Randy and Caroline
A lovely July in Seattle!
Saturday, October 13, 2012
In 1493, Columbus sailed the deep blue sea ...!
For some unknown reason, when posting on Blogspot using my iPad, after I've typed a few paragraphs, the editor stops scrolling and there's no way for me to get to the bottom of my post to add anything further, since there are, of course, no arrow keys ever to be found on an Apple keyboard (one of the many fascinating facts I've gleaned from reading Walter Isaacson's very interesting and well-written biography of Steve "An Enlightened Being Who Could Be Incredibly Cruel" Jobs)! So, I've given up on Blogspot's fairly useless editor and am using Pages to generate the body of my blog post! I hope you're satisfied, Google!
Anyway, getting back to the storyline, needless to say, we were all pretty dejected yesterday after our meeting with Dr. Mansfield! Oh, to finish up my ruminations about why it's probably a blessing in disguise that another round of Cytoreduction/Debulking/HIPEC surgery is not in my immediate future, I doubt that very much of the 2/3 of a colon that I have now would survive the next round of surgery, especially if there were lots of appendix tumor cells plastered all over it! Another source of gloomy thoughts revolved around the expectation of inevitable eventual bowel obstructions, some of which could be treated surgically, but which also seemed inexorably to point to the need for "nutrition by veins" at some point in the future, basically being fed intravenously forever after, bypassing the taste buds and the whole digestive system entirely, saving you some money on toilet paper, but nevertheless a somewhat unsavory prospect, all the same! Oddly enough, if I understood Dr. Mansfield correctly, even though appendiceal adenocarcinomas are treated almost exactly the same way that colon cancers are treated generally, colon cancer patients don't seem to get much of a benefit at all from "nutrition by veins" in terms of increased longevity and decreased mortality, whereas appendix cancer patients do! Even so, I'd still rather not go there unless I absolutely had to!
Today (pretending that it's still Friday, October 12, 2012, Columbus Day), we met with my wonderful colorectal oncologist, Dr. Imad Shureiqi, and came away much more encouraged, mainly because there are still many chemo options available to us! As a first step, we're going to go back to a regimen of FOLFOX, which is like FOLFIRI, except that Oxalyplatin is used instead of Irenitecan (or "I ran to the can" as some of the chemo nurses call it because of one of it's more notorious side effects!), and which I had for my first 5 chemo treatments last year before my HIPEC surgery. The FOLFOX was quite effective at stopping the appendix cancers from growing last year, helping to make me a good candidate for HIPEC surgery in the first place! We only switched to FOLFIRI after I'd recovered from my surgery last year because of the peripheral neuropathy that Oxalyplatin caused in my toes, especially those on my right foot! The neuropathy due to Oxalyplatin is cumulative and may well become an issue with my new chemo cocktail! Oxalyplatin was also used (and perfused!) during my HIPEC surgery, after which the numbness and tingling in my right toes in particular became much more evident. The one additional factor that will be added to my FOLFOX treatments this time around will be the Avastin, which I wasn't able to take during last year's FOLFOX treatments because of my broken left arm, the one I broke idiotically the day after Christmas in 2010!
Hopefully, the FOLFOX plus Avastin will successfully stop the appendix cancer tumors dead in their tracks! We'll find out after my next CT scan, which will probably occur in mid-January 2013 at the earliest! In the meantime, we'll also continue to monitor the CA19-9 and CEA tumor markers in my blood work! In the event that the FOLFOX and Avastin also prove to be ineffective against the appendix cancer tumors, fortunately there are other chemo agents to try, some of which have either just been recently approved for use by the FDA or are very near to being approved by the FDA! So, as it says in big beautiful letters on the front cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Don't Panic!" All is not lost, yet! I'm still not dead, thank God, and I don't intend to be for quite a while, indeed, God willing! Thanks again so much for all your wonderful and life-giving prayers for us! This sickness is not unto death, but is for the greater glory of God, in order that we sons and daughters of God may be glorified through it! Amen!
Friday, October 12, 2012
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue ... !
Happy Columbus Day, everyone! October 12, 1492 was a Friday, according to the Julian calendar that was still in effect then (the Gregorian calendar wouldn't be adopted in Continental Europe until Friday, October 15, 1582, 420 years to the day before my wonderful nephew Garrett Collins Greenly was born, whose first decadal or 10th birthday is only 3 days away, and who has the same middle name that I have, my Mother's and Garrett's Grandmother's maiden name!)! I suppose Columbus Day is officially celebrated on the second Monday of October for the sake of convenience!
