Meg soldiers on

Meg continues to walk to and from the lab most days, and puts in a pretty full day there. She often comes home for a nap before dinner, and then tends to nod off while reading on the couch after dinner. Some days she has more energy, other days less - there's no obvious pattern.

The physician's assistant found no obvious reason for the fatigue: it's probably a result of the ongoing cycles of chemotherapy. There's some hope it may improve in a month or two. I recently attended a brain cancer patients/caregivers support group, where several people related experiences that confirmed the chemotherapy & fatigue connection. One patient related how she recently started slowly regaining her vigor after her year of chemotherapy ended.

Finding acceptable food continues to be a problem, as the chemotherapy-induced changes in her sense of taste render Meg acutely sensitive to sweet, salty or spicy foods. She's become an excellent monitor of the sugar that finds its way into all manner of prepared foods that you wouldn't think need sugar. I've just returned from a careful reading of a lot of food labels in the local co-op, bearing bread and crackers which I hope will be palatable to Meg. If not I will, at least, get an interesting change of diet!

Meg spent a few days at her parents' house last weekend, visiting with them and with her sister, who was also down there for a visit. They enjoyed chatting, walking on the beach and assorted family pleasures. She found the flying unstressful, which augers well for our trip back east for Nick's graduation, which will be coming up in a couple of weeks.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Saw items with this design in the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance gift store recently. Design came from a poster stockpiled by the British government for use after a German invasion, so was never used.

It certainly effectively summarizes Meg's attitude towards her disease. She continues to get very tired and often needs naps, and goes to bed early, but still manages to walk to and from the lab every day.  Her sense of taste continues to be very erratic, and often surprises us: she generally finds mild foods acceptable but unexciting and is slowly losing weight. We didn't do much very active last weekend, though we did get to have lunch in the sun on the back porch. High point of the weekend was an excellent dinner cooked for us by a long time neighbor and friend (René) at his lovely and airy house. He's off on adventures soon, so it's available for rent, if you're interested. Photo below and one of René preparing dessert.

We visited Meg's physician's assistant last Friday: no obvious explanation for the symptoms, but no great worry either  - chemotherapy patients often have such symptoms. Some thought that things might start getting better after this next chemotherapy cycle. It appears (to me) that she's not as tired as last week, but it's a bit hard to tell.

Yesterday (Wednesday) she had another mystery infusion, and started the second cycle (5 days out of 28) of the chemotherapy, which has now been raised to its highest dose. She seems to be tolerating it well, taking an anti-nausea pill and then the chemotherapy pill just before bed, with the hope of sleeping through any resultant nausea.

Next weekend Meg will be off to visit her parents in Santa Barbara, and then we'll be getting ready for out trip back east in May, for Nick's graduation and our visit to DC.

Music, visitors, fatigue

Meg's sister visited us for a few days last week: her son was visiting a possible university to attend next fall. He flew home, and Caryn stayed on for a few days. She enjoyed visiting with Meg, and they got to play their recorders together two evenings. Caryn noted a problem of flying with them: the recorders caused much consternation at security and were pronounced "evil-looking" by one security guard. 


More music came our way last weekend, when Keith Cheng (former lab colleague) was in town and entertained us on the piano, kindly supplied by Gerry Smith, Andrew's boss, who supplied lunch to go with the concert.

Meg was very tired after her sister had left - we initially thought it was the result of trying to keep up with Caryn, who's always very energetic. However Meg's continued very tired, very sensitive to the cold, and very lacking in appetite. We're not terribly worried (recall the lack of visible tumor) but something odd is going on, perhaps a reaction to her anti-seizure medication. We hope that the physician's assistant can hope sort things out during Meg's visit on Friday.

Despite all the fatigue, Meg is soldiering on (my own Energizer Bunny) and continues to walk to and from the Hutch most days, where she's back at work 80% time.