A day or so later, I didn’t feel well when I got up in the morning. My neck was stiff, the glands in my neck were swollen, and I think I was running a slight fever. I had already gone through my high school graduation by this time, a graduation ceremony at which I was the class speaker, and I was already back at work at my regular summer job as an assistant manager of the refreshment stands on Steel Pier.
Symptoms Disappear
The reader will forgive me, I hope, if I have the sequence of events a little confused. All that I can be sure of all these years later is that I played Squire Hardcastle in “She Stoops To Conquer,” that I kissed a lot of young women classmates at the cast party, and that I was sick shortly after. I can’t even remember if I went to a doctor at the time. I do remember that I was aware of the disease mononucleosis, not uncommon among young people even then, and that I even feared I might have it.
Perhaps a day later, my symptoms disappeared. No more stiff neck. No more swollen glands. No more slight fever. I could put this little health crisis behind me and go on with my life.
Now let’s skip ahead 51 years. I’m sitting in the waiting room of a clinic in Mount Airy, North Carolina, a clinic that is part of the Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital Cancer Center. The Mount Airy clinic, about three-quarters of an hour north of Baptist Hospital off of Route 52 and about three quarters of an hour south of where I live in the mountains of southwest Virginia, is one of the places I’ve been going to to get my blood counts checked, catheters looked at, and other services in between stays at the hospital for chemotherapy and other procedures. As I waited to be called by a nurse, I took note on the waiting room bookshelf of a book with the following title: 100 Questions And Answers About Lymphoma by Peter Holman, MD, Jodi Garrett, RN, and William Jansen (Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, Massachusetts).
Bring Book Home
Although I felt that by then I knew a lot about this disease that afflicts me and with which I long have battled, I also knew that I did not know everything. Far from it. When I left the clinic that afternoon, I had the receptionist’s permission to take the book with me. Once home, wife Harriet and I began reading. I found much new information in the book, and—yes—much that I already knew. Then I read something I didn’t know before, read it and found that it triggered the strong response of recognition. For years, I had been asking myself, How did I get this disease? It’s been an obsession of mine just as trying to fathom how I got the thyroid cancer that afflicted me in 1966 has been an obsession. Suddenly I thought I had the answer.
On page 26, after a section on AIDS as a possible cause of lymphoma, was the following: “Another virus that may cause lymphoma is the Epstein-Barr virus, which infects many people without causing illness and is the cause of infectious mononucleosis (popularly know[n] as ‘glandular fever’ or ‘mono’ and often called the ‘kissing disease,’ as it is common among adolescents and is spread through saliva).”
Is Kissing Disease Cause?
Could the kissing disease be the cause of my lymphoma? I now think that it is the leading candidate. In fact, I now see it as the likely cause of my thyroid cancer as well. The thyroid cancer was cured through surgery and through the taking of thyroid hormone in pill form at far higher levels than would be called for simply for hormone replacement.
Now that I think I have a cause for the lymphoma, will it have any effect on how I am treated? Not in the least. I will discuss this question with my oncologist, but I believe that the virus stayed in my body just long enough to cause various genetic cancer-causing defects and then was gone.
Ordeal Continues
So where am I in my treatment? Aren’t I finished with all of this by now? No way. It’s not by accident that I have been referring to what I am going through as “an ordeal.” Since I last wrote on the subject, I have had another cycle of chemotherapy, I have had a CAT scan, and I have also had many injections of a product called Neupogen, which is also referred to as “growth factor.” I have also had my stem cells harvested in a process called apheresis or the separation of the blood into its various components in a remarkable machine.
The purpose of all the Neupogen injections was to force my blood system to produce a high rate of stem cells or immature blood cells. These immature blood cells can grow to become white blood cells, red blood cells or hemoglobin, platelets or clotting factor, or other blood components. In other words, a whole new blood system can be regenerated from these stem cells, which is exactly the purpose of a bone marrow transplant. Out with the old and in with the new!
