Archive for the 'General Posts' Category

I Have Cancer

Hello everyone -

It’s hard to come up with a good way to say this in an e-mail, especially a mass e-mail, but I thought that perhaps this was the best way to let everyone know. Some of you may know that I’ve been particularly ill as of late, and that the doctors have had a difficult time finding exactly what the disease is. For those of you who haven’t heard any of this yet, consider yourselves lucky that you didn’t have to go through the months of playing the “Disease of the Week” game, where each week I would be whole-heartedly convinced that I had some exotic ailment like Malaria of the p.vivax strain, or the very unlikely Thalysemia, or the almost unknown Whipple’s Disease.

It was just a week ago that the doctors were aggressively testing for one of these strange, mystic diseases – when suddenly the tests all came back wrong and in just a couple phone calls, everything seemed to fall apart. At least, that’s how it felt to me.

A few more tests in a different direction confirmed the findings. I have cancer.

I have a cancer called lymphoma. This is a cancer of the lymph nodes and, I’m glad to say, a very curable kind of cancer. I’m told that with the proper treatment, 97.9% of lymphoma patients survive. Nevertheless, it is cancer and I’ll have to go through all of the cancer rituals to get rid of it. Chemotherapy will begin soon, followed by whatever else it takes to get rid of this.

This is difficult. But I can handle this, I will beat this, and I will come out a better man in the end. I am looking forward to being a cancer survivor.

If I can’t have my health, I’m glad that I still have my family and friends. It is a relief to know that I will have you all with me as I go through this. I understand that it is hard to know what to say in a situation like this, but please don’t be shy. This is a fine opportunity to make jokes about me losing my hair, etc., etc.

I look forward to seeing you all again soon.

Future Cancer Survivor,
Dave Hahn

P.S. – I’m afraid I don’t have the e-mail addresses of everyone that I’d like to send this to. Please feel free to pass this on.

Cancer Quote ~ Frank A. Clark

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. ~Frank A. Clark

What Kind of Cancer Is This?

I have Hodgkins Lymphoma, what is also called Hodgkins Disease. This is cancer of the lymph nodes. This is one of the most curable kinds of cancers, as it responds remarkably well to chemo therapy. There are other kinds of lymphoma, all classed as “non-Hodgkins” lymphomas, and, as I understand it, the cure rate for these kinds of cancer is not as good.

There is a great deal of information available on the web about Hodgkins Disease. For an overview, I would recommend the Mayo Clinic’s website: Hodgkins Disease.

One website I’ve found interesting has been Bill Bujake’s Hodgkins Journal, which talks at length about his experience fighting and curing the disease.

Bone Pain From Neulasta

The booster shots they give me during chemo encourage my bone marrow to overproduce red and white blood cells. This will ensure that I’m strong enough to continue the treatments.

It’s hard to appreciate how many bones you have in your body until they all start hurting at once. It’s over now, but yesterday my bones screamed out like a wicked choir in a clench-your-teeth-and-wait-for-it-to-pass kind of pain.

I’ve heard it said that if ever you wanted to forget your troubles, you should just wear shoes that are too small. I can say that by yesterday evening my mind was completely clear, save for the total focus on my over-producing skeleton.

I’m fine now. And I probably have more big, healthy red and white blood cells now than I’ll ever know what to do with. If we had a red blood cell contest today, I would beat all of you, so don’t even try it.

Quote ~ Jewish Proverb

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. ~ Jewish Proverb

Dave Hahn Weight Loss Plan Not Approved By FDA

I’m glad so many of my friends have come to read and comment. That’s good, because I need to make a small announcement:

Remember all that weight I lost last year? Well – funny story about that – it was apparently not due to what a hot stud I was, or to eating better, or to working out, or to anything else that I might have bragged about during the past year of grinning and gloating.

Therefore, as I do not condone the use of diseases to lose weight, I retract any dieting advice, especially all the dieting advice, I doled out during the past year.

And I’m not saying I necessarily will, but just for you sticklers out there: I reserve the right to stop being such a sickly-looking thing and to get good and fat after all this is over. Pass me another cookie.

