Month: June 2021

And the beat goes on…

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Yes, it does. Sonny and Cher knew what they were singing about what seems like a lifetime ago now. I don’t know why, but the fact that Sonny died slammed up against a tree on a ski slope in Lake Tahoe the day after my birthday (January 5th) 1998 has my current attention. I guess it’s because his is a good example of a quick, unpredictable, death. Sonny had no time to sweat it. Death just happened to Sonny. No time to ruminate about it. Go Sonny go! I must confess that in some ways I envy Sonny his quick release.

Moving on, in my last post I told you that there was no longer any trace of multiple myeloma in my blood. I’m happy about that, but I must attach a disclaimer to that fact. The multiple myeloma will return. As I’ve repeated over and over, multiple myeloma is incurable although it is treatable. My oncologists have suggested to me that myeloma is a lot like type 2 diabetes in the way that it is treated by the medical profession. 

So, I can reasonably expect to make it to my eightieth birthday, although, frankly, longevity is not the holy grail here. And, of course, the six years from now until my eightieth year are not years owed to me. They are purely hypothetical time, years I might live, and years I might not. Moreover, as far as I know, after I’m dead, I won’t be able to regret anything about my life, how I lived it and for how long. “I” will not be so it’s ridiculous to speculate on what “I” might do after “I” am no longer. After I’m dead, “I” enter my immortality stage. 

I was not going to explore the whole business of mortality in this post, but I changed my mind. Bear with me. I just want to introduce here some ideas that I’ll come back to it in an upcoming post. These are not simple concepts to grasp, but, if you make the effort, it may help you understand life and death as I see them. So, here we go:

Humans are mortal, but only as long as we’re alive. To be blunt about it, it’s only when we are alive that we can die. Once we die, we are no longer mortal, we now become immortal, that is, we no longer change, and we consist only of what others remember of us. Our lives are complete. Simply put, immortal means not mortal. Well, once we’re dead, we are no longer mortal, by definition. We’ve arrived! We’ve become immortal! That doesn’t mean that we will live on forever in some form or other as defined by most of the religions that exist on this planet. No. “We” exist, after our deaths, only in the minds of others. 

My definition of immortality is clearly not the one espoused by most religions. The Abrahamic religions, for example, get around the problem of death by coming up with the idea of the soul. According to Christianity, the soul is the immortal aspect of human existence and is continuous before and after death. The body may return to the planetary store of compounds, atoms, and molecules, but the soul, well, the soul lives on in some kind of ill-defined relationship with a deity, “God” in the case of Christianity.  My definition of immortality does not acknowledge the bicameral nature of the person as consisting of body and soul. I see no evidence for the existence of a soul. Therefore, it does not ‘fit’ into any explanatory scheme I concoct. 

I could go on and on about death and dying as most of you well know, and as I promised I’ll get back to it in a subsequent post, but for now I’ll drop the philosophizing about immortality, death and dying and take up an issue that I’m currently faced with given the fact that we’ve tamed my myeloma. 

A few months ago, while I was still struggling with active myeloma, the pain in my bones was severe, and it was compounded by peripheral neuropathic pain. At that time a priority for me was pain relief. It still is to a large extent, but now, my priority is to see how far I can go in weaning myself off pain medications that were crucial for me for the time I was under the full effect of myeloma.  Now, I’m on two prescription pain medications and I take acetaminophen when I think of it. I was on three prescription pain meds until just recently, but I quit one of the medications cold turkey. Along with several annoying side effects, one of the more insidious side effects of that medication is dry mouth. My sense of taste was affected. I could barely taste some of my favourite foods and some I could not taste at all. I was anxious to try life without this med and as it turns out I’m quite confident that I’ll be fine without it. 

That leaves me with two pain meds. Gabapentin is a med I take for neuropathic pain. I’m currently cutting back on it to see how it goes. I’m not going cold turkey on Gabapentin, but I am determined to eliminate it from my pantheon of drugs. Hydromorphone is the drug that is the backbone of my pain treatment. I take it in slow-release form twice a day to deal with the daily predictable pain I get from myeloma’s excavations of my femurs as well as from sciatica and degenerative disk disease. I can also take hydromorphone in what’s called a pain breakthrough mode. That is, if the slow-release form of hydromorphone isn’t doing the job, I can take a more fast-acting form of the drug in any amount I feel is needed. I have taken breakthrough hydromorphone, but only sporadically, and as a last resort. I take as little of this drug that I feel will do the job. Taking more than a few milligrams of breakthrough hydromorphone leaves me hallucinating, not something I enjoy.  

