Don't panic

Today, my employer sent an email to everyone in the company with safety instructions related to the new coronavirus, which arrived in Switzerland two days ago.  Unfortunately, the email didn’t share its title with this post.  There was some sensible advice, such as washing hands instead of shaking them and not sneezing into colleagues’ faces, but the email also handed out a worldwide travel ban until the middle of March.  What is up with this?  As I don’t see the point of arguing with those responsible for them about rules that...

Seeing positive

This blog is already more than fifty posts old, but it’s not anywhere near its end.  I’m in for the long haul, until the cancer has been beaten and I can walk free.  I can imagine no other outcome.  With my eye on the distance, I sometimes forget to cherish the small steps.  This is not good.  A wise man once said not to “forget to celebrate the small wins along the way”, and this wasn’t even all that long ago.  So here...

Three to go

I had my fourth-to-last chemo session today.  The remaining three are already planned.  The two coming ones on Mondays two weeks apart, and the last one on a Friday with a slightly shorter recovery period.  Why this nonsense, you might ask.  I will have to go to the hospital on a Sunday to have the pump removed.  Do I not have anything better to do on a Sunday?  I might, but the next day I’m scheduled to fly to San Francisco...

Out in the snow

At least one reader of this blog will probably not be surprised that my resolve to stay away from the cold didn’t last long.  It wore off over the two days that followed my initial excursion into the snow.  By Wednesday afternoon, I was ready to rent a board.  Flucha encouraged me in this change of mind.  “How bad can it be?”, she asked.  “Get a three-hour-lift ticket and have some fun.  Your hands are going to survive.”This sounded sensible enough.  I almost walked down to the one sports store plus snow gear...

Time out

From the decadence of an upscale family resort in a remote corner of the Swiss Alps, I thought I would have plenty of time to read and blog.  I brought two books – one of them the thousand pages of Armenian resistance to slaughter by the Turks at Musa Dagh – an Economist and countless scientific papers on my laptop.  The resort offers supervised activities from morning till late and plenty to do and discover for the kids.  One day...

Good news

Maybe I was a little too blasé the other day when receiving the results from the latest CT.  Of course I didn’t expect bad news.  I’ve got bad news to last me a lifetime.  I don’t need any more.  But not everything that isn’t bad news is no news, as was the tag I attached to the previous post.Having a clean peritoneum is unambiguously good news and should be celebrated as such.  When I started out with chemotherapy, one of the things the oncologists warned me about was that metastases in the peritoneum tend to be resistant...

Summing up

Yesterday I got what might be the last doctor’s bill from last year.  It wasn’t something I had to pay.  The hospital had sent the bill straight to the insurance company, which had paid for it.  The document I received simply alerted me to the fact, and charged me a bit over 100 francs for the pleasure of staying in the hospital for seven nights.  The bill was for my hemicolectomy.  The total was around 8,000 francs.The hospital bills around my cancer add up to nearly 37,000 francs.  I had to cover 3,400 francs in...

Different things

On Thursday I got my third CT scan in less than half a year.  I didn’t receive loyalty benefits, but at least I knew what to expect.  The basic process goes like this.You’re invited into a radiation-safe room with the machine, a big white torus.  You take off some clothes and remove everything made of metal, and lie down on a narrow bed.  The radiographer connects a pump to one of your veins to inject the contrast agents when the scan is taken.  She then leaves the room to start remote-control operation.  The bed slides...