As you may recall, gentle readers, Karen has been experiencing increasing pain in her shoulders and arms. It has progressed to the point that she cannot reach far or all that high or low--she cannot load or unload a dishwasher, reaching to pass the pepper at the table can be startlingly challenging, and getting a shirt on over her head is more easily said than done. Happily, for the most part, we can all step in to help her out with these things. I've placed a number of drinking glasses on the countertop, for instance, so she no longer has to struggle to get a glass from the cabinet. And, while it is diametrically opposed to a vow I made to myself in college only to help ladies out of their clothes, I pitch in where necessary to help dress my spouse. Such are the compromises to personal integrity that marriage mandates, I suppose.
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| Sadly, this is not the sort of dogpile Karen is experiencing. |
With the pain steadily growing in intensity, we consulted an orthopedist who diagnosed arthritis and/or bursitis in both shoulders. Frankly, it's just not fair. Dogpiling on even more medical issues when Karen is already dealing with all the thrills and madcap tomfoolery that come with the cancer and the meds used to treat it...it is karmically wrong. I'm not one to wander the stormy heath railing at the heavens, shouting "Why me?" (because, more often than not, my real response is not even "Why not me?' but "Of course, me') but in this one specific instance, it is terribly tempting to stomp up and down our street giving the finger to the clouds above in a fulsome display of what you might call an Enraged Episode or a Psychotic Break but which my neighbors and I have come to know as Just Another Tuesday.
At any rate, the short term solution is four weeks of physical therapy followed (most likely) by cortisone injections. We had our first PT session last Wednesday and we'll be heading back just about an hour from now for Session Number Two: Electric Boogaloo. The good news is that it does seem like the PT could really help. Long story short: it's quite likely that the fatigue the cancer so reliably churns out has led to a collapse of posture and so on that has stressed her joints and muscles in the affected areas. On the other hand, the actual therapy is pretty unpleasant and leaves Karen in arguably more pain than she had going in, at least for the rest of that day. So, hooray for that.
In solipsistic news, someone today asked me how I was doing in, you know, that way that means No, how are you really doing? and in fact I think they actually even said that after my reflexive "Okay" response. And the answer didn't really change. I'm okay. We all are, more or less. Weirdly, the cancer has become kind of normalized and integrated into our lives in a way that was unimaginable just about two years ago. While we deal with it in some way virtually every day, it is in most ways a purely unremarkable part of our lives.
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| The Coffeys go for a drive. |
That said, I must admit that my old pal Creeping Dread is hanging around more than usual. Here's the thing: after some shipping hiccups, Karen's latest refill of Zykadia finally arrived yesterday. While it's great to have the medicine, in my mind there's a giant invisible countdown calendar that ticks off a box every time that delivery with the happy biohazard symbol on it shows up on our doorstep. This shipment unofficially heralds month four of this, Karen's third line of treatment, and means we are likely at best half way through the expected efficacy of this drug. Our path post-Zykadia is not especially clear but in our conversations there is a definite sense that Karen and I are both bracing for finality and resolution to this mess.
Way back when this started, we came up with the analogy that this entire experience is a lot like a slow-motion car crash. The air bags deployed a long time ago (that was the crizotinib) but we rocketed through the windshield a while ago and now, well now we're weightless and airborne and squeezing our eyes shut as we prepare to finally hit the pavement.
