Let The Wild Goose Chase Begin
I'm comin' for ya, dude.
Hey! How was your Thanksgiving?
Really? That sounds nice… oh, mine? It was lovely, thanks. Yeah, everyone’s still speaking to each other… yep, kids got along and no one threw mashed potatoes. We missed the traffic by coming back Saturday night. So great to see everyone, but nice to be home.
What?
Oh, the scan results, right…
Um.
Yeah, those didn’t come out like we hoped. Like, really not like we hoped. Lungs: measurably worse. Pelvic tumors: growing. Hydronephrosis (back-up in my kidneys) worse. New lesions in sacrum and pelvic bones.
You see why I’ve been avoiding you.
On the “Action Items” side of the page, however, we have now two solid Phase I trial options (thank you, cancer research funding), one of which I’ll be starting next Wednesday. Pending my visit with the PPMD (urologist) tomorrow and scheduling my stents. Yes, lucky me, I’ll be getting ureter stents again so I can pee. (Jeez, now I’m not only like an old woman but an old man, too?) The study (Option #1) is an oral drug, taken (yea!!!) with food daily, so no fasting, no infusions (looking hard for the silver lining)…
As opposed to the study drug from last summer, this one attacks signaling proteins on multiple pathways at the same time, so there’s a higher chance of success. The study worked well for an ovarian patient (she was on it for ten months) at The Cancer Factory already, although eventually she progressed and has now moved on to another study (my Option #2). So there’s a reasonable hope that this will give me some more time.
Another bonus is that Option #2 has openings forecast for a few months yet, so if Option #1 doesn’t show results, I can slip right on to Option #2 after about three months or so.
What? Well, we don’t know what else is out there yet. That’s the problem with studies. There are new ones coming down the pike all the time, but we can’t really predict what or when.
So, yeah. That’s where we are today. No, I’m handling it okay. (Just don’t talk about the kids.) I haven’t started buying plane tickets yet, but I’ve stopped shopping for high-end, life-long couture, since I’m not sure I’ll get my money’s worth out of it. And no, I will NOT bequeath it to you new-with-tags, so quit asking.
God bless black humor.
Fine, Thank You
As I climb back out of the chemo pit I fell into last Tuesday, I am greeted by Christopher Hitchens’ latest brilliant column in Vanity Fair, on Cancer Etiquette. Now, as anyone who has personally encountered The Big C will understand, there is a whole new book of rules that apply to those of us on the ugly side of the fence. And, as Hitch so brilliantly reminds us, the proper response to “How are you?” is NOT a lengthy discussion of your latest symptoms, scan results, and tumor diameters.
Conversely, the asker, when returned with a simple, “Fine, thanks, and you?” should NOT, as happens so frequently, re-state, “Yes, but how ARE you?” There may be things the patient doesn’t want to talk about. Maybe she’s had a long day of explaining to everyone how she’s really doing, and is sick of it. Maybe the news is bad and she doesn’t want to get into it right now. The sharing of bad news is particularly difficult, as the toughest part for me of having Stage IV cancer (and, as Hitch notes, the thing about Stage IV is that there is no Stage V) is having to explain to people what’s really going on inside my body, how dire it is, and watching and dealing with their reactions. Because, frankly, I’m not very comfortable with my own reactions to the situation, and I’m not exactly equipped with the emotional fortitude to comfort you when you hear my news. Hence the “No-Cry” zone I’ve erected around me since 2006; if you lose it, I’m going down, too.
On the flip side, there are those who feel it will be encouraging to share with the patient the story of another person they’ve known, personally or, my favorite, “my sister’s best-friend’s boyfriend’s cousin’s mom” who had the same, or perhaps completely different, cancer as I have, and who took every treatment plus radiation and is now hiking Amazonia/lived thirty years past doctors’ expectations/died a horrible, lengthy and agonizing death in sub-standard hospice care. Whether uplifting or depressing, these stories leave the patient wondering: 1) Is she telling me this story to make me feel better? 2) Is she telling me I’m going to die the same way? And, as Hitch found out, 3) What the hell do I say next? Frankly, we can all do without (see para. 2) having to come up with conversational tidbits to make you feel better about your story/aunt/distant acquaintance and the outcome of their cancer.
You see now why my standard response to the question in question has become, “Upright and conscious.” For those not in the know, my answer is funny, just another frazzled, sleep-deprived mom-on-the-go; for those who are well-versed with my sitch, it’s an honest assessment of my day, at least that part of it that I’m in right now. “Fine, thank you” just leaves too many open ends.
Instead of trying to relate to your friendly neighborhood cancer patient, to make her see how closely you understand what she’s going through (because, unless you’ve been the one holding her hair back for her in front of the throne and massaging her neuropathic feet, you can’t), just ask her if she’d like some company. Bring her a coffee, or take her out for one. Talk about the weather, your kids’ soccer games last week, how annoyed you are by Christmas commercials on November 1. If she wants to talk about cancer, she’ll be more likely to when she knows you’re there for the long haul than just the quick update.
