Postby NHMike » Thu Aug 16, 2018 10:13 am
O Stoma Mia wrote:NHMike wrote:... I'm going to start a book (or long article) on reversal issues. Just something to keep track of what I find and what I will be learning along with some of the things that I'm going through. I sometimes gather a lot of good information and a paper or book is a good way to keep track of things.
NHMike wrote:... I do wish that there was a book on just the reversal stuff. I have starting materials for such a book but I haven't started yet as I have an accumulating pile of stuff to do at work...
NHMike -
Thank you for thinking about writing an article or a book. A book or even just an annotated bibliography would be very helpful at this point for newly diagnosed rectal cancer patients.
What kind of format are you considering -- a literature review? a journal of personal experiences? a sort of Wikipedia article?
I hope you eventually get some free time to work on this project. It will certainly be a valuable contribution to the LARS literature when it comes to fruition.
One thing that I've learned about writing is to limit your subject or your piece may get away from you in terms of size.
I just wanted to focus on the Reversal aspect as the stuff before the reversal is complicated and changing and there's a very good knowledge base in this form already. A lot of people can answer questions for newcomers off the top of their head and they know how to guide the newcomer based on their introductory post and thread. I don't see that for the Reversal aspect.
I already ran into one literature review from Springer and that tells me that this is a very serious subject with at least a decent amount of research. I was leaning towards writing for the average person using a variety of sources, with citations of course. Something that's a blend on practical suggestions, what you'll be going through (in a range of experiences). I'd use a blend of recommendations from hospital websites and national health centers and peer-reviewed research.
My usual approach to writing is to grab a bunch of resources and then link them into the document so that I don't lose them and then try to figure out an outline and overall approach. I think that won't be too hard in this case.
I prefer to write long documents in LaTeX which is a SGML created by Donald Knuth in the 1970s to produce math and computer science textbooks. It gives you tight control over your document and it's good for writing articles, papers and books and it has a lot of support. The downside for most people is the steep learning curve. The modern WYSIWYG document programs like Word are easy to use for simpler things but they have a learning curve for more complicated things. I find that LaTeX makes it really easy to do citations and a lot of other things but it's more like programming than writing.
My big problem right now is that I'm spending so much time in the bathroom that it's hard to even reply to posts let alone gather my links and resources.
6/17: ER rectal bleeding; Colonoscopy
7/17: 3B rectal. T3N1bM0. 5.2 4.5 4.3 cm. Lymphs: 6 x 4 mm, 8 x 6, 5 x 5
7/17-9/17: Xeloda radiation
7/5: CEA 2.7; 8/16: 1.9; 11/30: 0.6; 12/20 1.4; 1/10 1.8; 1/31 2.2; 2/28 2.6; 4/10 2.8; 5/1 2.8; 5/29 3.2; 7/13 4.5; 8/9 2.8, 2/12 1.2
MSS, KRAS G12D
10/17: 2.7 2.2 1.6 cm (-90%). Lymphs: 3 x 3 mm (-62.5%), 4 x 3 (-75%), 5 x 3 (-40%). 5.1 CM from AV
10/17: LAR, Temp Ileostomy, Path Complete Response
CapeOx (8) 12/17-6/18
7/18: Reversal, Port Removal
2/19: Clean CT