MSI Press Blog

  With cancer, we tend to focus on the fight --- and sometimes losing the fight. Surviving, however, can also be daunting. "What now?" you might ask. Oxford University Press recently published two books that help answer that question: Surviving the Storm is a workbook for telling your cancer story. Psychosocial Care for Cancer Survivors is a guide and workbook for caregivers. For more posts on cancer, click HERE . Blog editor's note: As a memorial to Carl, and simply because it is truly needed, MSI Press is now hosting a web page,  Carl's Cancer Compendium , as a one-stop starting point for all things cancer, to make it easier for those with cancer to find answers to questions that can otherwise take hours to track down on the Internet and/or from professionals. The web page is in its infancy but expected to expand into robustness. To that end, it is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, cance

  Colorectal cancer has a life expectancy of 4-6 months if discovered in stage 4. If discovered in stage 1-2, life expectancy is 5 years. (Note: Carl's Cancer Compendium provides longevity statistics for a wide range of cancers.) So many people die from colon cancer and colorectal cancer after brief periods of chemotherapy, if that, a imperative exists for watching for early signs of cancer is not heeded (or in some cases, they are simply missed or misinterpreted). I speak from personal experience because although Carl died from cancer of unknown primary ( CUP ), his oncologist was convinced that the original cancer was gastro-intestinal in nature although the colon was clear of the cancer by the time the cancer had reached stage 4 (which can happen in cases of CUP). So, assuming the oncologist was right about the original cancer, did Carl actually survive the 5 years without knowing it? Discovery at late stage does not mean the cancer arrived late stage -- it may have taken mon

Whether you call it Anointing of the sick, Sacrament of Extreme Unction, or Last Rites, the ceremony of a priest spending time at the end of a dying (from cancer or anything else) parishioner's life can bring peace to family and friends. I am pretty certain that Carl held on until that happened. He was mostly in some other world, not comatose but not present to those around him either, during his last couple of days. He had all the signs of being in the last hours (not days) of life but seemed to hold on. He knew our priest would come on Sunday morning.  On Sunday morning, I alerted the priest to the near-comatose state of Carl. He responded, "We will take him as he is."  However, the minute he spoke Carl's name, Carl's eyes flew open, and he smiled, responding with cheer and apparent happiness, "Oh, hi!" Carl surprisingly followed the rite although it was clearly difficult for him at times to fight to stay in the present. However, that is clearly where

  When Carl first died, a friend sent me a little book, wonderful in its pragmatism and understanding of the immediate-after-death emotions and psyche. That book pointed out that widows (or widowers) have a tendency to turn the former spouse into an icon. (Well, some of them do, anyway, and that, according to the little booklet, makes it difficult to move on or even to maintain a normal range of sanity. I realize that I was doing just that -- not wanting to change anything in the house or how anything. I also put a picture in every room. Reading that booklet, I realized that I was indeed iconizing Carl. In an opposite manner, some people, perhaps many people, completely change their life and lifestyles after the death of a spouse. This was clearly expected of me. I cannot begin to count the number of real estate agents who contacted me for the first weeks and months after Carl died, offering to sell the house for me. I guess that would be a form of minimization. I had no desire to sell

  I like to follow the blog of Barbara Karnes , hospice nurse par excellence. Much of what she has to say to hospice nurses about end-of-life issues in general apply to caregivers of cancer patients in particular. Her latest post, " For some doctors, it just isn’t in their tool kit to stop trying to treat,"  reflects our experience very well. Only when Carl fell and needed four people to lift him and get him to the hospital and x-rays showed complete take over by cancer of four major organs along with blood clots in his legs and lungs did the doctor suggest hospice (although he also expressed a willingness to continue treatment -- a different treatment -- if we wanted). We chose hospice, but the period of time was short. Carl returned from the hospital and went on hospice August 7. He died August 16. I have always wished that the doctor had put the hospice option in front of us much earlier, perhaps even at the beginning of the 5-month period during which the doctor tried eve

  I have often not wanted to take medication for an injury -- I am pretty good at toughing things out. That has changed since I have learned about the connection between frequent/chronic inflammation and cancer. (The ability of anti-inflammatory medicines to prevent cancer is not known; they reduce inflammation, however, which is important.) Of course, inflammation is natural. It is part of how our body heals it itself. However, there are times when inflammation sets in and does not go away -- and that is the connection with cancer. Long-term inflammation can change DNA and result in cancer. Examples of long-term inflammation include ulcerative colitis and Corhn Disease. Either of these can lead to colon cancer. Here are some articles that are well worth reading. NIH National Cancer Institute  Risk Factors: Chronic Inflammation - NCI (cancer.gov) 8 foods that cause inflammation  8 Foods That Cause Inflammation – Entirely Health What is Pro-Tumor Inflammation and Its Role in Cancer? Ant

  Sometimes it is hard to get an answer from an oncologist in ay you need to understand it. They give you the full onion, but what you need is help in peeling the pieces .  What I have been trying to get my head around is the concept of acidity and cancer. My friend, Julie, a nurse-researcher who is quite respected, claims to have cured her husband of cancer by ensuring that his body provided cancer with an acid-free environment where it could not grow. So, what about that is true? Her husband did have stage 3 cancer (stomach).  Her husband is now cancer free and has been so for a few years. Her husband is not young -- in his 60s when cancer struck and in his 70s now (not sure that means anything) She did ensure a non-acidic diet for him. The question remains, though, is whether that diet cured the cancer (or put it into remission) or had any effect on it, i.e. did something else natter instead? This site agrees with Julie. It claims that "acidic pH leaders to cancer and normal p

  The final conversation had with Carl's oncologist was what we needed in our first conversation but did not get. Not quite two weeks before Carl died, at which time he was in a subacute facility, having fallen the week before, been admitted to the hospital, then shifted to the care facility, the oncologist called us with the results of the latest scans. "Not good at all," he said, and he gave us three options: let nature take its course -- Carl could move to in-hospital hospice or in-home hospice (we chose the latter, and while we had a very bad experience with the initial hospice , it was still the best choice) try out another chemical compound - He told us he had given us the most appropriate and strongest ("the best") that he had, but if we wanted to try another mixture, he would look at other options take part in a clinical trial - He did not of any for Cancer of Unknown Primary and would have to do some research; there might not be any, and there might no