The book sounds intriguing. Jonathan has an inspired attitude toward his diagnosis. Thank you! I rarely hear much about Multiple Myeloma, but I am overly familiar with it as someone diagnosed with Stage IV MM back in 2003. I called it "My Experiment" and it furthered my understanding of the mysteries of life. Expecting to be facing the last couple years of my life at age 51, instead, I am here at 73 having had a twenty-year remission. Thank you for this informative conversation. Uncertainty is quite reliable.
The terminology here is confusing. The Greek root “myel-” means marrow, but it is variously used for bone marrow as well as the spinal cord (which was presumably seen as the “marrow” of the spine (such that an infection of the spinal cord is transverse myelitis), as well as the white fatty cells that surround nerves in the spinal cord and the brain (the myelin sheath). Toxin exposure strikes me as a likely explanation for a hematologic malignancy at a young age, but these things are all probabilistic. Every now and then, a young healthy person just gets a terrible illness for no obvious reason. If it’s not the toxin exposure, the answer could literally be that one UV ray from the sun just hit precisely the wrong strand of DNA at precisely the wrong angle. These risks accumulate over a lifetime but they are never zero. It is certainly wise to seek medical evaluation when you have symptoms that don’t make sense.
Personally, I have a chronic hip flexor strain that has been bothering me for years, which I’m pretty sure is not cancer. However, one of the things I remember from medical school is when a patient was getting a lung node biopsied and it was not apparently cancerous, my thought was to tell the patient that they didn’t have cancer, to which the surgeon responded “I never tell anyone they don’t have cancer”. Because who knows, maybe they have some other cancer somewhere else, or maybe the microscope is looking at the one set of healthy cells left in that node, etc.
This whole notion of uncertainty intolerance I think is very applicable to the relationship context.
The book sounds intriguing. Jonathan has an inspired attitude toward his diagnosis. Thank you! I rarely hear much about Multiple Myeloma, but I am overly familiar with it as someone diagnosed with Stage IV MM back in 2003. I called it "My Experiment" and it furthered my understanding of the mysteries of life. Expecting to be facing the last couple years of my life at age 51, instead, I am here at 73 having had a twenty-year remission. Thank you for this informative conversation. Uncertainty is quite reliable.
Great episode. Wishing Jonathan the best.
The terminology here is confusing. The Greek root “myel-” means marrow, but it is variously used for bone marrow as well as the spinal cord (which was presumably seen as the “marrow” of the spine (such that an infection of the spinal cord is transverse myelitis), as well as the white fatty cells that surround nerves in the spinal cord and the brain (the myelin sheath). Toxin exposure strikes me as a likely explanation for a hematologic malignancy at a young age, but these things are all probabilistic. Every now and then, a young healthy person just gets a terrible illness for no obvious reason. If it’s not the toxin exposure, the answer could literally be that one UV ray from the sun just hit precisely the wrong strand of DNA at precisely the wrong angle. These risks accumulate over a lifetime but they are never zero. It is certainly wise to seek medical evaluation when you have symptoms that don’t make sense.
Personally, I have a chronic hip flexor strain that has been bothering me for years, which I’m pretty sure is not cancer. However, one of the things I remember from medical school is when a patient was getting a lung node biopsied and it was not apparently cancerous, my thought was to tell the patient that they didn’t have cancer, to which the surgeon responded “I never tell anyone they don’t have cancer”. Because who knows, maybe they have some other cancer somewhere else, or maybe the microscope is looking at the one set of healthy cells left in that node, etc.
This whole notion of uncertainty intolerance I think is very applicable to the relationship context.
The last paragraph of A River Runs Through It is pure poetry. Break the lines differently and it is a poem. So worth reading.
Great interview. Best to Mr. Gluck and his fam. I need to read his book!
lol - the "P word"
Thanks for the introduction to Kate Sweeney's work.
I would also like to know what was going through Dee Dee's head after the call from the therapist.
My experience has been that the better the service you're getting in the hospital, the worse off you are...