Rap Rhythm

One of the blessings of having a teenager in the house is that you are challenged to listen to music you would never intentionally play. Left to my own trajectory jazz and rock would fill the air. Jamie ads a healthy dose of show tunes (performed live), hip-hop, and rap. None of this is growing on me, but I am developing an appreciation for the manic, aggressive, angry, immediacy of rap. This past week has been played to a rap rhythm.

When this cycle of Faina's chemo started a week ago, Dr. K was satisfied that the treatment is working, which is to say that it is holding the cancer at bay, maybe even shrinking the tumors. To keep this in perspective though, this is like bailing out a sinking ship. As long as you are passing out buckets of water it stays afloat, but as soon as you stop bailing, it will take on water. That is pretty much the point Elizabeth Edwards reached, a news story that added a degree of gloom to this household. Mrs. Edwards' chemo was no longer effective, she stopped treatment and the flood comes in until the ship sinks.

We may be getting a bigger bucket. Faina has a 30% chance of qualifying for a new therapy for gastric cancer. The drug, Herceptin, has been successful in treating breast cancer and last month was approved for treatment in gastric cancer (it was approved in Europe back in February). It may be weeks before we know, especially since we are hung up in the less-than-cooperative pathology department at Hopkins, which has the stomach tissues that were removed in August 2009. Nudging them has become a daily task.

Faina will also have a CT scan in about three weeks, so we will have a measure of how effective the treatments have been. Meanwhile, we have an appointment on Monday with Dr. Esquivel at St. Agnes to explore the possibilities for that "Hail Mary" of a surgery-chemo procedure about which Dr. Avital at NIH-NCI told us.

On Monday, Faina started to get her energy back and our activity level picked up. We are in a rap rhythm, manic, aggressive, angry, and very immediate.