Archives of The Cheerful Oncologist, Volume 2

I’ve managed to knock my new blog site off of the ScienceBlogs main menu. Is this akin to letting a toddler dust off the Hummels resting peacefully on the highest shelf of the bookcase?

This is just another grim reminder of the vas deferens between the wired age and us baby boomers, who look at an I-Pod with the same facial expression Grandma had when she stood in front of her new dishwashing machine, as flabbergasted as a skunk in a perfume factory.

I do have a new post over there, entitled “Look Backward in Anger.”

Thanks for moving over to the new site, where the writing will continue to entertain, if not reverse the aging process itself.

UPDATE: It looks like I’m back on the ScienceBlogs main menu! Hip Hip Hooray!

Oh, Lordy, what have I gotten myself into?

I am excited to join the distinguished bloggers at ScienceBlogs as their resident sage and crazy-uncle-in-the-attic.

All new posts can be found at this site: http://scienceblogs.com/thecheerfuloncologist/

This is a wonderful opportunity for me to display an extremely refined level of incompetence as I try to unravel the Byzantine mysteries of working with Movable Type. One must remember that when I was in computer classes in college we fed a stack of cards into some machine that looked like a wood-chipper and then spit out a card that announced that yes, we had indeed successfully recorded the time and date for all posterity.

Wish me luck…and come on over for more shenanigans.

P. S. I apologize for the messy look of the new blogsite. I’m working on it.

“Big Pharma expected to dominate key cancer meeting” screams the headline tonight.

Hey, I thought Big Pharma was our enemy - out to ruin us average Joes with their secret plans to vacuum up all the money in this country. What gives?

It appears that three new treatments against metastatic renal cell carcinoma, all developed by Big Pharma (as compared to teensy-weensy biotech bodegas) are getting publicity at the annual ASCO meeting, where the latest research results are presented urbi et orbi. The three are:

1. Sutent (sunitinib), an oral targeted therapy

2. Nexavar (sorafenib), another oral targeted therapy (Oops! According to the news in this link Wall Street has nixed Nexavar for announcing negligible survival benefits compared with that ancient bane of alchemists known as placebo. Oh well - that’s life in a capitalist economy!)

3. temsirolimus (no brand name yet), an intravenous targeted agent

I’m not certain what is more thrilling about these results (Hey, I’m an oncologist. We hyperventilate over stuff like this) - the fact that we now finally have some new weapons against kidney cancer, a tumor that has been totally resistant to all chemotherapy, or the fact that these new targeted treatments (as well as others) will now be tested in patients with other more common tumors such as lung, breast and colon cancer.

We live in exciting times, don’t we? What will they come up with next?

Is this a club that I am not allowed to become a member of?

Individuals who “downplay the fear, anger or other negative emotions” found in recalling memories of sad or unpleasant events may improve their overall mental health.

Two studies from Concordia University in Montreal suggest that “healthy individuals work to build a positive narrative identity that will yield an overall optimistic tone to the most important recalled events from their lives.”

When asked to describe their emotions about both positive and negative events that occurred in the past, subjects who “reflected on positive events, like a dating relationship or marriage, recreation, or attaining a personal goal, they reported feeling just as happy as they had felt at the time of the event, as well as similarly intense feelings of love and pride. Again, however, they also reported feeling less anger, embarrassment, guilt and other negative emotions than they had initially felt.”

Oh, I get it - those of us who gloss over or conveniently discredit the pain, embarrassment, anguish or humiliation of past life events best described as “worthy of immediate incineration” are not only happier but have higher self-esteem. As one of the study authors states:

“Mental health is maintained or improved by people’s attempts to make sense of their life experiences.”

Oooh…goody goody gum drops! So on top of everything else I’ve been doing wrong ever since the first issue of Psychology Today hit the stands, now in order to save my soul I must transform any unhappy memories of loss, failure, unintended spittle, off-key warbling, trousers worn a tad too high in the waist, less than stellar parallel parking and generalized love life incompetence into phony remembrances of

More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,

Give me a break! I believe that honestly recalling sad times for what they truly were conditions the mind and spirit to better accept the vicissitudes of life and lays a foundation of appreciation of the many blessings that dangle before us like sweet treasures of the Sugar-Plum tree, if we would just open our eyes and acknowledge them.

Well, this is just one oncologist’s opinion, but if I’m wrong and I am forced to train my mind to whitewash all painful memories in order to maintain my cheerful disposition I’m going to have some difficulty turning the events of April 9th, 1976 into a “positive narrative identity.” Even if Newton, Einstein, Hawking and Mr. Spock huddled around the chalkboard they could not compute an equation that would have saved me from unintentionally entertaining my fellow calculus classmates that afternoon with a brief but indelible impression of a black rhinoceros extracting his foot from a Congolese mud wallow.*

There are some memories that defy extinction, both good and bad. One shouldn’t be punished by the psychology nannies if one chooses to live in harmony with the Janus-faced past.

*With apologies to P. G. Wodehouse