New Treatment on the Horizon

Steve and I are wrapping up our time on Ocracoke Island. It’s been a good visit, a nice change of pace and place. Sun, sand, sea, and shells are always healing. It’s been a challenging visit in some ways, too, but that’s another post for another day. Today, some other news is foremost on my mind.

We’ve known for several weeks now, based on changes happening in my body, that Sasquatch is no longer working as well as it needs to. They call it “breaking through” when the cancer stops responding to a drug, and unfortunately, the rogue cells have broken through. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we got the results back from a test to explore the likely effectiveness of an immunotherapy drug, and it looks really promising. A score of 10 or higher is considered good, and I scored over 50. So I’ll be starting a new treatment protocol with a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy next week. The original plan was to begin Monday at 8 am, but we’re still waiting on insurance authorization. Don’t ask me how I feel about insurance companies’ ability to interfere with treatment plans right now. The plan is to start as soon as we possibly can.

It’s a bit disconcerting to have Trodelvy stop working. But I keep thinking about, of all things, a caving trip I went on with my church youth group in the eighth grade. I was a little anxious that I’d experience claustrophobia, as I wasn’t fond of small spaces. But what I found was this: I was completely fine crawling, wriggling, and squeezing through the narrowest of passages, as long as I could see a way forward. The only time I panicked was when I came around a corner and the passageway appeared to dead-end in front of me. It was an optical illusion–the passage simply made a hard left, which I realized when I heard voices ahead and saw a brief flash of light from a headlamp. I made the turn, and I was back on track.

I realize there may come a time when we will have exhausted the alternatives, and I dread that possibility. But for now there is a way forward, so I’ll keep on pushing through the tight places. In the meantime, Steve and I are going to watch another sunset over the sound and look forward to cuddling our kitties again tomorrow evening. Onward!