Lab Rat

I've been doing some digging around on the intarwebs to see if there's something more we could do to alleviate Karen's fatigue. Here's the thing: completely unscientific anecdotal testimony from other lung cancer patients that have taken or are taking crizotinib have done so for nine months and longer. One guy has been gulping down those $6000 a month pills for two years now. Now granted, this is completely unscientific and is far from being a representative field but...nine or more months is an awfully long time to be lying around the house without the will to do much more than pick out the day's pajamas. So we are embarking upon a science experiment. Unfortunately, unlike the Great Unknown Drifter Project of '09 I won't be able to do any dissection nor will I get to spread  lye around  my crawl space. But it still should be interesting.

Specifically, Karen is going to try not taking the compazine she's been taking twice daily to deal with nausea from the crizotinib. Fatigue is a possible side effect from the compazine so it's possible that's the true culprit here. If we can deal with the nausea in some other way (or if it's just become more tolerable) and this is indeed the cause of her fatigue then Karen could be back at near to full strength soon. Maybe. Who knows. But it sure beats sticking our thumbs up our asses if only because, you know, we always end up needing to use those thumbs to handle our food.

Our ultimate goal. For Science.

Why would we think this would work? Who died and made us Kings of Science? No one. But based on the same completely anecdotal and nonscientific evidence I have gathered from an online lung cancer support group I joined simply to poll about the fatigue, this has worked for some. Most of those guys didn't have any fatigue (just a lot of constipation and diarrhea though obviously not at the same time). Also encouraging us is the fact that Karen's energy does definitely seem to be making a comeback. She was awake all day today which sounds like more of a milestone for a preschooler than a grown up lady woman, but trust me on this. It's a marked change.

So here's to science. We're just a couple of dreamers, like Anthony Michael Hall and that kid that looked kind of like Ralph Macchio only he wasn't actually Ralph Macchio. If this works, we're going to venture into some Weird Science territory to make things even more interesting around here.