Carpe YOLO

Karen's oncology appointment yesterday went pretty well. Her energy has been getting better daily, the nausea is more or less under control, and her coughing and shortness of breath are gone. She's not taking and pills or cough syrup at all, either. All of this led Dr. Sherman to opine that this is sound "clinical evidence" that the crizotinib is working although we'll have to wait until she has her scans done at the end of the month to get actual proof that it's working.

Since it's working, it's reasonable to assume that she should enjoy the 8 - 9 months of effectiveness the drug averages for its users. Following that, said Dr. Sherman, there's a chance she could respond to "maintenance chemotherapy" that will buy her much more time than the few weeks or two months we thought chemo would get her. Granted, there's only something like a 40% chance this'll work but still...we took it as good news.

So we left the doctor's office feeling pretty optimistic. Karen is feeling well enough right now to accelerate her plans to return to work. Instead of waiting out the month, she's shooting for a February 15 return. She really wants to get things back to normal and we're all onboard for that.

Still, we have adopted a more aggressive stance on doing things these days. We're not putting stuff off the way we did when our inevitable mortality seemed a more far-off prospect. For instance, I decided--after long ago giving up trying when my efforts were insanely fruitless--to try to get a reservation at the French Laundry in a bucket list kind of way. I called the restaurant and was totally prepared to use the cancer card in order to maybe secure a better spot on the waiting list. What happened instead was they had a sudden opening and we got an actual reservation. On March 28, no less. Which is Karen's birthday. So that's kind of awesome.

And Karen got me a pair of tickets for the second weekend of Coachella this year. To be honest, I balked at first. The money involved kind of freaked me out and I didn't really feel that right now is the time for me to be running off to do the things that might be on my Things To Do Before I Die List. But it was on Karen's--she really wanted to do something for me and it would be pretty ungracious of me to turn this down. So I'm going. Not sure with who yet, but I'm going.

And all of this means we are probably almost 100% certain to go on that damnable Alaska cruise. Oh well.