BoneDaddy

Good news! As far as the doctors setting the global standard for treating my cancer can tell, I currently don’t have cancer. 
 
Happy New Year Everyone!
Turned out to be good enough odds.  Thank all the gods, even the Old Ones.  On a critical fail this cancer pulls out the old Iron Crown tables. 

Well you can tell iot is 2021 as this is good news.
Well it is 2021 for me.

PREPARE FOR RANT...3...2...1...RANT!
 
    Tony Stark is an alcoholic with control issues so large that on the weekends they go out and crush small Japanese cities.  
    He pendulum swings wildly between tantrums of the “Daddy...pay attention to me!” type, going on ad nauseam about never listening to or respecting ANY authority, and then boldly stating that since he is smarter than everyone else they should follow him blindly and agree with any nonsense that pops into his addled mind. 
  Let’s see how smart ‘ole Tony Stank really is.  
   He ignored everything happening at his company to such an extent that he was almost murdered by the guy he paid to steal it.   He announced his being Iron Man at a press conference without thinking what it might do to said company’s stock prices thus destroying the savings of his investors and the jobs of his employees. Not to mention possibly putting the lives of anybody standing near him in jeopardy when some bad guy came to call.  He was dumb enough to tell Ivan Vanko how to power up his armor, ‘cause hell, nobody ever escaped from being a prisoner before...right.  He gave a terrorist the address of the home he shared with his girlfriend, and instead of moving her out ASAP he got obsessed with hearing how she liked her giant bunny rabbit. He let his PTSD talk him into taking an object from space that he didn’t understand, talked someone with no backbone into hiding their experiments from the rest of the team and after he accidentally created a “murderbot” he had the nerve to act like the team was just too stupid to understand when they called him to task.      
After all that he decides to hook up with an asshole with an Ahab fixation on someone who is supposedly one of his best friends and come up with the Sokovian Accords.
   I’m starting to see spots in front of my eyes so I’ll let the idiocies of the rest of the films go for now   Tony Stark should be punched in the mouth on an hourly basis for about 6-8 months with an occasional surprise boot to the nads a couple of times a week.       Thank you. 
     WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED THREAD.

From the same list that I found Scrappv Doo on someone put Borat, Newman from Seinfeld, Carrie Bradshaw, Hannah Montana, Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch, Barney, Ally McBeal, Susan Delfino (Terri Hatcher's character in Desperate Housewives) and The Cat in the Hat (movie version). But they do not have Jessie Eisenberg's version of Lex Luthor from Batman vs Superman

Eustace Clarence Scrubb
 
Thomas Covenant
 
Joffrey Baratheon
 
Fernand Mondego

Holden Caufield
Jay Gatsby
Sister Carrie

Thanks for the update, still pulling for you, BoneDaddy.

Yes, we're all pulling for you BD.  Victory on a 17- sounds like pretty good odds.

I felt fine before my initial diagnosis, so my usual reserves of aplomb and overconfidence have been sorely diminished. 
 
the PET scan was easy - I’m cool with tight spaces and the hard part is not falling asleep and trying to roll over. I’ll hear about the results in a day or two. 
 
My neck can’t take any more radiation. If they didn’t kill all the cancer, what seemed incredibly hard when I was going through it before will have been the easy part. My fantastic odds will have become much, much worse. I’ll find out in a day or two.
 
The odds are currently very much in my favor, like 19 to 1. I’d bet on me right now. If the dealer has an ace in that hole I’ve got a real problem. 2 days to find out. 

I felt fine before my initial diagnosis, so my usual reserves of aplomb and overconfidence have been sorely diminished. 
 
the PET scan was easy - I’m cool with tight spaces and the hard part is not falling asleep and trying to roll over. I’ll hear about the results in a day or two. 
 
My neck can’t take any more radiation. If they didn’t kill all the cancer, what seemed incredibly hard when I was going through it before will have been the easy part. My fantastic odds will have become much, much worse. I’ll find out in a day or two.
 
The odds are currently very much in my favor, like 19 to 1. I’d bet on me right now. If the dealer has an ace in that hole I’ve got a real problem. 2 days to find out. 

I felt fine before my initial diagnosis, so my usual reserves of aplomb and overconfidence have been sorely diminished. 
 
the PET scan was easy - I’m cool with tight spaces and the hard part is not falling asleep and trying to roll over. I’ll hear about the results in a day or two. 
 
My neck can’t take any more radiation. If they didn’t kill all the cancer, what seemed incredibly hard when I was going through it before will have been the easy part. My fantastic odds will have become much, much worse. I’ll find out in a day or two.
 
The odds are currently very much in my favor, like 19 to 1. I’d bet on me right now. If the dealer has an ace in that hole I’ve got a real problem. 2 days to find out. 

Tomorrow is my PET scan, to find out if I’m fine or so very terribly horribly not. To say I am anxious about the latter possibility is an extreme understatement. To help, my subconscious has been serenading me with Freddy Mercury singing “Who Wants to Live Forever?” for the past three days. 
 