This Columbus Day 2012 has been an interesting one for us! I had my most recent CT scan at MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) two days ago on Wednesday, October 10, 2012. Yesterday, my wonderful surgeon, Dr. Paul Mansfield, went over the results of the CT scan and the tumor markers from my most recent blood work with us (Caroline, Burr, Cynthia, and me) and the results were not encouraging, to say the least! The tumor markers, both CA19-9 and CEA, continue to grow exponentially, clearly trending up up and away! The good news is that there are still no signs of tumors outside of my abdominal cavity! However, the tumors on my peritoneum, which are very hard to image precisely, definitely appear to be growing and sending out spindly processes that would eventually cause bowel obstructions if they were left to grow unhindered! It seems clear that my rather aggressive appendiceal adenocarcinoma tumor cells are no longer being kept in check by my current chemo cocktail, FOLFIRI plus Avastin! Dr. Mansfield said that he was sorry, but that there's really nothing that could be done surgically at this point, like another round of Cytoreduction ("debulking") plus HIPEC, for example! In some ways that's a relief, given that 12 hour surgeries tend to be somewhat grueling, even though I recovered miraculously well and quickly from mine of a year and a half ag !
This Columbus Day 2012 has been an interesting one for us! I had my most recent CT scan at MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) two days ago on Wednesday, October 10, 2012. Yesterday, my wonderful surgeon, Dr. Paul Mansfield, went over the results of the CT scan and the tumor markers from my most recent blood work with us (Caroline, Burr, Cynthia, and me) and the results were not encouraging, to say the least! The tumor markers, both CA19-9 and CEA, continue to grow exponentially, clearly trending up up and away! The good news is that there are still no signs of tumors outside of my abdominal cavity! However, the tumors on my peritoneum, which are very hard to image precisely, definitely appear to be growing and sending out spindly processes that would eventually cause bowel obstructions if they were left to grow unhindered! It seems clear that my rather aggressive appendiceal adenocarcinoma tumor cells are no longer being kept in check by my current chemo cocktail, FOLFIRI plus Avastin! Dr. Mansfield said that he was sorry, but that there's really nothing that could be done surgically at this point, like another round of Cytoreduction ("debulking") plus HIPEC, for example! In some ways that's a relief, given that 12 hour surgeries tend to be somewhat grueling, even though I recovered miraculously well and quickly from mine of a year and a half ag !
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Concerning Furlong's Postulate ...
Just a few notes to clarify Furlong's Postulate! A "twin prime" is usually taken to mean 2 prime numbers that are separated by 1 and only 1 even composite number, which must necessarily be some multiple of 6, except for the very first set of twin primes, namely, 3 and 5, which are separated by 1 and only 1 even composite number (4), which is manifestly not some multiple of 6. Just as I did before in the case of Bertrand's Postulate, we can easily verify Furlong's Postulate by "daisy chaining" up the number line: the 3rd twin prime pair (11, 13) is strictly between 7 and 2*7 = 14, the 4th twin prime pair (17, 19) is strictly between 13 and 2*13 = 26, the 5th twin prime pair (29, 31) is strictly between 19 and 2*19 = 38, the 7th twin prime pair (59, 61) is strictly between 31 and 2*31 = 62, the 10th twin prime pair (107, 109) is strictly between 61 and 2*61 = 122, the 15th twin prime pair (197, 199) is strictly between 109 and 2*109 = 218, and the 21st twin prime pair (347, 349) is strictly between 199 and 2*199 = 398, and so forth!
By the way, I have no earthly idea how anyone would go about trying to prove my postulate for all primes! It's not even known for sure whether there are an infinite number of twin primes! Almost every number theory nut worth their salt believes that there must be an infinite number of twin primes! Of course, if someone could prove that my postulate is true, somehow, then, since there are an infinite number of prime numbers, that would necessarily mean that there would have to be an infinite number of twin primes!
By the way, I have no earthly idea how anyone would go about trying to prove my postulate for all primes! It's not even known for sure whether there are an infinite number of twin primes! Almost every number theory nut worth their salt believes that there must be an infinite number of twin primes! Of course, if someone could prove that my postulate is true, somehow, then, since there are an infinite number of prime numbers, that would necessarily mean that there would have to be an infinite number of twin primes!
And the Story Continues ...
My previous blog post wasn't meant to end when it did, although it did make it like a cliff-hanger! I'm having some editing issues writing my blog post using 'Nother Paddy! Anyway, this will boost my overall number of posts, at least!
As I was saying, the results of my Thursday, August 16, 2012 CT scan were a bit inconclusive. There was still no evidence of disease outside my abdominal cavity, thank God! However, the tumors definitely were not shrinking, but instead had gotten somewhat bigger than they were in my June 2012 CT scan, although it was hard to quantify just how much bigger, since my mucinous signet ring cell tumors are apparently rather poorly differentiated (not very encouraging, since the more poorly differentiated the tumors are the more aggressive they tend to be!) and are spread out somewhat amoeba-like on my peritoneum, the membrane that encompasses my abdominal cavity! The very experienced radiologist was able to report to Dr. Shureiqi that none of the tumors appeared to have grown by 25%, which is good news! If the tumors would have grown by 25% or more, then we would have definitely concluded that the FOLFIRI with Avastin was not being effective, in which case we would most likely stop using Irenitecan in the chemo cocktail and go back to FOLFOX, using Oxalyplatin coupled this time with Avastin. Last year, FOLFOX definitely was able to stop the tumor growth in its tracks!
