Yesterday I came home with a headache that felt as if someone were playing pinball inside my brain. Pain was bouncing back and forth within my skull. I don’t believe in headaches, but this one was real. I dropped onto my bed for an hour and a bit but then had to provide the childrens’ pre-bed routine. Flucha does most, but I’m reading books and brushing teeth. I wasn’t in a good mood, and the children noticed it. Fasting isn’t pleasant, and when I fast, I’m far from pleasant. An hour or so later, the pain had subsided and I could finish some work that had accumulated because I arrived in the office fairly late. The girl is in a summer camp, which doesn’t start too early in the morning, and it had been my turn to take her there.
It is beyond me how some people do even longer fasting cycles. I've just read a fairly old case study of ten cancer patients that fasted prior to and/or following chemotherapy for between 48-140 hours and 5-56 hours. One crazy motherfucker fasted for 140 hours before the therapy and for 40 hours afterwards This is more than a week. If this is what stands between me and the cancer, the cancer wins. This is absolutely not compatible with my fortnightly chemo sessions. How would I ever regain the weight lost during fasting.
Today at the hospital, my doctor told me that she was leaving. Her training requires rotations in different hospitals. It’s bad news to lose someone who’s familiar with my case. The good news is that she suggested a more senior doctor to take over my case. This chap not only shares my first name but also my passion for fasting. He’s the guy who said he'd fast himself if he had cancer. I will be able to discuss potential changes to my fasting regime with him. The hard-core woman who did 180 hours of fasting fasted for around the first and fourth sessions only and ate in between. This is an option.
Chemotherapy continues not to do any damage to me. I will soon find out whether it does damage to the cancer. My doctor spoke of another PET-CT scan this month already. She must be curious to find out before she’s leaving whether the fasting has a positive effect. I’m less curious. If the results show less cancerous growth, I’d be stoked and enthusiastic to continue what I’ve been doing. If the results are negative, I’d be devastated. I don’t know where I’d find the strength to continue with this.
My trepidation when faced with a scenario of a potential positive result and a negative result with the same probability is known as loss aversion. On my bookshelf, Daniel Kahneman and Rolf Dobelli have written about this. In people’s minds, potential losses loom larger than gains. This is of course irrational. I should thus have no worries about the PET-CT scan where, in the absence of other information, a positive result is just as likely as a negative. The expectation value is zero. Bring it on!
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