Loose Strife

Laura has continued to do well in the sense that she’s keeping food down and is not in much pain. She sleeps till noon, but then has much more energy than she has had for months. Baking a cake, finding new recipes — she hasn’t cooked anything for ages — and today she spent the afternoon shopping with my sister (her family is visiting) and then picked up lots of junk food “now that my appetite is back.” “To each his own,” I said snidely, recalling our recent chats about the girls’ penchant for processed foods. She replied, “Eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we die.”
Last night she asked the table who liked the squash gratin dish that she baked and then counted hands, “two, four, six…”
Laura wore the kids’ pirate patch on her eye much of the day on Sunday.
So there’s this definite sense that she’s doing better even as she’s getting worse.
Yesterday we met with Laura’s local “general” oncologist who is essentially her primary doctor now. Laura had written a long list of current symptoms: double vision, balance problems when walking, eye lids droop, speech is sometimes slurred, mouth is extra dry, trouble chewing, short term memory loss. It’s an ominous list of troubles that apparently all point to the presence of undetectable “micro-tumors” in the base of her brain.
Her primary oncologist recommended that Laura get radiation to the base of her skull, which her neuro-oncologist had independently suggested last week. Laura’s radiation oncologist was paged and appeared in the exam room within five minutes. (This is the doctor you may recall who is so committed to her patients that she calls our house just to check in, works to move heaven and earth or at least administration roadblocks to get Laura the best care, and calls in her technicians on the weekend just so Laura can get a head start on her treatment.) Her radiation oncologist was eager to help as soon as possible and had Laura in her office an hour later for preparations.
Radiation is always risky and in this case it is a little more so in that Laura had whole brain radiation only four months ago and conventionally this kind of followup radiation to the brain is not done for at least six months. But the risk/benefit trade-off is clearly in favor of starting immediately. Laura responded remarkably well to the last radiation treatment to the base of her spine, so I’m feeling very hopeful.
On a completely different note, I finally found a video conferencing program that works (very poorly) using our satellite internet connection. It’s Skype and our skype ID is “davidkulp”. So if you want to say hello to Laura or the kids and see their smiling faces, feel free to sign up and call. (It’s free.)