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Bertram31.com General Bulletin Board
One For The New England Journal of Medicine
Posted By: mike ohlstein
Date: Saturday, 27 May 2006, at 9:25 a.m.
Some things are so strange.......so absurd......that if you saw them in a 'made for TV' movie you'd say 'bullsh*t, that just couldn't happen'.....and most of the time, you'd be right. In fact, you'd probably be right all of the time.
Except this time.
I'm going to tell you a story that is stranger than fiction. So strange, in fact.....that you simply won't believe that it's true. Or that it could possibly be true. I'm going to tell you a story about a guy who was marched up in front of the firing squad. He was blindfolded. The commander issues the order "READY!"......"AIM"......."FIRE!!!!".
The guns all go off. The sound is deafening. Smoke fills the air.
And in an instant of total disbelief......this guy is left standing there.......not quite understanding why he doesn't feel any pain.
Could they all have missed....he wonders.....?
Apparently so.
I do not now........nor have I ever.......had cancer.
Huh? What was that? Did you just say that you don't have cancer?
The pathology report came back last evening. One lobe of lung, pieces of two ribs, and a slew of lymph nodes later.....there is no trace of carcinoma in...or out...of my body.
You might wonder how that could be. Frankly, I find myself wondering the same thing. My mothers father was killed by adenocarcinoma at age 68. http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/9339/24402.html My mother was killed by adenocarcinoma at age 54. I had a biopsy (fine needle aspiration) done on the tumor in my lung which returned a finding of adenocarcinoma from not one.....but two separate labs.....one in Westchester and the other at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The false positive rate on this particular procedure is approximately 0.7%. That makes the probability of two false positives about .49%, or about one in two hundred. A PET scan showed that the tumor had an SUV index of 5.0 (for you doctors)......indicative of adenocarcinoma. It's appearance and location smacked of adenocarcinoma. The surgeon who held the tumor in his hand commented that it looked like cancer to him.....and he has seen thousands of them. The lab that did the surgical pathology ran tests on samples from each item that was resected several times.....because frankly......they were confused. Memorial Sloan-Kettering is a cancer center. They treat cancer patients. They are the premier cancer treatment facility in the world. How could it be that there's no cancer in any of this stuff...?
Fellas.......it's a miracle. Or something like that.....
I don't have cancer. Never did. I had a hell-of-a whompin' infection...but no fever or elevated white cell count.... Whatever it was...was about to destroy the lower lobe of the same lung......and would have....if we didn't take it out. In no way, did I have an unnecessary surgery.....
But I don't have cancer. No chemo, thanks for playing......you're done. Cured.
From the beginning of this ordeal back in early April, I told every doctor that I saw........from my primary care guy to the guy at Sloan, the same thing.
I said, "Doc.....when I look in the mirror, I don't see a guy with cancer".
They each responded the exact same way by saying, "Neither do I".
And we were all right.
And apparently......we're going to be alright.
Boys.......I'll see you in Panama
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