Dear hearts, Val is coughing. Lately she coughs in fits and starts throughout the day, although mostly she sleeps well. Some days she coughs with every sentence she utters, her breath hitching on words as she tries to squelch the impulse. There is a faint, asthmatic wheeze behind her words. Continue Reading
cancer
we continue
Good news: Val’s most recent scan results (scan was last Friday, results shared Tuesday) showed something approximating stability. We had the scan done too early in the treatment cycle to corroborate with the study protocols, so they’ll do another scan at the end of this cycle in a couple weeks. Continue Reading
honeycrisp
Dears, Today we went in for Val’s treatment and to meet with the oncologist. I’ve been worried because it seems to me that Val’s condition — especially her breathing and energy — has worsened rapidly in the last month. She’s been wheezing audibly; taking shallow breaths to avoid coughing;and her Continue Reading
port is in
Just a quick note to say that Val’s port implantation surgery today went well. She’s groggy tonight and on pain meds, but she can take the dressings off in a couple days and we anticipate the port will be much less of an encumbrance than the PICC line. She’s bummed Continue Reading
port
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
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 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