Roger Albert

Trials and Tribulations

~ Roger JG Albert

[Feeling a little disjointed today…]

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that it’s all about me and my trials and tribulations around my experience with myeloma, old age, medicine, chemotherapy, and its side effects. Of course, I’m not completely self-absorbed, just mostly so. To be honest, it’s been a bit difficult to focus on anything else. Myeloma and its effects have taken over my (and my family’s) life. The pandemic hasn’t helped either. Both myeloma and the pandemic have severely restricted any social activity in which I used to take great pleasure. Driving is a challenge but not impossible. My neck seems to be getting somewhat better after the dexamethasone injection in my neck about six weeks ago. Now I fear that my time with Daratumumab may be coming to an end. I don’t know that for sure, but the neuropathy in my left hand is getting quite bad. Increased peripheral neuropathy is a side effect of Daratumumab and may be a signal that my body is rejecting the Dara. I talk to an oncologist in Victoria next month and we’ll certainly talk about my chemo treatments. On top of that I have a tooth that is dying if not completely dead. The endodontist I saw about that says I need a root canal and I should be on antibiotics for a bacterial infection just below that tooth. To be on antibiotics I probably need to cease chemotherapy treatments for a time. That’s another thing I need to talk to the oncologist about. So it goes. 

By the way, I’ve just finished reading The Cancer Code (2020) by Dr. Jason Fung. Aside from being a practicing nephrologist in Toronto, Fung is a prolific writer. This book on cancer is fine although Fung focusses on tumor-based cancers and mentions myeloma only in passing. I quite like his analysis and where he ends up suggesting that cancer is subject to evolution and natural selection like any organism. He argues that in the past cancer was seen as a mistake, then as a somatic mutation, but he writes: 

“Cancer had always been considered a single genetic clone, so evolutionary processes were considered irrelevant. But the realization that cancers evolve was electrifying. For the first time in decades, we had a new understanding of how cancer develops. The entire field of science known as evolutionary biology could now be applied to understand and explain why cancer develops mutations.” (from “The Cancer Code: A Revolutionary New Understanding of a Medical Mystery (The Wellness Code Book 3)” by Dr. Jason Fung)

Daratumumab is a monoclonal antibody. It worked well for a time. I hope it works for a while longer, but it is destined to fail when it no longer responds to myeloma’s mutations. He notes that cancer cells act like prokaryotes or single-celled organisms and not like eukaryotes or multi-celled organisms. According to Fung, we are on the cusp of a major paradigm shift in cancer treatment, but it will be expensive. What do we do about that? 

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Just to remind myself that I’m still a sociologist, I’ve spent quite a bit of time lately reading and watching MSNBC, CNN, The Guardian, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, Ring of Fire, Beau of the Fifth Column, and other newsy YouTube videos. I check out some Canadian content, but the elephant next door is far more compelling than Trudeau’s antics or O’Toole’s foibles. I’ll come back to the US below, but before I go there, I just want to say that I’m reading a book by David Graeber and David Wengren published just last year called The Dawn of Everything. The book challenges everything we know about the “Western” version of history and is a refreshing read. For one thing it sheds value on indigenous ideas and ways of seeing as providing the real challenges to the philosophers (Locke, Hume, Hobbes, etc.) of the Enlightenment, Rousseau, and other incipient lefties. The authors reject the idea that indigenous peoples were the child-like innocents they are often portrayed as by European travellers and colonizers. They also challenge the idea that things can’t change, that we’re stuck with large scale, ridiculous, bloated states. Unfortunately, Graeber died on September 2nd, 2020, three weeks after this book was released. He was fifty-nine years old. That hardly seems fair.

I don’t know how many of you are interested in American politics. It can be a nasty, grubby place at times and unless you are steeled against media biases and distortions of reality, you might be left with all kinds of strange ideas about what’s really going on to the south of us. One thing is for certain, I’m getting just a little perturbed at the ignorance and stupidity of some American politicians in Congress who shout “socialism” every time Biden and the Democrats dare spend a dime on regular, run-of-the-mill citizens or on infrastructure. They want all the cash to go to the 1%. I’m still not sure how that benefits them personally unless they believe Milton Friedman’s ridiculous trickle-down theory by which if regular people as taxpayers give billionaires all the money that some of it will trickle down to them. That is such a bullshit theory. The proof of that is that it’s never worked and the concentration of wealth in the über-wealthy is clear evidence of that. 

Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, and their ilk in the Republican Party and sitting members of Congress obviously haven’t a clue what socialism is, or, if they do, they are being disingenuous about it. The truth is that it may be some of both. For these clowns, any money spent on bridges, highways, city roads, the electrical grid, wastewater systems, potable water, etcetera, is evidence of socialism. So stupid. They take the notion of individual initiative and investment to the extreme. But, of course, they just want to get re-elected and making outrageously false statements is the name of the game. They can always be retracted later when nobody is paying attention.  

I’d say that I follow American Congressional politics as entertainment, but it’s not funny. There is a fairly serious challenge to the status quo there from a far-right racist Republican cabal and some people seem to want to continue the Civil War of the early 1860s. I do take some comfort in the fact that there are over 300,000,000 people in the United States and that would be a hard ship to turn around. I have a lot more to say about the US, supply chains, the wane of capitalism, the rise of oligarchy (which is already close to the surface), and history. Stay tuned. 

I strongly recommend reading Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook. You’ll get a well-researched commentary on American politics from a classy historian. Check her out.

Lassitude

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 13 Comments

Yes, lassitude, which the dictionary that Apple so kindly provides for us as part of the operating system on my computer defines as: “a state of physical or mental weariness; lack of energy.” That about sums it up. 

I know my expectations for myself are way out of whack. I keep forgetting the basic realities of my life: I’m almost seventy-five years old, I have a slow acting, but debilitating cancer and chemotherapy designed to fight said cancer that has side effects I’ve already discussed on this blog at nauseum. No need to flog a dead horse (as they say). I also have some neck issues that most people of my age get but that don’t afflict all of us in this demographic with pain. We won’t talk about arthritis now, shall we? 

So, I’m tired and generally not feeling that great. What should I expect? Duh! 

The past month has been especially unpleasant. My computer tells me that I’ve spent about nine hours a day of screen time. That seems about right. I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos on everything from sailing to boat building, to prospecting, art, art history, lumber manufacturing, bushcraft, the La Palma volcano, people living alone in off-grid cabins, American Congressional politics, and more. Nine hours a day. It’s true that I also read quite a few articles from The Guardian, The Tyee, NPR, the CBC, and lots of internet-based news sources. And I’ve written a bit too. Still, I do a lot of sitting in my recliner, staring at my computer screen. I often think about things I could be doing like drawing, painting, woodwork, etcetera. Sometimes I do these things, generally followed by increased pain in my back and legs. That doesn’t encourage me to do more things. In fact, it actively discourages me from doing things. So, I go back to my recliner for another few hours. This pattern seems to be my fate now. I’m not sure I can do anything about it either.

Today is Sunday and this week is my chemo week. This is the fourth week in my monthly cycle and for the fourth week I don’t take lenalidomide, a drug I would normally take daily. On Thursday I take dexamethasone, valacyclovir, montelukast, and get one and a half hour of a Daratumumab infusion. That’s all no big deal. However, the effects of these meds will leave me feeling like I’ve got the flu for at least a week after. 

Tomorrow, I have to go to the lab for blood tests. So, VIHA has now closed all satellite labs in the Valley leaving only the lab at the hospital. There used to be three satellite labs, one in Cumberland, one in Courtenay, and one at St-Joseph’s hospital. All gone now. Apparently, VIHA can’t find enough staff. There are no appointments to be had either for tomorrow, and I need lab results tomorrow to be able to get my infusion on Thursday. I may spend the better part of the day tomorrow at the hospital waiting to get my blood tested. That will not put a smile on my face. But, we’ll see. I’ll report back on my next post.

Do I sound like I’m complaining and whining? Well, I am.

Slowly Falling Apart

~ Roger JG Albert

For this post, I decided to create a collage of quotes and commentaries from books I’ve been reading lately. They range from comments on death and dying to philosophy, culture, and the future. So far in this blog, I’ve refrained from commenting on American Congressional politics, but I just may go there soon. I told my sociology students year after year throughout my college teaching career that the American empire would fall, as all empires fall, not from external conquest but from implosion due to unresolved, long standing conflict. The American empire, specifically, will fall because of commodity production that depends on longer and more complex supply chains and failing profits. America is falling on its own sword of profits. Supply chains and economic processing zones in a plethora of ‘developing’ parts of the world have been an issue for decades while only recently making it onto mainstream media commentary and news. I’ll explain in a future post.

US politics has to wait. It’s a mess down there but it’s a mess everywhere on the planet at the moment. Let’s move on.