The problem is that I’m seventy-four and at my age, the degenerative process is well under way. There’s no stopping it, and it’s not satisfied until it’s done. At my age, just about everybody has back pain and sciatica. These are conditions endemic to the species. It serves us right to have evolved from an arboreal species to one that is bipedal and an upright walker. Monkeys don’t have back problems. 

So, my challenge at the moment is to reduce my intake of pain meds to the point where I get pain relief without experiencing all the negative side effects of the various meds involved. So far so good. We’ll see how it goes.

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I’m writing this post on one of the hottest days of the year so far with tomorrow promising to be even hotter yet. Thankfully we have air conditioning, so the house is staying at a very acceptable 24.5˚C. Outside today, according to our weather station, the temperature has topped out at around 40˚C. Tomorrow, the prognosticators have promised us temperatures of 40˚C at mid-afternoon, so the beat goes on. 

I’m not complaining about the weather. The weather is what it is. It doesn’t respond to our needs, but instead requires that we respond to it if we’re not happy with it. Good luck with that. On to the next post now. Maybe I’ll take less time to get it out than it took me to get this one out. No promises. 

Check out this article Carolyn found for me. It’s a great discussion of chronic pain:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/28/sufferers-of-chronic-pain-have-long-been-told-its-all-in-their-head-we-now-know-thats-wrong?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 8 Comments

# 87. The Last Post in a Series.

Last Friday morning, we (Carolyn and I) had a meeting with my oncology consultant, Dr. Nicol Macpherson, at the BC Cancer Agency in Victoria. We meet with the oncologist in Victoria maybe three times a year. The rest of the time we have a local GP who specializes in cancer treatment. Our local GP oncologist is Dr. Bakshi. We’re quite happy with the service we get from the BCCA and from the local staff of nurses and Dr. Bakshi at the Cancer Care Centre at the Comox Valley Hospital. The meeting with Dr. Macpherson this morning was especially eventful. 

I knew that I was doing well with the chemotherapy and monoclonal antibody treatments I am getting. I started my current regime in mid-February of this year and the progress I made in a month was nothing short of stunning. We keep an eye on my frequent lab tests by logging into an Island Health website called MyHealth. On that site I get to see all the results of my lab tests, imaging results, and upcoming appointments. Obviously, we need to know what we’re looking at when we check out my blood serum profile including my paraprotein and Kappa Free Light Chain numbers which are of particular interest in my case. After some research and consultation, we now have a grip on what the lab results mean for my myeloma activity although the information is always incomplete and must be interpreted fully by someone who has better access than we do to the numbers. That someone is Dr. Macpherson in Victoria although Dr. Bakshi must also have access to my numbers, and my GP is probably copied on all the documentation coming from the hospital here and from Victoria. Now for the fun part:

So, Macpherson told us this past Friday morning that there is no trace of myeloma protein in my blood at the moment. No trace at all. He expects that that will be the case for the foreseeable future, years probably. 

We have been hoping for this result, but we had a bit of a setback late last year and early this year so we were doubtful that the zero myeloma protein in my blood would be an ongoing condition. It now appears that it is. The next few weeks will give us a definitive answer, but the situation looks very good. I have to keep reminding myself that myeloma is incurable but treatable. At the moment I’m in full remission. Inevitably the myeloma will make a comeback. We don’t know when, and that’s the frustrating part of this narrative. Still, we are in a good place right now and probably for some time to come. 

The situation with my cancer being resolved for the time being, I’ve had to rethink the focus of this blog. I have published well over four hundred posts but only eighty-seven addressing explicitly my experience with myeloma. Given the current situation I’ve decided to close the series of posts dedicated to myeloma and open up the blog for other topics and commentaries on current affairs, life and death. I started this blog in 2012, the year I retired. That’s quite some time. Maybe I’ll aim for a thousand posts. There’s no purpose in doing so but I can set up an arbitrary goal if I want. Whatever. 

Sometimes I’m tempted to shut the thing down completely but then I get the itch to write a commentary about current affairs, to get something off my chest, or just to post pictures of the beauty that surrounds me on our property here in Cumberland. We’re approaching the summer solstice. This time of year often brings unsettled weather and exponential growth in the garden which actually needs more heat and sun to ripen fruit and get the lilies to bloom. The lilies are coming up now, slowly, but soon they will colour the garden with splashes of red, yellow, orange, and white. The rhododendrons are still in bloom, at least some of them, but the dogwood and the wisteria have pretty much shed their blossoms and are moving on to create more branch and leaf structure. The weather prognosticators are suggesting that a warm, sunny trend is on the menu for next week. If that happens, we will again be able to sit out by the pond or on the deck next to the water feature there, drink tea and read. We will eat out on the deck again in warm comfort. 