Gee, chemo seems to make me a little bitchy. Aren’t you glad I’m back?
Random Realizations
With the exception of catching a cold, it’s been a fantastic week. Fun things to do, plenty of excitement and opportunities to wear high heels. And along with my trend of expanding wisdom with increasing age, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve discovered over the past seven days. Maybe some of them will be helpful.
- Birthdays are awesome, especially when your kids make you cards.
- With chocolate inside.
- It is possible to survive a week without diet Coke.
- When staying in a chic hotel with exciting on-site nightlife, you have to expect drunken hotel guests.
- Who are incapable of moderating their voices in quiet hallways.
- At 1:25, 1:54, 2:17 and 3:20 am.
- While lying awake silently cursing rude hotel guests, it is possible to forget all semblance of manners or empathy or respect for human life.
- Children get tired-and-cranky exponentially faster when playing at other children’s houses.
- A good playdate can last for eighteen hours, but requires devoted host parents. (XOXO)
- The best possible time to run into people from your past, say, college, is when you are decked to the nines in an expensive dress, killer shoes, hip jewels, and freshly-straightened hair and out for a date with your cutie-patootie hubs at The Four Seasons.
- No matter where you order it, shellfish-over-pasta is just shellfish-over-pasta. Lesson learned.
- However, it is possible to do some very exciting things the next morning with french toast.
- It is possible to still have things to talk with one’s husband about for nearly a whole day, even after seventeen years.
- Chic young things at swanky, hip bars in boutique hotels spend too much time on their cell phones texting people who are elsewhere and not enough time enjoying their surroundings.
- Although they seem to enjoy their fifteen-dollar vodka-and-tonics plenty.
- Thirty-nine and cancer-ridden means that four cocktails over the course of an evening, even with food, will result in a hangover.
- Irrespective of the quantity of water consumed during the same evening.
- Hangovers are quickly dispatched while lying in a pouffy hotel bed watching TV and eating salt-water taffy for breakfast.
- Coughing at night is more annoying than drunken hotel guests outside your room.
- Divorce can be avoided by sending the coughing party (me) to sleep in the guest room.
- All drivers who are not me are complete and utter morons.
- Especially when I’m running late.
I hope I have enlightened you with some of my new old-woman wisdom. I’m home from chemo and off for my daily kip. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.
I Love Birthdays
Isn’t it sad how most women fear getting older? How much money we spend on facial treatments, personal trainers, Lycra undergarments, and hair dye to avoid the appearance of aging? Like the bimbos on Jersey Shore are really having any more fun than actual grown-ups.
Today is my 39th birthday. If you’d asked me three years ago whether I’d see 39, I might have said no. And I know there are a lot of people out there who will quake at the impending doom of the big four-oh, worrying that it symbolizes the fading of youth, the approach of pop-culture irrelevance, the relegation to “old-person” status. (Okay, maybe not Dara Torres.)
Not me. I’m thrilled to be having a birthday at all. And if I get the chance to go grey, to get (more) wrinkly, I’ll be excited about it. Not just because it’ll save me a fortune in blonde highlights, but because it will advertise my success. It will broadcast the triumph of will, love, modern medicine and good nutrition over the evil cancer monster. It will announce to the world that I am more interesting than I was at 25, more complex, a better friend, partner, and parent. I will have wisdom to share, stories to tell, funnier jokes. (I’m willing to let the bikini go for funnier jokes.)
I know I come back to this analogy frequently, but I feel like aging adds more and more intricate pieces to the mosaic image that is my life. The pixels get smaller, the details crisper, the image sharper. More interesting.
Old people are cool. Bring it on.
I hope I'll look like this.
Speak Your Piece
I’m sure your inbox has been as crowded as mine, over the past six weeks, with emails from senators, the veep, even Barry O. himself, exhorting you to cast your vote this way or that, choose this candidate over that one, save our country from certain destruction at the hands of [insert opposing political party name here].
So I’ll keep this brief: make sure you vote today, and not just for the party you like best but for the candidates who will do the best job. And I don’t need to remind you of the importance of thinking carefully about the recent health-care legislation and its potential benefits for the illin’est of us, in terms of lifetime healthcare limits, pre-existing conditions, and coverage for the young adults under their parents’ policies.
Okay, I’ll get off the soapbox now. The most important point to remember is: if you don’t vote, you can’t bitch about them later.
Photo courtesy.
I'm a two-and-a-half time ovarian cancer survivor who is not only determined to make it to sixty but also to look damn good while getting there. My two boys, husband, and dog are counting on me to get out of bed every day, so I might as well wear something cute and make each one COUNT. I'd love to hear from you about your odyssey - sharing makes it all easier to take. And laugh at.