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Robert Sapolsky is one of my all-time favourite guys. He has a number of his Stanford University lectures on YouTube. He’s a neuroscientist who specializes in stress. He worked in the field for many years with Olive baboons in Africa. I have a video in which his work with the baboons is featured. On the topic of the human condition he writes:

“we are now living well enough and long enough to slowly fall apart. The diseases that plague us now are ones of slow accumulation of damage—heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular disorders.” (from “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping (Third Edition)” by Robert M. Sapolsky)

Now, ain’t that the truth! If you check out Stats Canada’s vital statistics you’ll find out that cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada. Actually, life is the leading cause of death everywhere, but as far as the observable evidence of bodily decay and death goes, cancer is determined to be the immediate major causes. Writing this makes me want to go back and binge watch Sapolsky on YouTube. Not only does he have a lot to say, but he says it in such an engaging way that binge watching is entirely feasible. I’ll be sharing more from Sapolsky later, but now on to another very different writer.

This is a quote from another book I’m reading that I want to share with you. Talk about falling apart! Robinson is a contemporary novelist writing in the sci-fi genre with dystopian tinges. He writes:

“Say the order of your time feels unjust and unsustainable and yet massively entrenched, but also falling apart before your eyes. The obvious contradictions in this list might yet still describe the feeling of your time quite accurately, if we are not mistaken. Or put it this way; it feels that way to us. But a little contemplation of history will reveal that this feeling too will not last for long. Unless of course the feeling of things falling apart is itself massively entrenched, to the point of being the eternal or eternally recurrent individual human’s reaction to history. Which may just mean the reinscription of the biological onto the historical, for we are all definitely always falling apart, and not massively entrenched in anything at all. 31 India” (from “The Ministry for the Future: A Novel” by Kim Stanley Robinson)

Most of this quote will be difficult for you to fathom because it’s out of context. It’s the last sentence that really matters. To help you out a little with the context of this quote, the ‘order of your time’, in the first sentence means that in the course of your life you feel out of control. You can’t go back, you can’t stay still. You can only go forward towards your death. This applies not only to us as biological entities but also to our cultural and social constructs which also are bound to come and go in a generally disorderly way. We cannot be ‘massively entrenched’ in life because daily existence makes a lie of any attempt to avoid moving toward death.

Now, more from Robinson in another of his sci-fi novels set far from Earth on a ship and a moon.

“Existential nausea comes from feeling trapped. It is an affect state resulting from the feeling that the future has only bad options. Of course every human faces the fact of individual death, and therefore existential nausea must be to a certain extent a universal experience, and something that must be dealt with by one mental strategy or another. Most people appear to learn to ignore it, as if it were some low chronic pain that has to be endured. Here in this meeting, it began to become clear, for many of those present, that extinction lay at the end of all their possible paths. This was not the same as individual death, but was instead something both more abstract and more profound.” (from “Aurora” by Kim Stanley Robinson)

Robinson is not a great writer in terms of composition, but he is a very perceptive commentator on the human condition. His novels are all about the fragility of humanity in the face of evolution and death, both on an individual and social level. Death denial is a consistent theme in human history and as a goal, has engendered a mass of immortality tales with “supernatural” characters as diverse as Zeus, Jesus, Shiva and a mess of lesser gods. These characters are our heroes who will save us from death if only we believe in them. But then we come face to face with evolution and biology which care not a wit whether we believe in them or not, and which just carry on.

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So, what about falling apart?

It’s clear that average death rates have risen consistently over the decades on the planet although in the US they’ve been falling for some demographics. Falling or not, on average we live well into our seventies. In fact, Stats Can tells me that if I live to be seventy-four I can expect to live another fourteen years. These are average life expectancies, of course. Millenia ago, living to thirty-seven years of age was considered average. People died of things then we seldom die of these days (such as appendicitis).

Sapolsky understands that the longer we live the more things can go wrong in our bodies. That’s self-evident the longer we live. If we get injured while young we can expect to heal and then just get on with things. As we (I) get older the healing process slows down.

There are a few very fortunate people, especially in the world’s richest parts, who suffer very little as they get old. I don’t think I know any of those people (well, maybe one or two). That said, there is an inevitable decline in capacity as we age. That doesn’t mean we should stop living and simply prepare for death because we know it’s going to happen. For me, I have much reduced capacity. At seventy-four I have maybe a quarter of the capacity I had at fifty. But a quarter is better than nothing. I still have shit to do! I’m falling apart, yes. In fact, I can’t fall much farther, but that’s fine, I still have a way to go.

Dexamethasone, Tooth-aches, Pig Kidneys, and Life.

