WE ARE DONE (for now)!
NO MORE CHEMO! Yesterday was officially my last dose. While I still have a table full of other meds I’ll still have to take, the daily poisoning that I’ve endured for the past two-plus years is over! I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to Kat and everyone else who has endured and put up with me over this less-than-fun journey. This is a trip that I do not care to repeat, ever, though that is, in reality, highly unlikely. Still, my oncology team is convinced that my numbers have been good enough for long enough that we can consider my leukemia to be in remission! PARTY TIME!
Well, okay, maybe hold up on that party thing a little bit. The doctor was careful to explain that being in remission doesn’t mean I immediately stop showing symptoms. Doing daily chemo for over two years means I have a lot of the drug in my body. The poison isn’t going to suddenly go away just because I stop adding to it. Recovery from the drug could take just as long as the chemo did, and there are some symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, that may never go completely away.
One of the things the doctor warned about was symptoms seeming to disappear for a while and then suddenly returning without any warning. While nausea and night sweats are the symptoms most likely to reappear, he warned that I should always keep my cane handy because there’s no way of knowing when my muscles might decide to shut down and stop working. He said the symptoms can also mimic a cold or the flu. Should such symptoms reappear, he requested that I call the cancer center before calling my GP to consider whether what I’m experiencing might be a leftover from the chemo.
What does ‘being in remission’ mean if I’m still going to be just as sick? Let’s start here:
The doctor emphasized that there is no way to be absolutely sure that CLL is in complete remission. There is a test that can be done with a bone marrow sample, but it is still considered highly experimental as no one is quite sure what to do with the results. As a result, he recommended against the rather painful procedure. Instead, I’ll do quarterly check-ins with the nurse practitioner, and as long as those pesky numbers don’t start to climb again, we’ll assume that the remission is holding.
There’s also no way to accurately predict how long the remission might hold. Five years is pretty much the max for most people, but there’s always the chance it could be as little as six months. His recommendation was pretty standard: get plenty of rest, eat well, exercise when I can, and avoid any serious stress. Apparently, the doctor hasn’t been reading a lot of news lately.
In the meantime, I have a fine needle biopsy of a nodule on my left thyroid this morning. My anxiety wishes that Kat could be there with me, but she has other things to do and, by any means of accounting, this is a rather low-risk procedure. I just have to stay completely still.
HAVE YOU MET ME?
I don’t think I’ve ever stayed completely still for anything! A local anesthetic will be used, and then they carefully poke a needle into my neck. I can’t imagine anything going wrong there, can you? I’m told the whole thing shouldn’t take more than two hours, and then I can come back home and sleep off the anesthetic.
Having a nodule is not necessarily indicative of yet more cancer. Should the biopsy come back positive, thyroid cancer is typically handled by an endocrinologist, not an oncologist. Same building, different floor, different doctor. The nodule has sat there untreated for the past two years, though, so chances lean more toward it being benign.
Where do I go from here? Assuming the whole thyroid thing is a nonissue, I have an appointment with the neurologist that may be rather involved. There could be a surgery or two involved there. I’ll need to see a urologist again, and there could be a surgery involved there as well. I still need to be in an assisted living facility, but as Medicare/Medicaid budgets get tossed around, who knows when that might happen?
A part of me wants to get back to work taking pictures again. I would have to make a lot of adjustments, though. I need to be able to sit down more often than standing. Indoors is better than outdoors. No extreme weather in any direction. No chasing breaking news stories. For that matter, probably no chasing static news stories. Still, I feel like the photo ideas have just been piling up for the past three years. I want a camera in my hand again.
For now, we’ll just worry about this whole FNA thing, get through it, then chill for the weekend. I’m sure next week will bring a whole new set of problems. There’s never any shortage.
So, who’s down to party?
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Brace For Impact
I was notified via text late yesterday morning that today’s oncology appointment had been moved to tomorrow. I double-checked with my inside person at the cancer center, and she confirmed the change but said no reason was listed, which is unusual. I’m concerned. This should be the visit that tells me I can stop taking chemo pills. My oncologist is Indian. His nurse practitioner is female. The hematology staff is all female and primarily Black. Community Health Network, of which the cancer center is a part, has long had a progressive DEI stance. However, in the past two weeks, we’ve seen multiple federal agencies, including the CDC, drop and eliminate DEI initiatives. Companies that refuse to drop DEI programs have come under fire from Republicans.
I’m concerned.
Meanwhile, Kat has been working to help address the winter needs of homeless people living near the salon. She passes three homeless encampments on her way into town. She’s been working diligently with others to provide hats, scarves, gloves, and blankets. As aid for displaced people has become increasingly nonexistent, she knows that many of these people would not survive without a little bit of help.
The America in which we’re living right now is insane. I think the most disturbing headline I’ve seen this morning is Rubio says El Salvador offers to accept deportees from the US of any nationality, including Americans. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador confirmed the unusual and possibly illegal arrangement, saying El Salvador has “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system.” He said his country would accept only “convicted criminals” and would charge a fee that “would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
Yeah, you read that correctly. The Secretary of State has entered the US into an agreement for deporting American citizens to Salvadoran prisons in a country where civil rights are routinely ignored. If you thought this was just about immigration, you were wrong.
There is some pushback. The AFL-CIO and other pro-labor organizations have filed suit against the Treasury Department for allowing Musk’s stooges to have access to sensitive personal information. That lawsuit, like anything going through the court system, is going to take time, though. In the interim, these are the nutjobs that have access to your information:
I’ve said this before; I’ll say it again: Elon Musk is an Apartheid-loving traitor who came to the US illegally because the South African government wouldn’t let his white ass get away with the crimes he’s committing here. The Felonious Punk attack on South Africa exposes divisions over race and land and is fueled wholly by Musk’s hatred for his home country, the people who were holding him accountable for his racist actions.
I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to type a lot this morning. I’ve been trying to pull a video clip from Sen. Schumer’s remarks yesterday, but it’s taking too damn long. I’m pretty sure they’re posted all over social media anyway.
If you can’t see where all this is headed, you’ll likely become one of its first victims. There are protests schedule in all 50 state capitals for noon tomorrow. I’ll be at the cancer center at that time, but if you can, please go.
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