Loose Strife

Sorry I haven’t posted any news on Laura for over a week, but I didn’t really have any news, and didn’t want to merely post that Laura was still extremely fatigued, vomiting daily, and feeling down.
But I have good news today that the chemotherapy is working — that the cancer is receding. Laura had lots of extra blood tests and everything came back normal. No indications of problems, for example, with her liver, kidneys, etc. No indication of nutritional deficiencies. Suprisingly, she’s not dehydrated nor did she lose as much weight as we thought. And her cancer marker has continued to fall from about about 400 to 300 to 200 over six weeks. Both her oncologists have examined her in the last week and found that her lungs sound very good and she reports no serious pain in her back (although Laura’s on some hefty amounts of pain medicine). The opinion is that radiation was successful and chemotherapy is doing its job.
That’s all really good news. Laura will get a CT scan in three weeks before her next chemo for a more definitive reading, but these tests are all very encouraging.
However, all that success doesn’t explain why Laura is feeling so sick. I’ve felt frustrated with the oncologist because I worried that she wasn’t doing enough to address Laura’s symptoms, but today was a very productive visit in which her doctor clearly recognized the problem. “On paper, I’m very encouraged,” her oncologist said. “But day-to-day there’s much that still needs to be done.” Laura’s condition can’t be simply chalked up to chemotherapy, the doctor said.
This isn’t to say that the oncologist knows what’s causing Laura to be so sick. But she’s got some good ideas and the oncologist left me with a long list of plans including modified meds, specialists, etc.
Two days ago I was considering taking Laura to the hospital to get her a “tune up” and force the issue with her doctors. Laura balked at that. And now I feel much more optimistic that something can and will be done.