So, we’re doing this again…
I originally started this blog to report on my wife’s first battle with breast cancer almost six years ago. Jody had her own tumblr, but didn’t really want to talk about her illness, so I took on that role so her friends could know what was going on. I met lot of great people because of tumblr, including some in real life. After nearly ten months, Jody was declared cancer-free (or at least as cancer free as one can be, given, y’know, Cancer), and my blog evolved into other things, like gardening and food.
But, it’s back. Yes, Jody has once again been diagnosed with cancer. So the blog is circling back to its beginning. [Lots more details after the jump.]
In October Jody developed a cough, which she thought was just a symptom of a cold she had at the time. But after the cold went away, the cough didn’t. She suspected it had become a case of walking pneumonia. Since we were planning on going to visit her almost 90-year-old mother for Thanksgiving, Jody decided to get her lung situation checked out, so she wouldn’t be contagious during our visit.
Because we just move to this mid-Mitten town, we didn’t yet have a primary care physician, so she called the local urgent care facility. They told her that if she was having trouble breathing that they would most likely just send her to Emergency at the hospital in the next town over, so they suggested she go directly there instead, which is what Jody did. She called me after a few hours (I was busy teaching) and told me that they had taken a chest x-ray and didn’t like what they saw, so they wanted to do some more tests. A CT scan came back even less promising, and they directed her to an oncologist so she could get additional tests done. Now, in order for her to have an MRI and some of the other tests, she needed to have a PCP, which now we have, and he formally referred her to the oncologist.
The Wednesday after Thanksgiving Jody met with the oncologist who had studied her x-ray and CT scan, and he referred her for some additional tests, including an MRI and a biopsy of lung tissue. She spent all of one afternoon and into the evening getting a PET scan and an MRI of her head. The PET scan was not good, but the MRI of her head showed nothing. (ß Joke, yes you may laugh).
The results, in summary: cancer in both lungs, both hips, in her spine, and in numerous lymph nodes. It’s not simply a tumor to be excised. Numerically: stage 4 metastatic cancer. The biopsy indicates that it is the same cancer as she had in her breast and a few lymph nodes back in 2013.
The prognosis: if she has no treatment, she will not likely live even a year. With chemotherapy and possibly additional hormone therapy, her five-year survival probability is perhaps 40-50%.
Despite her statement after chemo the first time that she would never do it again, Jody will start chemotherapy this Friday. Her initial schedule is to do six rounds at three-week intervals, which takes us to mid-April. Last time she followed the chemo that shrunk her tumor with a radical mastectomy. Can’t do that to both her lungs.
In her current condition, Jody finds it difficult to breathe deeply, as the growth in her lungs is constricting her bronchial tubes. When she changes her body position, she often starts coughing. She tries to breathe and move very carefully, but that causes anxiety. Anxiety causes her core muscles to contract, making it more difficult to breathe, leading to more coughing. And, you have a negative feedback loop. With our most recent consultation with one of the oncologists, we explored and thoroughly discussed this issue, and we are working to alter her drug therapies for her anxiety/depression and also her asthma. Already, prior to any formal changes to her medicine, just by knowing what part of the problem is, Jody has modified her own prescription schedule a little so that it is helping her breathing. She made it all through family Christmas dinner and socializing with only one mild coughing spell. The oncologist says that she may see rapid improvement in her breathing perhaps after only one dose of chemo. Breathing is good.
That’s what we know right now, and now you do to. So, what can you do?
Thoughts and prayers are always welcome, but more tangible expressions are even nicer, too: cards, visits, emails. Financially we are luckier than most with a family safety net, and better off than we were the first time around, when we had to COBRA her insurance to maintain coverage. Our deductibles and copays are better now, too. (Yay for teachers’ unions, and all other unions that help and protect their members and their families!) We got through this the first time with lots of emotional support from friends and family, and that helps a lot. Having great senses of humor, and people to humor us, was also important. So, send us funny things! Jody starts many sentences these days with “Not to be morbid, but…” If we cannot laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?
If you are nearby, visits are welcome, but please call ahead to make sure that she didn’t just finish a chemo treatment and is now busy for the next three days puking her guts out—she’s not a very good hostess in those conditions. Delivering food, while appreciated, is not necessary, as her appetite has already waned over the past six weeks and will definitely get worse during chemo. Also, I like to cook and it is an outlet for my own tension and anxiousness, plus it’s my favorite way to show people I love them, so I want to cook for her what foods she may actually want to eat.
Please feel free to email or message your questions or concerns. I’m a teacher by nature as well as profession, so I like sharing knowledge about our situation and how we are dealing with it; it’s actually therapeutic for me I believe. And if I can help others understand what we are going through, maybe it will be easier for them to go through their own similar traumas in the future, and then Jody’s cancer will have been an indirect way to make the world a slightly better place for some people.
One more thing: death. There is a strong likelihood that this bout of cancer will kill my wife. Perhaps not immediately but eventually. Jody is not afraid of death, however. She is already a survivor, as a child, of a near-death experience, and has positive expectations for the next Act in this eternal improvisation we call life. She has no unfinished business, no regrets, no amends to make, and has been a light unto this present world, and welcomes the peace that comes with death from this life, whenever that may occur. That said, she’s willing to fight the good fight for her current life for the people around her who she loves and who would sorely miss her. And she looks forward to the continuing opportunity to do more Good for others while still here on Earth.
I have set up a Caring Bridge account, if you are interested in more day-to-day reports. Posts here to tumblr are more likely to be of the general week-at-a-time variety.
https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jodyvanderyacht
Thank you for reading, and thanks for your friendship and support.
