Re: My Last Trip as a CO Platinum Elite (a Brief Recap)

AES wrote:
> In article <1134761792.198653.306900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> "Reef Fish" <Large_Nassau_Grouper@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > a voluntary choice on our part. Because my wife was ill with
> > chemotherapy treatment from March through early September,
> > we had flown CO only once (to LAX) until October, so that it
>
> Very sorry to hear this, but being in a similar situation at present
> will risk asking: Do you happen to have obtained any solid or detailed
> information of risks of lymphodema from flying, post-surgery and post
> chemo? (It's said to be a risk, but detailed studies or information as
> to actual level of risk seems to be hard to come by.)
>
> Email reply OK if you prefer.

I seldom ever email a reply on anything I post in a public forum. In
this case, since I've known so many people who have had chemo-
therapy, from word of mouth from friends and relatives when they
learned that my wife had to undergo one, I think it's important to
respond to questions such as yours, as well as volunteer other
relevant info I've learned this year. The information I share here
with you will be of interest to many others who have friends and
relatives who have undergone or undergoing chemo treatments.
That's what NEWSGROUPS are: for sharing info and discussions.


First of all, one always-available source for USEFUL information
about just any subject is the Google WEB section. The only
trouble is that most of the time you get TOO MANY references,
and have to pare down to a manageable few to read and THEN
have to judge on their credibility and trustworthy of the info found.

I did a Google WEB search with the keywords (relating to your
question):

"risk of flying post chemotherapy"

and promptly (in 0.23 second) got 233,000 hits. Most of the
top ones are very relevant to your question, but you would be
spending the rest of your life reading even a small portion of
the 233,000.

The most often mentioned "post" effect is DVT (Deep Vein
Thrombosis), and there is even an early hit that gives one a
"calculator" for the risk of DVT:

http://www.fleetstreetclinic.com/ip1.php?menu=1&sub_menu=4&sub_id=52

But I am always skeptical and suspicious of these TV game
show or tabloid newspaper type of over-simplified to mis-info
on such serious medical questions which not only depend on
SPECIFIC treatment to SPECIFIC types of cancer, but also
depends very heavily on SPECIFIC patients!

So, even if you have time to read all 200,000 web pages, the
questions should always be addressed to the PHYSICIANS
who are familiar with the case and history of the particular
PATIENT.

Having given the above disclaimer, let me first give you some
some fairly general medically known and uncontroversial
results that apply to most chemo patients:

1. Only lymphoma types of cancer are treatable by chemo.
And chemotherapy is sometimes the ONLY possible
treatment (because of the area affected may not be possible,
or extremely difficult or dangerous, for surgical removal).

2. The frequency of chemo treatments is usually once
every three weeks, with very different medication for
different types of lymphoma, and patients react very
differently -- ALL bad, and some much worse than
others, because as it had been said by some phama-
cists and physicians to me that the TREATMENT is
almost worse than the ILL -- chemo is known to cause
permanent damage to parts of the human organs. But
a cancer patient often had no choice but to take the
very undesirable treatments, and suffer whatever main
and side effects the treatment causes, other than the
expectation that they may "cure".

Sidebar: Before I was given a glimpse of the reality and
horrible treatment of chemotherapy, I could only relate it
to the treatment of "heart worms" in dogs -- as our Great
Dane was unfortunate to have had it when young: the
treatment is to give as much of the medication (POISON)
that would NOT kill the dog, but kill the worms in its heart.
I came to learn that chemo treatment is much WORSE to
humans than heart-worm treatments to dogs. :-(

3. My sister went through only 6 sessions (or 4 months)
of chemo (last year) for her breast cancer. She suffered
more for her treatment than most people I knew. She
was sick and couldn't eat and threw up for most of the
two weeks after each chemo session; and when she
felt better the 3rd week, the treatment and suffering
would repeat itself again! My wife's lymphoma was in
a diffuse area in the abdomen and required 8 treatments.
She fared much better than my sister did. She did not
become ill after each treatment and except for fatigue
and other expected minor effects, was almost NORMAL
the first few months. (She lost so much of her hair the
first two weeks that she decided to ask me to give her
the make-over to be Yul Brenner -- and I obliged. :-)
But that was easily remedied by a ready-made wig.

