In a word, flatulence.

I'm not kidding, I have taken to speaking out of my arse. (It strikes me as funny considering they're treating my head... some sort of redirect perhaps?)

It's not a big deal, nothing a few apple/cinnamon candles placed in discreet locations around the house can't dissipate. But damn, the indignity of it, it's sort of distracting halfway through a sentence when you're actually managing to say something that doesn't make you sound like the moron you have become, you get *that* feeling. Brain power fades, butt power kicks in and that's you for a while.

It started on Saturday, probably in direct response to my last blog which basically pooh-poohed the side effects of treatment. My body probably just thought, easy huh? I'll give you easy!

BUT (take this body, cancer and all), it could be worse... I could have that concrete gut thing from chemo. So hah. Can't beat me yet, cancer. Give up, go home, be the loser you are. I have half of Yankee Candles Inc. in my house and it smells great, thanks.

You may have taken my health (although aside from cancer I'm so disgustingly healthy it's not even funny), but my dignity - and my bowels - will remain forever mine (if only in my own imagination).

You know, sometimes I get to the point where I hate some of my blogs. I read them back and think I should delete them. But then I read the comments that people leave for me and the e-mail in my inbox and realise that, yeah, this might just be doing what I'd always hoped since starting it. It was always my intention to try and help people to get through, you know?

I mean, it's not like I think I have anything terribly profound to say, there are lots of great bloggers out there, better than me by far. But my philosophy has always been to try and keep it real. Honest. I just feel that seeing someone be totally honest about their experience and how they're feeling, even if you don't agree with them, can help you find your own honesty, which can only be healthy. There's nothing more real than having cancer.

I just want to say to everyone, please don't be afraid. It totally blows, of course it does, but you can do this. You really can.

Quick rant: A bit of a contention with cancer literature and how cancer patients are treated:

Sometimes it's just too much freaking pressure.

Lemme explain where this is coming from... (and it's probably just me right now with one of my little foibles as I try to figure this crap out, flying by the seat of my pants)

I have always been a great believer in attitude. But lately whenever I read a magazine article or book about cancer and they start in telling you that you *must keep a positive attitude* to survive, I just start to feel completely exhausted.

We're pressed to be proactive, stay positive, blah blah blah. Eat grapes and drink water, that'll cure your cancer. If you want to get better badly enough you can and will. Most oncologists would never take chemo if they got cancer (easy to say when it's not eating you alive, huh?) OR prescribe it for their families.

I started reading a magazine Jim had picked up for free at the rad/onc place last week and got a bit angry to be honest. Just leave me the hell alone. Please don't tell me at this point in my life that pretending to be happy will save me. Give me a little credit here. I used to be intelligent.

Maybe.... just maybe.... at this point I want to be able to just be sick and have my doctor take care of me.

Maybe I don't have the incessant energy for positive rhetoric that I used to.

Maybe all the ex-spurts should just think about writing books about how cancer REALLY is, or (better yet) just shut the hell up and watch the damn paint dry for a bit.

It doesn't help.

We don't need to be browbeaten by some second-rate author who *might* have had cancer, and has managed to sell a few books on Amazon.com. That's not helping. Cancer literature has become huge business. But any idiot can write a book. If it's a subject that people want to know about, it'll sell. However, how do we judge the validity of what we're reading in these books?

Has anyone ever thought this? What makes these authors right? Or do we just take what we want from the subject matter and forget the rest?

OR are they just giving people what they want? The *secret* to surviving cancer... Do we feed this media frenzy of "it's all about having the right attitude"? We all want to survive and maybe it's all just a coping mechanism. I'm good at those myself, but mine come more from black humor and - sometimes - bitter cynicism. Whatever gets you through the day, right? Is it a feel-good thing though? The message written in the cancer-media? How real is it?

Witch doctor magic? Snake oil? Cancer is a gift.

Anyway, to my mind, REAL positivity is this: Refusing to feel sorry for yourself.

I won't pretend to be happy with my condition. That's so not going to happen. But I refuse to feel sorry for myself here. Bad as it is, there are others who have it harder and who are probably handling it far better.

