Guarded Optimism

Today we visited the oncologist for a check-in and left feeling unusually positive. That's a nice change from the shroud of gloom we've been piloting through the last month or so. We were so upbeat we bought fancy panini sandwiches. These are very fancy sandwiches which were created in ye olden Europe and eaten only by nobility. They are not to be confused with a grilled cheese sandwich.

This positive update is John Candy approved.

Anyway, Karen has been feeling pretty well lately. We figured it was because she had shaken the cold that attacked all of us over Christmas and because she'd had close to two weeks off work to sleep and watch Die Hard. Turns out the crizotinib may be the cause. Our nurse practitioner, Kathy, confirmed that Karen was breathing better, she was no longer wheezing, her weight was stable, and she was generally doing pretty well all things considered. While the official line is that the drug should take longer for patients to see positive effects, Kathy told us that she had seen lots of patients respond this quickly. So Karen would appear to fall in that happy 60% that benefit from crizotinib. She's having some issues with nausea but the anti-nausea meds (including our state-sanctioned weed) are doing a pretty good job keeping that under control.

All this being said, I'll feel even better when we eventually have new scans taken and we can see actual measurable improvement. Assuming that it's working, Karen will keep taking this drug until she stops responding.

And how long can we expect her to keep responding? It's hard to say. Since this is a fairly new drug, there are not a lot of long-term studies to provide information. Still, I'm looking into it and preliminary research would imply that we can expect Karen to be taking it for eight to nine months. We'd prefer a couple decades but we'll take it for now. This potentially longer response time just might mean I can dodge that cruise.