Unfortunately, I have some bad news. Total Biscuit seems to have had a cancer relapse...
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He posted that it was inoperable on twitter, and the doctors given him 2-3 years to live (though he says that is the average, and he plans on living much longer). So yeah, pretty terrible.Mr.Mattress said:
OT: That is pretty awful. Hopefully he will be able to live on for many more years.
He's a stubborn son of a gun. If anyone's going to push that 2-3 year average up, it's him.
Wish him and his family all the best in this fight.
FUCK CANCER.
Wish him and his family all the best in this fight.
FUCK CANCER.
"Inoperable" sounds scary. And it kind of is. But as someone currently in the process of a cancer/health scare (I have very few answers right now), let me throw some knowledge around. TotalBiscuit isn't done for. He might be. But there's still a reasonable hope.MarsAtlas said:
Many cancers are inoperable at the time of diagnoses. At the same time, cancer survival rates (measured over two, five, and ten years) continue to rise. Cancer treatments and cures have progressed at breakneck speed over the last decade or so, and we might in fact be the generation that turns cancer into just one of many trifling health issues. We're not there yet, but there's hope and there's research. And actual survival rates are always a little in advance of the official odds as a result. My own mother was supposed to die from her leukemia, but did not.
The best way to defeat cancer is to identify it early, at an operable stage, and simply remove it. Follow ups are then required, often over the course of several years, to ensure that it has not emerged once more. Most of the time, however, the symptoms of cancer already imply metastasis, which means that the cancer has spread to other parts of the body and continues to proliferate. This is where other treatments, traditionally chemotherapy, come in. But there are also new types of treatments, like immunotherapy, capable of targeting cancer cells without damaging healthy parts of the body. Not all treatments are appropriate for all kinds of cancer, and each person's cancer is unique; after all, a cancer is a mutation of that person's genes that has forgotten how to die.
While cancer treatments continue to improve, one of the biggest challenges is the identification of cancer in younger people. Since cancer symptoms can be so general, doctors are not likely to look for cancers until treatments for other conditions have failed, and that provides more time for the cancer to proliferate. Some are slower and some are quicker; small cell lung cancer, for instance, can kill in a matter of weeks. That's barely enough time for a proper diagnosis to be made, so it's no wonder that long-term survival rates are 2% or thereabouts for that particular brand of lung cancer. And before anyone gets mouthy about setting oneself up for lung cancer, up to 10% of lung cancer cases afflict people who have never smoked. Even if we want to play blame games, though, cancer is a horrific condition that no-one deserves.
Our increasingly artificial lives appear to have some effect on cancer acquisition rates, plus the age groups as risk. People are getting cancer at earlier times in their lives. This might have to do with increasing medical awareness of cancer conditions, but it's also likely that our changing world influences this as well. We breath corrupted air, eat food with high preservative contents, live sedentary lifestyles, and shun sunlight. This provides our bodies with incentives to mutate in order to adapt, while lowering the likes of vitamin D content in our bodies that exist, in part, to help us fight infection. Between 11% and 25% of us are likely to develop some kind of cancer that requires medical treatment in our lifespans.
But would you like to know a better, and happier, horror story?
Many of us, perhaps most of us, have had cancer and defeated it without knowing. Usually, the body's immune system will detect "foreign" influences and destroy them. This may have been over a period of days or even hours. Cancer is simply a natural mutation that runs right out of control, and in some cases, becomes a tumour (or tumours) that require operations, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and/or other treatments.
I wish TotalBiscuit the very, very best. He won this battle before, and I believe he can do it again. And for anyone whose body is feeling at all strange, feeling anything wrong, I would like to discourage you from toughing it out. You never know when you're the unlucky one who is about to fight cancer, but the sooner you get on to it, the more likely you are to win and lead a full life. I understand that different nations have different policies and procedures concerning medical care, and that we live in an era of unprecedented strife outside of sheltered first-world nations. Even so, and even though we often suffer beyond our control, I take life to be a great gift. Do yourself a favour and take your health seriously.
This isn't exactly true.Trollhoffer said:
Your body doesn't "mutate to adapt and resulting in cancer". Mutations occur as a result of random DNA damage which can occur completely naturally or be induced by carcinogenic/mutagenic materials. There are arguments to be made about modern life with respect to the burning of fossil fuels and so on with the potential slight increase of carcinogens into the atmosphere; however it is far more complicated than just that. It still has a great deal of randomness in it, even if you are exposed to mutagens; but its not an adaptation in any way.
