Yoyo update

the yoyo has gone down again.

this morning, i picked up the reading of the mri i had last thurs. naturally, i was completely at sea by the time i had read 4 words, 'intermedullary enhancing soft tissues...' so, skipping the next 3 sentences, i came to the short and sweet summary: 'osseous metastasis, scapula and humerus'.

i deduced that the cancer had indeed metastasized to my scapula and my right arm (assuming that 'humerus' had nothing to do with my wit).

subsequent surfing found a paper written by doctors in taiwan. skipping the parts that didn't make sense to me, i found the words 'osseous metastasis' connected with 'pain' and 'skeletal debilitation'. quoting further, '...the mean survival time between bone metastasis and death was 5.67 months'. yikes!

after reading the results of the mri, cris and i had a 2-hour wait for our consultation with a top oncologist from singapore, which was arranged by cris' boss. the objective of the consultation was to obtain a 2nd opinion on the diagnosis of my illness.

we had forwarded my medical results to the doctor the previous week, so he had time to familiarize himself with my case. when we were seated, he immediately told us about 'nexavar' and 'sutent' (i hope i got the names right), which he said were the gold standards for treating renal cancer.

his own treatment is entirely different and still controversial, although he had successfully treated some patients with it. it would cost only a little more than half of what nexavar and sutent would cost. however, it would require a monthly visit to his clinic in singapore, for probably the rest of my life. maybe, we should just migrate to singapore or malaysia.

he told me i could try nexavar or sutent first, if i wanted to because they are the more popular and tested medications. he told me to think it over and then, get back to him. i figured that his saying this meant i still had the luxury of time to test the gold standards first, before going for his treatment. remember, i hadn't yet surfed 'osseous metastasis' at that point.

back in the car, i was chuckling to myself. cris asked me what was so funny. i said that before we left, the doctor had told me not to lose hope. i found it funny because even if he had said there was no chance of my being cured, i wouldn't lose hope at all. faith and hope were the only things that kept me going. i couldn't lose either one at all.

so that's life as benjie, yoyo-ing down the road of life.