MSI Press Blog

As with Carl, many people have "signs" of cancer that can be interpreted either as something else quite mild or dismissed entirely as just a bad day or maybe I ate something bad yesterday. Otherwise quite healthy people simply ignore them as an annoyance. (Before cancer, Carl was sick just one day in his life -- 50 years earlier he threw up, once, on the lawn, from unsuspectingly drinking stagnant water the day while carrying out his Forest Service employee duties, Seriously. Never again did he ever throw up even after three rounds of chemotherapy, but he died, healthy, from cancer!)  This is the insidious nature of cancer. Often, you just do not know you have it because the signs are so innocuous until it has taken over your body and is in the winner's circle -- and you have an incredibly difficult battle to get your body back -- and many people lose that battle every single day. This is especially true of "toilet information." Change in bowel movement is prett

  Looking back on Carl's cancer, our cats' cancers, and cancers among friends and family, we should have seen the signs, which would have led to better decisions and, likely, better outcomes. But they were small changes, slow changes that we got used to gradually without thinking back to what things used to be like.  One day, Carl forgot where the brake on the car was and pushed the gas pedal instead. Scary! Could happen to anyone, right? That was a few months before his late stage 4 metastatic cancer diagnosis, with hypercalcemia (which really messes up the brain). A small sign, but we missed it. His growing tendence to leave dishes to do until the next morning of plants to water the next day. Lazy, right? That started maybe a year out before the cancer diagnosis, likely about the time his organs were being attacked and overwhelming his immune system -- and likely his energy. A small sign, but we missed it. There were more. If we even noticed them, we dismissed them all as  ag

  By the time, Carl was diagnosed, his cancer was metastized to his liver, lungs, bones, and upper stomach. After many biopsies and scans, the primary could not be found, and the cancer was officially labeled Cancer of Unknown Primary . Impaired Mobility: harder and harder to walk and climb stairs     We associated this with worsening of gout, which had been present for more than a decade     This could have been due as well to cancer-related hypercalcemia and bone cancer Frequent urination     We associated this with normal aging     This could have been related to  prostate cancer (not the case with Carl but the case with many) Pain in the side     We associated this with a gallbladder attack; it appeared similar to what our daughter, who had her gallbladder removed, had gone through.     We did not know that this same kind of pain is diagnostic of liver cancer. Frequent dozing off while working on the computer or watching television We associated this associated with  fatigue from t

  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

  It seems that the most commonly shared experience by most cancer patients is that they miss the signs of cancer until often it is too late (stage 4 or 4) when discovered. That is because the signs do not leap out, generally. The following article does a good job of sharing the signs as well as providing a list of risk factors (if you have those, best to keep an eye out for signs) for one of the most deadly cancers: pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer (msn.com) For other Cancer Diary posts, 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 CCC is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, ca

  Carl dozing with his beloved cat, Intrepid both died of cancer, were cremated, and share a vault in local cemetery's columbarium Carl was often dozing during the last months of his life, perhaps as much as the last year. He had had uncontrolled sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome for years. For the former, her refused treatment; the CPAC and his beard battled for dominance, and his beard won. RLS was tames with medicine.  When Carl would doze off, I just assumed he was tired because he did not get adequate amounts of sleep. However, something else of which I was completely unaware was probably at work: dying. The dozing off became longer and more frequent during the last 2-3 months of his life, and during the last week, he moved from being mostly interactive to being mostly somnambulant. Carl dozed off and on during the day a lot even as much as a year before being diagnosed with advanced stage 4 cancer of unknown primary . Indeed, some of it was very likely a manifestation of

  This tweet: Erika on Twitter: "What don’t we (cancer peeps) ever talk about how much cancer effects our feet? Or am I the only one? My nails suck. So many cracks. My toes even look different, I swear." / Twitter brought up the question of the relationship between cancer and the feet. Some signs of cancer that get ignored until too late are edema, cracks in the skin of the feet, and neuropathy -- likely because they are also signs of other things as well, and nearly know thinks of cancer first. Cancer is the disease that creeps up on you very quietly, then taps, says "boo," and your whole life changes on the spot. But there is also foot skin cancer -- melanoma and other kinds. Check it out HERE. For other Cancer Diary posts, 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 t

  Personal experience from the editor: When three of our six cats were diagnosed with cancer, it was at a late stage. (The number is normal; 50% of cats over the age of 10 end up with cancer.) Even talented feline oncologists cannot turn the clock back. They can try to stop the clock, but sometimes the damage is too great.  We lost Intrepid to cancer three years ago (and wrote a book about him). He survived only a month of chemotherapy; he was diagnosed too late, and several important organs were in the process of failure: kidneys, pancreas, stomach. His older "brother" (not biological) who came from Jordan as well was diagnosed at the same time.  Murjan  managed to survive three years on chemotherapy, but by the time he died last Sunday, he was on seven medicines, periodic hydration, and down to 5 pounds (from 16). He fought valiantly, but ultimately the cancer won. Likewise, our young Lynx Siamese cat, Snyezhka, has breast cancer, diagnosed at stage 4, treated with surgery,

  I have read a number of new articles about advances in understanding pancreatic cancer in the last few weeks. Probably the best way to share the information is simply to link the  Pancreatic Cancer Signs Scaring Doctors Most (msn.com) Habits Secretly Increasing Your Pancreatic Cancer Risk, Say Physicians (msn.com) 13 Warning Signs of Pancreatic Cancer You Should Know, Doctors Say (bestlifeonline.com) Read more about Cancer Diary posts  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

  New information from American Cancer Society shows that colon cancer is increasing in people under the age of 55.  Concerned: Here are the signs of colon cancer, but please be aware that sometimes no signs are seen before the cancer spreads to other organs and reaches Stage 4, or even before the situation turns into Cancer of Unknown Primary . For other Cancer Diary posts, 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 CCC is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, cancer-related story -- and be open to guest posts:  Cancer Diary .   Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter  here  or

Carl frequently complained of being cold during the last two months of living/dying with cancer. Even with the heat at, for me an uncomfortable, 72 degrees (when we typically maintain it at a comfortable 66 degrees). Even when wearing a sweater or even something heavier and smothered in blankets. He was always complaining about being cold, and only after he died did I find out why -- and that he really was very cold because body temperature drops when someone is dying. We were constantly struggling over how to compromise on temperature. My son and I were extremely uncomfortable with the amount of heat Carl would set the thermostat for, as well as having concerns with the cost of the amount of gas needed to keep the house so hot (dying can create immense financial stress -- a topic Cancer Diary will address in the future).  In general, cold registered for me, having grown up in Maine and having spent a few winters in Siberia, pictured above, on a very different scale from the perceptio

  While there have been some posts on skin cancer before, what is new in this article,  The #1 Early Sign of Skin Cancer Most People Miss, According to Dermatologists (msn.com) , is the new discoloration that appears and gets dismissed.  That is precisely how I found my skin cancer: a discoloration that most people assumed to be an age spot next to my eye that for some reason most had thought to have been there for a while, but it was not. I saw it appear. I asked the Skin Institute to have it looked; there was a three-month wait for an appointment. I asked to be on a wait list and, lo, they were able to get me in within three weeks. "No, clearly not cancer," said the doctor. "I should be able to freeze it off, but let's take a couple biopsies--a slice and a puncture--just in case." Now, I was not in a hurry for any kind of biopsy since all my biopsies have to be done without painkiller, to which I am severely allergic. But, of course, it had to be biopsied. A