All Quiet on the Northwestern Front

Despite the post title it hasn’t been entirely quiet here this week, but it hasn’t been terribly full of intrigue and great feats of derring-do.  Deb has stayed a lot closer to home, with her only trip out of town being a one-hour jaunt down I-5 to Tacoma.  Most of the rest of her time has been spent either on the phone or on the laptop, though we were able to get out over the weekend to run our usual slate of errands.  The biggest difference from our usual (recent) routine was, of course, the fact that we had much of Monday afternoon not center around anything having to do with dry ice (or anything else at -30° F).  Instead we stopped on the way home at a store downtown that sells office furnishings.

We had been into the store the previous weekend looking for desk chairs for each of us, I picked a model I’d used before while working in Oak Ridge (thus the choice was easy for me).  Deb hadn’t been sure how she would like one particular chair over another one based on a simple 5 to 10 minute sit, so the salesperson (Rachel) invited us to come back in sometime during a workday and let Deb use one for an hour or so while she worked on her laptop.  Brilliant.  So we did just that.  Sadly for Rachel, Deb discovered that the chair in question isn’t comfortable for her over the long-haul.  Oh, well.  Back to the drawing board (or CAD workstation, these days).

But we have returned to Monday morning now, and we are sitting at The Wandering Goose for breakfast wondering what the near-future will hold.  Deb will have her blood drawn at 10:30am for analysis and we report to the oncologist an hour later.

The reason Deb got to skip the taxol infusion last week was because her side-effect symptoms had built up to a level where Deb was having more persistent malaise/nausea and occasional neuropathy in her fingers.  I think Dr. Ahmed had hoped that taking a one week break would clear that up.  Well, it hasn’t, really.  Deb is no worse off than before, but not really doing all that much better either.  The neuropathy is about the same as before, and the nausea is just as bad as before (to the point that Deb is feeling it a little even now). 

Does that mean we will skip another week?  I guess that’s up to Dr. Ahmed and Deb, ultimately, but I’m not thrilled about putting Deb through more taxol until we actually see a marked improvement.  I keep thinking about where the intersection on the risk/benefit graph might be, and while we can’t know for certain where it is I personally feel that we might be on the wrong side of it.

What does all this mean?  Well, right now it means that I will be updating this post after we see Dr. Ahmed for Deb’s oncology check-in.  Taxol?  No taxol?  We have the cold caps and dry ice ready this morning either way.  But I really don’t mind wasting the money spent on the dry ice if it comes to that.

::: LATE BREAKING NEWS FLASH - AGAIN THIS WEEK ON SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT :::

Just like last week, there is more to today's story.  We got to the medical center early to let them do Deb's blood-draw in time to get results before the oncology appointment.  Turns out that the appointments were running late as they always do when there are residents rotating through.  That isn't a complaint about residents.  I am all for giving them the opportunity to get training, even if it means the appointments run a little longer.

When we finally got in and Deb described the maintained side-effects mentioned previously, Dr. Ahmed decided that it was not yet time to restart Deb on taxol, so we get another week off from that (and another week off from dealing with the cold caps for six or so hours).  Dr. Ahmed also answered my burning question of whether or not we would be tacking on the missed doses to the end of the 12 weeks or whether we were deleting them.  She feels that, since the side-effects are still in force, there is still enough taxol racing around in Deb's system that we will count that as the dose.  Ergo, no additional doses at the end of the 12 weeks.

So Deb is now sitting in the chair getting her Herceptin dose only and I get to have another half-afternoon not dominated by messing with cold caps and dry ice.

One final note today - Deb will not be getting an infusion next Monday.  She will be getting it next Thursday instead.  We will be in Anaheim, CA for the first half of the week so I can present a paper at the annual conference of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers.  Deb will also get a chance to sit down with coworker/partner/mentor Jan in person since Jan lives relatively close by.