My run with Cancer

  I wish I could tell you that my third treatment was a breeze…. But it was far from it.  I started to react as usual with horrible nausea and then the fevers but this time my blood pressure dropped dramatically (75/52) and I started to develop joint pain overnight.  My joints hurt so much that I found it hard to move the covers on or off my body. I went home after 24 hours (Wednesday) with the rotation of Advil and Tylenol for the fevers and joint pain in hope that things would clear quickly.  While the fevers cleared at the 48 hour mark again (Thursday evening), the joint pain worsened.  In the early morning hours of Friday I woke up in so much pain I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t move without excruciating pain.  Trying to lift my arm to grab the sheet caused me to cry out.  I actually found myself lying there questioning whether birthing a 9lb baby with no epidural was worse… I came to the decision that they were just different but compar...

   I am writing this from my room at Princess Margaret while I await my third treatment in this trial. Treatment #2 went much better, only requiring one night in hospital and fevers were all finished within 48 hours.  I was saying to Ian that’s it’s strange to wait for the onslaught of side effects. With chemo the side effects came on somewhat gradually. With this treatment it’s like I get punched in the face. Bam! I’m hanging over a garbage can and spiking fevers.  Here’s hoping it’s not that bad and I can go home today…. They just hung the IV Benedryl so this post is getting cut short as I start my sedative stupor.  Let the games begin!

  I was really hoping that I would be updating everyone to say that I’m home and things weren’t as bad as the doctors said they’d be. Unfortunately it was pretty awful. I have had constant fevers, with periods of Tylenol induced reprieve, from Monday afternoon through early this (Thursday) morning. With some of these fever spikes I would get rigours, which the nurses here affectionately call the “shake n bake”. You start by feeling a bit chilled which quickly progresses to shivering and then to violent shaking… it’s a trip. Luckily they can calm it quickly with some demerol. I also have a mystery rash that feels and looks like a sunburn and then over night last night I developed a mouthful of sores. The mouth seems similar to the mucositis I’ve had previously… but the combination of symptoms along with low platelets is making the doctors nervous… so a Wednesday discharge has turned into a “hopefully Friday” discharge.  Overall, I’m feeling much better today, mouth soreness a...

  For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you’ll likely have seen that I successfully completed my second half marathon in October, with a personal best time. Had you asked me back at the end of 2020 if I thought I’d ever run another half, I would have said absolutely not. At that time, not only had running become difficult and painful, but I was also just hoping that I would outlive the pandemic; that I would be able to do the traveling with my kids and make those memories that we established as goals when I received the inoperable diagnosis at the beginning of 2020.  Tonight, as I sit and write this, I’m struck with how blessed I am to still be here, to be as strong and “healthy” as I am, and that I have the treatment opportunities that I do.  While the last trial was determined to have failed in November, I have been given the opportunity to start in a new phase 1 trial (phase 1 meaning first time in human use). In the meantime… as our family tends to do when my tr...

 I'm actually surprised it's been as long as it has since my last post.  I kept waiting to have something to tell everyone, but I really spent the last 3 months in a state of uncertainty.  As I described in my last post, immunotherapy can cause inflammation of tumors which makes it appear as though they have grown, when in fact they haven't.  So as I progressed through the summer and the scans every 6 weeks, they continued to show small amounts of growth, but still within the parameters of the study.  My doctor kept saying that there was no reason to stop treatment because inflammation could still be playing a role. As you might be able to imagine, that never gave me a great sense of relief or confidence.  That combined with the fact that I was then anticipating the next scan so soon made for an emotionally challenging summer.   I hadn't had that sense of dread in a long time... but it was always there, in the background, letting itself be known....

  At the end of last year, Spotify’s Wrapped informed me that I, in fact, am a Taylor Swift fan!  I never would have identified myself that way had you asked me, but once I took a little time to review, I have fully embraced my inner Swifty.  It also brought me back to a song that I heard on the radio at the time of its release and I have been listening to it much more in recent months. It is called “Out of the woods”   It was originally released around the time of my breast reconstruction (2015/2016). We had successfully had the second child we so badly wanted and fought through the original cancer diagnosis to be able to have. We waited until she was old enough to be able to manage having a mom out of commission for a little while (post op recovery)… and really wanted to put the cancer chapter to rest. It had been five years… we thought we were out of the woods.  Fast forward to the fall of 2017 (just months after having been discharged back to my GP and ...

 It has been an exhausting few days, but well worth it.   It appears that Princess Margaret Hospital was granted 1 slot for the next group in this trial, and I was a match!  Everything lined up in such a way that it struck me as such an answer to prayer.  I had prayed for healing, obviously, but specifically for God to use me to demonstrate new ground breaking treatments for cancer (I prayed for this even before I knew my file was going to PMH). My doctor's referral and the new spot opening in the trial lined up perfectly.  I met with the team at PMH on Monday, got the 25PAGE consent form and was on my way.  This consent form is intense.  My best description is that it reads like a CNN comercial. Ian and I read through it and I spoke with the team yesterday... I'm in!!   I will be rceiving Dostarlimab and an additional experimental drug whose purpose is to enhance the effectiveness of the Dostarlimab.  It will be a lot of driving ba...