THE CAMBO CANCER CHRONICLE

2000 words / 9 minute read As I wrote in Origins Part One , when I started out on the Escape leg of the Cancer Odyssey, I had no firm plans in place and nothing more than a vague picture in my mind of how things might look going forward. Despite that, I wasn’t making a total leap into the dark - I’ve done quite a bit of travelling around Asia and my best mate Dick had lived here in Sinville for much of the previous decade, during which time I came through once or twice for weeks or months at a time. I must say though, that neither of us expected to end up back in Sinville itself - that took us both by surprise - we were on a mission to find “Sinville 2”, but that could end up being a very long journey with no guarantee of such a place even existing at the end of it. So I’m glad we came back when we did - like lots of the quirks of this trip, the timing was fortunate and there is no question of me moving on again, I feel we’ve made the right choice staying here. All t...

Thought I would share this short but very interesting TED talk regarding breakthroughs in cancer drug delivery methods. These guys are using the body's immune system to target the tumour directly, rather than the slightly more scattergun approach of modern chemotherapy which, like a bloodthirsty warlord, indiscriminately kills everything in its path. In body cell terms, it's like an army unit massacring unarmed civilians in a warzone: Malignant enemy combatant or benign civilian just minding their own business? Makes no difference, kill 'em all! So whats most exciting about this for early-stage cancer patients is the real chance that by being so targeted and specific, we could significantly decrease the number of tumours that metastasize, therefore actually curing far more people before their cancer has the chance to spread. I've saved the link to the Resource Centre but you can also look at the video here .

900 words / 4 minute read Regular readers will be aware of the "time vortex" nature of Sinville. Dates have lost their meaning in this "Anti-Narnia" of perpetual weekend and constant summer. Granted, you have a time of year when it rains more, and a time of year when the temperature climbs, but you'll still be wearing your shorts no matter what. This, of course, means I pay no attention to such things, so I don't care what day it is normally and still have to work out what month it is sometimes. I've also not considered 2018 at all, with the one exception of a survival goal that I've written down here . It's these goals that can creep up on you suddenly, as I experienced twice over the last 24 hours, leaving me slightly weirded out. These were both triggered by reading about an imminent external event and thinking “Christ, already? That’s not supposed to happen for ages!”. Before you say it, I realise that normal people think that ...

1800 words / 9 minute read At no point during the (nearly) five years since my diagnosis have I let myself get sucked into comparing myself to others and thinking “why me?”. Had people not asked me whether it's something I think about, I doubt it would have even occurred to me to do so - even if it did, allowing that kind of mindset to take root is a sure-fire way to depression and the Victim Mentality if I've ever heard of one. I've also avoided hypochondria, but have felt the blowback from the many who do cry wolf or exaggerate their suffering to doctors in having to deal with the medics' scepticism when describing my symptoms (understandable though, given the rampant net-doc self-diagnoses they must hear every single day). Incidentally, I had to consciously reverse years of automatically answering the question "How are you?" with a cheery, "Fine, thank you!" when in hospital since, telepathy not having caught on as a diagnostic t...