So, it’s still cancer. It’s also very, very advanced. An ultrasound and additional X-rays show an advanced lesion on the liver, several lesions on the spleen, and aggressive metastasis in the lungs. Effectively, any treatment at this point is palliative; there’s no cure beyond miraculous responses to off-label drugs. The oncologist couched Froggie’s remaining time […]
So, it’s cancer. In typically-clinical language, the radiologist’s report stated “CONCLUSIONS: severe generalized reticulo-nodular miliary lung pattern is concerning for diffuse pulmonary metastatic disease from unknown primary tumor.” Basically, cancer has spread to the entirety of both lungs from an unknown source. There’s a mass in one lung that may be the source, but is likely […]
About four feet behind me, a dog named Froggie lies in his crate, door ajar, struggling to breathe. He’s on a hundred milligrams of one drug and more of another. The X-ray of his rib cage looked like, quoting our veterinarian here, “popcorn”. Basically, it’s cancer. Tomorrow we’ll get a call from her, while she’s […]
Marlene Vis, my aunt, passed away this past Saturday, aged 63, loosing a prolonged battle with cancer. I know it’s trite to say that cancer patients “fight” their disease, but if anyone had, she did. Sent to hospice twice, she beat the odds to live more than a year longer than the most optimistic projections. […]