I haven't been blogging of late because there hasn't been much in the way of news. Dash moved back home from NYC after deciding he'd like a little more support nearby. That's the biggest news. Otherwise, our day-to-day is stuck in a well-worn rut.
And it appears that we'll be stuck in that rut for awhile. This past week Karen had a new MRI and new PET scan and the reports from both were good. So she'll keep taking her current chemo on the same three week cycle until it stops working.
The success of Karen's treatment means that she celebrated her third birthday since being diagnosed. We observed by NOT going to the French Laundry and instead I made fried chicken. At this point, the whole "probable last INSERT HOLIDAY" mindset has lost its power since we've had multiple birthdays, Christmases, etc and the whole thing leaves us--well, at least, me--feeling like crybabies who keep crying wolf. So going forward, we're operating under the assumption that finality is a ways off. At this point, it feels like the odds are that Karen will beat the odds because she's been doing so consistently through this delightful time.
Not that doing so is especially easy. All of the testing feels like being subjected to a series of mock executions, with each of us wondering if this time is the time the hammer falls. Good news is a relief to be sure, but bracing for the worst is pretty reflexive this far in and expending all that very fraught emotional energy for no good reason can add a surprisingly infuriating (but minor) component to an otherwise happy bit of news. It's just another wonderful way that cancer fucks with you.
