blog entries: health
At last, on Tuesday I fired my first shots at the Enemy. Everything before had been but preliminary, but on Tuesday I found myself in a comfy chair in a cosy little room, listening to the Tallis Scholars singing in Beverley Minster, with Karen beside me in a somewhat less comfy chair. They gave me cute socks and a cookbook, too! …
We really have the best of both worlds, logistically.
All of the chemotherapy and radiation therapy can (and will) be done at the Central Vermont Medical Center near Montpelier — only 35 minutes from our house. And I’ll be able to drive myself to almost all of these appointments myself. Yea! Unsurprisingly, the hospital is small, comfortable, and friendly. Perhaps more surprisingly (given its size) it’s quite up-to-date: no worries about anything less than 2017 best practices.
Everything having to do with each surgery will be all the way down at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.…
In a nutshell: I’ve been diagnosed with esophageal adenocarcinoma. It’s pretty big, but not huge, and other than one lymph there is no sign of it having metathesized, so prognosis is good. Best-practice treatment today in both North America and Europe is a (probably five-week) course of radiation therapy with a supportive batch of chemo-therapy which acts synergistically with the radiation. This might completely eradicate the tumor, but whether it does or not, long-term survival statistics dictate that much of the lower esophagus and upper stomach then be removed surgically.
I could be eating (gently) again by Thanksgiving.