Despite my intent to write a caringbridge update in December then January, it has stayed a task I avoided as I wondered both “what to say? and “do I have to?” Thoughts I tend to have when I actually have few thoughts. But I know that many of you wonder if my bags are packed for Philadelphia. They are not quite yet.
2012 was a tough year in my treatment experience, largely because I never believed my treatments could be so unsuccessful. (I can state that “I am terminally ill with a hard to tame disease”, but that does not mean that I really accept it myself.) I went from one unsuccessful treatment approach to another as some tumors responded but new tumors grew. By the summer I was on a chemo that actually burned my butt, feet and hands – very surreal. You accept it in the moment because it is the reality but when you look back it’s like, “Wow. Really?”
My current treatment is considered easy to tolerate and it is. I expected to ‘graduate’ in December and was surprised then demoralized when the retrospectively obvious was stated for the first time – I should stay on this chemo for the complete 6-8 cycles (eg months) if it might be working.
The delay frustrated me. It continues to frustrate me because I have no desire to spend my summer months traveling back and forth to Philly. This timeline should have been fairly obvious at the outset but communication and leadership is all the more challenging when you change providers and have a long distance trial you are trying to accommodate. Mainly I stay frustrated that so much of my life is about staying alive and the suspended state it requires. I vowed to find my footing in 2013, reclaim my life but building a life beyond the constants of daily health care regimes is just not that easy for me. I have only so much energy. I have only so much vision.
I have deemed myself in a malaise and thus exempted from much more then putting one foot in front of the other this December and January. But you wonder and ask what is going on with UPenn, which I appreciate. I will be scanned in late January with results on the last day of the month. Because my blood work is not an indicator of what is going on inside me, this will be the first real check-in since early August. If it shows no new tumor growth, I will stay on the taxol/avistan combo through mid-March or possibly early May. At that point, if declared by my doctor to have had an ‘optimal response’, I will then transition to the UPenn trial. UPenn requires seven visits to Philadelphia in a tight numerical sequence. (And forget about that corporate jets transportation.) I am still not ‘in’ the trial until I physically go there, get approved and sign the paperwork. Until then my slot can go to the next candidate but as I have worked for 18 months to qualify so has every other candidate faced these barriers. While it has been tempting at times to give up on this trial, my heavily treated body is no longer eligible for most trials. And UPenn stays a dynamic place for cancer break-throughs.
In the meantime, I stay distracted with the endless paperwork of being alive. And I scheme (thus far unsuccessfully) about a winter trip to somewhere warm and sunny. Or just warm.
Malaise – it’s a lovely word that hits the spot even when you are not quite sure what it means. It is “a general feeling of discomfort, illness or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify.” Okay, i probably dont qualify for the latter part of the description but I still claim the malaise of December and January and do not see it as a negative thing. I had lovely holidays. I enter 2013 with hope. And that sense of malaise that sits with me like my knitting, well, I think it is just fine for now.
Thanks you as always for the many kindnesses that keep this journey just fine for Mike and me.
warmly, marcy
