Hacker News Reader

Comment by kbd | Hacker News Reader

  > Our friend Sven Guckes died in Berlin on February 20, 2022.
  > He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2021.

Sheesh so fast... scary. RIP.

View on HN

My mother was diagnosed with bone cancer and died a week later. She had been living with it for some time and just dealt with the pain until my sister made her go to a doctor. I’m not sure what the lesson is here or even if there is one but yeah, it can all happen quickly.

First off, my condolences.

This is something I have seen more frequently with older people: they just suck it up either because they don't want to be a burden on others or because they have seen a lot of hardship in their lives and on that scale some pain signals don't register high enough to make a fuss about.

If there is a lesson: keep an eye on older people and be sensitive to the stuff they tend to shrug off.

Yes, it can be that fast. Two cases nearby in the last two years. Very scary stuff, and you don't have to be over 50 either.

Any way to get an early diagnosis and potentially be eligible for surgery? Any warning signs to look for?

I imagine it depends on which cells are impacted. Glial cells not giving much option.

The two people that died recently near me: one a bad headache, the other a sight problem in only one eye. In both cases they went to a neurologist, the cancers were both the most aggressive kind and in both cases the time between initial diagnosis and the funeral was less than three months. Very harsh stuff.

That's so scary and sad.

I'm sorry for your losses.

Thank you. Still not over one of these. To the point that I recently reached for the phone to give that person a call and only after getting the 'number not available' signal it clicked again. Cognitively I've long ago accepted it but in times of half-attention it goes off the rails so easily.

Can you describe the sight problem in only one eye? I've had one for a while now and it's getting worse. For example, did your friend have a redder-than-usual eye?

I've already seen an optometrist and he thinks its just worsening blepharitis which I've had in both eyes for over 5 years.

You don't need an optometrist, you need an ophtalmologist here. If you are unsure, check more than one specialist but that's it. There are a lot of eye conditions that do not necessarily need to be anything to stress about.

That's correct.

Optometrist is a tech. Ophthalmologist is an MD. I’m surprised the optometrist didn’t refer out.

That's what should have happened, if only to rule out that something bad is happening. Time is everything with stuff like this.

mail? jacques@modularcompany.com

Eyes are complicated! Lots goes wrong with them! I had a problem with my right eye that got worse for about 4 months, until it got to the point where it actively interfered with my work and I went to the doctor. Turned out: dry eye.

Seriously, it's bananas how much silly stuff can mess with your eyes. You can have bad-quality tears! You have, for instance, an array of little glands that secrete an oil that needs to be in your tears for them to work right. And they malfunction all the time! (That was my diagnosis but wasn't ultimately what the real problem was, which was much dumber).

Go see a doctor but also don't freak out about it. You're not going to die next week.

My cousin was a ER doctor. Last year, after one shift, he had some abdominal pain. One colleague offered to perform an echography and bam, there it was: renal cells cancer, with a size comparable to the kidney itself. Further tests revealed that it was already metastasized, and five months later he left us. He was 53 years old, he knew everything that was going to happen to him, and happen it did. It was not a matter of insurance or receiving more or less care, his fate was written since that damning echography.

This reads like a horror story but that's the crudeness of life and death for us. Only thing to do is medical checkups from time to time and try to live a plenty life because you may not be there after the next corner.

That sucks. And yes, your last line is spot on: use it while you have it.

Unfortunately, this is the nature of the most deadly cancers. What makes them deadly is that by the time they're catchable, they're already uncontrollable. Pancreatic is in the same category because your pancreas can take a lot of punishment before it starts to fail; most pancreatic cancers are first identified by the symptoms caused by the pancreatic cells metastasizing to something that can't take that punishment and presents a malfunction you can feel more quickly.

We've investigated the feasibility of regular cancer screening for this, and the problems compound; turns out when we do regular imaging of the human body, we find out various odd morphologies are developing and dissolving all the time, and only a handful of them will ever become something the body's own immune system doesn't get on top of before it becomes an endemic problem. So "Why don't we just do regular pancreatic cancer screenings?" turns out to be harder than we want it to be, even if we could discount the cost factor.

It sounds like glioblastoma multiforme maybe. Life expectancy used to be 6 months average post diagnosis...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com