The potential downside of returning to Oxalyplatin is that the cumulative peripheral neuropathy would probably worsen. Oxalyplatin was the chemo used in my 12 hour Cytoreduction surgery with HIPEC on Tuesday, April 12, 2011, last year, and the toes on both of my feet, especially my right foot, are still numb and tingly! Not to mention the inconvenience of having to forswear for a while my favorite Starbucks iced quad espresso drink, because of the weird effect Oxalyplatin has on one's throat!
I'm scheduled to have yet another CT scan in October, so we decided to continue with the current chemo regimen until then and reassess then what we should do! Please pray for wisdom and insight so that we'll have a better idea of what to do!
And now for something completely different! My latest number theory conjecture! A mathematician named Bertrand famously postulated that there always exists at least one prime number between any number n and 2 less than twice n, for all numbers n greater than or equal to 4. That's the stronger form of Bertrand's Postulate. The weaker form of Bertrand's Postulate is more well known and it says that there always exists at least one prime number between any number n and twice n (2*n), for all n greater than 1! There is a very nice proof of the weaker form of Bertrand's Postulate given in Wikipedia! We can easily "daisy chain" our way up the number line as far as we want to go verifying either form of Bertrand's Postulate!
For example, the 2nd prime number 3 is strictly between 2 and 2*2 = 4, the 3rd prime number 5 is strictly between 3 and 2*3 = 6, the 4th prime number 7 is strictly between 5 and 2*5 = 10, the 6th prime number 13 is strictly between 7 and 2*7 = 14, the 9th prime number 23 is strictly between 13 and 2*13 = 26, the 14th prime number 43 is strictly between 23 and 2*23 = 46, the 23rd prime number 83 is strictly between 43 and 2*43 = 86, the 38th prime number 163 is strictly between 83 and 2*83 = 166, the 66th prime number 317 is strictly between 163 and 2*163 = 326, the 115th prime number 631 is strictly between 317 and 2*317 = 634, the 205th prime number 1259 is strictly between 631 and 2*631 = 1262, the 368th prime number 2503 is strictly between 1259 and 2*1259 = 2518, the 670th prime number 5003 is strictly between 2503 and 2*2503 = 5006, and the 1229th prime number (1229 itself is a prime number and equals the total number of prime numbers less than 10000!) 9973 is strictly between 5003 and 2*5003 = 10006, and so forth! Furlong's Postulate is quite simply that there will always be at least 1 "twin prime" strictly between any prime number (p) and twice that prime number (2*p), for every prime number greater than 5
As I was saying, the results of my Thursday, August 16, 2012 CT scan were a bit inconclusive. There was still no evidence of disease outside my abdominal cavity, thank God! However, the tumors definitely were not shrinking, but instead had gotten somewhat bigger than they were in my June 2012 CT scan, although it was hard to quantify just how much bigger, since my mucinous signet ring cell tumors are apparently rather poorly differentiated (not very encouraging, since the more poorly differentiated the tumors are the more aggressive they tend to be!) and are spread out somewhat amoeba-like on my peritoneum, the membrane that encompasses my abdominal cavity! The very experienced radiologist was able to report to Dr. Shureiqi that none of the tumors appeared to have grown by 25%, which is good news! If the tumors would have grown by 25% or more, then we would have definitely concluded that the FOLFIRI with Avastin was not being effective, in which case we would most likely stop using Irenitecan in the chemo cocktail and go back to FOLFOX, using Oxalyplatin coupled this time with Avastin. Last year, FOLFOX definitely was able to stop the tumor growth in its tracks!
The potential downside of returning to Oxalyplatin is that the cumulative peripheral neuropathy would probably worsen. Oxalyplatin was the chemo used in my 12 hour Cytoreduction surgery with HIPEC on Tuesday, April 12, 2011, last year, and the toes on both of my feet, especially my right foot, are still numb and tingly! Not to mention the inconvenience of having to forswear for a while my favorite Starbucks iced quad espresso drink, because of the weird effect Oxalyplatin has on one's throat!
I'm scheduled to have yet another CT scan in October, so we decided to continue with the current chemo regimen until then and reassess then what we should do! Please pray for wisdom and insight so that we'll have a better idea of what to do!
And now for something completely different! My latest number theory conjecture! A mathematician named Bertrand famously postulated that there always exists at least one prime number between any number n and 2 less than twice n, for all numbers n greater than or equal to 4. That's the stronger form of Bertrand's Postulate. The weaker form of Bertrand's Postulate is more well known and it says that there always exists at least one prime number between any number n and twice n (2*n), for all n greater than 1! There is a very nice proof of the weaker form of Bertrand's Postulate given in Wikipedia! We can easily "daisy chain" our way up the number line as far as we want to go verifying either form of Bertrand's Postulate!
