Round 12

Went to the city yesterday for Round 12. It was a pretty routine visit other than my meds came up from the pharmacy quickly so we got to take an early train home. I also have an appointment now for my next scan (on May 7th). I’m hoping for more tumor stability which would be an indication of what we used to call “remission” when I was a kid. Now they call it a “progression-free interval”. I have come to despise chemo but when in a long fight, you gotta keep on swinging. My next treatment will mark six months of the stuff - at least the weather is warm so I'm not always freezing!

Also, here’s a link to an interesting article from the NY Times today – it quotes my oncologist extensively towards the end.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/health/policy/24cancer.html?ref=todayspaper

Puerto Rico and Round 11

After the fun of Richmond, I went for Round 11 on April 9th. This time I insisted on coming off Avastin because the fissure wasn’t getting better. So I’m now off of it. Again, it was a pretty routine treatment – just a long day in the city with a lot of waiting for an open chemo chair.

Vicki joined us since it was her birthday and she wanted an “independent day in NYC”. So, we gave her some geographic limits (from the Central Park Zoo down to 42nd between 2nd and 9th Aves and no riding the subway) and away she went. She met us back at Sloan Kettering after wearing herself out being a girl about town. And, she brought us some chocolate from the M&M store on 7th Ave!

On the off weekend, I went to Puerto Rico for 6 days. My guy friends in Morristown and I (5 of us) borrowed a beach house of another friend and had an awesome time. Rob referred to it as a frat brother vacation. Puerto Rico is a beautiful island and we had a great section of beach almost to ourselves (see photo above). We did a bunch of research on places to sightsee but the call of the ocean got the best of us! Each day, the prediction for the following day would be rain so we’d beach it and plan to sightsee the next day. But then the next day would turn out to be just as beautiful so we’d beach it again.

For you beach lovers, the temperature every day was about 85 and we had a nice ocean breeze! So, we'd swim and nap under the coconut trees pretty much all day. And, our house was just across the street from the beach so it was a short walk. In the evening, we’d go out to dinner in Dorado (the town where we stayed – about ½ hour from San Juan) or we’d go into Old San Juan for dinner and drinks. One evening, we hit a casino in one of the San Juan hotels and I even won $120 playing blackjack. It was a great getaway with the fellas!

Richmond and Round 10

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve written so I will make several entries today starting with Round 10 which was back on March 24. The chemo was pretty much routine. I didn’t see my regular onc but got a substitute. I asked him to take me off Avastin to let my fissure heal (Avastin suppresses healing) but he didn’t want to change the protocol of another doctor. So I agreed to take another dose.

On my off weekend (which is at the end of the two week cycle), our family went to Richmond to see some friends. It was the kids’ spring break so they were up for a long weekend. The kids got to see their old school chums (in fact, David had a sleepover just about every night we were there). We got together with a couple of families for dinner and I saw my former colleagues from Genworth. It was a great weekend and we even snuck in some good southern barbeque!

We got home in time to host both Passover and Easter at our house. I enjoy the holidays because they always involve good food and family time. I made a new gefilter fish recipe which my 6 year old nephews actually liked! They thought it was chicken! So that was a culinary success for us. In all, it was a very good week.