Gratitude

This is the first time to use my phone to type a blog. I’m in chemo chair today and getting gemzar and carboplatin.

Why am I grateful? I had a million decisions to make about clinical trials and suddenly those decisions were off the table. Poof. My fallback plan was to get standard of care with two regular drugs. I’ll get treated two weeks in a row and one week off.

How did all this happen? I had been told about a low-expression her2 clinical trial with Dr. Brig so I went to see him and they started paperwork but my her2 registered as less than 10% so he wanted to retest sample. That would have required 2 weeks delay for treatment to retest and to meet other criteria.

Also Dr. Patel got me an appt. at Sarah Cannon with Dr. Hamilton head of clinical trials on Wednesday at 10:45. Patel has been amazing the past few weeks, acting quickly, trying to find the best care for me. She’s getting married this week (twice! A Hindu and Catholic wedding!) and even called me on her day off to update me on info that might have helped me get into a trial.

To combine fun and business on Tuesday we stayed at the Gaylord Opryland hotel for $25. after we used my Marriott points! Do you know how much those rooms are? 400! I nearly fainted. But good times seeing lights, eating a dinner in the cascades area of hotel, walked around place, watched a goofy movie when we went to bed.

Once I arrived at Sarah Cannon, I found I was going to see Denise Yardley who is head of later clinical trials esp. for triple negative. My blood pressure began going through roof (138/78 vs 104/62) anxious about how my life depended upon the right decision at this point. I gotta admit I did have one breakdown and tears which calmed me down later though. Yardley thought she had the perfect trial for me but after 2.5 hours of talking and checking on criteria, the research nurse came in to tell me I didn’t have measure-able disease for a clinical trial. It was too small. .8 instead of 1.5 cm. Not a bad problem to have (small disease) but was hoping for clinical trial. Found out one clincal trial for triple negative combines a probiotic with new drug. But my endocrinologist mentioned one doc at MD Anderson does not like probiotics for cancer patients.

I called Dr. Brig’s office on way home and said Sarah Cannon had told me ALL clincal trials require a certain amount of disease so I asked Christie in charge of clinical trials what they required. 1 cm. So bye-bye to that trial.

I still struggled wondering if we were making right decisions with chemo again and Darrell the nurse practitioner said he had called Brig and he agreed I couldn’t do his trial.

Now here’s where it gets weird. On my way to chemo, on some random station, the lyrics of the song playing were about “the cancer’s all gone as if was never there” (because of God).

I’ll take it as a sign that we’re doing the right thing. Grateful for that song.