#ewing's sarcoma

This New Yorker story informs us about a significant cluster of young adults who died from Ewing’s sarcoma in Washington County, Pennsylvania, an area with a lot of fracking activity. Additionally, reporters at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette documented at least twenty-seven cases of Ewing’s diagnosed between 2008 and 2018 across Washington, Greene, Westmoreland, and Fayette Counties in Pennsylvania. Ewing’s sarcoma is a virulent form of bone cancer. We also learn that three in a million people, on average, contract Ewing’s each year; four cases in a town of twelve thousand (Cecil, Pennsylvania, in Washington County) seemed like a lot. As we debate fracking, and listen to the republican whines about the banning of fracking, and the politically soft proposals by President Biden to ban fracking only on public lands, we have to take into consideration that toxicity of the wastewater generated from the fracking process and its effects upon the people who live in the affected areas. Then, rethink the whining.

Excerpt:

As the families looked into the matter, they began to wonder whether the illnesses were related to resource extraction in the area. Pennsylvania’s fracking frenzy started in 2004, when drillers began harvesting hydrocarbon from the Marcellus Shale, a formation rich in natural gas. Since then, Washington County, where Cecil is situated, has become the most heavily drilled county in the state, with some two thousand shale-gas wells mushrooming all over the region. Gas wells release pollutants into the air. Fracking involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and various chemicals—including benzene, antifreeze, and diesel—into the earth to fracture shale deposits rich in fossil fuels. When the gas returns to the surface, it is mixed with those chemicals, as well as with mineral salts such as bromides. (The shale was once an ancient seabed.) The mixture is also laden with naturally occurring radioactive elements that have been buried in the earth for millions of years, including uranium and thorium, which both decay into isotopes of radium. At the surface, the gas is separated from the liquids, which are known as fracking waste and must be disposed of. Sometimes this by-product ends up in the region’s rivers, and then its drinking water.

Update: it's been a rough summer. the grandma, Aunt, and now a cousin dying and then then recovery from this surgery is going to be long. I'm not stressing it though. I made it out alive.

So basically they took a giant skin graft from my other leg this time...yes my drove leg 🥺.

Extended the incision from the top of my head to my chin.

Put the flap in and connected the blood vessels

They also used the shark fin (extra skin) on top of my head to close the gap from other skin defects and shape the skin for the skull.

I lost alot... Alot of blood. So much so that I coded the first night and passed out for 12 seconds. The doctor was trying to drain the pen rose drains (white tubes) and one of them got clogged and put pressure on my carotid artery on the left side. So an epi pen later and I was back awake with 7 people staring at me and scrambling to get an arty line in (a line that goes straight to your artery so they can transfuse blood)

After I stabilized later on in the day I tried sitting up and passed out again.

And the last time was when I swing my legs off the bed to situp and use the urinal. I passed out on the nurse again so she hit me with another pen.

The doctors decided it's in their best interest to give me a blood transfusion to help me stabilize and so far so good.

Still in ICU but they are hoping to transfer me upstairs today and then we will go from there.

Did I mention Bentley is very defensive with people coming in and messing with my tubes. It's quite hilarious when you see. 5lb Yorkie grilling people like "Don't fuck with my hooman"

All in all I feel better. This oxy is keeping my pain down and luckily I heal really fast. Already walking around on day 2.

you didn’t get to live. you didn’t get to see a senior year, graduation, college, work, family. Your life looks as if it was so small. You just got hospital beds and white walls and loving a boy who couldn’t respect you after you died. 

Your life looks so small from the outside but from here, from someone who wasn’t outside, it was bursting with passion. you were so special, so strong and used to be so happy. there was so much love in you that you couldn’t contain it. There were so many people who cherished you that we couldn’t even make a list.

all you wanted was to survive for your family until you couldn’t anymore. you’d always said you wanted to die until one day you were and we all sat in a circle begging for you to live. 

Yes, it seems performatively weird, but there’s a reason for it. I am known for naming things- scores of stuffed animals, huge bugs and snakes that get into the house and cause a ruckus, and sometimes appliances I’m feeling affectionate towards. I also named my Swiss army knife Lord Cuttington because I was so thrilled to finally have a pocket knife.

But Carl was different. Mom, knowing my affinity for naming things, said that I absolutely had to name my tumor. I chose the name Carl during my first chemo session, because I was thinking of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I like him as a character, but he’s brash, rude, gross, and a creep. So I like thinking of Carl as this gross creep who’s always having problems with whatever I’m doing.

But who I named it after doesn’t matter. The real point is that naming it gives me power over it. Cancer is scary. It’s this mysterious disease that creeps up on you, takes over your body, and makes you go through a treatment that’s almost as bad as the disease, all while praying it doesn’t spread.

But Carl? Carl’s just some jerk that lives in my back and presses against my lungs. He may have collapsed one and given me terrible back pain, but that’s just like when your neighbor takes your lawnmower without asking and returns it without gas. Cancer is scary. Carl the tumor isn’t. And a huge part of the fight against cancer is mental and keeping in good spirits. So turning the tumor into something that doesn’t scare you is helping.

Doctor: We've identified your tumor from the biopsy. It's cancerous. It's a kind called Ewing's Sarcoma.

Me: "Sarcoma?" What's sarcoma?

Doctor: Sarcoma dick!

Me: ...