I’m pleased to have no doctors’ appointments and no new side effects to report since my last post. It turns out I do not have an infection, and I am back on dabrafenib and trametinib as of yesterday. Tuesday night we went to an election watching party. You all know how that turned out, but it was a big deal for me, because we were out for almost 5 hours, and I had more than enough portable oxygen to make it through the event and back home. I mean, I was exhausted because I was also awake much later than usual, and that bled into yesterday, but I’ll call that the one good thing to come out of election night.
The other big events of the week in cancer land so far have been a) discovering that the “block” I’ve been walking is actually two blocks according to someone who used to live here, b) taking a really proper shower on my own now that we have a shower bench (thank you Carrie), c) discovering more things I can eat (hello takeout Thai) and d) some progress in physical therapy. In terms of just moving and doing basic stuff, I still have so far to go and I am still so impatient about my conditioning, but I have to remember that in the space of a few weeks in September, my lungs suffered pretty profound damage. And I do not know–and possibly nobody else knows at this point–what that will ultimately mean, what recovery is possible or what the timeline will look like. So I just have to stretch my limits slowly and work within the parameters I am given. Patience is the hardest part.
More news as it happens.
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There is going to be a lot of analysis of how the democrats lost the election on Tuesday, and I am not sure I have much to add that won’t be said better elsewhere. But one thing sticks in my mind, so I share it here.
The entire mainstream U.S. technocracy rallied around the Harris campaign and democratic party, and the majority of US voters said “no thank you, we’ll try the fascist agenda again.” Take it from someone with swallowing problems: that’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s also quite an indicator of how much the technocracy has been failing people–and failing to persuade people–for some time.