Me. That’s who. Me. I do. 

Tomorrow is my PET scan, to find out if I’m fine or so very terribly horribly not. To say I am anxious about the latter possibility is an extreme understatement. To help, my subconscious has been serenading me with Freddy Mercury singing “Who Wants to Live Forever?” for the past three days. 
 
Me. That’s who. Me. I do. 

Tomorrow is my PET scan, to find out if I’m fine or so very terribly horribly not. To say I am anxious about the latter possibility is an extreme understatement. To help, my subconscious has been serenading me with Freddy Mercury singing “Who Wants to Live Forever?” for the past three days. 
 
Me. That’s who. Me. I do. 

Yahoo News freaked me out a bit this morning, re-publishing Aretha Franklin’s obituary. 
 
it freaked me out a bit because I clearly remember that Clint Eastwood died shortly after finishing The Mule. I recall the news reports, the obits, a brief blurb on NPR about the funeral. I don’t know what to think about it, aside from the fact that I was clearly mistaken as far as what we call objective reality is concerned. 
 
do any of you remember a woman briefly playing for the Toronto Bluejays back in the ‘80s? For like half a season? Newsweek wrote an article about her?  She chewed tobacco somewhat messily, cursed a bit during interviews, and frankly wasn’t a very good fielder, but it was the ‘80s and Toronto wasn’t exactly on fire back then.  I can’t find any evidence now on the internet that this actually happened, but damn I remember it pretty well. 
 
do any of you have anything like this? Not part of a mass mis-remembrance of history, but some historical event you remember that doesn’t seem to have actually happened?

I have cancer. Keep breathing, I will almost certainly be ok eventually.  I want to talk to you all about what kind of cancer I have, and how some of you might get it, or might have it.  I will also tell you how I am and how I expect to be in the future. 
 
I don’t smoke. I don’t drink to anything like excess - I had four drinks one birthday and that was frankly one too many for me. I’m not overweight. I exercise, I lift weights. I’m 47 and I can bench press my body weight, run two miles in about 20 minutes (tortoise slow for a real runner, plenty damn fast for my age cohort) and knock out ten pull ups without breaking a sweat. A few years ago we stopped eating anything with nitrites, last year we went dairy free. I wear sunscreen, and my covid mask is rated for asbestos removal. I’m healthy and risk averse is what I’m saying, and I’m also saying that there’s nothing you can do to avoid this one. It isn’t from bad habits. Mostly. 
 
I have squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the throat. SCC is usually skin cancer, but apparently it can show up elsewhere in the body in different circumstances. If it’s in your skin, no big deal. If it’s in you throat like mine is, closer to a big deal but still not an automatic death sentence. Something to act on immediately with haste and determination like a grease fire in a frying pan, but nothing too serious yet. If it gets to your other organs, usually through your lymphatic system, life gets much more tenuous. That is house-on-fire serious. 
 
Mine started at the base of my tongue, between my tonsils. It spread to the lymph nodes on either side of my neck. We all have hundreds of lymph nodes, they are about as big as a coffee bean usually, and they squeeze lymph back and forth around the body. The two closest to my tonsils are currently about as big as Lima beans - honestly not very big, nothing that looks like it’s trying to kill me. If the cancer spreads beyond them ... We aren’t discussing that today. 
 
One way a human body, one like mine or yours, can be persuaded to make cancerous squamous cells in your throat is as a response to HPV, the human papilloma virus. There are many varieties of this virus, and almost every one of us has been exposed to at least one of them. The ones marked number 16 and 18 are the bastards of the bunch, the one that the Pap smear is looking for, the one in my throat, the one there is now a vaccine for. HPV 16 is my enemy, my uninvited guest, the traitor at my table, my very own deep state conspiracy. 
 
There is no test to detect HPV in your throat before it is cancerous. The primary tumor is frequently so small as to be effectively undetectable. They had a hard time finding mine with a PET scan and had to perform a surgical biopsy to get to the tissues involved. The tumor doesn’t hurt, doesn’t effect my ability to speak or swallow or breath or do any of the other things one does with a neck. I had no idea it was there, and no one would have had any reason to know it was there until it metastasized to my lymph nodes. My very slightly swollen lymph nodes that also don’t hurt. They aren’t even red.  No pain, no fever, no sore throat, no tight range of motion, no trouble at all, no reason to know things are bad and could get much worse. 
 
I’m trying to scare you. I wasn’t scared, and I’m still only a little scared now thanks to antidepressants. 
 
My cancer doesn’t look scary. It looks just like something a little weird that’s probably nothing. I’m 47, my lymph node is a little swollen, no pain, no big deal, right? Wrong. Massively big deal, cleverly disguised as no big deal. 
 
I woke up one morning and the lymph node on the right side of my neck was swollen. It didn’t hurt and wasn’t green or anything. I called my doctor, and she reasonably explained that sometimes the ducts that connect lymph nodes to the rest of the body get clogged up, and she recommended hot compresses and some antibiotics. This did nothing but make my neck warm.
 
