Another Change in the Path

The phone calls have already started and I am just home an hour or so from Duke, where I got two units of blood transfused to help counter the fatigue. But no chemo. After the visit today, the frank discussion of the recent CT (in a nutshell, more, bigger and more places), it seems that unless we know what might work in my body, chemo is like taking sugar water. It does nothing for the cancer. My body is simply drug resistant. There are some tests out there, similar but not the same as what they do for HIV, that *might* tell us if there is a medication that could work. That would require a day surgery, taking a chunk of the tumor off the liver area. Dr. Valea is worried that I might have trouble healing, but I am going to think about it. I don't simply want to stop chemo all together if there is something out there that might work. We also discussed Stage I clinical trials...those are the ones where a possible drug is tested on humans, right after the lab rat stage. They don't know much about how the drug will work on the humans, or how much drug or what side effects. Most studies won't allow me in due to the emoboli of earlier this year. And frankly, I don't feel much like a lab rat.

Quality of life. Quality of life. That is my mantra now. I kind of threw Dr. Valea off guard, I think, when I said (as we were trying to deal with that "how long" question) "so, I might not be here this time next year". Declarative sentence. He looked pained, actually and agreed that was possible. I would rather have had an argument that I could live for two or more years, but that did not come.

Most important is to be Mom, even if I am not a fun Mom, for Sofie.

So it is all about acceleration now. It is one thing to think you have a few years, another to think in terms of months. But that thinking, harsh as it probably sounds, is better for me, because I do have a tendency to procrastinate. And this time, I don't get a do-over. There are no extensions. If I don't do the things I think I want to do now, I will die with them undone.

They are not spectacular things, but they are a step or two beyond getting my affairs in order (which of course, being the pragmatic person I am, I am doing). But they are hard, because as I make the list and then begin to cross things off the list, I know I am only getting closer to when the inevitable is going to happen. Letting go for real. And saying goodbye. I am so not ready.

PS: I am not really in a place where I want to talk about all this quite yet, I am trying to let it sink/soak into my brain and talking about it makes it too intellectual, not an emotional process. So I hope y'all understand for now.