No growth, no fluid

Rich is going to Tennessee every three weeks. Every other visit (so every six weeks) he gets a CT scan to assess how the medication is working. It's a horribly inexact measure of progress. The visits are brief (he can fly in and out the same day) and the staff are always pleasant. But the news is not very earth shattering. We don't expect to show up to a CT scan and find that all of his slime has shrunk away. So we bide our time with statements like "no growth, no fluid". That statement can be taken both ways.

Sure the slime isn't growing that we can tell. But it took years to notice it in the first place, so even if it were growing, I'm not sure we could tell. I'm not sure that the CT scan from January when he was not taking medication looks much different than his latest one after three months of medication. So it's a bit like taking a pill to keep tigers away. No tiger attacks yet. YAY!

Rich has very few side effects from our anti-tiger/slime medication. He is more prone to heartburn, though that could be stress related. Tomato products exacerbate that but he is unwilling to give up Mexican food or meatball subs so he just takes a dosage of Zantac that made the pharmacist ask, "Are you sure this is right?" His upper belly (right below his rib cage where the slime buildup is thickest) feels tight at times, but with his barrel chest and clothes, the world would never know. He's wearing all the same size clothes. He's playing all the same sports. He killed 21 people in one battle at Pennsic. So it would seem other than the time and expense of jaunts to Tennessee, life is relatively normal.

And yet, it's not. Rich is more irritable than normal. He's worried. He's unsure of his own body and what it's doing.

We all thought that CT scans were supposed to be virtual photographs of one's insides and yet it's more like the Rorscharch test of medical diagnosis. (Funny side note of a joke by Bob Newhart that ordering those cards must be awful. "Do you have any more of the three guys playing pool?" "No, but we've got three naked ladies fishing in a boat.") The CT scans we took in 2007 told us nothing because it was too soon to notice anything. The CT scans from October pre-surgery seemed like a textbook case of green slime to be extracted. After that "hunh" moment on the operating table, we're all a bit more dubious of what those scans actually tell us.

And unfortunately, right now, those scans and how Rich feels are our only markers for improvements. And Rich feels ... worried.

All this sounds depressing, but there are bright spots. Rich says that he felt great at Pennsic. His joints were fine, his stomach felt fine (I took note of the distinct lack of Mexican food on our medieval vacation), his back felt fine despite sleeping on an air mattress in a field. Have I mentioned he killed 21 people in one battle? So possibly a lot of this is stress related where having a vacation and being physically active keeps his mind off of things.

But we are back in the thick of things here in the modern world and that takes its toll on Rich (and anyone else in his immediate vicinity). He has another check up next week where they will just draw blood and dole out more pills, but I'm going with him on his trip in September for the CT scan. From 5am until 8pm we can pretend we're on vacation and have a delightful lunch somewhere. It's not quite Pennsic, but perhaps it will brighten his mood.

Three's Company

I have been incredibly upbeat about Rich's cancer, but when we went to Tennessee at the beginning of May for his orientation and initial dosage, I got a little sad. As we went over the details of Rich's treatment on that first day, they reminded us that while in pill form and with minimal side effects, this is still considered chemotherapy. As a chemotherapy patient, Rich and I are not supposed to create any new lives while this drug is in his system. Therefore, any plans we would have for a second child are on hold as long as he's taking these drugs. They instructed that it would take 60 or 90 days after his last treatment before they felt like everything was out of his system. We couldn't take that kind of break from the drug trial without forfeiting his participation. So if Rich stopped treatment for us to get pregnant, he would have to wait for another trial to become available. That didn't seem like a good idea. And so, no babies any time soon.

We are unclear how long Rich will need this drug trial treatment. It could be over a year, depending on how the CT scans look. It's all up in the air. So as we waited for more blood work for Rich, I sat in the next room and looked like this.

In the grand scheme of things, this is the best plan. I can't imagine being the Chancellor of Optimism while either pregnant or tending to a newborn. We watched my six-month-old nephew the other day and that one evening gave me an idea of how bedtime can be touchy with a super tired three-year-old along with a super tired baby. Everyone has her limits. Rich also tends to worry when I'm pregnant so he doesn't need that stress on top of his worries about his own health. Again, everyone has his limits. So it makes sense to wait. But I had started thinking about our next foray into parenthood and was even getting a little excited about it. So it was just a bummer all around.

After the first six weeks of Rich's treatment, though, I've come around to this plan. We have our hands full at the moment with Ian and regular flights to Nashville. It's a bit of a luxury to only have one kid in our house while that one kid is under the age of four. Rich and his brother are five years apart and thick as thieves. My two older brothers are 6.5 and 18 years older than I am and we're all doing great.

