80/20

Right on cue yesterday morning the side effects of the Docetaxel kicked in, though not as heavily as last time. I'm very tired, feel numb and tingly all over and have a big lump in my throat. I want to eat all the time to drive away the taste in my mouth, although it's hard to taste my food. The home-care nurse came this morning and started me on another five days of Neupogen shots -- apparently I'll have them as a matter of course since my white-blood-cell count went so low on the last round.

On Thursday, I went to my radiation oncologist to discuss the next stage of treatment, which will start at the beginning of August, after I've had a month to recover from chemo. She feels less and less inclined to think there's cancer in my bones, and she's only going to radiate my armpit for now. "Bone mets aren't life threatening," she said, "and if there are some later, we can treat them later." Bone mets may not threaten my life themselves, but -- I thought, but didn't say -- they're a sign that your life is being threatened.

Still, I made the mistake of asking her what my chances are of collecting my pension; though she declined to give an answer to that specific question, she gave me worse odds than I'd expected: I could swear that my surgeon told me some months ago (to my surprise at the time) that, with chemo and radiation, there was an 80 percent chance the cancer would NOT spread further; this doc said it was 20 percent, so I guess I got it reversed. And that's only if there are no bone metastases. If the cancer is in the bones, there is no cure, for sure. In any case, she reiterated that this cancer is aggressive and serious, and everything rides on the chemo and radiation since it's not sensitive to any hormones or proteins and therefore there are no long-term drug therapies for me.

Actually, I had initially assumed that as long as the cancer was in the lymph nodes, there was no cure, so I suppose I should be happy there's any chance at all that it won't return, even if 20 percent isn't very promising. The ups and downs of this diagnosis have made it hard to plan what's left of my life. But I guess we're all in that boat to a greater or lesser extent.

The radiation doc said she doesn't think I have lymphedema since my hand isn't swollen, but sympathized with the breast swelling and discomfort I've been in since the surgery. She says there's a five-percent chance I'll get lymphedema from the radiation.

Pollyanna moments:

• The weather is nice, though I'm mostly lying on the couch in a windowless room. I managed to do a little weeding in the front garden yesterday morning until my back gave out, and it was lovely to scratch around among the thyme, which looks like it's dying but still smells great. I've been reading Vanity Fair this morning, and envying Johnny Depp his yacht in the Caribbean, as I look forward to a long, isolated, urban summer. But though I occasionally fantasize about getting out of the city to some exotic destination, what I mostly long for is to visit my ageing aunts and uncles in the places I call home: Massey, Manitoulin Island, Pembroke. I miss them, and treasure the visits I made there in the past couple of summers. My trip to Manitoulin with my parents and brother last year was heavenly, both because it's a magical place and because it was probably the last time I got to sit around with my mom and dad and aunts and uncles and sing old songs to the fiddle and the harmonica.