family will be in 3, 5, 7 years. No one can tell the future, but we can prepare."

Next time another cancer patient or a well wisher or some innocent schmuck who is just trying to be helpful tells me my problem is that 

1. my problem is not planning for another 20 years
2. I'm giving off negative energy or c
3. hiking, eating bark, and swimming in cold salt water will fix what ails me

I'm sending them over to talk to Annie whose own reality she blogs about here   along with her knitting / design career, her children, her plans to help fund some of their expenses and life in general.

Boy, am I glad I met Annie.

 

Skin Cancer: Risky, Rampant, Deadly

 

The largest organ in our bodies, the skin is a great conductor of everything from good things like warmth to bad things like cancer. And once inside your skin it enters the thousands of tiny capillaries which feed your skin.  

 

Now it's got a network and can travel at will. Brain, bone, and every organ is ripe for cancer to occupy and destroy, all in a matter of weeks.

My dad had melanoma and didn't live that many years beyond having that patch of skin removed. He was very private about his health but I've always been curious about the added risk that might be passed on through genes and not related to sun exposure.

 

Every minute of every day someone around the world dies of melanoma, a fast spreading and extremely aggressive form of skin cancer.

While Leukemia, lung cancer, and colon cancer decline, melanoma rates - which should be the easiest cancer to detect since it can be seen - have nearly doubled over the past decade.

American Cities and Skin Cancer risks are pictured on an interactive map here and thankfully discovering the risk where you live isn't so grim if the map is at least interesting to use and engaging like this one is.

What is grim is what skin cancer can do to you AND how many people have it.

Nearly 1 million Americans have basal-cell carcinoma, and if you count cases of squamous cell and melanoma, skin cancer ranks as the most common cancer in the United State. 

At its simplest skin cancer kills you or disfigures you

 

Melanoma is a killer. It killed Bob Marley and President Reagan's daughter Maureen died of skin cancer that progressed to her brain. Troy Aikman had surgery to remove it in 1998 as did John McCain during the 2000 presidential campaign.

It's only more recently however that I met a much younger woman with squamous-cell cancer, to which she's lost her hair and much of her feeling of control of her well being.

Like Basal-cell, Squamous-cell are cancers that don't kill you, but maim you instead

They're simply disfiguring, eating away whatever skin has been affected - generally face, chest, arms, scalp. Like a flesh-eating virus if they are untreated chunks of ears, cheeks or whatever skin they want has to be sacrificed.

The key to all this better be detection because prevention is apparently not that easy to achieve

Howard L. Kaufman, co-director of the Melanoma Center at Columbia University estimates that only 20 percent of melanomas are related to sun exposure but says,

“It’s the one risk factor that we can control.”

Which brings us back to the map. Is it really a matter of where we live? How much sun exposure we get? Or genetic makeup and how much attention we pay to the little spots that appear on our face and don't go away?

I've obviously got some reading to do about skin cancer.

Links:

• Understanding Cancer Risk
• Skin Cancer Home Page
• What You Need To Know About Melanoma
• Cancer Topic Searches: Skin Cancers and Melanoma

 

Peas for Pets

"Susan, I heard a local D.J. talking about animal sterilization today, and he said to get them little bags of frozen peas."

Lilly B from Twitter

Somehow I can't imagine getting my kitties to lay on cold peas after a sterilization procedure but maybe it'd work with a bigger animal?

It made me smile anyhow to think about it. All I know is a bag of frozen peas after biopsies sure helped me.

 

Cancer Fears Come From Most Unlikely Sources

JERUSALEM, Mar. 21, 2008 (Reuters) — The Israeli air force said on Friday it was suspending training flights using U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets after finding a suspected cancer-causing substance in the cockpit.

Me, My Pain and the Acupuncturist

The acupuncture office this morning wasn't on my list for cancer treatment but since I think cancer is a more systemic issue, it's all part of the story.

My hip has been giving me a lot of pain, increasing in the past two weeks since I came home from Austin.  On a scale from one to ten it's bordering on a nine - which for me is saying something since I don't like to admit to an 8 since it's too close to 9.

I'd gone past the normal pain meds to my Rx Ultram and it wasn't doing a thing.

Never having been to an acupuncturist I didn't know what to expect. But here's the story in an after acupuncture report.