~ Roger JG Albert

So, dexamethasone strikes again! I went to the hospital this past Thursday for my monthly infusion of the monoclonal antibody, Daratumumab. Along with the Dara, I get a number of other chemo meds among them dexamethasone. I only get fifteen milligrams of dex these days once a month and that’s probably a good thing because any steroid can be trouble in the long run. Of course my long run is getting palpably shorter, or to put it another way, dex can’t really hurt me in the long run if I don’t have much of a long run. What I can say, though, is that no matter how long my long run is, I’ll make the best of it. I’ve decided that that’s my goal. I’m thinking of my life now as a one mile marathon race. Getting closer to the finish line is no reason to slow up. In fact, it’s all the more reason to step up the effort. Of course, the closer to the finish line we get, the more tired we get so it’s a trade-off. Still, pushing to the end is my goal. But I digress.

What is interesting about dex is it’s effect on my tooth-ache. I mentioned before that I had a nasty tooth-ache that a dex shot in my neck attenuated rapidly and almost eliminated entirely. Well, that tooth-ache has persisted in a low rumble since it returned after a few days following my neck shot. Again, the dex that I took orally on Thursday killed the pain in my tooth right dead. It’s back now because as I’ve become well aware, the relief from dex is very short lived. Oh, I appreciate the pain relief whichever way I can get it, but dex has other side effects that aren’t as welcome as the pain relief. Check out this list of side effects. I’ve experienced many of them over the past couple of years.

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[As an aside, I’m writing this sitting in my new La-Z-Boy recliner (thanks to my very generous daughters) in my cozy, warm living room. Carolyn, my love of forty-eight years, while I sit warm and cozy in the living room, is out there walking on the trails in Cumberland in rain as thick as soup. She is accompanied by Tilly, our Bernese Mountain Dog/German Shepherd mix who loves her mom and also most other living things, and swimming too. I hope she gets home soon so we can have a cup of tea together. She did!]

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So, what about pig kidneys? Well, lots. This article explains what the experiment was all about. And it was an experiment, of course. Serious ethical issues aside, the experiment was a success. Researchers in New York attached a kidney from a specially raised pig, one that was genetically modified to not produce a certain sugar that caused immediate rejection in humans, to a cadaver. Yes, a cadaver. The objective was to see whether or not the pig kidney could reproduce the function of a normal human kidney, and apparently it did, and splendidly so. The cadaver was special too, of course. I suggest you read the article to get the story from a reputable source.

What’s the big deal, I ask? Researchers genetically modify pigs so that we humans can use their organs. How does that make you feel? The truth is that pig heart valves have been successfully implanted in humans for some time now and researchers have been experimenting with xenotransplantation since the 17th Century. We eat pigs all the time. They are one of our major sources of food. They are also intelligent, rivalling some humans I surmise.

The reason pigs are such a good fit for xenotransplantation is that they are so closely related to us genetically. In fact, we are related to all other living things, animal and plant but with varying degrees of fit in terms of the quantity of genes that we share with them. We are very closely related to chimpanzees sharing something like 99% of DNA with them. (I think that the reason we don’t raise chimps to eat is that they look too much like us.) We share DNA with ducks and cedar trees, snails, and puppy dogs.

From what I can gather from casual observation, we tend to think of all species as distinct from each other and, of course, that’s partially true. Sadly, we are generally ignorant of our place in the scheme of life on this planet. We have been convinced over millennia that we are special under the sun and that all life on the planet is there to serve us. That attitude will ultimately lead to our demise as we Bolsonaro the Amazon rain forest, empty the seas of fish and other life, and generally bulldoze our way through all life on the planet. We take up more and more of the biosphere every year. We, as a species, have no respect for life and from what I can see, have very few mechanisms that would allow us to gain respect for life. Our culture is designed to deny death and thus to ignore life.

Our political systems are geared to produce maximal growth and compete in absurd ways for greater and greater shares of planetary resources. It’s disconcerting to see China and the US embroiled in a chest-thumping match over Taiwan. How stupid. How short-sighted. How ignorant. What are they going to do, lob nuclear weapons at each other? It’s especially ridiculous knowing how closely tied manufacturing in the US is tied to production in China. It’s hard to see how Americans destroying American production in China will help anyone, anywhere. I suspect that the Chinese leadership is in need of a diversion to keep its population’s collective mind off of serious domestic problems. Focussing attention outward is a tried and true method of avoiding domestic conflict.

