do I explain that I went through three rounds of the adria and ifex chemo, and that this study with the trabacketedin will be Episode 4?
nah.
in fact, I don't usually write much during these weeks off of chemo. mostly, I'm pursuing living and continuance - i.e., trying to get some work done - and doing just about everything but ruminating over my fate.
enjoying taste coming back. enjoying uninterrupted sleep. enjoying something like strength, something like ease, something like stamina, something like usualness which has always has little normalcy to it.
I had appointments with three other doctors...Nemechek the surgeon, Davis the radiation guy, and labs at the old Chemo clinic...Monday and Tuesday.
I've been escaping from patientness since then, thank you very much.
but, looking back over the appointments, I realize how much I want doctors to be people when it comes to concern over me as a person...and how at the same time I don't want to welcome humanness in their own characters.
Dr. Elias has been running this study for 6 years. Dr. Nemechek says...Elias will be invested in the study. you have to watch out for experimenter prejudice.
Davis says, well, there has been no recurrence that we know of in the area we radiated...so...we did our job.
Nemechek says he had a good argument...the kind peer review is supposed to engender...with Dr. Klancar, the head of Hem/Onc. Andy said...he saw next to no growth under the adria/ ifex...why stop with it? once you stop you can't go back...organisms adapt. he said Dr. Klancar is an Eeyore, always seeing the negative side. it's not shrinking so we have to change...
he used the term "jump ship".
he, like all of us, like me when I've invested in a CD project for years, is proud of what he does and what his Tumor Board can do.
for me it's a no brainer.
Dr. Elias is a sarcoma expert. where Dr. Klancar gets up at 4 am to research and finds serofanib, Elias tried it two years ago and is on to more promising prospects.
if his pet study doesn't work, Dr. Elias knows six more drugs in early testing to try.
adria had, at most, nine more weeks of use. each cycle adding compound toxicity. after three more, they'd discontinue it because of risk to the heart. it hasn't been easy, and would only have gotten harder.
yondelis has no compound toxicity, less to endure than adria every round, and a proven track record.
everyone should be proud of what they do. everyone should really believe someone would be best in their hands. I do musically.
but it's resonant to me that every client, like myself, needs to take in all the recommendations, and then follow his own star, his own heart, his own stomach.
Marty McFly said (in Back to the Future), you're the Doc, Doc.
but in the sense that we have to know inside us when to follow and when to evaluate, we're the Doc. I'm the Doc.
I may not want to be. I may want it to be like the 50's doctor/ patient role, where I take my cod liver oil and grimace, and go out to play in a few days.
but even leaving aside all my medical conspiracy theories (asterisk to come) about overprescribing and numbing busyness, everyone's going to be human, and maybe even a little territorial. like any other field...and more importantly than any other field...the patient keeps his eyes and his heart open, looks at several menus before ordering, and ask for what his stomach says he's hungry for.
so, d'ja ever see that movie Undercover Brother?
based on an internet cartoon, it's a Black-written blaxploitation movie.
they know where the good stuff is, believe me.
there's Smart Brother, the cheerful rotund guy with all the answers... Sistah Girl, the jive talking operative with a heart of gold, White She-Devil, otherwise known as the Black Man's Kryptonite,
and Conspiracy Brother.
*that's me. why didn't Ted Kennedy run for the Presidency? we don't know, but I'm certain he knew. how did Coke come to replace water as the world's drink? couldn't be that hundred billion dollar ad campaign, featuring men and women who, if they drank a batch of Coke, wouldn't look healthy enough to have been in the ads. why are health standards now so narrow that it's almost impossible to meet them? well, if you fall short, take this.
Conspiracy Brother.
"Jesus Christ? Black Man! Babe Ruth? Black Man! Madonna? ....sleeps with Black Men!"
I can relate.....
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