Sisyphus Revisited

Well there has been a confluence of meaningful dates: Camus' 100th birthday, 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, 24th of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and NET (Neuroendocrine Tumor) day. Don't think there's a deep significance to this, but has led to some interesting reading this weekend. An interesting review of a book on Camus and his birthplace Algeria, an amazing video on the rise of the Berlin Wall from the Archives and lots of Facebook postings on the joys of neuroendocrine tumors. On that topic, Michele and I traveled to Edison, NJ last weekend to attend a carcinoid cancer conference (NETs and carcinoid are synonymous.) Always good to get an update and see photos of tumors cut out of people. I felt like a minor celebrity when I told people that I had just returned from Basel and PRRT treatments. We were also the only people to arrive via mass transit; a train from Penn Station and a 1.5 mile walk.

As to my health, my blood work except for one test is normal. Perhaps the best indication of my health, how fast and how long Steve can pedal up and down hills in Rockland County, is returning to normal. On Sunday morning I got on the bicycle and rode 61 miles up the West Side of Manhattan, over the GW Bridge, 8 miles on River Road, then up 9W to the Bear Mountain Bridge, and finally to the Garrison train station to take me to Grand Central Terminal. I came home and still had some energy. It looked something like this: http://www.mapmyride.com/workout/428103349 This is the best indication that the radiation is finally wearing off. Let's hope it lasts awhile. I'm hoping to assess my options after a Ctscan in mid December.

Not much new to report on the health front, but my old buddy Sisyphus was on my mind again. At first, I thought I was Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill trying to extend my life. While there is some truth to that, I now realize that it is the oncologist who is more truly Sisyphus. Other doctors are generally trying to maintain the health of long term patients, while in the world of cancer the positive goal marks are five year survival rates and cancer drugs are often measured in how many additional months they can keep a patient alive. Not exactly an upbeat profession! Those who work in geriatric care, nursing homes, and hospices have to say goodbye regularly to their patients, but it isn't a lost war or watching a rock roll down the hill again and again. (Now as Simon & Garfunkel sang I am truly a rock.) In my fight for survival, I have always referred to my treatments as Dr. Yu's bag of magic tricks. (Perhaps I think he is Gandalf.) Dr. Yu, in a more martial description, calls them bullets, but I think he is in a war with the out of control cells in my body trying to envelop and eventually destroy my liver and wherever else they might travel. (That does sound gruesome.) At least these Sisyphi are well paid and get to go home to their families after a day of rock pushing, a much better existence than Dr. Bernard Rieux in "The Plague." Conditions of cancer and the plague are both on some level absurd, but, needless to say, I wish the oncologists well in their struggles.