Val did two rounds of chemo on the trial drug, her white blood count flattening out each time. Then the first scan showed that cancer continued to grow by millimeters. It was decided to ditch the trial and try a different chemo cocktail. It is now two weeks after the first round of the new chemo regimen, and… Val is breathing more easily. Her lungs feel less tight. She says, “The claustrophobic reach for air, the tightening, has slowly loosened. The air is plentiful.”
She also coughed up a teensy fragment of tumor. Grainy, she says, a gritty speck, like nothing else the body produces. This happened before, in 2008. It is a hopeful thing.
It means a little more room to breathe.
D