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nightdog_barksOkay, so let's get this out of the way right off the bat ...
Yes, I agree that Wilson is panicking and acting irrationally. Cancer is never something to not take seriously, but from everything I've read so far, Stage II thymoma, if operable, has a good success rate and often doesn't even require chemo. The idea that he wants to stay out of the hospital and try this SUPER DANGEROUS experimental drug (I'm assuming it's experimental, since drug companies generally don't want to license medicines that will kill half their patients) is ... odd, to say the least.
But here's the thing (and I want to emphasize I'm only speaking for myself here). When you receive a diagnosis of cancer, many people DO jump to the worst-case scenario first. We ask ourselves, what are all the bad things that can happen? Oh my god, if they could happen, that means they might happen! It's like the sequence in Woody Allen's wonderfully humane movie Hannah and Her Sisters, where because Allen's character has a small hearing loss, he blows it up into believing he has a malignant brain tumor, and constructs an entire narrative of despair and loss around it. Wilson's an oncologist, so he's already seen the absolute worst that can happen -- to other people. Now it may be happening to him, and what happens? He panics, and behaves irrationally. Just like many real people do, every day.
So. It's also possible he has a very good reason to panic (besides human nature, I mean). There seems to be a connection between thymoma and myasthenia gravis, but it's hard to tell from the literature which comes first (chicken and egg syndrome, also known as cart-before-the-horse disease). But that may be what Wilson's real concern is -- that he'll develop MG, or he's already showing symptoms that he thinks are related to MG. If he does have both, the prognosis is not as good as for thymoma alone, and he's seriously afraid that he will, as he said, "wither away in a hospital bed."
What I know in the end is that there's a lot we don't know. Is it just a thymoma? Have they done a biopsy? They say it's Stage II now, but staging can and does often change after a biopsy. How did they find it? Thymomas are usually discovered after a routine chest X-ray-- was Wilson having a chest X-ray, and if so, why?
What I think is that things will get weirder, not saner, towards the end. I mean, this is a show that last night seriously presented the possibility of a patient levitating. I think we're going to see more spooky, inexplicable-by-logic incidents, and hey, maybe when Kutner shows up, it's not a dream sequence or a hallucination.
I'm gonna go with the words of Walt Whitman on this one:
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward ... and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.
TL;DR, I think there are mysteries yet to come, and if the worst happens, it'll happen, but it still won't be what we expect.
So. Beautiful and sunny here, probably need to run some errands but we'll see. Tomatoes are doing well although we lost some of the ripening cherry tomatoes to a caterpillar. Grrrr. Also need to clean up and tweak the fic I finished and send it to my First Readers.
And ... onward.
Yes, I agree that Wilson is panicking and acting irrationally. Cancer is never something to not take seriously, but from everything I've read so far, Stage II thymoma, if operable, has a good success rate and often doesn't even require chemo. The idea that he wants to stay out of the hospital and try this SUPER DANGEROUS experimental drug (I'm assuming it's experimental, since drug companies generally don't want to license medicines that will kill half their patients) is ... odd, to say the least.
But here's the thing (and I want to emphasize I'm only speaking for myself here). When you receive a diagnosis of cancer, many people DO jump to the worst-case scenario first. We ask ourselves, what are all the bad things that can happen? Oh my god, if they could happen, that means they might happen! It's like the sequence in Woody Allen's wonderfully humane movie Hannah and Her Sisters, where because Allen's character has a small hearing loss, he blows it up into believing he has a malignant brain tumor, and constructs an entire narrative of despair and loss around it. Wilson's an oncologist, so he's already seen the absolute worst that can happen -- to other people. Now it may be happening to him, and what happens? He panics, and behaves irrationally. Just like many real people do, every day.
So. It's also possible he has a very good reason to panic (besides human nature, I mean). There seems to be a connection between thymoma and myasthenia gravis, but it's hard to tell from the literature which comes first (chicken and egg syndrome, also known as cart-before-the-horse disease). But that may be what Wilson's real concern is -- that he'll develop MG, or he's already showing symptoms that he thinks are related to MG. If he does have both, the prognosis is not as good as for thymoma alone, and he's seriously afraid that he will, as he said, "wither away in a hospital bed."
What I know in the end is that there's a lot we don't know. Is it just a thymoma? Have they done a biopsy? They say it's Stage II now, but staging can and does often change after a biopsy. How did they find it? Thymomas are usually discovered after a routine chest X-ray-- was Wilson having a chest X-ray, and if so, why?
What I think is that things will get weirder, not saner, towards the end. I mean, this is a show that last night seriously presented the possibility of a patient levitating. I think we're going to see more spooky, inexplicable-by-logic incidents, and hey, maybe when Kutner shows up, it's not a dream sequence or a hallucination.
I'm gonna go with the words of Walt Whitman on this one:
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward ... and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.
TL;DR, I think there are mysteries yet to come, and if the worst happens, it'll happen, but it still won't be what we expect.
So. Beautiful and sunny here, probably need to run some errands but we'll see. Tomatoes are doing well although we lost some of the ripening cherry tomatoes to a caterpillar. Grrrr. Also need to clean up and tweak the fic I finished and send it to my First Readers.
And ... onward.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 05:57 pm (UTC)I can understand Wilson panicking considering all the people he's watched die, but I'm surprised that a) he's acting THAT irrationally and most of all b) that House isn't forcibly stopping him. He's fully capable of handcuffing his best friend to a hospital bed, so why isn't he? I'm actually hoping we do learn it's worse than it sounds so that the behaviour we saw in the promo, from both of them, makes more sense.
Or maybe we'll find out the drugs he's giving Wilson aren't the super dangerous ones Wilson thinks he's getting, but the safer standard treatment?
It's turned lovely here now, we were actually hot yesterday!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 06:11 pm (UTC)He's fully capable of handcuffing his best friend to a hospital bed ...
The places my mind went. I would pay good money to see this. *fans self*
no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 06:53 pm (UTC)It was nice, though, because it fit in with House knowing magic.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 06:29 pm (UTC)Again, my apologies. :-(
no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 10:19 pm (UTC)Anyway, the 43" _I_ saw (those that were actually in the ep) were absolutely amazing and believable. The promo, I'll want to see in context.
I must be the only one who was pissed at this episode, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with Wilson's health. But I can;t really rant before I've read what everyone else has written... which I can't do now.
And you're so brave. Onward, indeed.
Totally OT: "Onward!" was the title (Avanti!) of the official newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party. I'm so old not only do I remember the Italian Socialist Party, I even remember when most Italian Socialists were honest :).
no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 10:35 pm (UTC)I didn't mind the episode as a whole. Dr. Scott over at Polite Dissent said the medicine in this one was just horrendous, heh. I liked the levitating kid, but then I'm a sucker for magical realism. *g*
And yes, LJ has pitched the biggest hissy fit it's had in quite a while! I can see my journal page, but my f-list won't come up.
Ha, there's a movie called Avanti! also, although I don't think I've ever seen it.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-25 01:07 am (UTC)MG is an auto-immune disease; for some auto-immune diseases, e.g. celiac, the incidence of lymphoma is higher than that for the general population. (The faster the immune cells proliferate, the more likely a cancer-causing mutation will arise.) /pedantic
no subject
Date: 2012-04-25 01:15 am (UTC)And that's what I thought -- people with MG can get thymoma, but if you've got thymoma, you're not necessarily going to develop MG as a result of the thymoma. Also, I did not know about the increased incidence of lymphoma. Yikes. :-(
no subject
Date: 2012-04-25 03:16 am (UTC)back when they seemed to care about the medicine.no subject
Date: 2012-04-25 03:23 am (UTC)