I could argue that the way we are increasingly economically interdependent through production of commodities in networks that span the globe is encouraging as a basis for concerted action. However, I’m not sure that we have the time to wait for economic interdependence to lead to political interdependence. Finally, I’m not convinced that as a species we are capable of doing what needs to be done to enable us to live in harmony with the rest of life on the planet. It may be that cockroaches will inherit the earth and if that’s the case, so be it.

Dexamethasone for the Win!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Last post I more or less said that I would not write about pain anymore. Well, that’s not really practical if I want to write about my life so that idea is out the window. Lately pain has been my life. It’s dominated everything that I do and don’t do (because of it). So, away we go.

Along with the general pain in my legs and back from the chemo treatments I get, I have serious neck issues that are fairly common in older people, that is, vertebrae that collapse or the passages in the spine shrink (stenosis). For all of you young’uns out there, this is your future. However, most people don’t have pain to accompany these age-related changes. I just happen to be one of the lucky ones to get excruciating pain in my neck that includes cramps and a low-grade throbbing pain. Most of this I can handle. The cramps require immediate attention much like a charley-horse in the leg muscles. I often wear a neck brace to keep my neck from moving too much and inducing the cramps. In fact, I’ve just put one on because looking down on my keyboard is a sure way of bringing on a cramp.

I’ve been exasperated with my neck pain because it severely limits my mobility and I want to do some painting, drawing, and boat work. As soon as I look down for any length of time, I get a cramp and that really cramps my style, if you know what I mean. So, I called my GP. He, I’m sure being sick and tired of me complaining about pain referred me to the Pain Clinic at the hospital in Nanaimo. They called me from the clinic surprisingly quickly and we set up a telephone appointment with Dr. Pariser, one of the doctors who works at the clinic. We decided on a procedure. It would take place on October 6th, yesterday. All that was left was the waiting.

Carolyn drove me down to Nanaimo yesterday morning when I got to see Dr. Pariser. We decided on a treatment that’s been around for a long time and that works fifty percent of the time and only after a month following the procedure. It (the procedure) involves injecting a steroid in the spinal cord to deaden the pain. It’s clinically referred to as an epidural. Epidurals are sometimes given to women during labour but they are not uncommon for lower back pain.

In my case the steroid was dexamethasone. I’ve often mentioned dexamethasone (dex) in my previous posts because it’s a staple medication of my chemotherapy and it has interesting side effects. I was a bit surprised when Dr. Pariser told me that he would be injecting dex into my neck, but he assured me that there would be no adverse effects from adding this dosage of dex into my mix along with my monthly oral 12 milligrams taken in conjunction with my infusion of Daratumumab at the hospital. Frankly, I didn’t know what to expect in terms of side effects from the dex injection in my neck. It didn’t take long to find out.

Before I tell you about the effects of the dex injection in my neck I want to tell you about another source of pain I’ve had recently that prompted a visit to my dentist. It started innocently enough with a bit of sensitivity in an upper left molar. It has a large crown which has been there for some twenty-five years. X-rays showed a probable need for a root canal. Well, that was fine and dandy, but when could that be scheduled. I was in pain NOW. My dentist was very concerned and referred me to a group of dental specialists in the Valley that specializes in this kind of work. Great. Their office called me and cheerfully informed me that I was booked for an appointment on November 15th. Yahoo! That’s all I needed: a six week wait for a consultation, never mind the procedure. After whining for a bit I got the appointment moved up to October 15th. That was some improvement but still a long way off given the level of pain I was in. I mean, this pain trumped all other pain in my body. It was excruciating, it was relentless.

So, yesterday when we drove to Nanaimo I was still in a lot of pain, but it had attenuated some due to an onslaught of hydromorphone. I take hydromorphone daily in a small dose for pain associated with my multiple myeloma, its side effects and the side effects from the chemo. I take a slow-release dosage morning and night, but I also have a stock of what’s called breakthrough medication for times when the slow-release dosage just doesn’t cut it anymore. Over the last while I used a lot of breakthrough hydromorphone. It has a lot of side effects that I don’t particularly enjoy, like insomnia, but too bad about that. I needed pain relief and damn the torpedos! It’s a good thing I had my breakthrough hydromorphone.

This is where serendipity comes in. I love serendipity. Dex can relieve pain. I had pain in my mouth as well as my neck so what would dex do for my molar pain? Well, I’m pleased to report that the dex pretty much killed the pain in my mouth, at least for now. I don’t expect the pain relief to last a long time, but any relief is welcome. I have the hiccups, a common dex side effect so I know it’s working. Strangely enough, I slept very well last night. Insomnia is also a common side effect, but it’s also a side effect of other meds I’m taking so who knows what’s going on in my body.

