My busy week

This week's newsletter is going to be a little different from normal - more of a stream of consciousness than a deep dive into particular topics. I hope you don't mind. This past couple of weeks have been pretty busy for me, mostly on personal stuff, but I'll attempt to relate the highlights, particularly where they intersect with skepticism.

Some readers will be aware, but many will not, that the year for me has been fairly difficult. Back at the end of February my wife, Susan, was diagnosed with breast cancer (after discovering a fairly large lump), and just a couple of weeks later had surgery. Then began the fortnightly rounds of chemotherapy, followed by some weekly ones, all of which were variously tolerated, but mostly ended up with Susan feeling pretty awful. Then there were the expected side-effects, such as loss of hair, changes to her senses of taste and smell. Pretty awful, but better alive than dead.

The past few weeks have seen her undergoing daily radiation therapy, with a total of 15 exposures. The side-effects of that are different from chemotherapy, but have made her feel pretty tired, as her body is summoning its resources to recover from the radiation. Additionally, the effects are cumulative, and a little bit like getting a suntan - not a very pleasant one.

But, this week she has completed the radiation therapy - and she now moves on to ongoing hormone therapy (a daily pill for 5 - 10 years), which targets the hormone receptors on the cancer cells.

With all of the major and drastic interventions behind us, we are feeling that we can now move on with life a bit. Susan's hair has begun to grow back (though it makes me aware of just how slowly hair actually grows when you have to start from bald). These are minor cosmetic things, but they contribute to making a person feel whole, I think.

During the cancer treatment, friends and family and workmates have been fantastic and incredibly supportive. I am pleased to say that, by and large, we've not had any of the alternative medicine crowd try to convince us that some magical combination of herbs or change of diet will be the cancer cure that is needed. Perhaps our skepticism has acted as a protective forcefield against ths. (Though, I did have one of our neighbours, who are originally from India, suggest that I could send Susan to India for a course of Ayurvedic medicine. I largely put this down to them being well-meaning - at the time I explained that we were following the advice of doctors, and that that was going well.)

So, that's all been going on in the background for the week that's just been.

But there's been other things happening this week for me too. On a positive note, this past Tuesday, we attended my daughter's graduation ceremony - a much postponed ceremony because of Covid. My daughter graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery - that's the degree you get to become a doctor. So, it was a “proud dad” moment for me, and lots of celebration all round.

Also attending the graduation ceremony was my mother - who'd flown up from Napier to spend a few days with us. So, in addition to the graduation ceremony, we've been showing her around Auckland a bit.

Of note this week in Auckland was the opening of the Costco Wholesale warehouse store. This is a pretty big deal, especially since it's located at Westgate, which is near the end of Auckland's Northwestern motorway, and about 10 minutes drive from where I happen to live. The store, which promises lower prices on a large variety of items (groceries, hardware, car fuel, services - such as car tyres, pharmacy, optical, electronic goods, hardware and tools, and bizarrely rollout grass and coffins), works on a membership model which allows you to visit the store and purchase from there. The annual fee is $60 per household, or $55 for a business. With the discounted price of fuel, many people have seen that the annual fee is quickly recovered by filling up their car there.

The store opened on Wednesday, and had people camped out overnight, wanting to be the first through the doors. Traffic chaos was predicted and eventuated, as the store is located in the middle of the newly developed area (containing other “big box” stores), and accessible only via a single lane road. Nevertheless, we decided that since my mother was returning home on Thursday, Wednesday would be the day to visit. So, we headed down there about 4pm on opening day, anticipating a long wait. Well, I consider it a minor miracle! Traffic was relatively light, and we made it into the store without queueing. Once inside, there were a large number of people there, all pushing over-sized shopping trolleys (I'd guess 50% larger than a large supermarket trolley).

The store has a fairly extensive range of goods, most of which are in larger-than-usual sizes, with the expectation that you shop big and infrequently. Many people were seen exiting the store with bumper-sized packs of toilet paper, but we got away with some plus-sized packs of cereal, laundry detergent, and dishwasher tablets.

Now, I do consider our quick entry on opening day to be a miracle. On Saturday, encouraged by the ease with which I'd been able to access the store on opening day, I decided to visit again. Big mistake! Saturday, it would seem, was the day that the majority of Aucklanders would have their first opportunity to visit. Joining the traffic queue was slow, but 15 minutes later I was in the carpark. Then there was the queue to find a park. Another 15 minutes later I was parked and out of the car and heading to the entrance. Then I saw the queue to get in, which I'd estimate was probably another 30 minutes of waiting. I guess they can only have so many people in the store at any one time. So, I aborted that visit, and have decided that any future visit will be after the initial novelty and curiosity of the rest of Auckland has died down a bit. It's the beginning of school holidays, and I guess, one fun(!) outing for the kids is a visit to the biggest shop in the country.

In seriousness, it will be interesting to see the effect that the store has on prices in supermarkets and other retail outlets. They're certainly likely to feel some strong competitive pressure, especially those in close vicinity. I've already seen the surrounding supermarkets discounting some of their prices, and also revealing larger-sized packages.

Thursday was Susan's last radiation therapy treatment, and my mother returned to Napier, so things at home returned to some sense of normality.

One thing we decided on to assist with Susan's recovery was to seek out a local gym that could assist with the physical recovery. Hunting around online, we came across a specialist gym with trainers that specialise in post-cancer recovery, and fortunately, it's just a couple of km down the road from us. It's run by a Canadian couple, and in our initial talk with them, they seemed to understand our needs, and we felt we could work well with them. I emphasised that we were strongly pro-science, evidence-based stuff. No woo! Well, Friday we were booked in for an initial evaluation session - the kind where they get you to do all sorts of balance exercises, which make you feel silly and inadequate (well they did for me, anyway!) During that session, one of the trainers suggested that a visit to a chiropractor might help with loosening up my spine. That was not received very well by me! Nope, not going to a chiropractor. A physiotherapist, yes! The trainer asked why we were against chiropractors and I said that they weren't science-based. I'm sure, given more time, I could have come up with a better answer. But anyway, we're still happy to start a programme with them, but will keep an eye out for education opportunities!

My assessment is that the sort of exercises we'll be doing seem to be low risk and have positive benefits, but I am aware that gyms are hothouses for pseudoscientific nonsense, but will be on the lookout for this.

So, that's pretty much been my week, packed full with activities. I also have a job to do, so have had to fit everything in around that!

On to a few other topics that have arisen…