No News Is...

... not necessarily good news.

I was reminded by Caroline of Singapore, a good friend and avid reader of this little slice of literary heaven, that it's been 3 weeks since my last post. If that last part sounded like a confession, fine, I confess.

I'm guilty of not wanting to tell you what I'd been hoping not to hear, but what I did hear. The chemo I'd been on since October, the one that gave me the Mr. Clean look, slowed things down, but didn't show any signs of putting me into remission. The cancer that's in my lungs is still there, still active, and still growing, albeit very slowly. 

So as Huey Lewis would say, I want a new drug!

The good news is there are new drugs, and at least one of them is on Dr Z's radar for me. But before we start a new treatment, I'm going to see the Wizard at Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC next week. For those who don't know, I saw the Wizard when all this started and a couple of times since then. She eats, sleeps, and breathes colon cancer, which sounds like a horrible way to live, but it does make her the guru, or, as I like to say, the Wizard.

In the mean time, you know me, I'm living. I'm stopping in Paris again on my way to Prague for work after the NYC trip, and then I have to start getting serious about training for my next half marathon (The Pittsburgh Half in May). I continue to be amazed that in over two years, since my back pain was resolved, I've never had any symptoms of the disease - just side effects from the medicine. If they didn't keep scanning me, we still wouldn't know that it had spread to my lungs. It's weird. 

If we do nothing, eventually these lung spots would compromise my breathing. But we're still a long way from that, and I'm looking forward to figuring out what the next step is going to be. 

Wish me luck... Luck with the Paris Metro that is. Last time I got on a train headed the wrong way. Stupid French-only signage!

(Not Even Close To) Live From the Chemo Room 35

So, I'm thirteen days late in posting this. Gimme a break. Haven't you heard of writer's block?

Infusion 35 was the day after Christmas, or as I like to call it Family Jewvie Day. You see, for those who don't know, we Jews have nothing to do on Christmas Day, so we go to the movies. All of us. This year my family saw Life of Pi, which is like Titanic, only in this one the Leo DeCaprio character is an Indian teen and he survives, along with a lion. So maybe it's not really like Titanic, except for the sinking boat part.

My oldest has been asking if he could join me for chemo one time. He's very intrigued by how things work. So I brought him along and he spent the morning in the chair next to me, until Marcie came to deliver lunch and to rescue him from what had probably become boredom by then. He's very observent, not in the religious way, but in the noticing way. Over dinner that night, he had lots of questions about the procedures he had seen. 

He was gone by the time my favorite part of the day occurred. There were four of us who were all getting pumps, or, if you prefer, a chemo-Takhomasak.  One of the techs appeared with four shoebox-sized gifts for us. "You'll never need this," he said, "but Northside (Hospital) is making us give them to all our pump patients." In the box, labelled Chemotherapy Spill Kit, is basically a haz-mat suit, including gloves and booties, and some rags. The irony was just starting to hit me when one of my fellow chemo loungers said, "Let me get this straight. Getting this shit on my skin is apparently very bad, but dumping it straight into my heart is OK."

Brilliant!

The Northside reference may have been an omen. Dr. Z and his partners sold their practice to one of Atlanta's largest hospital entities as of the end of the year. New ways of doing things, including how they bill for chemo sessions, are now in place. I can't wait to see what this means to my wallet. 

More on that tomorrow in Episode 36. Stay tuned!