GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…Alzheimer’s #11: Time Traveling With My Dad, part 2

Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed hidden from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents in 2015. Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from most of the people I know even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had Alzheimer’s…” But there was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads. Or horror stories. Lots of those. Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this part of my blog…

I’m a STAR TREK nerd and I have been since my dad introduced me to the TV series in 1968 or 1969. I was pre-adolescent, and desperate to have something in common with his. I’d failed miserably in “sports” and long ceded that domain to my brothers and sister. I’d pretty much given up ever having any connection with Dad. Until Gene Roddenberry and Lucille Ball conspired to bring my dad and me together. The fact is that for me, STAR TREK is inextricably linked to my relationship with my father, and I am a writer today because of that connection.

STAR TREK has also dealt with time travel since what is called The Original  Series, beginning with “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” in 1967 and a time travel incident that was used to reboot the entire franchise in 2009, creating a skew from the timeline of all of the TV series as well as the first ten movies…as well as a temporal incident in this real world. During the premier of that movie, my father, myself, and my own son went to the movie along with an old, old friend of mine…

Anyways, in all, STAR TREK has dealt with time travel issues in 50 of the 741 television episodes and thirteen movies.

When I talk to dad these days, I’m dealing with time travel issues all the time.

I’m pretty sure Alzheimer’s messing with Dad’s memories would have been stranger for me if I hadn’t actually messed around with time travel and alternate futures in my own head.

Most of the people who’ve heard me deal with Dad’s wanderings through the past and present are amazed at how calm and soft-spoken I am. Truthfully, the leaps and bounds he makes don’t bother me. I just go with the flow of the conversation – oh, I forgot to mention that Dad ALSO deals with alternate timelines as well. Like the one where Mom is still alive and is divorcing him…

Alzheimer’s has given me a new appreciation for the philosophical concept of “being in the now”. Jesus said it, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34, NIV)

Buddha said it, ““The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” (Motivating Thoughts of Gautama Buddha, Mahesh Dut Sharma)

Ekhart Tolle said it, “All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.” (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)

Must be right, eh? (I’d put a smiley emoticon here if I could…)

For Dad, “now” is a fluid concept. Lately he’s been vividly dreaming, calling me to whisper that because I won’t believe him, I HAVE to come to his apartment, because Mom’s there and they’re talking; or insisting that he has an entire wardrobe at “that place I was before” he has to get to; or declaring that “the guys I bum around with” had just dropped him off and he was wondering when he would get paid for doing the job they did. But when I press for details (no, I don’t grill him!), the illusion begins to fall apart and he’ll say, “I don’t know where I am or what I’m going to do next…”

That’s the default mode. Something in him senses that the timelines aren’t lining up. He called last night to ask if I had Mom’s phone number, followed saying in the next breath, “Oh, Mom’s dead.” He’ll breathe one more time, then ask, “But does she have a phone where she’s at?”

When I’m feeling strong and in a good mood, I can joke about it, “Dad, you know where Mom is, right?”

“Oh, that’s right, she’s dead.”

“And you know how creepy that would be for you to try and talk to her in her coffin, right?”

He laughs, and then we move on to whatever the next point of conversation is, sometimes in the past, sometimes “I’m just bored here…”

I’ll talk about boredom some other time. For now, these are all my thoughts on time traveling with Dad. If you’re interested in my previous ruminations where I’ve done research into the medical “why” this is happening, you can go here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2017/09/guys-gotta-talk-aboutalzheimers-10-time.html

For now, that’s it.

Image:  http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/06/25/6360242025150255191939281878_Alzheimer-disease-patients.jpg

ENCORE #73! – Metastatic Breast Cancer: BRAIN CANCER

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared in January of 2012.

The first question that comes to mind is, “Is a brain tumor the same as brain cancer?”

