Karen Is a Bad Doctor

If Karen were a doctor, she'd be Dr. Giggles.

And after our first bi-weekly appointment to keep extra tabs on Karen's condition, we are moving back to monthly appointments because while Karen has indeed been feeling more worn out, it does not seem to be the result of her cancer roaring back but rather a muted encore performance of her initial crizotinib side effects. With labs and everything indicating that she's still doing well (including the intermittent facial rash that is a drug side effect) there's no reason to show up every two weeks at the oncologist's. Meaning there is no good reason to wake me the hell up so freaking early twice a month. So we will just keep plugging away and hold off on diving into the chemo pool for at least another month.

This being said, everyone is pretty clear-eyed about the fact that the crizotinib will most likely lose efficacy fairly soon. With that in mind, she will have another PET scan near the end of August to see how she's doing. And with the probability that chemo is not too far distant, there are some other things going on.

Specifically, there will be changes at work. Wells Fargo has started to look into hiring a replacement for her and, in fact, Karen is interviewing candidates. She will be moved to something that used to be called "Special Projects" at my old job at Ziff-Davis. While I personally like the way it sounds that she is cleared to build and construct a death ray I'm sure it is much more mundane than that.

Not as mundane was the start of this transition at work. Earlier in the week Karen had a meeting with her immediate team members to let them know that Wells Fargo was starting this process. It was a small group and it was pretty quickly awash in tears, with some members needing to excuse themselves from the room temporarily. Karen has been incredibly fortunate to work with such great people, people who have become real friends and that truly care for her. The downside is it makes this transition a whole lot more difficult.

In the meantime, we will continue to enjoy the parade of visitors. Next up: the Agnelli/Ferrante clan who arrive tomorrow! Frankly, considering the air miles Karen's illness has generated, I think we're due some kind of discount from the US airline industry.