As a bit of a side note, if there are scientists reading this, scientists interested in pain and its management, you might want to think about a way of letting others know how much pain we’re in. That wouldn’t have any pain relief effects, but it may increase positively the way most people react to people with chronic pain. I mean, it’s hard to know if someone is in pain or not. People can fake it. There are clues in bodily function and blood work, but not many that show physically. Arthritis can sometimes show clearly in the body. In the last decade of his life, my father’s hands became deformed with arthritis. He was unable to open them, and he kept them clutched against his chest. Maybe, if our pain wasn’t obvious, if our limbs glowed blue or green that would be a clear indication of pain. Whatever. Work on it.

So, in summary, dex was a clear winner for me yesterday and today. I still had a shake (liquid diet) for breakfast today like yesterday rather than my usual granola or toast, but I’ll carry on with that because I really like the shakes Carolyn makes! Besides, I expect my toothache to reappear as the dex wears off. So be it. Pain management is very complex because the pain never stays the same in terms of source or intensity. It’s like playing whack-a-mole, but with no fun involved.

Up, up in the air.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 8 Comments

What do I want to do with this blog? The thought crossed my mind that just giving up on it would not be the worst-case scenario. I’ve been at it for a few years now so it wouldn’t be outrageous for me to either quit entirely or maybe just take a break over the summer. Mygawd, I’m not making any money writing it. Lots of bloggers make money on YouTube with their blogs. I don’t, so what’s the point? Maybe I could monetize my blog, attach it to a video log and turn it loose on YouTube. After all, we DO live in a capitalist society. Might work. Probably not. 

The weather has been wonderful lately if you want to lay about on a deck. I sit on the deck close to the rock/fountain and watch the birds come down for a drink. The one in the video here is a female goldfinch we think. She flits around avoiding direct contact with the fountain. It would probably knock her over if she did. 

The wisteria gives them some shelter and protection before they come down to the fountain, but they’re still wary. Smart birds. There are cats prowlin’ around here. Our princess is one of them and she’s a hunter sometimes, mostly mice, but we don’t want to tempt her with birds. She’s being such a brat lately. She seems to have figured out exactly when I’m just about to fall asleep, then she pounces on the bed, meowling like crazy and poking my face with her paw. 

Tilly has been hanging around the pond a lot lately. She patrols the perimeter sniffing around trying to get frogs to abandon their rocks along the shore. I don’t like the way she’s been fixated on frogs lately. She come close but she hasn’t caught any yet. I’d be very pissed off if she did. She spends most of her time under the deck these days where it’s cool. She’s got such a thick black coat she must really suffer in this heat, but she never complains.

Got a call from my Oncology GP this morning. He noted that my bloodwork is coming back from the lab within reference ranges (normal). Tomorrow I go to the hospital for another infusion of Daratumumab. After that, I don’t get another one until the end of August. As of this month, I’m down to once a month for the Dara. I keep taking my regular chemo meds, lenalidomide and dexamethasone, three weeks on, one week off. So, I’m in a weird space where I have no myeloma detectable in my blood, but I’ll be on chemo for the foreseeable future, that is, until the drugs don’t work anymore. At that point they’ll put me on another regime. That means that I must be vigilant around the side-effects of the chemo. It’s not always easy to tell chemo med side-effects from pain med side-effects. 

For an old man, I’m feeling pretty good these days for about fifty percent of the time. I’m sleeping moderately well most of the time, but I have wakeful nights periodically. My neck is what’s tormenting me the most these days. According to my Oncology GP I have OAD (Old Age Disease). I can’t turn my neck more than 3% left or right. Maybe 4%. Makes it hard to do shoulder checks when I’m driving. Of course, I still drive. What are you thinking? I just have to turn my whole body when I do a shoulder check. That’s fine.

Technically, I have degenerative disc syndrome and it’s common among older people. I’m getting a CT scan early next month to confirm the diagnosis. Once I get the scan, I can ask my GP for a referral to someone who might be able to do something for me. That would be good. If I do get some relief, I’ll be able to do more writing, and maybe some sculpting. I’d love to do a bit of printmaking too. Or maybe I could just lie on the couch more comfortably. That would be good.

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

#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.

62 Meh…and sporangia.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Not much motivated to write about my myeloma journey right now. My last post was on August 23rd. Today is Monday, September 14th. For some time I tried and succeeded in putting out a blog post almost every week but lately with the uncertainty around my treatment, I’ve lost interest. So, it’s been three weeks since my last post.

