Last edited Mon Aug 25, 2025, 05:32 AM - Edit history (1)
(I will compose a more detailed reply later today. Leaving this as a placeholder. )
I do feel guilty. I am scientist by training so I am cautious with any position on things without a better fleshed out model and mechanism.
But Metformin unambiguously seemed to be a drug of the type, where having gone on it once, it was a bad idea to go off it. Her cancer seemed sensitive to it.
There’s a doctor whose writing I rather like. He explains it well here:
https://www.salon.com/2025/05/20/dont-fight-uncertainty-embrace-it-2/
As a physician, I’m used to uncertainty. Most medical problems transpire inside the body, hidden from view. I can’t touch the clot in a patient’s coronary, or see their stroke in the same way I can see a flat tire. At work, I can rarely be totally certain about anything. That’s just the nature of medicine. As Canadian physician William Osler said, medicine is “a science of uncertainty, and an art of probability.” But it’s also the nature of the world. I can’t personally verify the weather in Tucson, or general relativity, or the reality of climate change, either.
Instead, I weigh and consider a constellation of indirect information, and make a judgment about what I think is likely true. To do this, I’ve been taught to think in probabilities, as Osler suggested, because probability is a yardstick for uncertainty. Physicians and scientists everywhere are trained to think this way. But this kind of thinking, called Bayesian inference (after the English mathematician and clergyman Thomas Bayes), is something that can benefit everyone. Especially in a time when the basic facts of what’s real, and what’s not, have come into question.
I am not a doctor and my field in science is far removed from cancer. But as a care-giver, I had a feel for how my mother was responding to treatment. I learnt odd factoids from the experience of taking care of my parents, such as that antibiotics like furantoin can increase your creatinine levels..
The grey areas of human health can be hard for people to navigate under scrutiny and when liability rather than care of quality is the main concern in healthcare related settings. This was the end or perhaps middle of the pandemic (Nov 2021).
She had an excellent oncologist. He is mine as well..i really like him. But the hospital had deteriorated over the course of the pandemic. My doctor left soon after and is at a different hospital now. Just the year before her hospital was pretty good. By the time she passed away it was this busy, invasive place with an overall diminished quality of care. It was a sense impression but distinct.
I am doing okay. I sometimes try to feel more remote from everything and that works for me. My mom would have wanted me to progress as far as I could in my work and after a long and dreary break I am trying now.
Bruce’s Spider would be weary by now ;-/…
I still like science and facts so..cautious optimism I guess.
Thank you 
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