This is only part of the target. The other piece, lower on the spine, received radiation already, and wasn't discouraged. Surgery, we know, is a temporary fix.
So this morning we visit with oncologist to hear about the promised new tricks. We are given the name of a drug previously unmentioned. Not a new cancer drug -- it has been used in thousands of lung cancer patients -- but its track record for chordoma is exactly one patient. In Germany. With results that "seem encouraging."
One patient? Encouraging? Wouldn't a dose of asparagus produce the same, without the side effects?
And what, I ask, about the two drugs mentioned in previous visits?
Well, maybe, he says. But he is intent on this newer possibility, if he can get approval from the insurance company. He leaves the room, and five minutes later comes back, smiling happily and giving us a thumbs up. Yes! We can go to the pharmacy and get it filled.
Neither Rich nor I smile. I don't share the physician's enthusiasm. Rich is not my trial monkey.
Aren't we doing this backwards? To cure, why are we hurting?
So much I don't understand.
But we go out to a favorite bistro for lunch and have our soups and salads and wine, and walk along the Hudson, and the rest of day I'm humming I'll see my love tonight from "West Side Story" and believe this song will never end.
Candace
4 comments:
~So glad to hear this (reasonably?) good news!
One can think of it as Rich being a pathbreaker, one who pioneers new territories, which is only necessary because no one else did so far. And maybe that's part of the anger -- why didn't someone else pave this way before? But there are no answers to that question.
Shocking that the date to begin was a day earlier than they had said. But congratulations for having made it! My goodness, what an adventure. I wish you both some peace and quiet to enjoy.
I don't have any "anger" at Rich having to "pave the way" -- after all, all our lives have been trailblazed and are now supported by others.
What is enraging is the "medical business" in which healing is defined narrowly and success is in a pill.
Thanks much for your thoughtful comment.
HI Candace, I knew what you meant, and that's what I meant, the anger at the medical business and/or randomly at the fact that this was not yet territory that someone else got to blaze but that it has to be done by Rich.
Strange that my name did not show up; I did fill it in -- it's Heather!
I have a lot of issues with the medical industry and I share your frustration. I wish we could take the best of Europe and the USA (and other parts of the world too, why not) and make one very-best system. It's good you're there. Every patient needs a person there, watching and asking questions. Maybe not only patients need that, I just realized. A witness and a support person, these are lovely aspects of partnership. Thinking of you! Heather
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