Thought Picnic: Comparing my encounters with cancer

Comparing cancer treatments

Fifteen years ago, I was on the receiving end of a cancer diagnosis, and it was the first day of treatment with chemotherapy. Everything was predicated on my ability to tolerate the gruelling onslaught on my body that was eventually delivered every third week on a Monday for seven sessions.

By comparison, between chemotherapy then and radiotherapy today, the latter seems more tolerable though, just as exacting on your body. Chemotherapy was then necessary because, besides the obvious cancer lesions on one sole and the emanating tumours on the other sole, there was a likelihood that cancer could be in different parts of the body.

Rather than try to determine all the localisations of the cancer, chemotherapy with its cytotoxic ability to kill cancer and some healthy cells in the body seemed the best option against radiotherapy. In the case of prostate cancer, this was still contained and localised with the prostate gland and my options were between prostatectomy or radical radiotherapy, and I opted for the latter.

Effects on the body

In terms of side effects, chemotherapy knocked me out by the beginning of the third day, there was no strength to do anything and that was also exacerbated by the inability to keep food down so I had to be given anti-emetic medication. Within the first five days after chemotherapy, I also had to be careful that no one had any contact with my bodily fluids as it was toxic to healthy people.

I was not prepared for the shock of being cordoned off in my section of the hospital ward and any nurses who needed to draw blood had to take full hazardous materials (HAZMAT) precautions when approaching me. That little piece of detail was not communicated in our pre-treatment briefing.

While I believed I would survive Kaposi’s sarcoma, I do not think I was thinking of fifteen years ahead to reencounter cancer in my prostate gland. During the preview of options for treatment, I did ask if chemotherapy could be a treatment option for the prostate and the view was except in the case of metastasis, it was not a viable option.

Experience or newness

I guess my thinking was having tolerated chemotherapy well before, a second experience would not be as bad. However, it would have left me less able to do the usual things with the need for constant care and monitoring as I had back then in the Netherlands.

I write this not to celebrate cancer but out of gratitude and thankfulness that I have been fortunate to survive cancer and tell stories of the triumph of humanity over adverse events through medical intervention and so much more, the mercy and grace of God.

References

Blog - Waiting for chemo

Blog - A life of cytostatic ostracism

Blog - A primer on cancer and chemotherapy