Outsourcing worry

Chaya Venkat is a great gift to anyone with CLL or for the matter, any catastrophic illness.

Her fine article on how to handle the CLL diagnosis could easily be applied with a little tweaking to any major health.

I suggest you first read her overview of the subjest at

http://updates.clltopics.org/3232-out-sourcing-cll

Then read my comment below:

Another great article.

The only thing I might add is that not only doesn’t one specific outsourcing strategy work for everyone, one strategy may not work for anyone all the time,

I have needed many tactics to get me through this roller coaster ride.

Mostly, I tend to be deeply, some say too deeply, involved in the minutia of my disease management, seeking multiple expert opinions when a big decision is needed from the team of CLL gurus that have helped me so much over the last 5 years. Yet when it is crunch time, I make most of the calls myself. As many know, I am a MD, but not a hematologist, but a family doc. They say the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient. I argue who has more skin in the game than me. Can I separate out my fears and make a cold calculated decision? Not always, but I trust myself and my research and my gut more than that of any one expert.

But there are times, such as the first few weeks post transplant that I was way too sick to decide chocolate or vanilla, let alone what to do next, and I handed control over to my docs, with the eyes of my wife and a dear friend and very sharp doc who beat Hogkin’s Disease watching closely.

Other times, I chose to coast. Enough with CLL. With a deep enough remission, I think it is crazy not to live for a while in denial and have the best of times, worry free. That is never easy, but family and travel and serving others are a big help for living in the moment.

And finally, there is there is the outsourcing to the world of the fantastic and the unlikely, but possible. I do things that my intellectual side say are ineffective, but give me the important sense of doing something positive- eating organic raw vegan food, drinking tons of green tea (the real stuff from Japan), taking vitamin D3, regular exercise, and Budwig supplements. It is lovely to think I am making a difference, and it is impossible to prove that I am not. Besides, as you said, I have CLL, I don’t need CAD or osteoporosis complicating therapy.

There is a high price for being the constant master of your destiny- worries and regrets, but for me most of the time the price of outsourcing my future to anyone else is much higher.

Thanks for the chance to reflect on this

Stay strong

Brian Koffman

PS There is a bone marrow donor drive by BE THE MATCH at the Kings game tonight. Please sign up.