MSI Press Blog

  Earlier, Cancer Diary reported on the death of Kirstie Alley due to colon cancer. Now another well-known person has died from it: Pelé.  Carl Leaver , MSI Press typesetter and co-founder, died of Cancer of Unknown Primary ; however, his oncologist suspected that it started as colon cancer (though, typical of CUP, the colon was clean by the time CUP was diagnosed at advanced Stage 4). Carl had skipped his colonoscopy, not with a great deal of thought but just because he did not want to be bothered with it at the time. Advice to everyone: be bothered with it! Read about the symptoms of colon cancer and issues of colonoscopies HERE . There is also a good deal of information about colon cancer at Carl's Cancer Compendium (cancers are listed alphabetically). Click HERE for more Cancer Diary posts. Click HERE for more posts about colon cancer. 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

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

   54-year old Jason Maman put off checking out the reasons for his stomach pain for a year. It turned out to be stage 3 colon cancer. Read the article here .  This is a bit different from the delayed diagnosis described in last week's (May 13) Cancer Diary blog post. In that case, the patient knew something was wrong; it took too long for doctors to take her seriously and to get an accurate diagnosis. Carl , too, put off getting a diagnosis for something he thought was just stomach pain . He consulted "wisely" (right?) with our daughter who had had her gall bladder removed years earlier when he thought it might be his gall bladder. He decided to just monitor it for a while and see if it got worse. He adapted his food intake for gall bladder management. It did not work. To his defense, this occurred as covid was winding down, and doctors in our area were not seeing patients in their offices, just telehealth -- and his long-term doctor had left when the pandemic started to

  I recently came across an interesting article about sneaky signs of colon cancer. Considering that colon cancer and the threat of colon cancer plagues our family, I found this article useful and summarise the list here: Sneaky symptoms of colon cancer A change in bowel habits, such as more frequent diarrhea or constipation. Rectal bleeding or blood in the stool. Ongoing discomfort in the belly area, such as cramps, gas, or pain. Bloating, gas, or changes in bowel habits. More serious symptoms like bloody stools, significant weight loss, or fatigue may occur. 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 up

  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

  Cancer knows no pity and has no boundaries as to whom it will attack. (We do a little bit about genetic markers, but cancer does not limit itself just to those who are genetically marked.) The latest victim is Kirstie Alley, who has died of colon cancer. Information about her relatively secret struggle with cancer is available HERE . For more posts about colon cancer, click HERE . Read more about Cancer Diary posts  HERE . Check out colon cancer at  Carl's Cancer Compendium  (the cancers are listed alphabetically). 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

  Carl Leaver , to whom Cancer Diary and the CCC are dedicated, has a lookalike son. Their interests and behaviors are essentially the same. Carl's son CB has his same build -- except that he is a foot shorter, part of the CHARGE Syndome with which he was born. Carl died of Cancer of Unknown Primary; however, his oncologist believed (gut instinct plus experience) that it started in the colon. Carl could have had regular colonoscopies, but he foolishly chose not to because he was super-healthy. (The only time he was sick enough to vomit was one day when he was 21.) Unfortunately, he died super-healthy. Never vomited again, ever. Never felt sick until cancer wore out his energy and his muscles and then his thinking capacity. So, lesson learned? CB gets regular colonoscopies? His siblings do, and his brother has had some polyps removed. CB, however, cannot. As his gastroenterologist says, as a result of CHARGE Syndrome, CB has a 35% chance of dying from any procedure that requires int

As more studies are conducted that seek the cause of colon cancer, diet comes into focus (of course). The following article, Deadly diet combo theory behind colon cancer rise in young people , has very useful information. In short, it says too much sugar and too little fiber is a cause for concern in regard to potentially developing colon cancer. Well, that is too summarized. Go ahead and read the article. It is short, but enlightening. For other Cancer Diary posts, click  HERE . Blog editor's note: As a memorial to  Carl Leaver , MSI Press graphic arts director and designer, who died of  Cancer of Unknown Primary  August 16, 2021, 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 expec