Putting pressure on a cancer patient is the last thing I want to do, so only when you feel up to it, and not before, please keep us apprised of your conditions — but don’t take energy away from recovery.

We love you and worry about you. Both of you. Be safe and healthy.

David

What’s unfortunate is the level of our understanding of how various cancers begin and propagate through the body. We learn more each year, but we still have far to go, as chemotherapy consists essentially of using poisons which are designed to kill the cancer cells before they kill the rest of you, with the idea that you stop at the point that the cancer is dead but your entire body hasn’t been poisoned to death yet.

There is hope. Oberon is cured. Jerry Pournelle had a brain tumor so deeply embedded that they didn’t even want to do a needle biopsy for fear of causing traumatic brain injury just with the needle. Yet after targeted radiation treatment, he is cured — even just ten years ago his case would have been helplessly fatal.

Life is precious, which is what makes it so worth fighting for. Every time someone dies, a universe ends — but She Who created the Universes remembers Her warriors who fight for Her against the Entropy.

So mote it be! So say we all!

Good advice. Cannot state that enough.

Getting the tests done, paying attention to your body, and advocating for yourself in the medical system are all absolutely crucial and it’s mostly the last point that the rest of this message is about.

I lost my father to colon cancer (though probably not squamous cell and that can make a difference) in ‘99. He didn’t get regular tests and when he did go in with complaints (bleeding), (1) his doctor assumed the bleeding was only due to hemmorhoids (for which he had three procedures to correct), (2) later doctors assumed previous doctors had done tests they should have but didn’t, and (3) later doctors sometimes failed to actively listen to my father who was, by this time, more assertively listening to his body and communicating his symptoms (just one consequence of which was that they left him waiting in the ER for three hours, hours during which he lost a dangerous amount of blood…and his complaint was bleeding out in the first place).

Initially, my father was glad he would retain his natural stoma (an intact anus) too.

It can also be very important to be informed and assertive in a way that doctors won’t dismiss you as challenging their authority, literally a mortal sin of the system sometimes. So you don’t want to self-diagnosis but sometimes you have to push doctors into listening and much more aggressive care.

Not saying the latter is the case in Isaac’s case, his doctors seem to be much more on the ball, but it is something to keep in mind perhaps…

Much support and healing to you both and I hope this goes very well. It’s heartening that chemo and radiation are likely to take care of this!