I talk to my local oncologist in a couple of days for fifteen minutes or so but he doesn’t make the major decisions around my treatment. I have a meeting scheduled for the consulting oncologist next month, but I have no expectations around that consultation. It will be the first time I talk to this guy. He’s new in town. I’ll be just another file to him.

From my last set of blood tests I know that my blood is pretty much normal. That will change. Technically, if I’m considered in remission they’ll do more blood tests every three months and reconsider my situation then. But right now, I don’t know if I’m in remission or not.

I already told you that I decided to cut my chemotherapy short about six weeks ago now because one of my chemo drugs was playing havoc with the way my muscles are supposed to respond to the neurological signals controlling them. My thigh muscles are particularly affected by bortezomib (trade name: Velcade), the offending drug, to the point where I experienced severe pain and weakness in my legs, especially in my thighs. That situation seems to be improving slowly. I’m taking some good pain meds and they are helping the situation, and I’m seeing a physiotherapist, but I think just being off chemo is making a big difference.

It’s been a roller coaster ride over the last few months. I’m tired of it. Thankfully, being off chemo is giving me some respite although I still have great fatigue and restricted mobility. I am doing better and I’m happy about that. Lately I’ve been able to draw and paint a little and use my microscope, telescope, and iPhone to put together some interested projects. I can’t do anything for more than a couple of hours at a time, but that’s infinitely better than staring at the ceiling all day long. I’m actually enjoying myself. I have a secret dream, however, that I shared with my physiotherapist. I shouldn’t tell you because if it doesn’t happen I’ll be sadly disappointed, but I’m determined to get into (and out of) our canoe next month and paddle around for an hour or so without assistance and without dropping like a heap on the ground unable to get up. That would be cool. I also want to drag the trailer to Strathcona Park next month for a couple of days of camping. My real secret though is that I want to restore our canoe. I can’t face that task right now, but maybe later this year, who knows. Over the past while I’ve accumulated most of the materials and tools needed for the job. Now I just need energy and strength in my legs.

In any case, while I wait to see what will become of me and how much time I have to live, I’ve been able to occupy my time productively within the limits of my illness. Well, it wouldn’t do to just idle away my time now, would it and just passively wait to die? No! In our world idleness is the work of the devil! Can’t have that.

Wait, I can see it now. I’m on my death bed, hours if not minutes from expiring permanently, but I think that I’ve left something unfinished. No! Can’t do that. Must…live…long…enough…to finish…this…blog…post. And I do. And I die happy.

Of course worrying about a bucket list or unfinished projects or missed communications is all moot. After we’re dead, there is nothing. Concepts like regret are irrelevant. Even if one believes in an afterlife, I can’t imagine anyone thinking that afterlife would be taken up with regrets about things left undone or unaccomplished in life. What a drag that would be.

One thing that’s given me a lot of pleasure lately, as I note above, is exploring the microscopic world with my microscopes and iPhone. And I’ve discovered that I can use my iPhone to record an image on my spotting scope. I’ve posted those images on Facebook so I won’t post them again here. However I will post here a couple of videos I did of sword fern sporangia. I posted a video here of an exploding sporangia some time ago while it was still attached to the leaf. This time I scraped the sporangia off of the fern leaf and that provoked them to open up en masse. The videos are at two levels of magnification. There’s a close-up one and one at a lower level of magnification.

The spores are quite visible after the sporangia have evicted them. They’re the little beige dots littering the area not covered by sporangia. I want a microscope powerful enough to have a closer look at spores, but what is interesting to me even at this level of magnification is that we normally associate movement with animal life and here we have a plant that is moving…with purpose.

I love that as I look at the world through a microscope it’s obvious that all living things on this planet have a lot in common. Carolyn and I watched a YouTube video (NOVA) the other night on DNA called What Darwin Didn’t Know. It really reinforced the fact that DNA is ubiquitous and that life is much more unitary that we think. We really are all in this together. It would be awesome if we could develop respect for all life, all of us that is, including Monsanto and Bayer executives, oil company boards, politicians and all of us. Of course, respect for life also means respect for death, because they are not separable. Life depends on death. We don’t respect death now. We fear it. What would respect for death look like?

PS: I hope the videos work for you. If not, please let me know. For those of you receiving email notifications of my blog posts, you may need to go to the blog site to see them rather that stay on your email to view them.

PS2: My next blog post will be completely different from what you’re accustomed to read here. It’s about a brother I would have had if he had survived childbirth.