While I don’t usually go to Yahoo Ask for my medical information, I decided today to START there because the answerer is both an MD and clear:

“Interesting that you bring this up. Primary brain malignancies have always been called brain ‘tumors’ rather than ‘cancer of the brain’. Yet many are clearly cancerous, locally invasive, progressing malignancies. Strange the way people perceive words. If you tell patients they have a ‘tumor, it does not seem as ominous to them as saying they have ‘cancer’…there is confusion that many people have in regard to this topic. A person with lung carcinoma that has spread to the brain has lung cancer in the brain. It is not a brain cancer. It is still lung cancer that is growing in the brain area. A person with a glioblastoma multiforme has a brain tumor - but these are usually aggressive cancers. As for cures - that depends on the primary brain cancer/tumor type and the stage.

Interesting question regarding the semantics of this.”

Source(s): MD medical oncologist - cancer specialist doctor Spreedog, 2010 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091114024633AADSsIx

This is in concordance with what I’ve already found out about bone cancer and lung cancer – when you have had breast cancer and is spreads (which is what Metastatic Breast Cancer is), you have breast cancer cells growing wild in the bones, liver, lungs, brain and various  other places.

So what happens? This seems to me to be a truly horrible kind of MBC because the brain is the seat of Human consciousness.

The writer here expresses this terror: “It was because of a few unusual symptoms, that several months ago I requested a brain scan. By the time the date arrived for the scan, the symptoms, along with my fears, had disappeared. Imagine my surprise when the next day my oncologist called to say that they had found 2 tiny spots on my brain. The news was devastating. While breast cancer is every woman’s nightmare, and metastasis is the nightmare of everyone who has breast cancer, brain metastasis is the nightmare of everyone who has metastatic disease. It was so frightening that I couldn’t speak to anyone about it. I could barely allow myself to think about it. None of this is news to you. You wonder how many tears you can actually shed. You wonder if you will ever feel like your old self again and if your friends and family will ever think of you in the same way. You wonder if you will lose the person you are. It is the most terrifying diagnosis anyone can have, even those of us who are used to bad news.”

What are the symptoms? Please keep in mind that the symptoms are DIFFERENT depending on where the cancer attacks first. Also, OTHER things can cause these symptoms. My wife works as a classroom aide with kindergartners – she gets headaches sometimes, as anyone would who tries to work with a room full of five-year-olds!

Symptoms include: “changes in the ability to think, understand and use words correctly; emotional changes; weakness; dizziness; seeing lights, seeing double, or narrowing of vision; problems with balance; seizures; nausea and vomiting; changes in smelling, taste, hearing. If any of these symptoms persist (that is, stick around for a while) like a headache that is worse in the morning, lasts for days, or recurs every day, then you’ll want to talk to your health care authority.

Once you report to the cancer care center or your doctor and there appears to be reason to suspect MBC-brain cancer, an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is the most effective technology for diagnosing breast cancer brain metastases. It does a better job in distinguishing a single metastasis from multiple metastases, which is an important factor in determining what kind of treatment a patient needs.

Unfortunately, treatment for MBC-brain cancer is problematic still. In m0st cases, whole brain radiation (which is exactly what it sounds like) is the first line of offense. There is good evidence that this treatment is effective almost half of the time in completely reversing the effects of the cancer. In MOST cases, it reduces the symptoms significantly. It is also a shorter-term treatment than the original chemotherapy with radiation doses given daily for 5-10 days (though this is sometimes spread over a longer period to lessen the side-effects.

At other times, the radiation is aimed from multiple directions at specific metastases. This has the advantage of fewer side-effects, but there is no clear EVIDENCE yet that this is as effective as whole brain radiation treatment.

Other, less common treatments include brain surgery (physical removal of the cancer), chemotherapy (not effective usually because the chemo can’t break through the barrier into the brain through the blood (called the blood-brain barrier); and a combination of the above.

Finally: “‘So much depends on the aggressiveness of your individual cancer, the time to recurrence from original diagnosis, any other metastases, and overall health—and, the number, location and size of the brain mets (metastases), and whether they are symptomatic or not,’  Patty observed. ‘I was so sure that I would die within 18 months of my first diagnosis with brain mets.  I readied for the time of my death. Now, I’ve had to revise things a few times.  I wonder if I hold some kind of record for brain MRI’s, having had them on average every two months for five years—that would be around thirty, with bad veins! I’ve had brain mets for five years and have been living with eight lesions for two and a half years.’”

