By Bev Pecan
I think most people have heard the quote about the bumblebee not being aerodynamically designed to fly, so he goes ahead and flies anyway. That’s progress. Another of my favorites is “if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.” And that goes with another quote about insanity being defined as people who continue to do business as usual and expect change.
As a kid, I was amazed that the tadpoles we caught decided to grow legs and became frogs and that butterflies emerged from ugly cocoons. That’s progress, too. Some people have made careers from studying these things and the world is the wiser for it. And sometimes, too, the reverse happens.
I just read that in cancer research, it has been found that some tumors and abnormal findings have been referred to as cancers and treated as such when the jury was still out about their actual malignancy.
Last fall, I was diagnosed with two different kinds of cancer. One was invasive in the colorectal area. For a couple years, I had bleeding and symptoms following a bout of kidney stones that lasted 11 days and blocked other bodily functions. I was offered colostomies, but no treatment for the stones. I refused the tests because several doctors brushed my symptoms off as hemorrhoids. Imagine my surprise to find out I now had a stage three cancer that would kill me before long if I left it untreated.
The second cancer is a spot on my lung that has been there for many years and was not given much attention until seen on tests taken by my medical team at Mayo Clinic. They couldn’t really decide if it was cancer, but it looked suspicious. They took care of the urgent cancer first.
Due to my other health problems, Mayo decided not to biopsy or radiate the spot and perhaps make matters worse by doing so. Watch and wait was fine with me. A second CT scan showed some changes recently causing the spot to look more solidified, but we have still opted to watch it and recheck in six months. If it is cancerous, I was told, it was a different form of cancer — a slow-growing type and not regular and invasive lung cancer.
I continue to do my own research to learn all I can to help myself in the meantime and that involves my making changes. All of us should seek to remain informed about what goes on in their lives. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to stay the same and expect things to get better.
Last week, in what I would call a really progressive story, it was reported that the medical field has decided more progression could actually be made by declassifying some of these preliminary lesions as cancers and not aggressively treating them before studying their behavior over an extended period. Thousands of unnecessary surgeries, the story said, made things actually worse or caused death for some of those patients involved. This was especially true with some forms of thyroid nodules.
Research found that when these nodules are encapsulated and haven’t broken through their barriers, they should be considered noncancerous and watched. I know of friends who were diagnosed with what was termed “inoperable” cancers and sent home to die. Lifestyle changes like nutrition and exercise stunned their doctors when future scans and X-rays showed no signs of cancer. They are still in remission today, many years later.
To me, real progress is careful planning and going slowly and steadily in the direction you wish to go. Finding new ideas and new solutions is good. Overbuilding and the problems that come with excessive expectations can sometimes have repercussions, which can’t always be undone. I think this works no matter where we are in our lives.
I think most people have heard the quote about the bumblebee not being aerodynamically designed to fly, so he goes ahead and flies anyway. That’s progress. Another of my favorites is “if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.” And that goes with another quote about insanity being defined as people who continue to do business as usual and expect change.
As a kid, I was amazed that the tadpoles we caught decided to grow legs and became frogs and that butterflies emerged from ugly cocoons. That’s progress, too. Some people have made careers from studying these things and the world is the wiser for it. And sometimes, too, the reverse happens.
I just read that in cancer research, it has been found that some tumors and abnormal findings have been referred to as cancers and treated as such when the jury was still out about their actual malignancy.
Last fall, I was diagnosed with two different kinds of cancer. One was invasive in the colorectal area. For a couple years, I had bleeding and symptoms following a bout of kidney stones that lasted 11 days and blocked other bodily functions. I was offered colostomies, but no treatment for the stones. I refused the tests because several doctors brushed my symptoms off as hemorrhoids. Imagine my surprise to find out I now had a stage three cancer that would kill me before long if I left it untreated.
The second cancer is a spot on my lung that has been there for many years and was not given much attention until seen on tests taken by my medical team at Mayo Clinic. They couldn’t really decide if it was cancer, but it looked suspicious. They took care of the urgent cancer first.
Due to my other health problems, Mayo decided not to biopsy or radiate the spot and perhaps make matters worse by doing so. Watch and wait was fine with me. A second CT scan showed some changes recently causing the spot to look more solidified, but we have still opted to watch it and recheck in six months. If it is cancerous, I was told, it was a different form of cancer — a slow-growing type and not regular and invasive lung cancer.
I continue to do my own research to learn all I can to help myself in the meantime and that involves my making changes. All of us should seek to remain informed about what goes on in their lives. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to stay the same and expect things to get better.
Last week, in what I would call a really progressive story, it was reported that the medical field has decided more progression could actually be made by declassifying some of these preliminary lesions as cancers and not aggressively treating them before studying their behavior over an extended period. Thousands of unnecessary surgeries, the story said, made things actually worse or caused death for some of those patients involved. This was especially true with some forms of thyroid nodules.
Research found that when these nodules are encapsulated and haven’t broken through their barriers, they should be considered noncancerous and watched. I know of friends who were diagnosed with what was termed “inoperable” cancers and sent home to die. Lifestyle changes like nutrition and exercise stunned their doctors when future scans and X-rays showed no signs of cancer. They are still in remission today, many years later.
To me, real progress is careful planning and going slowly and steadily in the direction you wish to go. Finding new ideas and new solutions is good. Overbuilding and the problems that come with excessive expectations can sometimes have repercussions, which can’t always be undone. I think this works no matter where we are in our lives.