Holy Horking Hairballs, Batgirl!

—Heads up: entry contains thoroughly icky details—

Here is a remarkable thing.  

A few weeks ago, shortly after chemo began, while out to lunch (I mean that literally), in the midst of a paroxysm of coughing, Val hacked up a biological gobbet of something unusual.  It was unlike anything she’d ever coughed up before, so (being a quick and not squeamish thinker) she folded it in her napkin and stashed it in her wallet to show TerriSue, our oncology nurse, a few days later.  TerriSue (also not squeamish) peered at the squashed fleck of tissue dried onto the napkin and snorted noncommittally.  But she suggested that next time (should it happen again) we might preserve the snippet in saline water so that the pathologists would have something viable to slice and decipher.  

Val related this story (“Did I tell you I coughed up part of my tumor?”) happily to all our friends, generally during mealtimes. A few days later Amy (friend, neighbor and veterinarian) brought us a little plastic biopsy jar, filled with formaldehyde and thoughtfully hand-labeled with a magic marker skull and crossbones and the title “Val’s Hairballs.”   We were instructed to keep it away from the dog.

Well, you guessed it.  Last week, as Val accompanied Amy and me on a bike ride to the yoga studio, she hollered across traffic, “Hey!  I just coughed up another piece of my tumor!”  That’s what she’d decided it was.  The only thing TerriSue had said (elaborating on her snort) was that occasionally people cough up a bit of lung tissue.  Eww.  But she had acknowledged it was not impossible to cough up tumor bits, so that’s been our hopeful working hypothesis.  We called back to Val, “Well, don’t lose it!  Keep it in your cheek or something!” And that’s what she did, all the way home and even during a side errand, like some kind of cannibalistic chipmunk.  If you’ll allow the image.  

She popped it in the Hairball jar and delivered it to TerriSue at the chemo appointment last week.  TerriSue laughed and took it to be biopsied.

And guess what!  Val, who had her one-week-after-chemo checkup this morning, just called me triumphantly to report that She Was Right All Along!  She really did COUGH UP A PIECE OF HER TUMOR!!!  

Can you believe that???  TerriSue (our main barometer) told Val that coughing up a tumor hairball (probably not her exact words) is a great sign. And it’s also great that she has almost completely stopped coughing, and just generally she is doing really well and she, TerriSue, is very pleased.  (She also said that the joint pains are likely to lessen with each chemo cycle, so I’m psyched to hear that.)

So that’s today’s happy news!  I hope you weren’t eating as you read this!  I asked Val what she was planning to do today and she said, “I’m going to stay home and whack myself on the back a lot.”  Wish her luck!

Deborah