I’m in the third session of chemotherapy. On Monday I got four hours of the usual toxins (oxaliplatin + calcium folinate + Avastin) followed by an injection of fluorouracil and a balloon pump full of 5 g of fluorouracil to take home with me. It sounds just like the previous two sessions, and indeed the differences are minimal. The first session I didn’t get the antibody that prevents angiogenesis. It was too soon after surgery and I needed blood vessels growing. The second session I got the antibody, but slowly. The doctor wanted to make sure I wouldn’t react badly to it. The transfusion took an hour and a half. Everything went well, and this time, the transfusion was a third faster. Next time, it will be faster yet.
It’s fair to say that the first quarter of chemotherapy is over. The pump was removed on Wednesday. Three sessions essentially done, nine more to come. What has happened so far? What is going to happen? On the surface, everything is good. I have only the mildest side effects and my blood looks fine. I’m generally healthy and take the therapy well. But what does it do? Is it effective? There is no way of saying. There are no tumor markers in my blood that can be checked and no imaging procedures scheduled. As all visible tumor tissue was removed during surgery, one wouldn’t see anything right now even if the therapy didn’t help. It will take some time for the cancer to make a comeback.
The chances it does are high. Everyone seems in agreement on this. Metastases in the liver is something I keep reading about. It can clearly get worse. How long it might take is an open question. What the chances are is another. No one can answer these questions. All numbers are statistics based on clinical trials or observations of a large number of patients. Any individual will react differently. The fewest measurements are exactly average. There’s always a distribution. This is my hope.
Right now, during chemotherapy, the cancer must suffer. With my regular exercising, good state of fitness, general health, and relative youth, my chances of reaching the mythical state of survivorship and staying there must be higher than they should be given my diagnosis. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m above average. Time will tell what good it will do me.
Time is where the answers are. No one else knows anything. The only way of finding out is by waiting. Maybe it’s for the best that time can’t be queried prospectively. I wouldn’t want to know that I’ll die next October. But it would be nice to have a few answers instead of submitting to chemotherapy and waiting for each two-week period to pass. I don’t even know whether it’s a good sign that I have few side effects (though it means I can continue at the full dosage). It's as if everyone had their eyes closed.
It’s pointless to try to guess the future. I’m not one to ponder, but it’s frustrating not to know what’s going on. I will be in limbo until Easter, slightly inconvenienced by a grave disease but utterly normal to everyone who sees me and doesn’t know. I'm stuck in my own black box, with no place to go. Let's get this over with and get some answers.
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