Hello dears, They took Val’s PICC line out last week. Tomorrow she will have a port surgically implanted instead. Next week she’ll begin her second three-week cycle of Navelbine. At the end of those three weeks she’ll have a CT scan, and around then we should also get results from Continue Reading
2012
the next thing, and the next thing
Lovelies, here is the latest. Val opted to join the trial with Eribulin, but was randomized into the control group. Therefore she does not get the trial drug, but instead the drug selected by her oncologist, which is Navelbine. This is so caustic to the little veins that it requires Continue Reading
latest CT results
Hi everyone, Val has been on Gemzar for about 8 weeks, so she had a CT scan Sunday and we met with the oncologist yesterday. The scan showed what the doctor called “mixed results”: in the lungs, some existing cancer nodes stayed stable, and some were smaller. This is way Continue Reading
Gemzar
Oh, cancer. You are such an exhausting prima donna. Go home. Get a day job. Take up fly-fishing. Become a cabbie, maybe? Turn all that energy to something productive, for once. Val had a CT scan Friday. We got the results this morning, and they were not we hoped or, Continue Reading
the underside looking up
i am waking up this morning. if my body is under me, or on top of me, hard to tell. then i am standing. and the slant in this old floor pitches me sideways more than usual. that is a clue. there are thousands of clues. the feeling of ten feet tall Continue Reading
the sunrises, surprises and surmises
oh the vagaries. 3 weeks ago i was in the ER with breathing problems and a fever. not pneumonia, not a pulmonary embolism. no, they say, it’s just the tumors. oh those. dang. i was hoping for something new. it was a saturday and they’d gotten bigger since sunday. the Continue Reading
breathing
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 Continue Reading
Big Bird
Val is where my heart is. Val, and my dog, and the family I grew up in. And out in the green-smelling woods of this big messy extraordinary world. This is where I keep my heart. I need a lover to define my edges, to draw the shape of my Continue Reading
de lay, de light, de spair
friends i have been infused. and the result is that i had to go on without my white blood cells. they would have only slowed me down. the masters of the universe wouldn’t give me treatment last tuesday because my white count was too low. it is a potent cocktail. and also a bone Continue Reading
the grass the mastodons and your homeland
i will tell you about this thing. but i can’t tell it all at once. there is no road to summary. i want so very much to be able to answer accurately people who ask me how i am. i think, well, i can walk. deborah can’t hardly walk. and Continue Reading