In very very simple terms cancer occurs as a result of a series of specific mutations occurring in a certain way and order which prevents the normal process of cell suicide when loss of control occurs.
Also strictly speaking most of us haven't had cancer. But most of us will have had cells that had the potential to become cancerous through further mutations but they were, appropriately and normally, destroyed. In order for a cell to become cancerous the normal biological mechanisms have to fail in specific ways (which is why some people are genetically predisposed to cancer, through their genetics resulting in "weaknesses" in those "failsafe" pathways).
Source: I'm a Doctor of Molecular Biology. Though as a disclaimer I'm not a cancer researcher (was working on blindness until earlier this year), if there are any around they'll know far more about it than I do.
The fact that his cancer was originally bowel cancer and is now in the liver is pretty much proof positive that its metastasized. It sucks to be honest, I'd been sincerely hoping that the poor guy had managed to get rid of it outright.
There's a lot of really interesting/promising and revolutionary treatments in the pipeline for cancer. Unfortunately for John, a lot of them are still in the experimental stage. And his cancer has advanced to an extremely perilous stage.
It's not hopeless...statistics are just that, medicine is always moving forward, and there are always people who buck the odds. But the prognosis is extremely grim. Best case scenario is he has an extremely grueling fight ahead of him.
It's incredibly tragic.
It's not hopeless...statistics are just that, medicine is always moving forward, and there are always people who buck the odds. But the prognosis is extremely grim. Best case scenario is he has an extremely grueling fight ahead of him.
It's incredibly tragic.
Naturally, I am happy to be corrected by a person of greater knowledge. My knowledge is based on what I've been able to collect through my mother's experience as a nurse and leukemia survivor, and my current health scare plus basic research-- certainly no substitute for proper study.Lightspeaker said:
Well crap. I'm not the largest fan, but he always seemed like a class act and well knowledgeable. It's always nice to see a big name cover niche titles.
I wish him the best and hope that he is either one of the few to beat it, or failing that, it takes him as quickly and painlessly as possible. It sounds callous, but I've seen the effects of fighting cancer long term on both the patient and their family, (including my father's cancer and death last year) and I know it can be very ugly.
I wish him the best and hope that he is either one of the few to beat it, or failing that, it takes him as quickly and painlessly as possible. It sounds callous, but I've seen the effects of fighting cancer long term on both the patient and their family, (including my father's cancer and death last year) and I know it can be very ugly.
Well, fuck. I enjoy watching TB's videos, at least the WTF ones - to me, they're an entertaining quality source of information about games I'm iffy about, and since our tastes and priorities seem aligned he hasn't steered me wrong yet. What's more, he's one of the heaviest hitters the pro-consumer side has in games journalism, and it'd be a real shame to lose a guy like him.
I guess this is nothing special in these times, but my family has been ravaged by this insidious disease, and I know how tough and god-awful the fight is. I wish TB and his family the strength needed for what's most likely ahead, and I hope he takes a bit more time off work to spend with his loved ones... the further the clock counts down, the more precious every day gets.
All the best to you, TB. Stay strong, and stay positive.
I guess this is nothing special in these times, but my family has been ravaged by this insidious disease, and I know how tough and god-awful the fight is. I wish TB and his family the strength needed for what's most likely ahead, and I hope he takes a bit more time off work to spend with his loved ones... the further the clock counts down, the more precious every day gets.
All the best to you, TB. Stay strong, and stay positive.
You know considerably more than a lot of people I've seen talking about it. Its to your credit because the general public is remarkably ill-informed about cancer. Largely because of the poor way the science tends to be communicated.Trollhoffer said:
Its the classic issue of trying to explain something that's very, very complicated to the public at large. Coupled with the fact the media tends to get overexcited. The headline "SCIENCE MAY HAVE DISCOVERED CANCER CAUSE" looks nice. The headline "Scientists in one study may have possibly identified a key protein in one specific type of cancer in a certain part of the body which may lead to an increased risk of developing cancer within this specific population cohort" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
damn it, I only just heard of the guy because of gamergate. And those hearthstone gimmick deck videos are awesome.
I hope he beats it and continues making us all laugh.
I hope he beats it and continues making us all laugh.
Out of curiosity, what is the likelihood of the material on his liver being a separate cancer entirely? I mean, if the spots on his liver come from a separate source and are not the metastasized cells from the colon cancer.Lightspeaker said:
I have very little knowledge on the subject and am always asking question because of that curiosity.
OT: I like TB and hope he totally screws the statistical averages on this. On the same note, I'm wishing the best for his family. After watching illness claim a family member, it gets driven home fairly heavily that the one person who is ill isn't the only person put through the ringer by these situations.