For example, the 2nd prime number 3 is strictly between 2 and 2*2 = 4, the 3rd prime number 5 is strictly between 3 and 2*3 = 6, the 4th prime number 7 is strictly between 5 and 2*5 = 10, the 6th prime number 13 is strictly between 7 and 2*7 = 14, the 9th prime number 23 is strictly between 13 and 2*13 = 26, the 14th prime number 43 is strictly between 23 and 2*23 = 46, the 23rd prime number 83 is strictly between 43 and 2*43 = 86, the 38th prime number 163 is strictly between 83 and 2*83 = 166, the 66th prime number 317 is strictly between 163 and 2*163 = 326, the 115th prime number 631 is strictly between 317 and 2*317 = 634, the 205th prime number 1259 is strictly between 631 and 2*631 = 1262, the 368th prime number 2503 is strictly between 1259 and 2*1259 = 2518, the 670th prime number 5003 is strictly between 2503 and 2*2503 = 5006, and the 1229th prime number (1229 itself is a prime number and equals the total number of prime numbers less than 10000!) 9973 is strictly between 5003 and 2*5003 = 10006, and so forth! Furlong's Postulate is quite simply that there will always be at least 1 "twin prime" strictly between any prime number (p) and twice that prime number (2*p), for every prime number greater than 5
Tumor and Tumor and Tumor Creeps in this Petty Pace ...
Summertime, and the living is easy! Since my last post, I've continued with my fortnightly chemo treatments (FOLFIRI with Avastin), having had 9 treatments this year, and 22 total (including the 5 FOLFOX and 8 FOLFIRI treatments last year)! Other than relatively minor nausea, I'm pleased to report that there continue to be very few side effects from the chemo! Prayer works! Please keep praying! And thanks so much for all your wonderful prayers and positive thoughts and good vibes! They are all truly life-giving and continue to buoy my spirits!
My spirits have needed extra buoying lately! When I met with my wonderful colorectal oncologist, Dr. Imad Shureiqi, on Friday morning, August 10, 2012, he showed me that one of the tumor markers they've been tracking ever since my diagnosis of appendiceal adenocarcinoma in December 2010, Carbohydrate Antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9), had trended upwards and, for the first time since my diagnosis, was above the normal range. The plot looked like the classic "hockey stick" graph of exponential growth, not unlike the one Vice President Al Gore showed in his film An Inconvenient Truth that tracked atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide! Somewhat alarming, to say the least!
Dr. Shureiqi ordered another CT scan, which I had last Thursday, August 16, 2012. Caroline and I met with Dr. Shureiqi the next day, Friday, August 17, 2012. The CA 19-9 level had increased even further, the slope seeming to approach the vertical asymptotically! And the results of the CT scan were inconclusive, at best.
My spirits have needed extra buoying lately! When I met with my wonderful colorectal oncologist, Dr. Imad Shureiqi, on Friday morning, August 10, 2012, he showed me that one of the tumor markers they've been tracking ever since my diagnosis of appendiceal adenocarcinoma in December 2010, Carbohydrate Antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9), had trended upwards and, for the first time since my diagnosis, was above the normal range. The plot looked like the classic "hockey stick" graph of exponential growth, not unlike the one Vice President Al Gore showed in his film An Inconvenient Truth that tracked atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide! Somewhat alarming, to say the least!
Dr. Shureiqi ordered another CT scan, which I had last Thursday, August 16, 2012. Caroline and I met with Dr. Shureiqi the next day, Friday, August 17, 2012. The CA 19-9 level had increased even further, the slope seeming to approach the vertical asymptotically! And the results of the CT scan were inconclusive, at best.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Great News About Most Recent CT Scan of Yesterday!
We're very pleased to report that the results of my most recent CT scan, which I had yesterday, June 14, 2012 (Brandon and Anita Cook's 15th Anniversary--Happy Anniversary, First-Cousins-Once-Removed!), are most encouraging, indeed! The 4 rounds of chemotherapy (FOLFIRI + Avastin for the last 2 treatments) I've had over the past 10 weeks have stopped the recurrent appendix cancer tumors dead in their tracks! The tumors on my peritoneum are not growing anymore! What an enormous relief! Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Your mighty prayers have been answered! Keep them coming! The plan is to keep beating down on any remaining tumors for another 3 months or so and confirm further progress with yet another CT scan then! After that, we'll assess the situation and perhaps enter into a chemo maintenance regime where I might be able to keep the rather aggressive appendix tumors at bay using pills that are as effective as the 5 Fluoro-Uracil (5FU) and the Avastin, a monoclonal antibody that inhibits the formation of blood vessels that would otherwise supply the tumors with blood!
Ideally, with the right combination of a much improved diet (I haven't had any red meat to speak of since mid-April!) that's largely whole food and plant-based, mostly vegan-ish (especially if you consider fish and other seafoods and the occasional poultry and dairy products to be "vegetables"!), lots more and better sleep, a modest amount of exercise, and continual prayer (although without much fasting!) coupled with sensible weight loss, I might even be able to wean myself off the maintenance chemo entirely! I'm so blessed and fortunate that so far the side effects from the chemo have truly been very minimal--I even have most of my greying mane of unruly Einsteinian hair! Thank God I'll be able to live long enough for newer and better and more effective chemo therapies to be developed, too! I'm receiving my 5th round of chemo (18th round altogether) even as I post this! Bless the Lord oh my soul! All is well with my soul and all is getting well with my body, too! Amen!
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Excitied About the Transit of Venus Today, Don't Know Why!
Today our Sister Planet Venus will transit across the face of our Sun Sol! Here in good old Houston, Texas it's supposed to happen toward sunset. As with any eclipse of the Sun, you should never look directly at the sun lest you fry your retinas, although Venus will not be blocking off very much of the sun's surface, unlike our own Moon Luna, so the Sun's normal brightness should keep you from looking at it too long! I've never actually tried fashioning one of those pinhole contraptions to shine an image of the Sun onto a piece of white paper to view it. Undoubtedly the safest way to view this historical Transit of Venus would be to watch it on TV or on the web, such as on the wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day website!
Apparently transits of Venus are rather rare occurrences, although the most recent one happened in 2004, which was only 8 years ago! The next one is supposed to happen sometime in 2117 when very few of those of us who are presently alive will be alive, presumably, barring some miraculous breakthroughs in gerontology! I'm still somewhat astounded that we know how to calculate such things in advance, or at least that someone knows how to do that! I'm pretty sure good old Newtonian classical mechanics suffices to do such calculations and computers are quite capable of doing most all of the heavy mathematical and physical lifting involved. Still, pretty amazing! Astronomical, in fact!
Speaking of Venus, by the way, one can readily point to Venus as a nearby example of what can happen to a planet like ours (Venus is just a little smaller than our own planet Earth) when you put a little too much carbon dioxide greenhouse gas in your atmosphere! Granted, Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth is, but nevertheless the Greenhouse Effect has run rampant on Venus, creating a truly hellishly hot global environment there with surface temperatures averaging around 900 degrees Fahrenheit or so, which is about 500 degrees Celsius (give or take 32 degrees Fahrenheit or so), which is even hotter than Houston, Texas in August!
Sic transit gloria Venus! Enjoy!
Apparently transits of Venus are rather rare occurrences, although the most recent one happened in 2004, which was only 8 years ago! The next one is supposed to happen sometime in 2117 when very few of those of us who are presently alive will be alive, presumably, barring some miraculous breakthroughs in gerontology! I'm still somewhat astounded that we know how to calculate such things in advance, or at least that someone knows how to do that! I'm pretty sure good old Newtonian classical mechanics suffices to do such calculations and computers are quite capable of doing most all of the heavy mathematical and physical lifting involved. Still, pretty amazing! Astronomical, in fact!
Speaking of Venus, by the way, one can readily point to Venus as a nearby example of what can happen to a planet like ours (Venus is just a little smaller than our own planet Earth) when you put a little too much carbon dioxide greenhouse gas in your atmosphere! Granted, Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth is, but nevertheless the Greenhouse Effect has run rampant on Venus, creating a truly hellishly hot global environment there with surface temperatures averaging around 900 degrees Fahrenheit or so, which is about 500 degrees Celsius (give or take 32 degrees Fahrenheit or so), which is even hotter than Houston, Texas in August!
Sic transit gloria Venus! Enjoy!
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
A Picture Worth 10,000 Words!
Sheboygan Dan, a fellow Appendilooza, recently sent a link to this profoundly right cartoon:
sarcasm, math, and language) can be found here. Whoever he is, he's a genius as well as being hilarious! His author's "blag" can be found here. I ran across this site a year ago or so, and loved it immediately then, but then completely forgot about it until Sheboygan Dan sent the link. Apparently there's more to this story, as you can discover for yourself by following the link and then clicking on the comic:
I certainly wish xkcd and his fiancée/wife all the best and hope and pray for her stage III breast cancer to go away completely and permanently! Along with my appendix cancer!Family Illness
Last fall I posted about a family illness, but didn’t give a lot of details.
In October my fiancée was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. It’s rare for young women to get breast cancer, and she’s otherwise healthy and has no family history, so it was a real bolt from the blue.
She’s been in nonstop treatment for the last eight months, which has been an emotional and physical ordeal that’s hard to describe. We both have all the support we could ask for—including an incredible medical team—and we’ve had some really good moments during these months, but it’s still a terrifying and isolating experience. Treatment is ongoing, and there’s no well-defined end point; things are going to continue to be scary and difficult for a while.
I’m usually pretty private about my personal life, but I wanted to explain why I’ve missed some midnight comic deadlines and have been particularly hard to reach lately. I’ve also spent a lot of these eight months immersed in cancer science, and I want to be free to talk (and draw comics) about stuff I’m learning without the unexplained subject matter leaving everyone worried and guessing.
Thank you so much for your patience, kind words, and all the little flash games you all sent. And all the best to those of you who are also caring for someone with cancer, or who are struggling with cancer yourselves.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Finding Chemo (Again)!
I had my 15th chemotherapy treatment (FOLFIRI) today. We hit a bit of a speed bump on the road to complete cancer freedom with my most recent CT scan, which I had on Wednesday, April 11, 2012. We were hoping and praying, of course, for a result of No Evidence of Disease (NED our pal!), but instead were told, on April 12, 2012 (ironically one year to the day after my marathon 12-hour debulking/HIPEC surgery!), by my wonderful surgeon, Dr. Paul Mansfield, that there was, in fact, Evidence of Disease. There were at least a couple of spots in my abdominal cavity that appeared to be growing, probably on my peritoneum, the large membrane that envelops the gut.
In retrospect, looking back at my previous CT scan from Wednesday, January 11, 2012, one of the spots that was clearly seen on my most recent CT scan was present there, too, only it was too small to be noticed if you didn't know exactly where to look! Apparently, a result of NED only lasts until your next CT scan and can be somewhat contingent on subsequent CT scans! The odds were definitely in my favor (as Katniss and Gale would say in the Hunger Games), given that 1/3 of HIPEC patients go into more or less complete remission, as opposed to the 1/1000 patients who do who only receive IV chemo! According to the laws of probability and statistics, even then 2/3 HIPEC patients don't go into more or less complete remission! But, we haven't given up hope, nonetheless! I still feel in my heart of hearts that I'm truly an "outlier" and can beat this appendix cancer, yet! Especially with everyone praying for me and wishing me the best and directing positive thoughts and vibes in our direction! If God is for us (and I know beyond knowing that He is, in all senses of that affirmation!), who can be against us?
We don't know if these tumor cells somehow evaded the HIPEC sloshing during my marathon 12-hour surgery last year or if they were resistant to the Oxalyplatin used for my HIPEC surgery and the subsequent 8 FOLFIRI chemo treatments I received after I'd recovered sufficiently from my surgery or both (or neither)! Only time will tell! Amen!
In retrospect, looking back at my previous CT scan from Wednesday, January 11, 2012, one of the spots that was clearly seen on my most recent CT scan was present there, too, only it was too small to be noticed if you didn't know exactly where to look! Apparently, a result of NED only lasts until your next CT scan and can be somewhat contingent on subsequent CT scans! The odds were definitely in my favor (as Katniss and Gale would say in the Hunger Games), given that 1/3 of HIPEC patients go into more or less complete remission, as opposed to the 1/1000 patients who do who only receive IV chemo! According to the laws of probability and statistics, even then 2/3 HIPEC patients don't go into more or less complete remission! But, we haven't given up hope, nonetheless! I still feel in my heart of hearts that I'm truly an "outlier" and can beat this appendix cancer, yet! Especially with everyone praying for me and wishing me the best and directing positive thoughts and vibes in our direction! If God is for us (and I know beyond knowing that He is, in all senses of that affirmation!), who can be against us?
We don't know if these tumor cells somehow evaded the HIPEC sloshing during my marathon 12-hour surgery last year or if they were resistant to the Oxalyplatin used for my HIPEC surgery and the subsequent 8 FOLFIRI chemo treatments I received after I'd recovered sufficiently from my surgery or both (or neither)! Only time will tell! Amen!
Saturday, February 18, 2012
On My Continuing Fascination With Units of Measurement!
I enjoy playing Google's "a Google a day," which can help hone your searching skills and almost invariably features interesting morsels of food for thought! Today's features the expression "the twinkle of an eye" (as in "in a twinkle of an eye"), which comes originally from a Hellenistic Greek expression "en atomE" (the capital E represents the Greek letter Eta, thought to have been pronounced with a long "A" sound, as in "hey," for example), which literally means something like "in an atom [of time]," meaning a period of time so short that it cannot be cut up into any shorter time period (Dr. Sheldon Cooper of "The Big Bang Theory," a brilliant theoretical physicist who's a little more nerdy and OCD than I am, could tell you that today this would be understood as the Planck time, approximately 5.39106(+/-0.00032)x10^(-44) seconds, the time it takes light to travel one Planck length, about 1.616199(+/-0.000097)x10^(-35) meters, in a "vacuum"--until Sheldon or I or anyone else comes up with a viable quantum gravity theory, that's the smallest unit of time we can meaningfully imagine!)--apparently, in medieval times (Spoiler Alert! If you haven't already done today's a Google a day and you still want to, don't read any further!), a "twinkle of an eye" was taken to mean (1 minute)/376 = 0.1595744 seconds = 159.5744 millisec or so.
Today's question asks how many "twinkles of an eye" it takes you to get to the Renaissance festival if it takes you 20 minutes to drive there. I reasoned thusly: if there are 376 twinkles of an eye in 1 minute then surely there must be (376 twinkles of an eye/minute)x(20 minutes) = 7,520 twinkles of an eye in 20 minutes! Which, in fact, is the right answer in the real world! However, when I submitted "7,520 twinkles" as my answer, the Google of "Do No Evil" fame confidently informed me that this was not the correct answer!
Somewhat gobstruck, I went ahead and clicked to see what Google World thought the right answer was and this is their "answer": a "twinkle of an eye" is (1 minute)/376 = 160 milliseconds and there are (20 minutes[=1,200 seconds])/(1 millisecond[=10^(-3) seconds]) = 1,200,000 milliseconds in 20 minutes and (1,200,000 milliseconds)/(160 milliseconds/twinkle) = 7,500 twinkles!
Of course, Google's "answer" is certainly in the right ballpark and is pretty darn close to my correct (and exact!) answer of 7,520 twinkles. But, to assert that 7,520 twinkles, which is the right answer, is not the right answer and to go on to say that 7,500 twinkles is the right answer when it clearly is not is just plain wrong!
That happened earlier today when I first tried to submit the correct answer (7,520 twinkles). In the meantime, someone at Google must have discovered the problem, because when I resubmitted my correct answer just now as "7,520 twinkles" (I didn't use quotation marks, though, I'm just using them here to indicate exactly what I resubmitted!), this was now recognized as a correct answer! The marvels of modern technology! I guess Google didn't do evil after all!
Today's question asks how many "twinkles of an eye" it takes you to get to the Renaissance festival if it takes you 20 minutes to drive there. I reasoned thusly: if there are 376 twinkles of an eye in 1 minute then surely there must be (376 twinkles of an eye/minute)x(20 minutes) = 7,520 twinkles of an eye in 20 minutes! Which, in fact, is the right answer in the real world! However, when I submitted "7,520 twinkles" as my answer, the Google of "Do No Evil" fame confidently informed me that this was not the correct answer!
Somewhat gobstruck, I went ahead and clicked to see what Google World thought the right answer was and this is their "answer": a "twinkle of an eye" is (1 minute)/376 = 160 milliseconds and there are (20 minutes[=1,200 seconds])/(1 millisecond[=10^(-3) seconds]) = 1,200,000 milliseconds in 20 minutes and (1,200,000 milliseconds)/(160 milliseconds/twinkle) = 7,500 twinkles!
Of course, Google's "answer" is certainly in the right ballpark and is pretty darn close to my correct (and exact!) answer of 7,520 twinkles. But, to assert that 7,520 twinkles, which is the right answer, is not the right answer and to go on to say that 7,500 twinkles is the right answer when it clearly is not is just plain wrong!
That happened earlier today when I first tried to submit the correct answer (7,520 twinkles). In the meantime, someone at Google must have discovered the problem, because when I resubmitted my correct answer just now as "7,520 twinkles" (I didn't use quotation marks, though, I'm just using them here to indicate exactly what I resubmitted!), this was now recognized as a correct answer! The marvels of modern technology! I guess Google didn't do evil after all!
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Random Ruminations and the Like!
Occasionally you run across something (on Wikipedia, for example) that is enchanting and interesting and coincidental and completely meaningless. A case in point happened today--while looking up data related to Earth's Moon on Wikipedia (what did we ever do before Wikipedia?!)--for no particular reason I noticed that the volume occupied by the Moon (V_Moon) is about 2.1958x10^10 km^3 or 21,958,000,000 cubic kilometers. Why did I find this intriguing? Because when I went to memorize that value, I realized with a shock that it will be ridiculously easy for me, in particular, to remember all five significant figures of this value, either because it encodes my birthdate (2/19/58) or my birthmonth (2/1958)!
Usually, it is standard operating procedure to memorize the radius R of a substantially spherical body and then calculate the volume V using the well-known formula for the volume of a sphere (known to the ancient Greek Archimedes long before Newton and Leibniz independently invented the infinitesimal calculus): V = (4/3)[pi]R^3, at least in 3 spatial Euclidean dimensions! Using this formula "in reverse," as it were, I can now always calculate the radius of the Moon (R_Moon) whenever I wish to, as long as I have access to a good enough calculator! Not to keep you all in undue suspense, the Moon's radius R_Moon is the delightfully palindromic 1.7371x10^3 km!
How does that compare to the Earth's radius R_Earth? Well, to answer this question, it helps to know (or remember) the very definition of the meter, originally! In the grips of the French Revolution, the good rational scientific-types in Paris wanted a standard unit of length that wasn't related to the random and variable lengths of some king's foot (foot) or thumb joint (inch) or forearm (cubit), but was somehow more grounded and less variable or changeable! What they came up with was that one meter would be equal to one ten-millionth of length of the meridian of longitude from the North Pole to the Equator that passes through Paris (where else?!), which means that nobody has any excuse anymore for not knowing that the circumference of our one and only home planet, Earth, is by definition equal to 4.0000000x10^7 meters, which is 2[pi]R_Earth, so that R_Earth is 6.3661977x10^6 meters or 6.3661977x10^3 km!
So R_Earth is 3.6648 times bigger than R_Moon or just a little under 11/3 times bigger or almost 4 times bigger! In American-friendlier units (as the 1988 Physics Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman said "We're inching toward the metric system!"), since there are just about 5 furlongs in 1 kilometer (as I've shown elsewhere on this blog, exhaustively--see below!), 6,400 km = 32,000 furlongs! Since there are 8 furlongs in 1 mile, we see instantly that the radius of the Earth R_Earth is very close to 4,000 miles, a nice roundish number! Similarly, the Earth's "belt size" is 40,000 km, which is 200,000 furlongs, which is 25,000 miles, which is the distance every point on Earth's Equator must travel in a day, which is 24 hours, so that every point on Earth's Equator must travel at a speed of more than 1,000 miles per hour just to stay in the same place (relative to the Earth, of course)! And that's not even counting the speed of the Earth about the Sun or the speed of the Solar System about the Milky Way Galaxy or the speed of the Milky Way Galaxy in our Local Group of Galaxies or the speed of our Local Group of Galaxies toward the Shapley Supercluster (or Shapley Concentration), etc., etc.!
On an entirely different subject altogether, lest I forget to mention it, my most recent CT scan at MD Anderson Cancer Center was on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, and we are very pleased to report that there continues to be No Evidence of Disease (NED)! Thanks so much for all your many prayers and positive thoughts and best wishes--they are all deeply appreciated and are definitely working, so please keep them coming our way! I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy just in time for the one (1!) year anniversary of my 12 hour operation last April 12, 2011. The preparation for the colonoscopy will be jolly good fun (as ever!), but the whole procedure should take about half as long as before since I now only have a semicolon! I'm also scheduled for another CT scan in April, before I meet again with my wonderful surgeon, Dr. Paul Mansfield at MDACC! Assuming there continues to be NED, I may even get put on a 6-month CT scan regimen rather than my current 3-month one. The CT scans are painless, but each CT scan gives a dose of x-rays equivalent to about 300 chest x-rays or about 1,200 x-ray scans at an airport! The worst part about a CT scan is waiting to get the results! And the best part about a CT scan is getting the result that there's NED!
Usually, it is standard operating procedure to memorize the radius R of a substantially spherical body and then calculate the volume V using the well-known formula for the volume of a sphere (known to the ancient Greek Archimedes long before Newton and Leibniz independently invented the infinitesimal calculus): V = (4/3)[pi]R^3, at least in 3 spatial Euclidean dimensions! Using this formula "in reverse," as it were, I can now always calculate the radius of the Moon (R_Moon) whenever I wish to, as long as I have access to a good enough calculator! Not to keep you all in undue suspense, the Moon's radius R_Moon is the delightfully palindromic 1.7371x10^3 km!
How does that compare to the Earth's radius R_Earth? Well, to answer this question, it helps to know (or remember) the very definition of the meter, originally! In the grips of the French Revolution, the good rational scientific-types in Paris wanted a standard unit of length that wasn't related to the random and variable lengths of some king's foot (foot) or thumb joint (inch) or forearm (cubit), but was somehow more grounded and less variable or changeable! What they came up with was that one meter would be equal to one ten-millionth of length of the meridian of longitude from the North Pole to the Equator that passes through Paris (where else?!), which means that nobody has any excuse anymore for not knowing that the circumference of our one and only home planet, Earth, is by definition equal to 4.0000000x10^7 meters, which is 2[pi]R_Earth, so that R_Earth is 6.3661977x10^6 meters or 6.3661977x10^3 km!
So R_Earth is 3.6648 times bigger than R_Moon or just a little under 11/3 times bigger or almost 4 times bigger! In American-friendlier units (as the 1988 Physics Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman said "We're inching toward the metric system!"), since there are just about 5 furlongs in 1 kilometer (as I've shown elsewhere on this blog, exhaustively--see below!), 6,400 km = 32,000 furlongs! Since there are 8 furlongs in 1 mile, we see instantly that the radius of the Earth R_Earth is very close to 4,000 miles, a nice roundish number! Similarly, the Earth's "belt size" is 40,000 km, which is 200,000 furlongs, which is 25,000 miles, which is the distance every point on Earth's Equator must travel in a day, which is 24 hours, so that every point on Earth's Equator must travel at a speed of more than 1,000 miles per hour just to stay in the same place (relative to the Earth, of course)! And that's not even counting the speed of the Earth about the Sun or the speed of the Solar System about the Milky Way Galaxy or the speed of the Milky Way Galaxy in our Local Group of Galaxies or the speed of our Local Group of Galaxies toward the Shapley Supercluster (or Shapley Concentration), etc., etc.!
On an entirely different subject altogether, lest I forget to mention it, my most recent CT scan at MD Anderson Cancer Center was on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, and we are very pleased to report that there continues to be No Evidence of Disease (NED)! Thanks so much for all your many prayers and positive thoughts and best wishes--they are all deeply appreciated and are definitely working, so please keep them coming our way! I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy just in time for the one (1!) year anniversary of my 12 hour operation last April 12, 2011. The preparation for the colonoscopy will be jolly good fun (as ever!), but the whole procedure should take about half as long as before since I now only have a semicolon! I'm also scheduled for another CT scan in April, before I meet again with my wonderful surgeon, Dr. Paul Mansfield at MDACC! Assuming there continues to be NED, I may even get put on a 6-month CT scan regimen rather than my current 3-month one. The CT scans are painless, but each CT scan gives a dose of x-rays equivalent to about 300 chest x-rays or about 1,200 x-ray scans at an airport! The worst part about a CT scan is waiting to get the results! And the best part about a CT scan is getting the result that there's NED!
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