Behold Plan D

Once upon a time  a trip to the ER would be the most remarkable part of my day but these days, not so much. So consider that whole "things change" saying as validated.

But before the ER, there was Thanksgiving. We had 12 other people join us for a hefty party of 16. Miranda and I did the cooking, we were blissfully free of political discussions, and I believe everyone had a great time. After the noro-virus fiasco of last year, it was especially nice to pull off a major holiday without any sort of medical drama. There's a lot of pressure for holidays to go smoothly these days so it was particularly gratifying to have Thanksgiving be so enjoyable.

If there was a dark side to Thanksgiving (and it really wasn't because we know about real dark sides) it was that Karen was enduring sustained and increasingly painful headaches. Just about a year ago this time unrelenting headaches heralded the arrival of the cancer's spread to Karen's brain. Throw in some forgetfulness and reaching for the occasional word and it was worrying. So Karen headed to the ER to check it out. A CT scan revealed nothing. So we chalked up the headaches to cancer in general, the forgetfulness to cancer in general and the Chem 4 weed, and that was that. Karen has a brain MRI scheduled for later this month, so anything the CT might have missed will be caught then.

The Maui Mauler, Kimo Sweet!

So that was Monday. On Tuesday, Karen returned to the chemo suite for her new Cyramza and Taxocrete treatment. I pause to note here that every time I say "chemo suite" aloud it sounds more like the name of a Hawaiian wrestler than a place. The infusion went fine with none of the abdominal pain that preceded Karen's colitis the last time around. She basically just slept through the whole thing while I wrapped up a document for work. After three hours we left.

And she felt pretty well. In the immediate aftermath of treatment, she was tired but after a nap she was up and about with good energy. That carried all the way through the next day. And it wasn't all that shocking, insofar that, excepting the headaches, Karen has been feeling great ever since she stopped the Zykadia. It's ironic that when Karen is medically at her sickest these days, she is at her best. When her body is healthier from treatment, the side effects sap all her strength. We were encouraged and thinking that maybe this mixture wouldn't be so bad and then Thursday came. And then Friday and Saturday and now we're thinking, nope, we got that wrong.

I have to point out that Karen is doing better than with chemo the last time around. She's not vomiting and is barely and rarely nauseated. Her stomach is doing much better than with the Zykadia. But this new stuff, it absolutely ransacks her energy reserves and leaves her languishing in bed most of the day. She gets a little breakfast, joins us part of dinner, and that's about it. She has also been in the grip of crushing body pain. Thankfully, that seems to have lightened up some today but she is still needing to use all her painkillers and plenty of marijuana to manage it.

Now we wait and hope that this eases up at some point and buys her at least some good time in between the treatments.