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT …#38: When There’s Nothing To Talk About Is There Nothing To Talk About?

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Like the title says…I don’t know what to say right now, so I’m going to direct you to a post by a very old friend of mine. I met Bruce Bethke before my wife and I married. I was looking for a science fiction writers group to join and stumbled across a notecard at UNCLE HUGO’S SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE (http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/index.shtml).

Bruce, Phillip C. Jennings, and Geri Balter started meeting, then sort of drifted apart. Bruce and I didn’t talk much (it was at the advent of the Internet, so contact was via paper or face-t0-face). Several years later, at a MinniCon, I heard him speak, re-introduced myself, and as it was now the Age of the Internet, we renewed our friendship. Older and wiser, we found we had more things in common.

This his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

A few months later, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

We became actual friends.

He’s a science fiction award-winning author; he’s a man who has survived some very difficult life experiences, and now he’s the executive editor of an on-line speculative fiction magazine.

A few days ago, he shared about their most recent experience with breast cancer.

I’ll leave you to ruminate with him as he looks at jackalopes and cancer…

http://stupefyingstories.com/

Scroll down to the Thursday, October 12, 2017 entry...

Image: http://wrex.images.worldnow.com/images/23784252_SA.jpg

ENCORE #72! – Metastatic Breast Cancer: Liver Cancer

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry appeared in December 2011.

This is not a cancer you hear about frequently, though it is third worldwide after lung and stomach in the number of deaths each year. It is uncommon in the United States with three fourths of all cases diagnosed in Southeast Asia, Mozambique and South Africa.

It is one of the least common of the metastatic breast cancers with bone cancer being 70% of the metastases and brain cancer being 10%. The remaining 20% are distributed between liver, lung and non-specific systemic diseases.

Metastatic breast cancer-caused liver cancer can show up as a significant weight loss, jaundice (getting yellow skin – this condition is sometimes seen in newborns (our son was jaundiced at birth)), and elevated liver enzymes (Inflamed or injured liver cells leak higher than normal amounts of Alanine transaminase (ALT) [This enzyme causes certain reactions to happen in the body that provide for cell energy and brain signal transmission] and Aspartate transaminase (AST) [which helps in the formation of the amino acids used to make several different body proteins such as hemoglobin], into the bloodstream). Other symptoms of MBC are abdominal pain, loss of appetite, fevers, nausea, sweats and vomiting. In some cases, there are no symptoms.

Tests that may be done to diagnose liver metastases include a CT (Computer Assisted Tomography) scan of the abdomen, liver function tests (to check for the elevated enzymes mentioned above), MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) of the abdomen, PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans or ultrasound of the liver

Pain from this kind of liver cancer responds to chemotherapy and analgesia. Doctors can also try radiation therapy to relieve pain and shrink the cancers.

How well you do depends on the location of the original cancer and how much it has spread to the liver. As recently as January of 2011, doctors have added a new treatment to the arsenal: Resection (removing parts of the liver affected by the cancer) of breast cancer liver metastases paid off in a survival benefit in patients with chemotherapy-responsive, estrogen receptor (ER)-positive primary tumors, according to data from a retrospective chart review.

“Although the cases were small in number, they are relevant in the context of changing views about cancer that metastasizes to the liver…I think there has been a [dramatic change in thinking] over the past 10 years or so, where it has been realized that this surgery can lead to long-term survival…I don't think that was recognized previously…I think there has been something of a nihilistic attitude toward breast cancer metastasis to other organs in the past…Generally incurable, most liver metastases from breast cancer are treated with chemotherapy or hormonal therapy,” said Daniel E. Abbott, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “I think this information is most valuable when people are willing to counsel patients and make the tougher decisions about who should and should not have surgery and then let patients make informed decisions.”

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg