Not much to update...

Not much has happened on the medical front since the last post. Angel gives me two eye drops three times a day (pathetic, I know, I’ve never even been able to put Visine in my own eye). The bottle with the white cap doesn’t hurt, the one with the red cap stings real bad for a few seconds. Then there’s the goop she puts in twice a day. Because of these, my left eye vision is 100% blurry all day, all night.

I thought I’d mention a few more things we learned when Angel and I were talking to Dr. Mishra the other day. When this all started, a couple of people (namely Angel and my mom) asked whether the indirect lightning strike from a few years ago could have had anything to do with this eye cancer. When that lightning flashed, it was by far the brightest thing that I had ever seen. Dr. Mishra thought it was very interesting that we brought that up. While she couldn’t say for sure (obviously) that it was causal, she did mention that arc welders (who see bright lights very regularly) are 7 times more likely to get choroidal melanoma than someone who’s not an arc welder. She also said that she’s seen more pilots with choroidal melanoma than she would expect to see. Is it possible that pilots see bright lightning flashes or other bright lights as well? There may be something to this, but maybe not.

She also told us that despite what we had read online, the chances of typical radiation side effects are very low with proton beam therapy. So hopefully no fatigue, no feeling sick, none of that crap. If she has to shoot the beam through my skin, it will feel like a bad sunburn in that spot. If she can’t get my eyelids out of the way, those eyelashes will fall out permanently. If she has to shoot through the important pieces in the front of my eye, I will probably have eye problems (glaucoma, cataracts, etc.) sometime down the road.

We also learned that the loss of vision that I’ll most likely experience won’t be immediate; instead it would be pretty gradual. In fact, it might take as long as 5 years for the full effect of my vision loss to be complete. We thought that was pretty cool because then my brain will have time to adapt as things change. In the end, even if I just have peripheral vision in the left eye, that should be enough information to add a third dimension to my overall vision. But again, most of these statistics are based on the typical choroidal melanoma patient, which is someone in their 60s or 70s. About 2% of patients with choroidal melanoma are around age 30 or lower. So out of the ~1800 people in the US that get it each year, about 36 of them are around my age or younger.

The only other thing that I can think to mention today is an herbal supplement called Essiac. It’s a blend of herbs, believed to have some anti-cancer properties, that was discovered by a Canadian nurse named Rene Caisse (the name is her last name spelled backwards). Angel’s cousin first brought it to our attention, and she had several stories about the effectiveness of Essiac in helping to control, or even get rid of, cancer. Online you can read lots of anecdotal stories about Essiac working its magic.

There are a few scientific studies showing that in cell culture experiments with cancer cells, Essiac has an anti-growth effect. But, there are also a few studies showing that it has no effect. It seems like it really hasn’t been studied enough to be able to say for sure, but I doubt that it could hurt anything. We bought a bottle of it in San Francisco the other day, but I haven’t started taking it yet. Because proton beam radiation damages the tumor cell’s DNA by oxidative damage, it’s not a good idea for me to be taking anything with strong antioxidants while undergoing radiation. I do plan to take it after I’m done with that, however.

Yesterday (Saturday) we drove to the coast with Ben and Katherine. We tried to go to Bodega Bay but a fire had the road closed. So we re-routed and went to Blind Beach, near the town of Jenner. It was a beautiful beach surrounded by big cliffs, with large rock formations out in the water. It was Duke’s first time playing in the ocean and he had a great time.

Angel and I are heading up to the Davis/Sacramento area later today, then radiation starts tomorrow!