Emily Update - 9.10.16

Hello all!

Here I am again with news form Emilyland. It doesn’t have the high drama or fashion of Shondaland, but it does have more cancer! But not that much more because Emmy had her PET scan and the results were very good. The cancer has shrunk in all places, if not in size then in activity. This means that Emmy can change her chemotherapy to maintenance which is also every three weeks, but with one drug removed so it a) takes less time, and b) is more tolerable.

In other (related) news, we went to Stanford to see a very fancy doctor. (Thank you Mark Hillberman) Dr. Wakelee invented Keytruda* which you have may have seen advertised in respected publications such as The New Yorker and during prestigious programming such as Real Housewives of New York City. Dr. Wakelee walked in and said, “Hi, I’m Heather.” Like any true expert confident in her knowledge and skills, she does not give AF about being and sounding fancy. She told us, very reassuringly, that Em would have had the exact same course of treatment had we gone to Stanford first and that her positive response to chemotherapy means that when this chemo stops working (which it will) she should have a similar positive response during her second line treatment.

(*In true Jewish fashion I may be exaggerating. She may have been part of a team that developed Keytruda, but either way she is a font of information.)

So, to close, Emily is doing really well and looks great. We are very happy with her progress. However, she does still have cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy, so she does suffer from fatigue. Because she is the kind of person who does too much, I ask for your support in helping her managing her activity level. The most reasonable thing would be for her to do one thing (like lunch or shopping or going to a movie) of a day. She also needs time to rest to recover from her one activity, so one thing a day, but not every day. She also needs to work to provide for me and the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed long term.