60 So now what? (…and microscopic events)

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 6 Comments

Thursday, August 13th is the second Thursday since early October, 2019 that I have not taken Bertezomib or cyclophosphamide, the two main chemo meds that I’ve been taking for months. I’m still on a low dose of dexamethasone and now nortriptyline, along with low doses of hydromorphone. My palliative care team is now fully involved in my case because of the Bortezomib induced neuropathy I am experiencing. Oncologists know very little about pain and make no bones about it, as I’ve noted before, nor do most GPs, so it’s up to the palliative care doctors to do what they can to relieve pain. GPs are often left to deal with the pain their patients experience but it’s often a guessing game finding the right palliative. It’s best left to the experts.

As it turns out, hydromorphone may not be the best opiate for me. In fact, it may be exacerbating my pain issues. So, back to the drawing board. We’ll be modifying my pain med regime one step at a time to ascertain the impact of whatever it is we do without crowding the issue by changing more than one med at a time. I can tell you one thing: I’m sick and tired of being in mind-numbing pain all the time.

Frankly, I’m feeling somewhat adrift. I was so used to the chemo regime and now that it’s gone, I’m struggling with what to make of it. So many unknowns as I slide into a time without chemo but with no promise of remission or relapse. I’m sure I’m not alone in this living purgatory, somewhere between chemo and remission. My GP oncologist told me that he would be in touch in six weeks or so to see how I’m doing and, I suppose, to set up a schedule for follow-up blood work. I should be getting blood tests every three months or so to ascertain the state of the myeloma proteins in my blood. Once the proteins start increasing, it’s time to make a decision again about chemo. Sheesh.

Whatever, the bottom line (to use a business metaphor) is that I’m getting ever closer, as we all are, to the moment of my final breath. The closer I get the harder it is to deny it. The difference between you and me might be that I’ve been issued my ticket to ride, stamped and ready to go in the form of multiple myeloma.

No, I’m not immune to the lure of death denial. I’m not anxious to die. I don’t have a death wish. In fact, I have a life wish. But wishing and hoping aren’t going to get me past this one. It’s just so hard to fathom being dead although I can see that it would be a relief from American politics.

Lots of people urge me to be positive and/or stay strong. Well, I’m not curled up in a fetal position in a corner of the living room wailing and gnashing my teeth waiting to die. Still, it’s a bit daunting thinking that, like my parents, grandparents, and all ancestors, I will also be relegated to the dustbin of history, and in the not-too-distant future.

Yes, I stay positive. I’m registered for a webinar organized by the Multiple Myeloma Foundation set for this Saturday at 1 PM. I wouldn’t be doing that if I weren’t positive! The webinar is to inform us about the latest treatments for myeloma and the progress that’s being made to find a cure. Yes, some researchers and scientists are actively looking for a cure. Problem is they’ll never find a cure for death.

Yes, I stay strong, whatever that means. Sometimes I just want to scream about the injustice of it all, but I don’t. I stay calm, but I seethe inside quietly with my teeth clenched. Maybe that isn’t staying strong. I don’t know. One thing for sure is that when worse comes to worse, I won’t hesitate to get zonked on morphine. Suffering is highly overrated. I’m not sure what the virtue is in suffering. You tell me. Is there a reward?

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Okay, so now for something completely different. Some of you will know that a couple of weeks ago I got a microscope that I can use in conjunction with my iPhone. I get some great pictures and video with it. I also have a standard lab microscope that is actually more powerful than my Wi-Fi microscope, but it’s not easy getting pictures with it. The pictures below were all taken with the Wi-Fi microscope and my iPhone. The first three images are pretty straightforward. The others not so much. The first image (1) is of a dragonfly wing. The second is a photo of the eye of a tiny fly. Number 3 is a larger image of 2. Image 3 is of the spore sack of a fern. The 5th is much different.

Don’t get grossed out now, but the 5th image is a very enlarged view of a mole on my back! I know…eweeeew. Weird, eh? You might want to keep microscopes away from your body after seeing this. Number 6 looks very flesh like, but it’s a highly enlarged view of a plant part. I can’t remember which plant or which part. Number 7 is…I have no idea. I don’t recall taking this image, but it’s of some plant part. Reminds me that I have to more carefully document these things, not that I’m doing a systematic study of anything. It’s just interesting to do while I wait for my myeloma to return.

I’m finding some great inspiration for abstract paintings here.

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©Roger Albert. All images taken with Wi-Fi Digital Microscope.