Toward the end of the 6-month treatment period, her
body's natural defence to infection must have been so
worn down by the treatment that after taking my sister
to the Aquarium on her visit, (chemo patients are
supposed to avoid all CROWDED places), she came
down with a mild case of pneumonia and did not leave
the house for two weeks for fear of catching anything
worse, while she was under constant monitoring of her
blood counts, and other signs of infection. She had to
monitor her body temperature every 4 hours, and a
temp exceeding 101 degrees is considered a life-
threatening condition caused by infection!

4. Her treatment was diagnosed by her surgeon as well as
two other lymphoma specialists to be a "complete success"
(i.e., with no sign of any trace of active cancer after
extensive CAT scans and other tests. Nevertheless, the
prognosis is that such cancer MAY return within TWO
years -- and for said reason, she was advised not to
remove the surgically implanted "port" (a golf ball sized
implant) for chemo injection as well as drawing of blood,
even though her post treatment showed a complete
recovery.

But to get to the KEY question of yours about FLYING and
its risk, all of the physicians knew that we travel extensively
and flew over 100,000 miles every year, but NONE mentioned
anything about the risk of FLYING, nor has my sister, who
is a medical doctor herself, who had undergone the chemo
treatment said anything about the risk of flying. So, as far
as we are concerned, we live our life to the FULLEST, and
firmly believe in the old saw, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!

Thus, we resume our cruising and flying two months AFTER
the completion of her 6-month treatment, and as long as she
enjoy the travel and have no adverse effects of any kind
(actually I sometimes get tired more easily than she does
now :-)), because she has the perfect 115 lb body for her
size while I carry an extra 20 lb more than nature intended
for my body to carry. In short, our lives are back to normal,
as far as it is possible for "normal" to be, at this time, and
she is under the regular care of a team of physicians and
specialists that we are not losing any sleep on WHAT may
happen a year or 10 from now, and simply live and let live,
to the best of our ability.

It is ironic that there were SEVERAL scums of the earth in
newsgroups, one LawrencePearl <fake name> in rec.travel.air,
one *** Goldhaber in rec.travel.cruises and a couple others
of their ilk, who had NOTHING to contribute in any of those
newsgroups and yet who made a pest of themselves by
harping on the unfortunate illness and treatment my WIFE
had, on the worst of all excuses that I had made a typo
error of calling her treatment "chomo" ONCE, instead of
"chemo" or "chemotherapy" which I had used all other times
because there is nothing to be ashamed of for being ILL and
had to undergo treatments.

But scumbags in newsgroups always find ways to make a
pest of themselves, not on just gratuitous flames, but on
the ILLNESS of the wife of a poster! They are the ones
who need treatment for their permanently DEFECTIVE
personality, and their psychopathic behavior.

Meanwhile, we are practicing what had been said best,

"I wish to live my life deliberately, to front the essential facts
of life; to suck the very marrow of life and see if I can learn what
it has to teach, and not, when it comes my time to die, discover
that I have not lived." by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

So, in a year in which my wife's illness and chemo treatments
confined us to remain at home for 7 months, we had done
4 cruises in January and February; 3 cruises since September
and flown as often as we had time to do the rest of our travels
-- flame away, LawrencePearl, Greg Morrow, and any other
lifeless morons in this newsgroup. :-)

As I had said to some of the sickies like LawrencePearl, "you
can live to be 1000 years old and you will NEVER have seen
or done as much as I have already! Just keep your whining
to YOURSELF instead of polluting newsgroups which are
meant for DISCUSSIONS related to TRAVEL or other travel
related topics".

To AES, and whomever may have learned something useful
from the experience my wife had relative to chemo therapy
and travel, and other sources in Google's WEB's 200,000+
pages, I wish you and yours well in NOT having the
unfortunate illness OR treatment of chemotherapy.

-- Bob.

.