What I learned from Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty and Alice. From Through the Looking-Glass. Illustration by John Tenniel.

The wall represents pride and as the saying goes, pride comes before the fall. The anthropomorphic egg represents how fragile life really is. We are only a few breaths away from eternity. All of the king's horses and all the king's men represents all of the medical practitioners. Here is my rewritten version of this nursery rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty ran on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
And all the doctors and all the nurses
couldn't put Humpty together again


Humpty Dumpty did not despair
Humpty Dumpty fell into prayer
All of Gods grace, and so much faith
helped put Humpty back together again.

After chemotherapy, the tumor had receded to a much smaller size and shape. I had blood tests every few weeks at first and then the interval went to 6 weeks. The surgeon delayed the surgery to consult with other oncologists and surgeons at a conference. He told us that my case was unusual and that the indicators didn't seem to be dropping as fast as the clinical model he consulted said it should.

One  of the concerns I have with medical practice is the rigid adherence to following a clinical model. They rely on clinical trials performed previously and follow a treatment plan that matches the model. The oncologist was troubled when I did anything that varied from their treatment plan. For example, when my white blood cell counts (neutrophils) dropped too low, treatment would be delayed. There was a high risk of infection. One treatment option to bring the white blood cell count back up was to receive a blood transfusion. I didn't want a blood transfusion. I was afraid that I might get something more than some more white blood cells. I know the risk was low. I told the oncologist that I was going to consume 4-8 TBS of chlorophyll per day. He didn't know what chlorophyll was or the benefits of chlorophyll. The oncologist was worried that this might interfere with the chemotherapy treatment. Chlorophyll is why plants are green. Chlorophyll is what absorbs energy from the sun to facilitate photosynthesis in plants. chlorophyll is similar in composition to that of human blood, with one difference; the central atom in chlorophyll is magnesium, while iron is central in human blood. I believed that chlorophyll would help stimulate the bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. It seemed to work since over a weekend, I would recover sufficiently to continue treatment.

The treatment plan didn't address some of the other issues that had arisen. I had terrible back pain. I complained of this pain everyone but no one offered any explanation and frankly, I don't think they even cared. Each practitioner looks at the same CT scan and only sees what is relevant to them. It annoyed me that I had to go see an Orthopedic surgeon to be told that the Lumbar 1 and 2 vertebrae had lost height, one had lost 75% and the other 50%. I was flabbergasted and upset that several surgeons, oncologists, and others had failed to mention that fact. They simply didn't really care that I was in severe pain because of a condition unrelated to the cancer. But wait, the condition was caused by the tumor crushing the vertebrae and the chemotherapy had made it worse. My shoulders were rounding and I couldn't stand up straight. My arms and shoulders were a mess. It was getting to be difficult to walk.

Humpty Dumpty was not being put together again.