Gold and golder!

As a first step towards having another Cyberknife treatment, yesterday, I have had another golden metallic marker (called fiducial) implanted in my periportal lymph node near the liver. I already have five other gold markers in my liver as part of my first Cyberknife last December. As noted earlier too in one of my blog posts, the fiducial implantation is a minor surgical process under local anesthesia. Compared to my previous implantation experience, yesterday was a better one in that I had less breathlessness and discomfort. Of course, I had one of the best suites for resting post-fiducial implantation :) The gold marker now would help the robotic system of Cyberknife to accurately locate the tumor in the lymph node while treating it. The next step towards the Cyberknife treatment would be a planning scan to be done some time next week. Meanwhile, I was advised to be on a couple of antibiotics (both oral and IV). The disease, among other surprises, gave me another one: I have become golder now with one more gold piece inside my body! :) I hope this marker would mark a new beginning in my life towards making it a disease-free one!

Another scan and further treatment. Gold again!

Yesterday, I had another PET/CT scan, the first one after the Cyberknife surgery, but the eighth one overall ever since I was diagnosed with cancer! And, today, I met my team of doctors - Dr.Ajai Kumar (Radiation Oncologist and Cyberknife Specialist), Dr.Niti R. Narang (Medical Oncologist) and Dr.Kumaraswamy (Radiation Oncologist) - with the scan report and the CEA test results (this time CEA value increased to 17.4 when compared to the earlier value of 7.2!)

The scan report is a mixed bag of both good and bad news for me; the good news is that the Cyberknife radiosurgery technique on my liver that I had last December has been very effective and my liver is fine now :); the bad news is that there is a bit metastasis of the disease, which means that the disease has gone further up a bit in the body with its presence in the form of a small nodule in the mediastinal lymphnode - this lymph node lies between the lungs in the chest. Already there has been another nodule in the lymph node near the liver and this was not considered for the Cyberknife treatment last time since it was too significant to treat. Now, this nodule has increased in size a bit. So, there are primarily two nodules to treat, both in the lymph system - one, near the liver and the another between the lungs.

Thus, my team of doctors, after thorough discussions, have decided to take a strategy of a combination of chemotherapy with another dose of Cyberknife radiation. The advantages of this strategy is that the radiation will treat the nodule near the liver completely and the chemotherapy will take care of the other nodule, or any other one in the body! I am convinced with their plan and hence decided to go ahead with it. Consequently, as a first step to radiosurgery, there will be another fiducial implantation in the form of a gold seed marker in the lymph node near the liver. This process will be done tomorrow as part of the usual process for the Cyberknife radiation. And, the chemotherapy will start in parallel this week too with the body exposed to the maximum effectiveness of the treatment.

I hope with this aggressive strategy of a parallel combination of radiation and chemotherapy will produce excellent results and work wonders for me. :) Keep watching this space for more updates :)

Small line of silver in the cloud of life

I had been closeted for more than 50 minutes and when I finally wanted to hit the Exit button on the screen and informed the Coordinator, who was sitting in her small cabin next to mine, I was forced to see a wry expression in her face and was told to revise all my answers in the test since I had around 40 more minutes to complete the test. I did not relent and badly wanted to exit the test. I insisted and persisted. She gave another dry look at me and grudgingly allowed me to exit the test screen. Boom! My eyes widened and my face lightened up by the horizontal rectangular bar in the test results page: it showed that I had passed the test with 89% way above the required 59% for a pass in the test! Wow! I am a proud owner of my first IBM certification. I am an IBM Certified Database Associate now! The words of congratulations naturally flowed from the Coordinator's voice, as though she could not believe the test results!

Often, among the distressing events in life, there might be some interesting asides in the form of broken lines of silver in the cloud of otherwise traumatic life. And, last Thursday, I had my first such line of silver as I had passed my first IBM Certification test for IBM's database DB2. I had planned to take the test almost three weeks back and the journey since had been an interesting one with my planning, collecting the resources for the test, studying, practicing, thinking, revising for the test giving my best and living in the present most of the times!

It had been sometimes tough for me given that my body does not often cooperate with me! I had to often study the material lying down on my bed since my back would not permit me to sit straight! And, often, my eyes would slow down and stand still with moisture in them filled to the brim! I had decided to test my own limits both physically and psychologically by planning for this test. And, finally, all my efforts paid off! When I saw a kind of strange and proud glow in the eyes of my parents and an ecstatic stream of words from my sisters and friends, I felt I did something at least for myself. After all, an achievement in these times of distress and trauma in life, at least makes me feel that I have a life! And, after all, this one silver line lightened up my little own world! :)

Reconnecting the relationship dots

Often, we tend to slide besides our self-created shield beyond which we think there can be no value and within which lies our entire world! And, in this psychological process "readjusting" ourselves, we fall prey to the proclivities of escaping from the relationships that lie both within and out of our shield. We suddenly realize the significance of these relationships when often we are out of it! Reconnecting to these dots of quarantined relationships will give us a new power of engaging ourselves with the higher levels of bliss and joy, coupled with new experiences associated with the freshness of feeling!

It has been a good 15 years and 10 years now since I jumped out of the network of my graduation and post-graduation friends respectively! Phew, that has been a real long time indeed! And the interesting part of my disease-ridden phase of my life is to regain those lost connections of those fun-loving hearts!

First, I shook up the network of the hearts that connected a few with whom my own self was hovering around for quite some time. Then I would email those friends, or leave a message to them on either Facebook, Orkut or LinkedIn, or dig into my address book to get the personal numbers to call them. Then, I would invite them to my home in Bangalore or propose to meet them in a location of my convenience, for which most of them kindly accepted. And, I cannot describe the happiness when I see them personally before me! It is just a bliss and any ode to my feelings would not be sufficient enough to offer tributes to them! :) I am still reeling in this bliss of having these dots in my visual space. I now find a kind of indescribable joy in reconnecting the old friendships and filling them with new aura of freshness! After all, the older the connection, the sweeter would be the reconnection!

Droplet on a lotus!

I am somehow left with a feeling of happiness when I saw several posters in the Bangalore Institute of Oncology (BIO) congratulating Dr.Kodaganur S. Gopinath on winning the prestigious Padma Shri award for the year 2010. (He is one of the 81 persons conferred with the award, which is to be presented in New Delhi by the President of India in March. See the complete list of awardees here.) The award usually is given to a person who has offered/offers distinguished service in his chosen field. Dr.Gopinath surely deserves the award not only for his service in his medical profession, but also for the fact that he is more humane in dealing with his patients.

I am fortunate that I had been operated by Dr.Gopinath for my diversionary colostomy in June 2009. Not only he was reassuring me on my health, but also was extremely sensitive to my painful position at the time. He was more caring that I had seen any one else and was constantly driving me to have positive hope towards life and living. Congratulations Doctor on winning the award and I am happy for you! You have won the Padma Shri and I am just one of the droplets on the Lotus who touch you and get a feeling of healing touch! I wish God give you many more years of lively service and many more droplets be fortunate enough to have your warmth and touch.