You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Julie has to treat a lot of cancer patients as part of her job, because that's one of the things her hospital specializes in. Cancer patient in Austin area needs to be in ICU? They go to Seton Main. It sucks for her sometimes, having to deal with cancer patients when she is has cancer, but I think she's more or less accepted it and learned how to handle it, and probably sometimes is able to bring an extra degree of empathy. But tonight she tells me that she has a woman who was treated for Stage 2 breast cancer and thought she had beaten it, but now it's back and it's spread to her bones and liver. Which is almost always fatal. And there's about a one in five chance that the same thing will happen to Julie.

Fuck cancer. Fuck whatever insensitive fuckbrained asshole assigned that patient to Julie. Sometimes I hate her job almost as much as she does.

Reason #732 Why My Wife Is Effing Awesome

Many thanks to xkcd.com for pointing this out. In Julie's case, they went with a sharpie pen instead of tattoos (somewhat different treatment regimen, I believe), but just as hardcore.

Cancer Update

Julie had another full-body PET scan this week, and the results were negative - no cancerous cells anywhere. It's been about a year now since she finished her treatments; just four more to go until she is considered "cured". Which is really an aknowledgement that you've been cured the whole time, but we weren't sure until now. Very inconvenient system, but it's the best they've got. Of course, there's still about a 20-25% chance that there's still mutant cells somewhere in her body, just laying low until they decide to start making tumors again. And if they do, well, that would be really really bad. So, every few months we'll be going through this, worrying and scanning and then worrying more.

Unfortunately, not having any cancer doesn't mean she's free of the consequences. Between the cancerous lymph nodes being taken out and the scarring from the radiation, Julie gets a lot of swelling in her chest and arm as fluids build up and can't drain efficiently. It can get very painful, and pretty much the only thing that helps is for me to massage the affected areas. It may get somewhat better with time, but for the most part she's going to have to deal with it for the rest of her life. I was talking to a friend whose wife underwent treatment for leukemia about seven years ago, including a bone marrow transplant. We agreed that if ordinary people were coming down with these kinds of chronic issues, it would most likely be labeled a major health issue and billions would go for finding cures. But since it's cancer, the medical industry shrugs its collective shoulders and says "well, it's better than being dead isn't it?" Yeah, it is, but that doesn't make the pain any less.

Cancer sucks.

Countdown

Monday, Julie's cancer was declared to be in full remission - a PET scan showed no signs of cancer anywhere in her body. This means one of two things: either her cancer is cured, or there are pre-cancerous timebombs hidden away in her body that cannot yet be detected. The only way to know which is to undergo regular full-body scans (every three months) to see if the cancer re-appears. If it does, then it is likely to continue to do so for the rest of her life. But if after five years it doesn't, then we conclude it was cured after all.

It kind of feels like being in a real-life Schrödinger's Cat experiment.

To help pass the time, and to encourage positive thinking, I'm setting up one of those cheap-ass web countdown timers.

Julie's Cancer is Officially Cured

Update-y Stuff

Julie had her first radiation session today. She needs to go back five times a week for six weeks. Despite being nervous about, her only complaing after was that her back was sore from having to lie on the table not moving for so long. Later on there will be skin irritation and fatigue, but we will cross those bridges when we get to them.

Three weeks of working day shift left her cranky and annoyed. This week she starts night shift, and I expect it'll leave her in a better mood. It fits her sleep schedule better, there's a lot fewer doctors and relatives to deal with, and sometimes the patients mostly just sleep. The plan is to work Thurs-Fri_Sat nights (7 pm to 7 am) as often as possible to minimize the overlap with the M-F radiation sessions.

I did my first progression raid in like a year last week, taking Vyp to the Ice Cream Social with K and Jess and the rest of The Left Claw. We attempted to get Sindragosa down, the last boss before Arthas. No sucess, but I was having way too much fun focussing on trying to do my job right to be bothered. Last time I did progression raiding, it was roflstomping Naxx with AC. This was much better - victories are more satisfying when you earn them. Not looking to get back into full-time raiding, but hopefully they'll have some room for me once or twice a month.