Eh, to be fair, he already beat the odds with his last batch before it set up shops a few blocks away, something like 40% survival rate, even with the standard cancer stat shit that makes anyone dying within a decade of completing their treatment being attributed to cancer, it wasn't that great of a chance.
And the fanbase has hopes, considering there's at least two treatments that he may be able to get into according to some of the oncology-like professions(whether they're bullshitting or not who knows) around that have had some measure of success. Not to mention, 2 years is a pretty long time to put stuff in order if it's confirmed as being terminal. Second opinions and all that jazz...
And the fanbase has hopes, considering there's at least two treatments that he may be able to get into according to some of the oncology-like professions(whether they're bullshitting or not who knows) around that have had some measure of success. Not to mention, 2 years is a pretty long time to put stuff in order if it's confirmed as being terminal. Second opinions and all that jazz...
Damn, must've been one hell of a dum-dum wound...MarsAtlas said:
Goddamn it. I only just started getting into TB's stuff. I lost my mother-in-law to breast cancer last year and our family has a long history of breast and throat cancers... I know how difficult the fight can be.
I wish him all the luck in the world. Hopefully his friends and family are all holding up as well.
I wish him all the luck in the world. Hopefully his friends and family are all holding up as well.
I lost two grandparents to different cancers... Although, it's been really heartening to watch practically everybody wishing him well throughout this, even this website's official Twitter feed and some of it's staff's twitter feeds have posted well wishing messages of support to him.
Here's hoping that things work out, it might be inoperable but it's not untreatable. The issue is the placement of the cancer, the liver processes a lot of the body's poisons into things that we excrete, everything from old blood cells to excess amino acids get broken down by the liver then excreted via the kidneys and bladder sometime later on. Because of that, the liver has a lot of bloodflow through it so if one of those small cancers starts releasing cancer cells into his bloodstream then things are going to go south very, very quickly. However, it looks like they may have caught it early enough to begin treatment before such things happen which dramatically increases TB's odds of pulling through this in the longer term.
Although, please take everything I typed with a grain of salt since I don't have all of the facts about TB's cancer and I am just speculating with what he has chosen to tell everyone.
Here's hoping that things work out, it might be inoperable but it's not untreatable. The issue is the placement of the cancer, the liver processes a lot of the body's poisons into things that we excrete, everything from old blood cells to excess amino acids get broken down by the liver then excreted via the kidneys and bladder sometime later on. Because of that, the liver has a lot of bloodflow through it so if one of those small cancers starts releasing cancer cells into his bloodstream then things are going to go south very, very quickly. However, it looks like they may have caught it early enough to begin treatment before such things happen which dramatically increases TB's odds of pulling through this in the longer term.
Although, please take everything I typed with a grain of salt since I don't have all of the facts about TB's cancer and I am just speculating with what he has chosen to tell everyone.
The only thing he did I ever consistently enjoyed was his WTF is? series. Still, even though I never subscribed to his channel,he always comes off as someone with a bit of an anger problem, but still an eloquent speaker who could argue his points better than most Youtube commenters.
The situation sounds totally messed up, I lost both a grandmother and grandfather to cancer, but they were at least somewhat old even my grandfather made it to 55 before brain cancer took him. Total biscuit could very well die in his 30s, when I was a kid that seemed so old, now its dreadfully sobering how young it feels.
Not much I can say about the guy beyond that, I can only really wish him luck with his treatment.
The situation sounds totally messed up, I lost both a grandmother and grandfather to cancer, but they were at least somewhat old even my grandfather made it to 55 before brain cancer took him. Total biscuit could very well die in his 30s, when I was a kid that seemed so old, now its dreadfully sobering how young it feels.
Not much I can say about the guy beyond that, I can only really wish him luck with his treatment.
There isn't a whole lot that can make me shake my head unconsciously, but reading this made me do so.
That really sucks. I can only hope that an option eventually shows up, as unlikely as that seems. And, I suppose, I hope that, should it come down to it, it's as quick or drawn out as he prefers. (Me, I'd take the easy way out, but I won't judge someone that wants to live as long as possible instead).
That really sucks. I can only hope that an option eventually shows up, as unlikely as that seems. And, I suppose, I hope that, should it come down to it, it's as quick or drawn out as he prefers. (Me, I'd take the easy way out, but I won't judge someone that wants to live as long as possible instead).
Heard about this via the Star Trek Online community (he's been known to play the game every now and then). Really sucks. I wish him the best.