Archive for January, 2007

It’s bad. She has stage IV lymphoma. This means that the lymphoma cells are present both above and below her diaphram, and in at least two organs. In her case, it’s worse. She’s not borderline stage IV, she’s full blown. It’s in at least 4 organs and they found cells free floating in her blood. And to top that off, it’s the type that’s not curable. The best you can do is put it in remission. The average expectency for someone with her stage and type of L. is 6-8 years. But, she’s not at an average stage of advancement, she’s beyond that.

The treatment is going to be just prednisone for the next 3 weeks to give her baby more time to develop. Then they are going to do a C section when the child is only 4 weeks premature. Then they are going to start her on 2 months of mild chemo as a starter. Then she’ll have at least 6 months of strong chemo. They are going to kill her bone marrow entirely and she’ll have to have a bone marrow transplant.

Once all that’s done, then it will be a waiting game to see if/when it comes back. Worst case is that the chemo doesn’t even fully put it into remission. Either way, the only thing left after the chemo will be the cells that were immune to the chemo treatment, so a second round of chemo is a waste of time. There will be nothing to be done unless some new drugs come on the market between now and then.

She went into a store to buy some baby furniture the other day. Then the reality of her situation and what it might mean to her ever getting to see her daughter grow up hit her. She had to have her husband help her out of the store without buying anything because she couldn’t stop crying.

Actually, it’s fairly well established that there are genetic predispositions to cancer, so in that sense it does exist. The new science of epigenetics also is explaining why families that have been exposed to cancer causing conditions in grandparents can pass that cancer on to their grandchildren

Well, my grandmother on my father’s side died of cancer (she had 3 different incidences of cancer before it became untreatable: breast, lymphoma, then bone). My grandfather on my father’s side also died of cancer (he first had stomach cancer, then later got gall bladder cancer, and he was too weak for them to operate on the second cancer, and so he passed). His brother, my great uncle Lee, also passed due to cancer.

It’s been no great secret to me all my life that the thing most likely to get me in the end will be cancer. Tonight though, I found out that my sister, my 42 year old, pregnant with her second child, helping to support her husband at his new job at a university in Tallahassee FL, helping to set up the first house she and her husband have ever bought just some 6 months ago, and still doing the last bit of raising of their first child that is about 14 years old, sister, has been diagnosed as having lymphoma with multiple tumors in her neck and face. The one that made her go to her doctor is in her upper eye lid area on her left eye.

The multiple lymph node tumors are bad enough, but the one on her eye in particular they are checking on to see which of two types it is. If it’s the good kind, then her prognosis is basically the same as just about any other stage II lymphoma, where they will remove all the tumors, do chemo and other treatments, and there is a chance it could be cured or go into remission and she would have 3-10+ years, and may never get cancer again and instead die of old age. If it’s the bad kind, then they will remove her eye, her eyelid, part of the bone around the socket, part of the area behind the eye, put her on strong chemo, and after all that they will only expect her to live another 12 months.

And as if just dealing with the cancer isn’t enough, she has another 12 weeks or so to go on the pregnancy. But, they can’t do any treatments while pregnant. In order to do any treatments, they would have to go to a hospital with a state of the art premature baby department and hope that having the child so premature doesn’t permanently damage its lungs or other organs. Or she can wait until after the baby is full term thereby giving it the best chances of being a healthy adult, and the three extra months could easily make the difference between the cancer being survivable or terminal.

My sister…no person should ever have to make this kind of decision. People use the phrase “life’s a bitch” all the time, in many cases, I don’t think a lot of those people truly fathom just how much of a “bitch” it *can* be. We used to have a proper grasp of this concept 100+ years ago when families routinely had lots of kids because only some of them grew up to be adults. Our modern day society coddles us enough that hard situations like this are truly rare.