Okey-dokey, this is going to end up a lengthy bit of documentation at my end and I am only posting in case something can help somebody else. Especially, as my situation has taken some interesting turns and twists and --- well, it has been quite something.
Let's get some basics out of the way. I live in Japan. I am being treated in Japan. I am 70 years of age.
So 2017 was when I was found, by another medical facility working on me for skin trouble, to have the cancer bug. From the reaction of the skin doctor when he realized what was going on he seemed to think that maybe they should have thought about that possibility before it got to the stage it was with lymph nodes all swollen and stuff. I had been going through a very strange skin problem for about three years and it really had a number of doctors in three different medical facilities quite perplexed. It was a pretty nasty bit of business. Connection with the cancer? No way to know for sure. And once the cancer was discovered it didn't matter, anyway.
And before the skin trouble I had one period of some very strange trouble with my neck and some serious pain trouble and that one also had the doctors perplexed and they weren't sure what was going on. I roughly remember that being shortly before the skin trouble started. The neck and pain trouble went away by itself, which also surprised the medical professionals. But since then we have noticed my system has a tendency to do that --- just fix something out of the blue and nobody really knows why it happened.
Up to when that neck and pain trouble started I had been a rather healthy type and very involved in organized sports up into my 50s. And I mean, even in my 50s I was playing semi-pro softball in an International League for a company team. I had played on some Japanese teams before that. I have a long history of involvement in TaeKwonDo. I suppose we could state I was a professional as for a time I did it as an instructor for the U.S. government while on active duty. In fact, I and a few others were removed from Olympic trials because of that. They ruled we were not in the right status. Anyway, that is just some background on physical activity, except for one probably important point --- I used to be in aviation. Choppers for the U.S. Army. There were some medical problems many years ago due to that activity, but recovery went okay. There has recently been some discussion about vibration levels being a problem for some, but that really was a long time ago. Still, it seems it should be added here.
That reference to TaeKwonDo is important now because of my spine, but details about that can wait.
In fact, I need to pause here and pick up on this when next I log into the community. Like I wrote, this is a long story to be putting into a document, or this online community, so I'll be doing it in parts. I keep good logs of all that's been going on, but have never written the whole thing out like I will do here.
Plus some folks might find some interesting comparisons to how Japanese medical professionals compare to those in other nations/cultures.
But I do have to add one thing, I really don't like the way nurses are treated in this country. There is some cultural aspects to that, but that doesn't make it right. The nurses are not treated with proper respect by both doctors and male patients. I obviously don't know how they are treated by female patients, except what I might have seen when outside of my ward or sometimes my room. And the aggressive relapse I had in 2021 meant I was in the hospital for almost 6 months, lasting into 2022. Except for some three-day pass type situations to take care of personal matters I was living in the hospital. I reckon the nurse aspect I have just touched on probably should be written about in another forum, yes? Just wanted to get that out. I have a lot more to cover on that one. though.
Okay, how about a break. It is half past midnight here right now.
Hi TG_CT and a very warm welcome to the online community which I hope you'll find is both an informative and supportive place to be.
Thanks very much for taking the time to put down in writing your observations. You might also want to join and post in the non-Hodgkin lymphoma group as you'll then connect directly with people who have had the same type of cancer as you.
If you want to do this, just click on the link I've created and, once you've joined, you can start a new post in the same way as you did here, and also join in with existing conversations by clicking on reply.
You might also be interested in the blogs section of the online community and the link I've created will take you there if you want to take a look.
x
"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