Nearing the End, Thank Gods

There are good days and bad days, but the bad days are getting worse, and more frequent. Julie is currently recovering from her fifth round of chemo, and it's pretty clear that the lining of her stomach is pretty much gone. Foods that she could eat fine a few weeks ago now trigger her nausea. Happens so often, that we are developing little routines and in-jokes while we sit on the bathroom floor next to the toilet, waiting for the next round of heaves. And she's getting weaker, not surprisingly. A couple of hours at the mall Sunday left her exhausted.

All this physical stress is tearing down her emotional state too. She feels horrid many days, she can't work, she's tired of playing computer games.... I'm getting worried about how much longer she can keep this up.

Fortunately next week will be the last chemo session. She'll get a few weeks to recover from that, which she's really gonna need, and then the mastectomy. Surprisingly, that will be much less stressful physically, because it doesn't involve cutting any muscle. The doctor says she'll recover in a week.

And then, mid-April, she is scheduled to start her new job, the one she was originally going to start six weeks ago. It can't get here soon enough - she needs to have this medical poisoning done with, and to get back to having a life.

Real Quick Cancer Update

With two of the planned six chemotherapy cycles completed, today's scan shows that Julie's tumors have greatly decreased in size. Hooray! Is very good news.

So, What's Gonna Happen?

Today is the day of my divorce trial. I read recently that only 15% of divorces in the US end up going this far, and half of those involve allegations of abuse. All I can say is, my lawyer and I have tried repeatedly to negotiate a settlement, only to be met with hostility or silence. The most recent attempt was eleven days ago, when my lawyer and I were up half the night assembling all the financial documents Brett said she wanted to see before she would sign the agreement, only to have her cancel the meeting at the last minute with a truly vitriolic e-mail.

No wonder we couldn't make the marriage work.

I figure one of four things will happen today:

1) Brett shows up with a recently hired lawyer, who immediately asks the judge to postpone until she's had time to prepare. Brett asked me for $1200 just a week ago to hire an attorney, so it could happen.

2) Brett doesn't show up. I win by forfeit, but Brett gains another platform to tell our daughter how I screwed her. Since the check I gave her for the lawyer hasn't been cashed yet, it could happen.

3) Brett shows up without a lawyer, and begs for more time and rants about how unfair it is that she is going to have to, you know, get a job some time in the next couple of years. Probably would be awkward as hell.

4) Brett and her newly hired lawyer spring some sneak attack that neither my lawyer or I anticipated. I don't see how, but that is the nature of sneak attacks.

Meanwhile, Julie is getting her first chemotherapy treatment today. I would so much rather be with her.

Serious But Not Dire

Julie got the full diagnosis and treatment plan from her oncologist yesterday. Her cancer is in Stage 3 and has spread to two lymph nodes. She's going to need months of treatment, first chemo and then a bilateral mastectomy, but she will probably beat it (survival rate for people at this stage is something like 60%). This is tough, but it's much better than if it had metastasized and gone to Stage 4, in which case we'd be looking at a survival rate closer to 20%. So, we are both feeling relieved and optimistic today.

Many, many thanks to everyone and their kind thoughts.

Luckiest Man In The World

The results of Julie's biopsy are, to put it simply, grim. She has a fast-growing, very likely to metastasize, cancer. There doing more tests now, to find out what the full picture is, but if indeed it has already spread then the odds of her surviving five years are not great. It would be so easy to curse the universe for teasing me, for dropping this woman who is perfect for me in my lap, only to threaten to take her away again. But that's not how I feel. I'm scared, I'm worried, but I also know that I have a wonderful, smart, funny, sexy woman to share my life with. A woman who thinks I am wonderful, and is happy to show me that she does. And, no matter what happens, no matter if our time together will be years or decades or only a few months, I still feel I am the luckiest man in the world.