BoneDaddy

I'm on 400 mg of Gabapentin 4 times a day, which is close to the maximum allowable dosage to treat pain. I've been on that for maybe 17 years as part of my pain treatment regimen. 
 
I've found the best way to handle the keeping track of objects is to have one (or perhaps two) places for each item in my life. If it isn't on my person, it's in its place. And I don't ever put anything down without thinking about it or without walking it to put it in its place.
 
My drinking glass is at one place on the counter or is on the coaster beside my computer.
 
My glasses are beside my computer or on my box of medicine.
 
My keys are one particular chair which no one ever sits in.
 
My shirt is on the treadmill.
 
My pants are on the doorknob of my closet.
 
My hat is hung on the rocking chair.
 
My book is on my box of medicine.
 
My coat is in the coat closet.
 
If they expect you to have to be on Gabapentin for a while, it's worth your time to try to build those kinds of habits. And it came in handy for me several times when, as a dinosaur's chew toy (long story), I experienced head injuries so bad that I couldn't build my own sandwiches. Literally. But I could still find my keys. 
 

Oh, and I've lost track of the shirt I'm supposed to be wearing so many times over the years that I have recurring dreams of wandering around trying to find my shirt.

See if you can talk them into doing an MRI first.
 
Magneto is much more powerful than Spider-Man.

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. 

I was hoping you’d drop by - the thread wouldn’t be complete without you being here!
 
Now BEGONE foul spirit!
 
 
my favorite moment when an NGD habitue was accidentally summoned was when someone said “I shake my fist in impotent rage!” And Rage dropped in to say “Hey!!!”

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. 

This is a very good point, and 100% correct. No matter who you are, if you went south of the border for appetizers (or dessert I guess... de gustibus non disputandum and all that...) and the HPV Vaccine was not part of your life, just keep an eye on your throat. That persistent tonsillitis that doesn’t hurt? Those stanky tonsoliths that seem terribly large? They way you snore even when you aren’t large enough that one might expect snoring? Keep an eye out. It’s PROBABLY nothing. But only probably. 

I was hoping you’d drop by - the thread wouldn’t be complete without you being here!
 
Now BEGONE foul spirit!
 
 
my favorite moment when an NGD habitue was accidentally summoned was when someone said “I shake my fist in impotent rage!” And Rage dropped in to say “Hey!!!”

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. 

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. 

I was hoping you’d drop by - the thread wouldn’t be complete without you being here!
 
Now BEGONE foul spirit!
 
 
my favorite moment when an NGD habitue was accidentally summoned was when someone said “I shake my fist in impotent rage!” And Rage dropped in to say “Hey!!!”

Firstly, sorry to hear that you caught this crud.  Best of luck in the battle you're in.  I'm seriously wishing some natural 3s into your dice rolls.
 
With absolute respect to people who identify differently than their biology would suggest - don't let that influence your medical decisions.  Mother nature is an absolute uncaring brute and your biological gender/race absolutely make a big difference in prevalence of certain ailments and treatment options.  I sadly know from first hand experience nearly getting my guts opened up by my young Japanese surgeon in Hawaii because he hadn't had enough haole (white - in this case Scottish) patients to realize my apparent appendicitis would, in fact, be more likely Crohn's or IBS and easily handled with a short course of anti-inflammatory's.  25 years later I still have my perfectly well-behaved appendix.
 
Also, thanks for posting in attempt to help others while you're critically ill - that's real heroism.  We need more people like that.  Like you.

Here’s an article by Robert Evans about how the Portland situation started and progressed. He’s an experienced conflict journalist with a number of podcasts I would sincerely recommend. First on my mind, It Could Happen Here. It’s ten episodes, released last year and startlingly prescient. 
 
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/07/20/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-battle-of-portland/
 
Also, and more on topic, a brief history of American Policing. 
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/slavery-mass-murder-and-the-birth-of-american-policing/id1373812661?i=1000478164181
 
if you like that there’s five or so more episodes about how the police in the US became so much more violent and worse and public safety than nearly anywhere else you might consider visiting (if leaving the house is your kind of thing these days. 
 
