Databases and MRI’s: Sunday, January 17, 2010
This is no doubt, going to be a busy week and it appears Monday will be no exception with all the snow we’re supposed to be getting. It’s snowing now in Vermont and is expected to continue through till the morning. That’ll make driving to work a special pleasure for sure.
I have a lot projects going on at work this week, and I’m feeling bad already for having to take more time off in order to return to Boston for tests and scans. I’m hoping between the snow tomorrow and taking off Thursday that I can complete some of this stuff in a timely fashion.
Tuesday is the radio show (which I’m almost prepared for), and Wednesday I need to bring my car in for it’s service check up and Thursday I’m off at 4am, heading for MGH in Boston! Yikes! … is this all going to happen?
I’ve also got a handful of jobs for Scifillian to complete before Thursday, and a few personal programming projects that are driving me crazy because I can’t seem to find the time to complete them. I guess once again they’ll be pushed to the side for more important and pressing matters.
Speaking of personal programming projects, I have a great little database that beginning to drive some of the facts behind or on this web site … like the Health Journal and the Weekly Cancer Scale. One of the reasons I wanted to get those items into a database was so that the history of how this cancer works on my body is recorded. Sometime in the future we’ll be able to look back and see when changes, for the better or worse, occurred.
As an example, each day when I fill out the Health Journal, those numbers are recorded in a database. At the end of a week, I can look at it and see what kind of week I’ve had, and the same thing goes for a month, and six months … and a year. That’s the only way I could think of to record the changing situation, and be able to make sense out of it later. Hopefully, it’ll be useful data somewhere down the line.
But it’s not complete yet, and as anyone that builds these types of databases knows, it takes time and thoughtful concentration to get it right, and developed in a way that useful data can be queried for results that are meaningful. Maybe we should leave this for another post about collecting data on living with cancer. Really, it could be used for collecting data on any illness if fact.
Recording this kind of data is difficult because so many of the things you feel are so hard to explain or describe … but it’s getting there, simply requires a lot of tweaking and thinking it through.
Not sure how I’m feeling about the trip to Boston on Thursday. On one hand, I feel like it’s a good thing to go and get re-tested and scanned so that I’m aware of where the cancer stands at this point in my life … on the other hand, do I really care? and is there anything they can really do about it anyway.
It was made very clear to me, after opting for these treatments, that if they failed, there wasn’t much else they could do for me … and that is still the case. So I question even going through the motions of testing and scanning … for what?
The truth of the matter is, it isn’t going to make a “hill of beans” of a difference, whether or not the cancer is fully active or not, for the moment … nothing really changes. It’s lingering in my system and can turn itself on and off at will … like it has a mind of its own, while it controls the switches that allow me more or less time. The doctors have no more control over this then I do in a sense.
I honestly feel there is very limited value in doing this. Another angle to look at this by, is that the tests themselves are so destructive to your body, that it’s hard to justify doing them on a healthy person let alone someone that’s already suffering. If you think about it, I’ve been subjected to more radiation, then most people have in a dozen lifetimes. As a matter of fact, if you add it all up, I bet I’ve had more exposure to x-rays and radiation, then an entire small town’s population worth of people. That’s insane! … do I need more?
When you get an MRI, CT or PET scan, it lays a lot of radiation in your system … don’t get me wrong, these are wonderful tests to see if there is something wrong. When they’re first searching to find what’s wrong with you … but at this point of the game, I have to question their value … do I really need more exposure and what good, is likely to come out of it anyhow.
Think about it. It’s one of those things we don’t get to read much about, but it’s there and it’s reality. Ask any oncologist, and he’ll tell you there isn’t any cancer or tumor they can’t kill with enough radiation. The question is … can they keep the patient alive long enough during the process.
Well, unfortunately it’s too late for me to get into these thoughts … but we’ll touch on them again after this week. It’s midnight, it’s snowing like crazy and I have to get up in the morning and get moving quickly …