We do want more kids (well, we've at least agreed on one more). We just have to wait for now. I promise you'll get a memo as soon as operation sibling is a success. But the three of us are having a good time in the meantime.

Prologue to writing again

Hi there. For those of you not on Facebook (*cough* Harry and Ed *cough*) you may have thought I dropped off the planet. At times I wondered if I had dropped off the planet. The cancer stuff wears on you, you know? For a long time all I had to do was just report on the latest cancer news and that counted for writing. But then we went to Tennessee and got pills and were sent home and then I stayed home while Rich went for follow ups and there just wasn't much to report other than "hey, we're taking pills and hoping for the best."

I kind of forgot how to write about anything but cancer. Which means I forgot how to write period lately. And over the last six weeks I've figured out that it makes me feel crappy. So bear with me as I knock the dust off my fingers.

I actually have several topics to cover but haven't figured out how to write them yet. (See earlier comment about forgetting how to put words into sentences. Me talk pretty one day.) They probably deserve their own posts so I won't get into them here. Let's do a little catch up.

Rich had his CT scan yesterday that was after six weeks of treatment. Everyone in TN called his results "rock solid" and they were all very pumped about it. I think that means things are going well. Rich spends a lot of time worrying that things are not going well and no one has considered it at all except for him, but that's kind of how he works, particularly about medical things. It's a charming quirk of his that is part of his Rich tapestry.

I am still taking a photo every day but I keep forgetting to post them to Flickr. One day I will sit down and load all my backlog of photos but the task seems daunting right now. I actually got pretty jazzed when I watched the video about the new iOS 7 for my phone because it has a way to group photos based on date and location and I totally need that. Photo organization is a point of anxiety for me these days.

Ian graduated from day care last week which makes no sense because he is still there all summer until he starts Pre-K on August 26. I got annoyed because the teacher we don't like (the one that told Ian he couldn't wear Batman fleece pants because they were PJs and that's only allowed on PJ day) told me that my son was the only child without a mother at the Mother's Day lunch last month. My own kid didn't seem to notice or care, but she was "worried" about it. I think my kid gets enough Mommy time so he will survive the occasional work conference I have. I missed graduation too, but Rich took pictures and Ian seemed more concerned about getting his cupcake than knowing I was there since Daddy and Nana and Granddad were in attendance. No need to bust out Cats in the Cradle or anything. The boy still sleeps in our bed.

Speaking of cats, the eldest cat Ms. Kitty has finally settled into a routine. She had started peeing on the rug downstairs and couldn't be trusted to roam free. After having to remove all 35 carpet tiles from the dining room and scrub them on the back deck, I declared this Not Cool and forced her to live in the bathroom. That seemed cruel, though, like solitary confinement in prison so I tried setting up the 4' dog gate with a 2' dog gate on top of it. My damn 17 year old, three-legged cat scaled the gates to sleep in the middle of the downstairs floor. A stroke of genius and a generous loan from Curtis and Kathy led to Ms. Kitty now living in a dog crate next to the loveseat downstairs. She has food and water and a litter box and is perfectly content. We let her out when we're home and bless her fuzzy little heart she goes back in the crate to pee in her litter box. I think she's just too old to share with the other cats, which I can get.

We finally replaced our SleepNumber mattress with a Tempurpedic knockoff and I am super pleased. The SleepNumber was wearing out and getting to be very frustrating. Rather than try to figure out how to bolster up the sides via complicated mechanics, we just replaced it. I considered lighting it on fire as a warning to other mattresses that might cross us or perhaps attach a wolf head to it and parade it through Ocean View, but figured I might be watching too much Game of Thrones and that we could just give away the pump and bladders while sending the rest to the landfill.

Last thing because it just came up ... I have a Windows machine at work and a Mac at home. I am fine with both and content with my multi-platform world. But I have got to figure out how to resolve the differences in keyboard shortcuts between a PC and Mac. Neither is better than the other, but they are so annoyingly different. My fingers don't know the difference. I started a sentence and wanted to erase it, but if you hit Shift+Home and then Backspace you delete EVERYTHING versus just the last line of text. That's a real heart-stopper. Thank God for Ctrl+Z (oh wait, Command+Z cause I'm on the Mac right now). Each time I hit Ctrl+Home and realize I have to hit Command+Up instead, it kills me with a tiny little knife. (And good gravy, if I hit Control+Up instead of Command+Up and suddenly I'm looking at multiple desktops? GAHGAHPWKCFNVMELDWI131AFWCW!!!)

So that's what's going on around here ...