Cancer is everywhere, which means the
talk of it is everywhere also. We all know someone who has cancer.
You can't read a book without finding a cancer sufferer, survivor, or
family member coping with someone who has it.
Turn on the television. Never mind the
ads for treatments and cancer centers, watch virtually any program
and it's going to come up at some point. At times it is a central
plot piece, at other times it just comes up in passing.
There are times when I don't need to
spend much attention on my cancer and at those times, each mention
leaves me feeling as if I've been poked by a stick. A little stick,
and not poked very hard. Still, poked with a stick. The surprise of
it, don't you know.
After all these months, I wouldn't
describe it as especially bothersome, but it can be a bother. I am
not now, nor have I ever been, one who tries to deny having cancer,
even if I could.
There are times, though, when I have to
focus on it because I need to do something about it. Like, right now.
I've spent extra time at the cancer clinic while we decide what we're
going to do, in terms of treatment, now that I am back on
chemotherapy.
The good news is that there are lot
more things we can do than when I first started on this journey. My
oncologists have always said that the goal of my treatment is to keep
me alive and as well as possible while the search goes on for a cure
for multiple myeloma. As we discussed treatment options this time,
there was a genuinely good feeling in the air. It's not a case of we
do this or that. Rather, we can do this, or that, or a number of
something elses to find something that works.
The bad news is that we have to do
something, be it this, that or something else. While my overall blood
work continues to be good, there's a set of proteins that is
interfering with my health and need to be dealt with. That's why I'm
back on chemotherapy.
The increases have been small from
five, to seven, to nine to 14 with each passing measurement. When I
was first diagnosed, the number was 186, so, obviously, things aren't
too bad. The way to keep them from getting out of hand, of course, is
to treat the cancer and whack it back down since “Not too bad”
can certainly become “Oh. Oh,” if left unattended, so treatment
it is.
An interesting fact in all of this is
that this is the first time we've instituted a treatment and then had
to revise it because it wasn't working the way we wanted it to. Every
other time we've tried something, it's done it's job, even if that
job was just to get me to the quasi-finish line that was my stem cell
transplant.
The fact that we had to adjust this
treatment did not come as a surprise though, since it came about
because of the manner in which we chose to proceed. The main chemo
medicine that I take is a tablet of varying strengths. To date, each
one has made me experience varying degrees of nausea. So, we wanted
to start with the small dose and see if that wouldn't be successful,
while cause the least stress to my system.
Well, no, it didn't work, so now we're
going to take a larger dose and add another medicine in the hope that
the two will work together to bring the proteins back under control.
I'd be lying if I didn't say it concerned me, because I'll be taking
more now than I did the last time I had to stop because it was making
me sick.
Still, it's the most direct and
simplest method to use at this point, so that's what we're going to
try first. Complicated can always wait.
I will say this about being in the
midst of treatment... Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer.
Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. We can pretty much
talk about it all we want without feeling so much as a single stick
poke.
There are a variety of versions of
the story that gives this blog its name. The pony is the constant in
all of them. A man is on his way to a party when he comes across a
young boy shoveling ass over tea kettle at an enormous mountain of
manure. The man asks the child if he wouldn't rather go with him to
the party than shovel all that poop. The kid says, “No way man.
With all that poop... there must be a pony in there somewhere
No comments:
Post a Comment