Cancer Crawl, 31 Jan 2025
The tests have all come back, so I have news. Strap in because it’s a bumpy ride.
Bad news: the mets in my brain have grown, and there is one spot where there is some bleeding. I am probably not symptomatic apart from twice getting a numb tongue for 10 minutes. Carrie and I spent an hour on a video call with the radiation oncologist here, who is great. There are really three options all of which are “bad” options in that they all contain risks. If I do nothing, he estimates I’ll start seeing side effects in two months, at which point we could do targeted radiation as a sort of palliative strategy. A second option that I am not at all keen on is using medical treatments to treat symptoms but doing nothing about the cancer itself. The third option is whole brain radiation, maybe minus the hippocampus. This comes with a lot of potential side effects but good chance of extension of life, and my odds in side-effects roulette are slightly better because I’m 54. At the moment we are leaning towards option 3, but that depends on discussions that will happen this weekend and next week. There is a lot more detail I can add about whole brain radiation and its various risks, but for now I’ll leave it at this: not radiating is at least as risky as radiating as far as I can tell.
The good news is that my lung mets continue to react to the meds I’ve been taking. So at least that is working (which is also why we are leaning towards the whole brain option).
Tuesday I see my medical oncologist, and the radiation oncologist is going back to the tumour board. We might make a move as soon as late next week. If I do choose the whole brain radiation, I can do a full half-day neurological panel of tests to set a baseline, which is something I would definitely want to do.
Symptom and side effect report:
Sleep’s been decent, all things considered. I got two vaccines Tuesday eve that caused some fever spikes alone or in tandem with the cancer meds. I was able to handle it and the second spike came with chills so I used “the boyfriend” to warm up my core, which worked like a charm. I hesitate to write this for reasons that will be clear at the end of the sentence: I last vomited Friday evening.
Housekeeping:
“Cancer Crawl” used to be a sub-feature of the blog (like a news crawl), but it’s more or less what I’m writing about these days. I’ve taken it out of the title because it’s ugly and takes up lots of space. So future posts will look like this. You can always find my 15+ years of cancer posts by hitting the “cancer” category.