Emily Update - 8.15.16
Hello all!
Emily is doing great! Seriously, if you are going to see her please be prepared for the reality that she doesn’t really look sick at all. Keep please your expectations for dramatic physical transformation/weight loss low, there is nothing to see here.
Emmy had her fourth chemotherapy treatment and August 9th and it went swimmingly as always. (For those of you new to our little group this is 4 out of a cycle of 6. It is one treatment every 3 weeks for a total of 6.) When that course is complete, Emily will switch to a maintenance schedule of one infusion a month. Maintenance chemotherapy has fewer side effects because one of the drugs in the cocktail she has receiving is removed during maintenance. I know I originally said that after the 4th treatment there would be scans and those scans would determine the necessity of the next two heavier chemo treatments before maintenance. And there will be scans, but because the scans are still to be scheduled and Emily is tolerating the chemo so well, we have scheduled the final two chemotherapy treatments and plan to do 6 treatments regardless of scans. The deal is, we could get the scans and then they would be good and because she is doing well and having such a mild reaction to chemotherapy that we would probably say, “Two more just because we can!” Then again, the scans could be not great and show that the cancer has not stopped growing in which case we would probably say, “Let’s try two more treatments and see if that can slow things down.” I’ll keep folks up to date on all that.
Marin Cancer Care have basically (by basically I mean they have) given us our own chemotherapy room. At first it was because Emmy needed to be lie flat on her back to manage her pain. But the radiation Em got before chemotherapy really shrunk that lumbar tumor and the pain is mostly gone. The next time I think we just blithely went to the special room out of habit and entitlement. Now I think we and Marin Cancer Care have all come to a tacit agreement that it is best that we just have our own room because:
-We’re loud.
-Our frequent giggling and/or cackling undermines the quite dignity that is expected of cancer doctor’s office.
-On our second visit Emily had to watch something on her iPad that involved Richard Pryor saying “motherfucker, cocksucker, and the n-word” at a pretty high volume.
-We encourage others to be loud and engage in conduct unbecoming a cancer doctor’s office.
-We are “fomenting rebellion” whatever the fuck that means.
We saw a new oncologist at Marin Cancer Care and we really like him! He answers questions clearly and provides context and information! We are making him our new doctor!
In the medical news that we have all been waiting for, Toby is off the Prozac. We are having a try with doggie medical marijuana. I told Emily we have to smoke it and then blow it in the dog’s face, but that isn’t true. We just put it on his food.
Abby