Stem Cells in Deep Freeze
Right now the stem cells of mine that were collected through apheresis are in the deep freeze at the Baptist Hospital Cancer Center. Once I am cleared for the bone marrow transplant, I’ll go through some procedures which I hope to describe in some upcoming postings. Then my stem cells will be thawed and put back in me. The hope is that the resulting new blood system will be resistant to a relapse of lymphoma for as long as possible. As I’ve previously indicated in my postings, the current state of the art in medical science cannot cure me of the form of lymphoma that I have, known as Mantle Cell B Lymphoma. It can only prolong my life. As a lover of life, I’ll take the extra days, weeks, months, years—whatever it can do for me.
Just yesterday I had still more tests—a PET scan, a lung or breathing test, and the dreaded bone marrow biopsy. I was wondering when I would be forced to have the latter, which I have described in a previous posting as akin to torture. Recently a friend of ours had a bone marrow biopsy in a doctor’s office. She described the test as not nearly as bad as we had warned her it would be. How does one account for the difference in experience? Can it simply be explained by the fact that I am the world’s biggest sissy—anyway the tallest?
The physician assistant who performed the procedure on me confirmed what I have long suspected. I have very hard bones—in fact, very very hard bones, the result perhaps of heredity and from having taken very high doses of vitamin D every day for many years to promote the absorption of calcium. An unfortunate side effect of the thyroidectomy I had 42 years ago is that I do not have a functioning parathyroid. Hence every week I need a certain amount of oral Vitamin D to help my body absorb and process calcium. At one time and for a long time, I took a high dosage of Vitamin D every day of my life.
Titanium Bones That’s Me
The unlucky young woman who performed the bone marrow biopsy on me yesterday, who happened to be several months’ pregnant, started calling me “titanium bones” about half way through the procedure. She was struggling to get her instruments to penetrate my hip bone, and I began to feel sorry for her, that is, when I wasn’t in agony from the pain she was causing me.
Why does the difficult, very painful procedure have to be performed on us lymphoma sufferers and other victims of the blood cancers? Because our oncologists need to know what is going on in our hip bone marrow both before and after bone marrow transplant. As adults, the hip bone is where almost all of our blood system is generated. When my harvested stem cells, now in the deep freeze, are put back in me, it is in the hip that they must take up residence and start to regenerate an entire new blood system.
PET Scan Results
By the way what did the latest scan—the PET—show? Am I in complete remission? No, the little cancerous lymph node in my mesentery just doesn’t want to go away. That’s one of the problems with being a relapsed patient. Our cancers learn how to put up quite a fight against the measures taken to get rid of them. On the other hand, because this was a PET scan, a nuclear medicine technique that measures not just structures but also processes, I did get quite encouraging information on just how active the little killer is at this point. Its activity has gone down by half--such encouraging news that I am now cleared to proceed with the main event, the bone marrow transplant.
The next time I do a posting to Mind Check I’ll probably be writing from the bone marrow transplant ward of Baptist Hospital. When I feel up to it, I’ll be letting everyone know how I’m doing as I go through the challenging and sometimes life-threatening procedure. It all starts for me on Tuesday, July 1. Good luck to me. I hope you all have a happy July 4th. You all know where I’ll be on the 4th.
To see other examples of my writing, see the website http://www.sasaftwrites.com. If all goes well, the first of the two books I hope to publish this year will soon be off press. Full title of this first one is Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, An Epic For Our Time.
Murdoch McLoon is an on-demand book. This means that when you order it, as I hope you will, the publishing service, which is called Xlibris, prints a copy especially for you and then ships it to you. By the way Murdoch McLoon is a story poem with the theme of one of the major issues of our day. It was written to be light-hearted and even funny in parts and gripping in still others, and I think it will be easily understood and enjoyed by everyone. To order Murdoch McLoon And His Windmill Boat, call 1-888-795-4274, or see the website http://www.Xlibris.com, or send an e-mail to Orders@Xlibris.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Stephen Alan Saft
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