Day 101, Year 9: Update on Mark’s Cancer Treatment
Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Weather: Lots of Fluffy Snow Overnight and into the Morning, 4-5 inches
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Today Mark and I traveled to Mass General in Boston to meet once again with his oncologist, Dr. Kwak, and a new doctor, Dr. Hong, who is the Associate Clinical Director in the Department of Radiation Oncology. He is young and a very positive addition to Mark’s team. We started by asking once again why surgery is not an option at this point. We knew it was because the mass did not shrink significantly with the last round of chemo, but we learned today that it is really due to the location. The mass sits right on top of three important veins in the abdominal cavity. Dr. Hong is very positive that the radiation will significantly shrink the mass, possibly even eliminate it, which he says happens in one of five cases. So after five and half weeks of radiation, there will be another evaluation to see if surgery is possible. Both doctors were fine with waiting until we return from our planned trip to Puerto Rico to start the radiation, but they recommended that Mark have one more chemo treatment as soon as possible just to keep things in check until the radiation begins. That chemo treatment has been scheduled for Monday. Mark will also be taking a low-dose chemo regimen with the radiation, but both doctors feel confident that the only side effect will be tiredness as the treatments progress. Dr. Hong told Mark he should be able to drive himself to and from the treatments. He was assuming we would be driving to and from Boston every day. But we had read on the internet about housing in Boston for cancer patients and when we asked about that, Dr. Hong’s nurse practitioner said she would look into it for us. We got a call later in the afternoon telling us that housing would be available either during or after the second week in March and that Mark’s name has been submitted. We should get confirmation of this by Friday. But we still have to figure out exactly how we will do this five week stint. The good news is that it sounds easier than we had imagined since the side effects should be minimal. So we’ll figure out how to deal with this as we sit on the beach in Puerto Rico. So I’m now going to turn my attention to getting ready for that trip.
When we looked outside this morning, we worried that we might not make it to Boston. Everything was covered with at least four inches of fluffy white snow. But it was truly like powder and caused very little problem other than demanding that I drive slower than normal. We got to drive the ‘new to the family’ Honda Civic that we just purchased jointly with Heather and Jed. It is very comfortable and handled beautifully in the snowy conditions—and it gets good gas mileage. By the time we got to Boston, there was no snow at all and the sun was shining, so the return home trip was an easy one. We fared better than my brother-in-law Joe in North Carolina. He had a doctor’s appointment in Raleigh today which is about a three hour drive for him. But it had to be cancelled because of icy road conditions. And then we got an email from our friends Geoff and Chris who are living on their sailboat in Norfolk, Virginia. They got almost a foot of snow! So the conditions here with 4-5 inches of snow (and no ice) was not so bad.
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| 140129 Day 101 Cape Cod, USA–Drive to Boston in the Snow |
Tonight our thoughts are with our daughter-in-law Jo and her family. Her parents arrived in Puerto Rico over the weekend. They were planning to stay until next week but yesterday they got word that Jo’s Uncle Robin died suddenly. Robin was married to Jo’s mother’s sister. Jo was very close with her Uncle Robin and Aunt Suzy and wrote that her Uncle Robin was “a yoga, veggie, swimming, tennis playing ex-teacher” who was loved by all who knew him. His healthy life-style made it all the more difficult to believe that he had a fatal heart attack with no warning. Jo and Justin, along with Ziggy and Coco, are now on their way to England with Jo’s parents for some healing time with family. Justin and Jo will return to Puerto Rico just a few days before we arrive and I think Jo’s parents are going to come back to visit in April. The sudden death of Jo’s uncle serves as a reminder to each of us to live each day to the fullest. Our friend Lynda Kaufman has a saying attached to all of her emails that definitely applies here. “Live like every day is your last.”
