Erik MH:

home

Chemo and radi­ation ther­apy begin

At last, on Tues­day I fired my first shots at the Enemy. Everything before had been but pre­lim­in­ary, but on Tues­day I found myself in a com­fy chair in a cosy little room, listen­ing to the Tal­lis Schol­ars singing in Bever­ley Min­ster, with Kar­en beside me in a some­what less com­fy chair. They gave me cute socks and a cook­book, too! …

more →

A ques­tion of logistics

We really have the best of both worlds, logistically.

All of the chemo­ther­apy and radi­ation ther­apy can (and will) be done at the Cent­ral Ver­mont Med­ic­al Cen­ter near Mont­pe­li­er — only 35 minutes from our house. And I’ll be able to drive myself to almost all of these appoint­ments myself. Yea! Unsur­pris­ingly, the hos­pit­al is small, com­fort­able, and friendly. Per­haps more sur­pris­ingly (giv­en its size) it’s quite up-to-date: no wor­ries about any­thing less than 2017 best practices.

Everything hav­ing to do with each sur­gery will be all the way down at Dart­mouth-Hitch­cock Med­ic­al Cen­ter.…

more →

“Walk­ing into Mordor”

In a nut­shell: I’ve been dia­gnosed with eso­pha­geal adeno­car­cinoma. It’s pretty big, but not huge, and oth­er than one lymph there is no sign of it hav­ing meta­thes­ized, so pro­gnos­is is good. Best-prac­tice treat­ment today in both North Amer­ica and Europe is a (prob­ably five-week) course of radi­ation ther­apy with a sup­port­ive batch of chemo-ther­apy which acts syn­er­gist­ic­ally with the radi­ation. This might com­pletely erad­ic­ate the tumor, but wheth­er it does or not, long-term sur­viv­al stat­ist­ics dic­tate that much of the lower eso­phag­us and upper stom­ach then be removed surgically.

I could be eat­ing (gently) again by Thanksgiving.

more →