Definition: Cancer \Can”cer\, n.

1. (Zool.) A genus of decapod Crustacea, including some of the most common shore crabs of Europe and North America, as the rock crab, Jonah crab, etc. See {Crab}.

2. (Med.) Formerly, any malignant growth, esp. one attended with great pain and ulceration, with cachexia and progressive emaciation. It was so called, perhaps, from the great veins which surround it, compared by the ancients to the claws of a crab. (1913 webster)

The Rainmaker

So far, I think the worst thing about having cancer was finding out that I had cancer.

Since then, I feel like it’s been nothing but good news. My bone marrow is clean, I’m not going to die – then the chemo isn’t (so far) as bad as I expected – then my pulse goes down, my cough is gone, my blood tests are better, the nurse is cute, the cookies are delicious (my appetite is back), and I feel more energetic. I mean, even the drought seems to have stopped since they told me I have cancer. I made it rain people! I made rain!

Now, surely there have been things that could be called bad news since the diagnosis – my website got hacked, the cancer is in a later-stage, Comedy Central changed the set of The Daily Show and gave Adam Corolla his own time slot, etc. Certainly all tragedies. But give me a break, nothing compares to that call from the cancer doc.

100% Chance Living Will Kill You

In 1996 an international study identified 7 factors that consistently predicted the probability of remission in Hodgkins Lymphoma patients. (Well, actually, they were looking for the probability of what they called the five-year “Freedom from Progression of Disease,” or FFPD. I interpret FFPD to basically mean remission.)

The probability of remission is much different than the probability of survival, so you have to be careful not to read the results as such. It’s easy to get carried away with cancer statistics.

The 7 factors include things like age, sex, and the measure of certain chemicals in your blood. As I understand it, a patient without any of these 7 would have a remission probability of 84%. For every factor you have, you lose 7%.

According to this test, my probability of remission is around 60% for the next five years. That means, according to whoever these people are that developed this project, that I have a 60% chance of losing this cancer and staying cancer-free between now and 2010.

But why stop there? Since we’re discussing statistics, I should mention that progressive heart disease is much more likely in Hodgkins patients following chemotherapy. Moreover, patients that receive chemotherapy treatment for Hodgkins Lymphoma are 4 times more likely to develop lung cancer, and are at an increased risk to develop leukemia within the first 10 years following treatment. In fact, according to the National Cancer Institute, the number one cause of death among Hodgkins patients is second cancers that develop following diagnosis.

Be that as it may, the Dave Hahn Institute of People Who Are Nuts says that if you don’t take the chemotherapy to cure your Lymphoma, you have a 100% chance of being an idiot. If it happens, you should feel lucky that you lived long enough to develop a second cancer, heart disease, or whatever else.

Realistically, I think these numbers – and really, any cancer statistics – should mean very little to an individual cancer patient. There are just too many factors involved to make any of these statistics worthwhile. Every individual responds differently to the treatment of cancer, and considering all the things modern medicine still doesn’t know about this thing called cancer, there’s really no way to know what will happen.

So, while these numbers are, I suppose, impressive or intimidating, they don’t effect me much. The really valuable thing that can be taken from all this is that tomorrow is not guaranteed, and you better not let today pass without making the most of it.

This Will Probably Not Happen

My chemo nurse said something last time about how great it was that I had such a supportive family during all this. That is definitely true, and I understand what she means. But I couldn’t help but think, are there families out there that are not supportive? Are there families out there that say, “Now honey, you know I love you, but I just don’t support your decision to have cancer.”

Or maybe it’s worse, maybe there’s a whole group of Tumor Rights activists out there that have bumper stickers and t-shirts that say things like “Metastasis Is a Right,” or “Tumors Have Feelings Too,” “Chemotherapy is Murder,” etc.

Perhaps when I go in to the Cancer Clinic tomorrow for chemotherapy there will be a big crowd of Pro-Tumor protesters with signs and megaphones, chanting and throwing paint on me.