I Lost My Hair for This?

June 23, 2009

Numbers are back, O Best Beloveds: 3200-something, up 700 points and a new personal best, if by “best” we mean “worst” and by “worst” we mean “oh, fucking hell.” So Exempra is not so exemplar, and we move on to the next steps, which by now you can probably recite along with me; scans, to see where we are at in terms of amount of disease, and then the next treatment. Dr. W. wants to try something radical; treatment with estrogen to make me estrogen sensitive again, and then I can go on anti-estrogen Femara again, which worked really well before. No, I don’t understand any of this. Yes, I am a little dubious because it sounds too good to be true (women doing the estrogen treatment love it, because they are on estrogen which is like cupcakes and puppies in chemical form and makes you feel fabulous and your hair like a supermodel’s and also apparently literally cures cancer but I probably have some of that wrong) and I’m afraid that any more failed experiments allows the cancer to grow that much more. But Dr. W. has had great luck with the estrogen thing already, with patients with as much cancer as me (though weirdly, super low numbers; I guess I don’t really have a lot of cancer, just high numbers), and it certainly would be better than the current state of things, where all the time I either hurt or zone out from pain meds. So I don’t know. I have to say I’m a little over it all, but don’t worry; we do not despair here, Beloveds. We whine! We whinge! We eat frosting! But we do not despair!

Scan reports and next plan as they come. But first, a change of pace as I finally go see a new neurologist about my nearly entirely useless left arm (“Thirty years I’ve been practicing,” said Dr. W., “and I’ve never seen this.” Goody!). I am really quite curious.

Never a dull moment,