Most of you know that Suzie and I (and the boys) lost our beautiful home in the Wikiup Hills due to the Tubbs Fire, shortly after the last blog post here, in early October. Now part two:
Soon after we moved into our replacement apartment in Santa Rosa, I began feeling pain and numbness in my left leg. I assumed it was from pulling a muscle while moving furniture into the new place, but it became progressively worse and worse, to the point where it was affecting my gait, and later limiting my ability to walk and move around without significant pain.
Eventually a visit to a doctor at Kaiser resulted in a diagnosis of sciatica. This is a fairly common condition, especially in old guys like me, in which leg pain and numbness is caused by a compression of the sciatic nerve, commonly from a herniated or bulging disk in the lower spine. Since I’ve had a history of lower back problems on my left side, I assumed that was my problem.
To figure out the exact cause of the pain, my doctor ordered an MRI on my lower back. Rather than finding any disk problem as expected, the MRI found a large tumor in my lower back (my sacrum, to be exact) that had grown to the point that it was pushing against and irritating the nerves running to my leg. The discovery of the tumor led to a biopsy, and the biopsy found that the tumor was cancerous.
Calamity times two, in the space of a few months. Hard to believe.
In the short term, there’s good news: This week I started radiation treatment to shrink the tumor, courtesy of an amazing sophisticated Star-Trek-like piece of equipment (info here), which is available at such august institutions as the UCLA Medical Center, Stanford, UCSF, and, of course, Rohnert Park. The radiation should, within a week or two, start to reverse the pain, which especially in the past two or three weeks has been an intense, constant, unremitting torture.
The longer-term is less certain. Further tests are underway to determine the nature and extent of the cancer (called multiple myeloma) and develop treatment options for it. A CT scan found no other tumors in my body, but the cancer has spread into my bone marrow generally, which means that I will need some kind of systemic treatment; getting rid of the one tumor I have won’t do. The exact treatment (and prognosis) will depend on the precise kind of cancer cells I have. From what I have read, this particular cancer is one that can held in abeyance in some patients for long periods, so I’m certain I won’t be disappearing any time soon.
I am so sorry to have to break this bad news to so many of you so abruptly and so remotely. But it’s important to me that that my friends and acquaintances and colleagues know what’s going on.
I will keep you all up to date with my status through updates here on the SSS Blog. You can subscribe to receive email notifications of updates by entering your email address in the form to the right. I’ll also post these updates on Facebook. For those who’d like to help us out during the process, we’ve set up a standing page with things we need help with, located here. We’d welcome your help. Feel free to send comments, greetings, suggestions, good thoughts and wishes, etc. my way through comments, either here or on your favorite social media (hate that term) site.
Finally, know that despite this run of “why me?” events, Suzie and I are good spirits, immensely grateful that we have so many resources available to us: each other, our sons, our families, our friends, our co-workers, our jobs, and access to excellent health care. We’re looking forward to overcoming this challenge and beginning a new phase of our lives.
Categories: SSS Health