KREW KUTS: Passing the Torch
By Bernie Krewski
With much regret, I am informing Echo readers that I can no longer write archived, history-related weekly columns as I have done for the last ten months – and previously for many years.
For twenty years, since my throat cancer diagnosis in October 2004, I have lived with the possibility of symptoms of cancer recurring. As documented in the clinical literature, this is the greatest concern of all cancer patients. “Cancer free,” a popular term, is something I have never taken seriously.
On Monday, January 13, my surgeon informed me that I have a lesion, a squamous cell carcinoma on my right cheek, likely easily treatable, and a large growth (the size of a small orange) at the base of my tongue – the implications being much greater. Because of my multiple treatments years ago, surgery is the only option – and it will likely be extensive. In medical terminology, the initial option is “a quadroscopy and biopsy right buccal mucosa and right base of tongue.”
My next step is a PET - scan January 31 to determine if these cancers have spread. This device uses a radioactive tracer to show how an organ is functioning in real time. It differs from a CT – scan which uses x-rays and an MRI which uses magnets and radio waves.
Because of where I live, a 20-minute walk from University Hospital in Edmonton (a teaching hospital), I have inadvertently become a cancer patient “educator.” I interact with students constantly.
Thus, I have participated in more than ten research studies, interviewed countless times, mentored students in the Faculty of Medicine for eleven years, spoken at conferences, and coached and supported other patients. These activities are symbolized in the well-known aphorisms “Losing speech does not mean losing voice” and being a “voice for the voiceless.”
Pat and I have been invited to speak at a large conference in New Orleans in October, but my recurrence of cancer may prevent that from happening.
Cancer is often shrouded in stigma, leading to feelings of shame, secrecy, and social isolation.
This topic is sufficiently important to be a compulsory subject in my mentoring of medical students. My openness – a willingness to discuss subjects like stigma in whatever depth is necessary – is the most consistent compliment I receive from medical students in their first two years of medical school.
Other head and neck cancer patients have asked me to keep them informed as I undergo further treatments.
Wearing my “educator hat,” I plan to do the same for Echo readers since I know of several residents of this district with similar conditions as mine.
"This is also a good time to pass my “history torch” to those who reside in this district. A major anniversary will be celebrated in some form this year. Doug Hoffman has at least a partial list of babies born in 1950, from one of my previous columns, celebrating their 75th birthday on some day this year."
I hope to read many of their biographies in these pages during 2025 – of what they did during the last half century.