Friday, November 19, 2021
Most days I bop along, assuming I’m on the way to climbing out of lung cancer back into my “regular” life. I focus on now, thinking about each day in terms of tasks: appointments to make, instructions to follow, medications to manage. I exercise, because this year, I will ride my bike from Portland to Multnomah Falls and back. Once in a while, I need to nap. Often, I’m working on other stuff, although sometimes what I’m supposed to do slides out of my mind.
Then there are other times. A moment, an incident when my world tips sideways and sends me tumbling into blackness. Thursday was one of those days.
I attended a virtual talk sponsored by the American Lung Association, given by a specialist in immuno-oncology, Dr. Houssein Abdul Sater, from the Cleveland Clinic & Carol and Robert Weissman Cancer Center: “Updates on Immunotherapy for Lung Cancer Patients.” It was excellent and disturbing. Was any of it new? Not really. Yet, by evening, I was in free-fall.
Here are screenshots of some opening slides from the presentation.
Please note: Lung cancer is increasingly appearing in folks who have never smoked a cigarette. (When was the last time you tested the radon levels in your house?)
There were other slides, but who wants to geek out on treatment protocols? The bottom line is bad enough. For anyone thinking I am Saint Cancer, what I did late in the afternoon of the presentation will demonstrate why you’re wrong.
First, I went to bed. (Not to nap.)
Then I cooked some dinner, curtly refusing my mother’s offer to help.
I spent dinner and the rest of the evening sniping at my family. They could do nothing right, plus they were clearly just…dense.
Then I went upstairs, opened my cytology report, and stayed up too late researching my exact exon mutations and the targeted therapies that have been effective with each. Slowly, I felt myself settling down.
Today I got up, apologized to my family and cried. I also got back onto the exercise mat for a strength workout followed by a nice endurance ride.
Lung cancer is aggressive and very mean. It is not something people usually beat and, in all likelihood, will not be something I “climb out of.” But, and these are BIG buts, the tumors have responded stunningly well to the treatment thus far (OK, there was a pretty big wrinkle, but what’s 5 months of pneumonitis between friends?). I have a good medical team. And, even if the cancer recurs, there are many other things that can be done.
That’s the balancing act: acknowledge the potent, insidious realities of lung cancer AND track medical possibilities; be inspired by the brilliant lived experiences of long-term survivors. They are out there.
So, there are no PollyAnnas here today, no saints. Just someone with a few tears, coming to new levels of understanding, on her way to a new normal.
Balance Stones by maria teresa bellomo from Pixabay
Cancer sure is a bitch, isn’t it? I think about this *every* *single* *visit* with my oncologist, visits which occur every four months (and it’s been four years since my surgery). My Dr. Oncology once told me that “cancer changes your body” when I was whining about how tired I get.
Of course, at my age (nearly 74) the tired could be age (but it always feels like cancer).
There’s an awful lot of all kinds of cancer around. My sister and I both had breast cancer when no one in our family ever had breast cancer–we were just lucky enough to spend our girlhoods on Long Island, where a cluster of breast cancer seems to have occurred. And having two kids didn’t protect my sister, so the idea that childbirth can protect you against breasts cancer is just that–an idea.
Hang in there, Karen. You are doing GREAT. And we love you, so there’s that 😉