It's not written as well as it could have been. It's not as scientific, in that it does not go point by point through alternative medicines and treatments, as it could have been. It's not very polite at times.
It's my story, and it's how I feel about those that would offer me alternative medicine in lieu of proper medical treatments for my cancer.
Read at your leisure. I hope you enjoy it. There's some great pictures of my spine in there, both before the surgery and after.
Quote:
I spent the next few months learning to walk again. I underwent 24 sessions of radiation therapy and several bone marrow biopsies, MRI scans, CT scans, bone surveys (which are essentially an x-ray of every part of you from several angles), and blood tests. You see, Solitary Plasmacytoma of Bone has a 50% chance of progressing to Multiple Myeloma in 10 years. Once that progression has happened, 37% of those diagnosed make it past 5 years. Currently, there is a second tumor forming in my right arm, but with the help of my hard working doctors, it was found early and will be treated.
Because of all the hard work of my nuerosurgeon, oncologist, nurses, and me I was walking again by February of 2005 without a cane and had returned to work at a new job. A job that now pays for medical insurance.
Without the scientific method none of my treatments would have been available to save me. 100 years ago I would have died as an infant, and 50 years ago I would have been paralyzed - if not dead. What I mean specifically is that without properly blinded studies, peer reviewed publication, the removal of emotion when gathering knowledge (removing confirmation bias and cherry picking of evidence), and the self correcting nature of scientific advancement there would have been absolutely no chance for me.
You see, medical researchers come up with a hypothesis based on observed phenomenon. They then devise a test in which they cannot influence the end result, and then publish their findings for their peers to critique. If they did something wrong, it is caught, and more testing is done. In fact, more testing is done anyway. This is called Replication. That means if you have devised a study showing how much more effectively and quickly your pet rabbit learns to foil bungling hunters by watching cartoons, then I will also replicate that test to ensure the results are genuine. If they’re not, we’re going to have conflicting outcomes, and more and more study will happen until we get to the bottom of the true nature of how rabbits foil hunters.
Let me boil it down: science sticks to the facts in a way that negates whether those testing have an opinion about their studies, and it ensures that if they do botch it it will be caught and corrected. This is the reality of how science works. It is also the foundation to every single one of the modern conveniences you and I take for granted every day. Cars, refrigerators, televisions, telephones, cell phones, computers, antibiotics, vaccines, satellites, airplanes, indoor plumbing, skyscrapers, shoe insoles, birth control, iPods, compact discs, DVDs...
The list can go on for pages and pages. Science is leading us to more comfortable, productive, healthy lives and careers. It allows us to do things that would seem to be magic to someone from 200 years ago.
Recently, an acquaintance responded to my chiding of the belief in ghosts and those that claim to talk to the dead “Ah the faith you all place in science. It doesn’t explain everything you know.” I simply responded to such an absurd statement by pointing out that science had fixed both my and her spines. She has rods and screws in her spine also, correcting a very severe case of scoliosis. She walks upright, has a straight spine and leads a healthy happy life because of science, and yet her attack on science was that it does not know everything.
Here’s a news flash: science admits that. It continues to progress precisely because of that. You see, explaining “everything” isn’t the goal. The goal is to continue to learn all we can on observed phenomenon with empirical data gathered from blinded study published openly for peer review and based on testable hypothesis.
Quite frankly to live your life in debt to science and then throw insults at science out of misunderstanding it is such an insult I don’t know where to begin. Which leads me to the point of this paper.
After I wrote this, I found out the cancer has spread to my arm. I will be talking with an oncologist on 3 January, 2006. We'll discuss treatment options then. In the meantime, it seems I have an excuse to miss TAM.