Cancer Sucks

Guess what I found out. People like me, who have a history of lymphoma or leukemia, cannot have the shingles vaccine. Super! So, shingles may be in my future. I usually say that if it ain't cancer, it ain't a big deal. Well my mom got shingles. It was excrutiating pain like she'd never felt before. I'll just hope they come up with a better treatment in the next several years.

(While they're at it, maybe they'll develop something less invasive than a colonoscopy before I'm 50 as well. Not looking forward to that.)

My friends who can get the vaccine, you better get it! If you don't, and you get shingles, I'll visit your bedside just to stare at you and shake my head.

I won't say "I told you so" out loud.

Speaking of cancer, my uncle Rob just found out he probably has kidney cancer. Ugh. I can't believe it. That's three out of five siblings. My uncle John had genetic testing when he was diagnosed after my mom. They determined that they did not have Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome, a rare, but the most common genetic issue in families who present with multiple cases of kidney cancer, which is rather rare itself. However, there is another genetic abnormality that runs in families, which, if one parent has it, gives the children a 50-50 chance of getting kidney cancer.

One good thing- If Rob's tumor is indeed malignant, it is tiny (8mm), and he has a good prognosis. They also would only remove a very small portion of his kidney. The only reason they even found it is because the siblings are having annual kidney cancer checks from age 50+. They saw it on his CT scan. Lucky lucky.