4th Maintenance

All per usual. I don't feel the effects of this one poison alone. Jan called within seconds of my drip finishing and we met for some Thai curry. She is going to leave me next week. But wait: It is only to visit her sister in Scottsdale for a few days.  Me, I now go back on the port flush schedule every 6-8 weeks. And ABJ wants a meet in 3 months. By that time I will have been a year without a scan and I believe he will schedule a followup at that time. If I count forward to the next booster sessions in 6 months, I believe that gets me to Feb  9, 2013.  Should be time in there to go south for Xmas, no?

ABJ was surprised that I had some neuropathy remaining, I don't know why. But they have a vitamin recipe to reduce the neuropathy which I will start on. Most of it I am already doing, it is just a matter of adjusting the amounts. He was skeptical about my knee problems being caused by the chemo and more in favor of age and the concomitant wear and tear. The nurses, however, are inclined to consider that chemo aggravates whatever you have going.

In my case what I probably have going with my knees is arthritis. It has momentarily cleared again and I can walk fairly well. Couldn't ride the exercycle this a.m. because of the early arrival of our housecleaner and my early infusion. Tomorrow is also out because I am fishing--priorities! priorities! A friend who is into homeopathy suggests a group he believes in thinks that fish oil helps joints, so I am doubling down on that dose every morning. (It may already be working!)

I finally finished The Emperor of All Maladies this week after putting it down for 12 months. And, of course, the last couple chapters are the very most important because they are very current in regard to cancer research (2010). Clearly, if one has cancer, one has it for the rest of their lives. It is a genetic malady. Where targeted gene therapy has been developed in the case of 4 very prevalent cancers, e.g., aggressive forms of breast cancer, it is highly successful. Then after 5 years further gene mutations can occur that preclude the effect of the targeted therapy. This occurs in only a subset of patients so large gains can be made by targeted therapies--but they may not be forever. In the case of all of these prevalent cancers, the entire genome has been sequenced and it can be compared with the normal human genome. All of this sequencing and then testing to develop a therapy specific to a single cancer is horribly expensive. There will be little incentive for the drug companies to take this on. Further, in the case of my rare cancer, why would anyone do the sequencing in the first place if there are so few people to treat?

Oh well, I don't have the time to dwell much on that, other than to lay it out there. Oh yeah, the 4-point buck above appeared outside our window yesterday afternoon. He is part of a herd of town deer that live here. He and his brothers--another with a rack and two more with spikes--have eaten all our plants including all the tomato blossoms. Can the cougars be far behind? USU's freshman class is reading The Beast in the Garden, the true story of the return of cougars to the town of Boulder CO (and a great read). And, just this week, one of our friends had one run in front of her car in a local canyon.

I'll get back to this on a regular basis so that you can continue to see what condition my condition is in.

Ciao