Hope on a Rope

Every other Tuesday, I go to the hospital for my infusions. The Monday before, they do a quick blood draw to run a metabolic panel and check blood cell count. So far all tests have come back showing everything within normal ranges. This past Monday they also ran a CEA blood test. “CEA levels help track the effectiveness of treatment in certain cancers, especially colorectal cancer.” My CEA levels have dropped from 139 to 95, which is medical speak for the tumors are shrinking.

Two more rounds of chemo to go, then they’ll run scans and we’ll see where we’re at. In the meantime, it’s something like a suspended reality where anything is possible.

Right now I have lesions on both sides of my liver. As my Italian born liver surgeon says, “to operate on both sides of the liver, this does not support life.” And while the cancer didn’t originate in the liver, getting on with life rests on enough lesions shrinking in enough places so that operating would in fact support life, or the lesions disappearing altogether. Either, they believe, is possible.

In every meeting they say, “don’t lose hope.”

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Two weeks ago we met with a different hospital for an official second opinion. The doctor had reviewed my charts. The protocol and path for treatment, he said, would be the same as I have now.

He also said the goal would be to “extend life.” To strive for “quality of life.” Said, “it’s unlikely operating on the liver will be an option.” He was relatively smug and by the book. I asked him his opinion on prognosis. He said that while there are many factors and unknowns, statistically, “2.5-3 years. Some live longer, many not that long.” “It’s likely some form of chemo long term will be the ultimate reality and we’ll monitor how you tolerate along the way, and determine if at some point it’s still the right course, or if it’s better for your body to stop doing treatments.”

Billy nailed it when he said after the call, “I bet that guy skis in expensive boots and feels proud of himself when he returns to his cabin in Tahoe at the end of the day.”

By contrast, the first thing our Dr. explained was this - “Stage 4 is not a sentence. It’s a classification. And there’s no reason to believe you won’t come all the way through this. We have a woman now, with a similar profile. 6 months later, she is cancer free. It’s possible.” And, “Statistics here mean very little. Our understanding of cancer and treatments have come a long way in just the last few years. If you isolated for people with a stage 4 diagnosis with this cancer, in your health, at your age, in just the last few years, the statistics would be wildly different.”

Also, “Don’t lose hope.”

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I was 12 when baby Jessica was stuck in the well. I came home from school everyday and turned on the news. I sobbed the day they brought her up. Thinking about that moment now, I still get teary. When the soccer boys were trapped in the caves, getting them out alive was an impossible task. I woke up in the middle of the night and I’d search for the latest news update. I was obsessed.

I followed every option the teams came up with, every new hopeful attempt. And I sobbed when they each came out alive.

We die within seven days without water. In both the case of baby Jessica and the boys in the cave, it would have been a lack of water that killed them. And in both cases, access to water would have kept them alive as long as possible.

A bucket of water keeps us alive, but it’s not what gets us out of the hole.

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We came into that first meeting with the Dr. looking up from the bottom of what felt like a very deep and cold well. Numbers like 4-6 months and 11% swirling in our brains. I wondered if that was my last Christmas. If I’d celebrate Bracket’s 22nd birthday in July. It felt like I’d gotten myself stuck in a cave with no way out.

One team lowered a bucket of water. The other a rope.

And that has made all the difference.