Still Numbers Girl
Thursday was my monthly checkup with my oncologist - blood work, a chat about any new symptoms, and a quick exam. I had decided a couple of weeks ago that I needed to start taking someone with me who could not only help me remember the things my doctor says (I can not remember anything! - chemo brain, #thestruggleisreal), but who could also help me remember my questions for the doctor and make sure I get answers that make sense to me. I had started to notice that I’d go in with questions, ask them and feel reassured when I left the doctor’s office, and two days later rehash the answer and find it didn’t make sense to me after all.
So my friend Lori went with me this time. In addition to providing a ride and good company, Lori’s profession as a lawyer means she is well-suited to questioning, probing, and recording. I was bringing the big guns this time! No unasked questions or misunderstood responses for me. I had my lawyer present! ;) She even planned to type up her notes for me! Monica Gellar-Bing would be proud. (I told her a photo of her notes would work just as well for me.)
More important than my lawyer, I had my God present. And the prayers of His people. Last month, my white blood cell counts were down, specifically my neutrophils, a side effect of my treatment. They monitor this every month because a low white blood cell count means increased susceptibility to potentially life-threatening infections.
There is “low” and then there is “unacceptably low.” They’re pretty much always low, but they were unacceptably low in the past and after a couple of months of this, the doctor had to lower my dose of treatment. The lower dose should have fewer side effects, but while it hasn’t been studied to find out if it’s as effective as the full-strength treatment, it seems to have continued to work well for me until now. Last month, my neutrophils were 1.0, just on the edge of unacceptably low. My doctor had warned that if they didn’t rebound this month, we’d have to talk about lowering my treatment yet again. There are three approved dosages of my treatment and I’m currently on the middle one. But if I drop to the lowest dose, there will be nowhere else for me to go if my counts are low except to a new treatment.
If you are new to my blog or to metastatic breast cancer (MBC), or even if you’re not, you might not know that having MBC means you’ll be in treatment for the rest of your life. The rest of your life. Seriously. Cancer is smart and it eventually figures out a way to beat whatever line of defense your treatment is utilizing. Right now I’m on an aromatase inhibitor with a CDK 4/6 inhibitor. (Don’t worry – you don’t have to know what that means.) So when this treatment ends, whether because of low white blood cell counts or because my cancer starts to grow again, I have to move on to another type of treatment that comes at the cancer from a different angle. But there are only a limited number of treatments out there. You don’t want to quit one too soon, because you have no idea how long the new line of defenses will hold. Some might keep the cancer at bay for a long time (and when I say “a long time,” I mean a year or two). Others might fail right away. But once you fail the last treatment available, you die.
So I really didn’t want to have to drop down to the lower dose of my current treatment. We were praying for those white blood cells to be higher than last time. Or even the same as last time. Just not below 1.0. And what did I get? 1.6! Fist pump! Thank you, God!
I had also asked my doctor to check my tumor markers again. Check out this graph from last July, with a fun little marker where my new result is:
That’s right – another good number! Nine, to be exact. The lowest I’ve been in a while. Praise God!
Now I do still have some new pain – in my foot and in my back. But my doctor consistently responded that he didn’t think this pain was concerning, or at least not concerning enough to bump up my scans that are scheduled for the end of May. And yet, I still have pain. I was reflecting tonight and thinking that his laissez-faire response reminded me of Monty Python and the Black Knight saying, “It’s just a flesh wound!” And I had a good chuckle, picturing myself, with my compression fracture in my spine and my healing rib fracture, and potentially more fractures elsewhere, as the Black Knight, with my doctor saying, “It’s just a flesh wound, Katherine!” Hahaha.
In the end, though, they really are just flesh wounds. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalms 73:26). “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). God, keep that my focus.
So my friend Lori went with me this time. In addition to providing a ride and good company, Lori’s profession as a lawyer means she is well-suited to questioning, probing, and recording. I was bringing the big guns this time! No unasked questions or misunderstood responses for me. I had my lawyer present! ;) She even planned to type up her notes for me! Monica Gellar-Bing would be proud. (I told her a photo of her notes would work just as well for me.)
More important than my lawyer, I had my God present. And the prayers of His people. Last month, my white blood cell counts were down, specifically my neutrophils, a side effect of my treatment. They monitor this every month because a low white blood cell count means increased susceptibility to potentially life-threatening infections.
There is “low” and then there is “unacceptably low.” They’re pretty much always low, but they were unacceptably low in the past and after a couple of months of this, the doctor had to lower my dose of treatment. The lower dose should have fewer side effects, but while it hasn’t been studied to find out if it’s as effective as the full-strength treatment, it seems to have continued to work well for me until now. Last month, my neutrophils were 1.0, just on the edge of unacceptably low. My doctor had warned that if they didn’t rebound this month, we’d have to talk about lowering my treatment yet again. There are three approved dosages of my treatment and I’m currently on the middle one. But if I drop to the lowest dose, there will be nowhere else for me to go if my counts are low except to a new treatment.
If you are new to my blog or to metastatic breast cancer (MBC), or even if you’re not, you might not know that having MBC means you’ll be in treatment for the rest of your life. The rest of your life. Seriously. Cancer is smart and it eventually figures out a way to beat whatever line of defense your treatment is utilizing. Right now I’m on an aromatase inhibitor with a CDK 4/6 inhibitor. (Don’t worry – you don’t have to know what that means.) So when this treatment ends, whether because of low white blood cell counts or because my cancer starts to grow again, I have to move on to another type of treatment that comes at the cancer from a different angle. But there are only a limited number of treatments out there. You don’t want to quit one too soon, because you have no idea how long the new line of defenses will hold. Some might keep the cancer at bay for a long time (and when I say “a long time,” I mean a year or two). Others might fail right away. But once you fail the last treatment available, you die.
So I really didn’t want to have to drop down to the lower dose of my current treatment. We were praying for those white blood cells to be higher than last time. Or even the same as last time. Just not below 1.0. And what did I get? 1.6! Fist pump! Thank you, God!
I had also asked my doctor to check my tumor markers again. Check out this graph from last July, with a fun little marker where my new result is:
That’s right – another good number! Nine, to be exact. The lowest I’ve been in a while. Praise God!
Now I do still have some new pain – in my foot and in my back. But my doctor consistently responded that he didn’t think this pain was concerning, or at least not concerning enough to bump up my scans that are scheduled for the end of May. And yet, I still have pain. I was reflecting tonight and thinking that his laissez-faire response reminded me of Monty Python and the Black Knight saying, “It’s just a flesh wound!” And I had a good chuckle, picturing myself, with my compression fracture in my spine and my healing rib fracture, and potentially more fractures elsewhere, as the Black Knight, with my doctor saying, “It’s just a flesh wound, Katherine!” Hahaha.
In the end, though, they really are just flesh wounds. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalms 73:26). “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). God, keep that my focus.
Am never not proud of who you are and Whose you are.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, so thankful for these encouraging tedt results! You are a beautiful lady, praying foe you!
ReplyDelete