I won't feel sorry for myself. Stuff happens. I'm not speshul (well not in THAT way).

Going through every day of your life dealing with treatment and drugs and all of this and still being able to acknowledge that you don't feel as bad as you should and that today is a good day is far more positive than trying to maintain the 'happy' that the experts would browbeat you into believing is a positive attitude in their dumbass little books and magazines.

So, that's what I think. Feel free to disagree.

And anyway, you know the most positive thing of all? That I was able to have this little rant! It's a poke in the eye to cancer that I am able to sit here and bad-mouth it (cancer is a skanky beotch), in my opinion.

And yes, I'm going to read this later and hate it too.

And I'll still be farting.

I'll try to keep this next part short because it's a little more serious. But I came to a bit of a realisation yesterday about my condition. I think there might be a hormonal aspect to what's happening to me.

My periods have been weird ever since being diagnosed as stage IV. I put it down to the chemo and just dealt with it. But yesterday I started thinking back over the past few months and realised that there might be more to it than that.

Back when I was having my liver radiation in Rochester, that last week of treatment I developed horrendous headaches and started vomiting. I probably wrote on here that I was either having side effects that I had so far avoided, or stomach flu. But this happened/started on the first day of my period.

Of course, the next weeks passed and I didn't feel great, which I expected because I was recovering from radiation to my gut. But the next period, first day I had morning headaches and vomiting. I was convinced that by then it was stomach flu, not really taking into consideration the fact that it had again happened with my period (or maybe just ignoring it).

I never really felt better after that. That was the period of time when I slipped very fast with my general cognitive abilities, personality changes, ability to function. I mean I went fast. To the point where I didn't know myself.

Now this last time, where I was having the seizures and taken to the hospital, it was the first day of my period. I woke up that morning with horrible vomiting and headache and I think I was thinking that maybe this is how I'm going to get at my time of the month since chemo. But the day went downhill fast. At that point in my life I was completely unable to help myself and I must have seemed somewhat normal in spite of everything because nobody seemed to notice that I was no longer there.

It's only now that I'm starting to really think on this and wonder if there's some sort of connection here.

My first visit with this new radiation oncologist was very enlightening. He showed me about a patient of his who 8 years ago had a huge gliboblastoma along with copius seeding of smaller tumors in her brain. He told me that my head looked like the images he showed me of hers, but that I had three (smaller) large tumors (ugh horrible grammar) and that statistics say a 3 month survival.

Then he told me that the lady in the article was still alive 8 years later after having the same treatment he's doing for me.

What interests me in this is that he told me she's been taking Tamoxifen (Tamoxifen is an antiestrogen. Antiestrogens bind to estrogen receptor site on cancer cells thus blocking estrogen from going into the cancer cell. This interferes with cell growth and eventually leads to cell death.) since. I never realised before that it's a treatment for brain tumors. Aparently, gliboblastoma is extremely resistent to treatment, followed closely (of course) by melanoma in which Tamoxifen has been shown to work too.

So last night I did some research and found some interesting articles about the use of Tamoxifen in brain tumor patients which showed a trend of prolonged survival in many. I'd post the links, but blogger is behaving like an arse today. I'll try to do so later.

I'm not a doctor or any sort of expert, although I do know my body. But what if I'm right about this hormonal thing with me? How can I not be? It seems so obvious now. I plan on speaking with the doctor about it on Thursday when I see him. It might not mean anything, but what if it does? What if there's a way to increase my chances of survival here? Also, this doctor is so on the ball that I'm sort of expecting him to mention Tamox at some point anyway, but want to let him know my thoughts on what's happening to my body. Good to be totally on the same page in my opinion.

At the very least this line of thought puts me in a better place than I was two weeks ago. We must take advantage of every opportunity to get on top of this... monster.

This is where I am now.

Any information/similar experiences, etc, with melanoma/hormone therapy, anyone who knows anything about this who can share or point me towards more information, it will be much appreciated.

Okay, that's about the linit of my intellect, back to the flatulence.