 
 
 

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. 

Todd Wainio (voiced by the incomparable Mark Hamill) mentions this song in his interviews a few times, so I finally looked it up.
 
Mum and dad and Danny saw the passing out parade at Puckapunyal
It was a long march from cadets
The sixth battalion was the next to tour and it was me who drew the card
We did Canungra and Shoalwater before we left
 
And Townsville lined the footpaths as we marched down to the quay
This clipping from the paper shows us young and strong and clean
And there's me in me slouch hat with me SLR and greens
God help me 
I was only nineteen
 
From Vung Tau riding Chinooks to the dust at Nui Dat
I'd been in and out of choppers now for months
And we made our tents a home, V.B. and pinups on the lockers
And an Asian orange sunset through the scrub
 
And can you tell me, doctor, why I still can't get to sleep?
And night time's just a jungle dark and a barking M.16?
And what's this rash that comes and goes, can you tell me what it means?
God help me
I was only nineteen
 
A four week operation, when each step can mean your last one on two legs
It was a war within yourself
But you wouldn't let your mates down 'til they had you dusted off
So you closed your eyes and thought about somethin' else
 
And then someone yelled out contact, and the bloke behind me swore
We hooked in there for hours, then a God almighty roar
And Frankie kicked a mine the day that mankind kicked the moon
God help me 
He was goin' home in June
 
And I can still see Frankie, drinkin' tinnies in the Grand Hotel
On a thirty-six hour rec. leave in Vung Tau
And I can still hear Frankie, lying screaming in the jungle
'Til the morphine came and killed the bloody row
 
And the Anzac legends didn't mention mud and blood and tears
And the stories that my father told me never seemed quite real
I caught some pieces in my back that I didn't even feel
God help me 
I was only nineteen
 
And can you tell me, doctor, why I still can't get to sleep?
And why the Channel Seven chopper chills me to my feet?
And what's this rash that comes and goes
Can you tell me what it means?
God help me
I was only nineteen
 

I think you are mistaken about the goals of the Black Panther Party as it was originally constructed.  They wanted to be left alone to be black and prosper on their own terms without the constant oppression of the white society that surrounded them.  They started carrying guns so they could make it clear that they were ready to shoot back. Not to start shooting, but to shoot back rather than run around getting shot anymore.  They arranged for food and clothing drives, after school reading programs, neighborhood improvement projects, classes in mediation and non-violent conflict resolution for gang members.  They were trying to build Wakanda in Oakland, and the FBI created such an effective smear campaign that everyone remembers it the other way around.
 

I think you are mistaken about the goals of the Black Panther Party as it was originally constructed.  They wanted to be left alone to be black and prosper on their own terms without the constant oppression of the white society that surrounded them.  They started carrying guns so they could make it clear that they were ready to shoot back. Not to start shooting, but to shoot back rather than run around getting shot anymore.  They arranged for food and clothing drives, after school reading programs, neighborhood improvement projects, classes in mediation and non-violent conflict resolution for gang members.  They were trying to build Wakanda in Oakland, and the FBI created such an effective smear campaign that everyone remembers it the other way around.
 

I think you are mistaken about the goals of the Black Panther Party as it was originally constructed.  They wanted to be left alone to be black and prosper on their own terms without the constant oppression of the white society that surrounded them.  They started carrying guns so they could make it clear that they were ready to shoot back. Not to start shooting, but to shoot back rather than run around getting shot anymore.  They arranged for food and clothing drives, after school reading programs, neighborhood improvement projects, classes in mediation and non-violent conflict resolution for gang members.  They were trying to build Wakanda in Oakland, and the FBI created such an effective smear campaign that everyone remembers it the other way around.
 