Life is the weirdest thing, and I don’t mean just as it applies to humans. It seems a little perverse to me, actually. The whole thing does. The birth, growth, maturation, and then decay seem to be a waste of experience and a slap in the face to beauty which it prepares to annihilate in a short time in the last quarter of life. It celebrates renewal but only on the destruction of what went before. The death of one generation means life for the next one. For us humans the process of life is particularly insulting in that it promotes the growth and accumulation of knowledge, of piles of household goods, and property in general just as it prepares to shut it all down and make fodder out of it. Of what use is that? None that I can surmise. But, in any case, let’s not glorify usefulness. 

The concepts of use and purpose don’t apply to life or they apply completely to it. Death is necessary as a base for life. No death, no life. So, ultimately the purpose of death is to act as a basis for life. Life, in the spring, likes nothing more than a pile of shit or manure to drive new growth along. That may be true, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. My death is not far off. According to the statistics, I have maybe five more years before I reach the average length of life in Canada for males. Given the success we’re having with chemotherapy and monoclonal antibodies I could just reach the average lifespan. Eventually, myeloma may well kill me, but whatever, something has to do the deed. I need to die, we all do, to make room for future life. Bring it on.

A picture containing tree, plant, flower, arranged Description automatically generated
A nice picture of white, red, and orange lilies to end with.

#86. ???????

~ Roger JG Albert

I woke up this morning at seven twenty three and got out of bed at seven twenty eight. In that five minutes between seven twenty three and seven twenty eight I had a couple of thinks1. These were little thinks, nothing momentous or earth-shattering. They were thinks about what I would do today. I decided on a couple of things to work on, writing a blog post is one and the other is going down to my studio to continue a clean up I started some time ago in preparation for some work I want to do.

Today is the day after my Daratumumab infusion at the hospital. That’s a bi-monthly event for me. We get to the hospital for a nine o’clock appointment. I grab a coffee after being logged in at the Wellness Centre then make my way to the Cancer Care Centre. After getting settled in they hook me up to an IV drip and then call the pharmacy to tell them I’ve arrived and that they can prep the Dara. Yesterday it took over an hour for the pharmacy to get the Dara to the Cancer Care Centre. I waited patiently but with a little frustration, I must admit. After about ten fifteen they released the Dara starting the infusion. I read my book for a bit but soon fell asleep. I woke up at eleven forty five. Cool. The infusion was almost done. It generally takes about one and a half hours. At about twelve twenty, Carolyn picked me up and we came home.

Along with the Dara, as you well know, I take dexamethasone and lenalidomide. These are the chemo drugs. Dara is not a chemo drug, but a monoclonal antibody. Click on the word Daratumumab in the paragraph above for some good information about Dara. Dex and Lena are very different drugs that do different things in the blood. Dexamethasone is a steroid and has some annoying side effects like interfering with sleep. That it did last night. I slept in fits and starts and got maybe four hours of sleep total. I won’t get much sleep until Monday.

My life these days is organized around my chemotherapy. Of course, my Dara infusions predominate, but the dex has the most immediate and dramatic effects aside from the hydromorphone. I most often go to bed before nine o’clock in the evening. I rarely go to sleep right away, however. Yesterday, I did fall asleep after going to bed at eight thirty. I woke up about forty-five minutes later with a start. I had gone to sleep with the cat laying between my legs. I dreamt that the cat had been joined by my brother. I woke up with nobody on the bed with me. I was startled when I woke up but relieved too because I find it uncomfortable to have the cat sleep with me. I mean, I could easily get her off the bed, but I’m a sucker for the cat. She rules.

A preoccupation I have these days relates to the purpose of life and how to determine what to do with the time I have left to live. I have all kinds of time every day to think about things so off I go. Obviously there will be some physical restrictions that hamper the kinds of activities I can do; after all, I am seventy-four years old. One serious big think I’m having these days is coming to grips with the kinds of activities I am still capable of doing amongst the many I did during my younger years. I don’t want to simply lay back and avoid any activities that would require of me exertion that might tire me or leave me incapable of doing anything for a couple of days afterwards. I’m still strong enough, but I’m not as well coordinated as I used to be. I’m learning that I have to strike a balance between what I want to do and what I’m really capable of doing. There is a slew of activities I did when I was younger that are beyond me now. I have to be realistic about these things. I cranked up the chainsaw the other day and chopped a bit of wood. That was fine. I could do that. But what I want to do in terms of sculpture would require that I use saws and chisels for a sustained period of time. I don’t know if I have the sustainability to sculpt, but I know I can paint and draw. Whether I have the desire to do these things is another question.

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1 This is a verb being used as a noun, but it’s probably not original.