I ignored my slightly swollen, pain free lymph node, and went about my merry way for another month before I called my doctor again. A month. That month may have been very, very important.
 
A gentle spousal rebuke prompted that follow up call to my doctor, who referred me to an otolaryngologist for a biopsy, and a CT scan.
 
When I told my friends I was having a needle biopsy stabbed into the gooey center of the mini Cadbury egg on my neck, they all looked worried as though I might have cancer, and said reassuring things.  I scoffed. “Look at me, I’m fine.” And I am. Mostly. There’s a ticking time bomb in my neck, but aside from that there’s not a thing wrong with my physical health. I keep saying that over and over because I want you to understand that this tumor has been slowly growing behind my tongue for an indeterminate period of time with zero symptoms whatsoever. 
 
Then the doc told me I had cancer.  I had to/ got to tell my lovely wife. “Had to” because I didn’t want to say the last thing she wanted to hear. “Got to” because there’s no better partner on the planet, no person I would more want in my corner, on my team, by my side or at my back than her. We had to figure out when to tell our kids (after the PET scan, which showed no distant metastases. When giving bad news, it’s best to know how bad the news actually is.)
 
I’m lucky, really.  I have an easy cancer, detected early. I have great health insurance, the kind every American should have. I live 20 minutes away from the literal best team on earth at treating this exact kind of cancer. This is like getting mugged when you have the Avengers on speed dial.  It’s a puny cancer, and a team of Dr. Banners are already angry at it.
 
To be perfectly clear, we’re sitting pretty from a financial standpoint. Lovely wife makes lovely money, and our insurance will keep paying for this until the cows come home. (We sent our cows to college and we haven’t seen them since. Maybe cooking school was a mistake.) This message does not end with a plea for money or anything at all. We are very lucky. 
 
My treatment regimen is very close to the standard practice for this diagnosis - about 7 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy.  It is tiring and painful as they very carefully and precisely rain atomic hellfire onto the cancer and not the rest of me. I need to keep eating and drinking and chewing and swallowing so my throat will remember how to function. 
 
There are nutritionists and pain management specialists to help with this process. We started with Gabapentin, which sounds like fun but hardly worth the price of admission. It makes pain management much less hazardous, but wrecks short term memory formation and makes keeping track of conversions or where I put anything down a real challenge. So far I have found 5 shirts of mine around the house, workshop, and yard. Shirts that I was wearing! I am losing clothing, keys, my phone, innumerable plates and bowls of food, and so on. 
 
 I need to do some exercises for my neck muscles to keep my full range of motion. The lymph nodes with cancer are right under my sternocleidomastoid muscles, (SCM for short) the ones that make a “v” shape from your ears to your clavicle when you yawn.
 
This cancer that I’ve never heard of is now the 6th most common cancer being diagnosed in the US.  HPV related throat cancers in middle aged men weren’t even on the radar until about 15 - 20 years ago. Usually SCC in the throat comes from smoking or heavy alcohol use. As a society we all stopped smoking enough that it the cancer’s continued presence became a mystery worth exploring, and the HPV link was discovered. The cancer seems to show up 10 to 30 years after initial infection. In my case it is probably about 25 - 30 years. HPV is a STD, the cancer that comes from it is very slow to show up in your tonsils or grow to any appreciable size. Just like yourself if you have it, it isn’t trying to rush things. 
 
This is the big takeaway folks. I assume most of you identify as men, and most of you are in my approximate age cohort. If you and your partners were sexually active before the HPV vaccine was available to you or your dating cohort, this could be a very important message for you. If I had known this was a possibility when I was dating, I would have rolled my dice and taken my chances. But I didn’t know that the GM was used an obscure Iron Crown critical hit/fail table just for the PC’s sex life. 
 
I’ve been reading about radiation treatment, and there is a very small chance that I might get super powers out of the deal. Mostly I was reading spider-man, but it seemed credible to me. 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion. 
 
 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion. 
 
 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion. 
 
 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion. 
 
 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion. 
 
 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion. 
 
 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion. 
 
 

Hey all!
 
treatment for throat cancer is allegedly more physically challenging than most. It certainly did suck at the end, and the healing process has continued to be somewhere between painful and merely aggravating since. By the end of October I had received all the radiation my neck can take, I think ever. We will take a look via PET scan on December 28 to see if they got it or not. Dear lord I hope so. 
 
I feel more or less fine, but far from perfect. The waiting is the hardest part right now: without the PET scan I’m Schroedinger’s cat, both fine and doomed simultaneously. 
 
I’m still having a hard time keeping my weight up, a ridiculous complaint for a middle aged American. Eggnog is a fantastic way to inhale calories, and I am getting a bit sick of it.  I look much better than I did a month ago, so everyone in the house is looking at me less balefully than they did before. 
 
as far as we can currently tell, I don’t have cancer anymore. As far as we can tell right now.  December 28 will, I dearly hope, provide better evidence for that conclusion.