To me, KIllmonger's actions were entirely in character with what we had of his past. His history is one of breaking the narrative - both in himself and of others. He moves from ghetto kid to military discipline, then breaks that again by going to the less-rigid special forces, then to CIA black ops, where he is taught the skills and abilities to break not just the course of individuals, but the narrative of nations. Then he breaks his own story twice more - moving from CIA to renegade mercenary, before violating his position there by killing his employer and heading to Wakanda.
What does he do there? Break the narrative! He kills the legitimate king by goading him into a duel he did NOT have to fight (the time of challenge being long over), then sidelines the council of the tribes, accepts the grudging loyalty of the royal guard, and gets the army pretty much completely on his side, upsetting the entire interlocking power structure. As Agent Ross says, just as he was trained to do.
Killmonger was a prisoner of his past, as was, in large part, T'Challa. This was a sub-plot I loved - two men, both haunted and empowered by the choices of the past made by others. Ultimately, Killmonger, despite his willingness to embrace change, cannot change from his predestined course. T'Challa, as expressly shown in his second spirit quest, can.

Took our six year old to see it with us.  He honestly cried when Panther went over the falls.
 
But at the end of the movie, with Panther holding Killmonger, he asked, "Do you think he'll be sad that his friend is going away?"
 
They NAILED this movie.
 
Chris.
 

So....
 
Who thought M'baku's vegetarian joke was awesomely awesome?

Such an odd, verbose reshoot of Roy Batty's "Tears in Rain" speech.
 

Ｃｈａｎｇｉｎｇ　ｆｏｎｔｓ　ｄｏｅｓ　ｎｏｔｈｉｎｇ　ｔｏ　ｃｈａｎｇｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｆｅｅｌｉｎｇ　ｔｈａｔ　Ｉ＇ｍ　ｅａｒｌｙ　Ｍｉｓｔｅｒ　Ｆａｎｔａｓｔｉｃ　ｐｒｏｐｏｓｉｎｇ　ｔｈａｔ　ａｌｌ　ｔｈｅ　ｍｅｍｂｅｒｓ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　Ｆａｎｔａｓｔｉｃ　Ｆｏｕｒ　ｔａｋｅ　ａ　ｔｈｅｍａｔｉｃ　ａｐｐｒｏａｃｈ　ｔｏ　ｄｏｃｕｍｅｎｔ　ｐｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｏｎ　ｓｏｌｅｌｙ　ａｓ　ａｎ　ｅｘｃｕｓｅ　ｔｏ　ｂｅ　ａ　ｊｅｒｋ　ｔｏ　Ｓｕｅ　Ｓｔｏｒｍ.

Ｉ　ｗａｓ　ｃｏｍｉｎｇ　ｏｎｔｏ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｔｈｒｅａｄ　ｔｏ　ｓａｄｌｙ　ｅｘｐｌａｉｎ　ｔｈａｔ　Ｉ　ｈａｄ　ｎｏ　ｆａｉｌ　ｔｏ　ｒｅｐｏｒｔ,　ａｎｄ　ｔｈｕｓ　ｃｏｕｌｄ　ｎｏｔ　ｔａｋｅ　ｐａｒｔ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｏｍｅｒａｄｅｒｉｅ　ｏｆ　ｓｈａｒｅｄ　ｆａｉｌ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｂｏａｒｄ　ｗｈｅｎ　ｍｙ　ｋｅｙｂｏａｒｄ　ｓｗｉｔｃｈｅｄ　ｔｏ　Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ,　ａｎｄ　ｓｗｉｔｃｈｉｎｇ　ｂａｃｋ,　ｄｅｃｉｄｅｄ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｅ　ｏｂｖｉｏｕｓ　ｔｅｘｔ　ｐｒｅｓｅｎｔａｔｉｏｎ　ｏｆ　ｃｈｏｉｃｅ　ａｎｄ　ｗｏｎ＇ｔ　ｌｅｔ　ｍｅ　ｃｈａｎｇｅ　ｉｔ　ｂａｃｋ.　
 
Ｓｏ,　ｍｙ　ｆａｉｌ　ｆａｉｌｅｄ.

Myself, I favor the Great Molasses Flood.