To quote Howard himself, “Not much on PC, but FYI.” But on the other hand, it is very much about the sometimes challenging aspects of “being a patient” — prostate cancer included.
For those who are interested, Howard’s latest update on MedPage Today is more about managing his newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes. However, since he is using metformin to help manage the diabetes, it does have relevance to the management of his very low-risk case of prostate cancer too.
Filed under: Living with Prostate Cancer, Management | Tagged: diabetes, journey, metformin, patient, Wolinksy |
THE "NEW" PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK 
If Howard’s elusive G6 hasn’t reverted yet (forget the fancy term: line please, Director?), as I reckon it has, then 2g/365 of metformin should do the trick!
Dear Bill:
I checked with the prompter. The line in the script reads. “… elusive G6 hasn’t gone in to spontaneous remission yet” …
Can you please try to keep to the script because this ain’t Shakespeare — who was granted an unlimited license to create a whole spectrum of new words (and new meanings for older words) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I and her immediate successor, so long as he did not create theatre that in any way shape or form cast aspersions on some of the less savory aspects of the way England was being governed at the time!
[Readers who find this comment a tad obtuse should note that not a single play by Shakespeare addresses (directly) any of the numerous truly thrilling aspects of “modern life” in the period from 1580 to 1620 when he wrote all his plays! He had good reason not to go there. Expressing personal opinions in public about many of those issues tended to be ill-advised when it came to one’s long-term freedom and health. Think dungeons, scaffolds, and the Tower of London! The “Bard of Avon” stuck closely to “the script” and wrote plays designed purely to entertain.]
Yes, just to be clear, I was going back beyond “the Bard” to Chaucer and “many a true word is spoken in jest”. I’m just jealous. As others no doubt are of me on our wide spectrum.
… but I’ve still not found the wretched word. It is far more highfalutin’ than “spontaneous remission”. I saw it in a paper on the safety of G3 “some of these cells seem to be capable of [recanonizification]” as a synonym for reverting to normal. I have never seen it before or since except in the dictionary when I looked it up and want to throw it at a doctor. …
SUM:
“Tumor reversion” or “reversion of cancerous cells to the normal wild type” are the usual way to describe the scientific observation that you are describing, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some members of the biological and molecular sciences communities had come up some “far more highfalutin'” language to “clarify” what they were describing for their peers (while simultanoeusly obfusticating this terminology for the rest of us!).