The Next Mountain to Climb

Hope and reality are not mutually exclusive. I think we live in a world where people may sometimes not want to face reality and sometimes don’t have any hope. I find great comfort in embracing both. Many things give me HOPE — God, my family, my friends, the mountains (especially Switzerland), and many more.  The REALITY is that my time on earth is much more limited than I had ever hoped it would be at 52 years old.  Swiss Alps, 2005 You’ve heard us praise Stanford, their care is top notch. As a cancer patient with a terminal illness, they provide so much more than medical care for me. I have regular appointments with social workers who help me (us) through this difficult journey. Our most recent was Monday morning. Their caring guidance is the impetus for this post.  LMS is NOT curable. Statistically speaking, just 14% of people live 5 years after a stage 4 diagnosis.  I have metastases to my lungs, skin in multiple areas, lymph nodes, and sinuses, that we know ...

We have some pretty good news after talking to my doc at Stanford.  My most recent scans showed that most of the tumors are stable.  There has been slight growth on some and slight shrinkage of others, but most are stable.  So the chemotherapy is working.  However, the fatigue I’ve been experiencing is definitely a side effect of the treatment.  In order to get the fatigue under control, I am going to take a lower dose of the drugs for the next month. If that helps with the fatigue, maybe I’ll be able to return to more normal life, most specifically the ability to return to work.  However, even if the fatigue improves, I will have to get more scans done to see if the lower dose has the same effect on the tumors.  So, overall, the news tonight is good.  I will be having an MRI of just my head tomorrow; the full body MRI does not get great images of the head; I have a couple spots that they want to be more clear about. And, Monday I will have a smal...