My favorite aunt has cancer (because she didn’t have enough medical problems already), and the news keeps getting worse and worse. She’s got a suspicious lump in her colon that might be cancer. Yes, it’s definitely cancer. It might have spread. It definitely spread. It’s stage 3. No, it’s stage 4.
Anyway, she’s apparently going to start chemo. Every two weeks. For the rest of her life. Even my cat only gets her Indefinite Chemo every three weeks. If it’s anything like my cat, it means they’re not curing it, just trying to keep it in check. This is just surreal, it’s like everyone here has cancer lately.
Is there anything I can do? Is there anyone here who’s had colon cancer or been on Indefinite Chemo who could offer any advice? I’ll take thoughts and prayers too, all the gently-used thoughts and prayers that you had left over after the last major tragedy and don’t know what to do with.
Having cancer is like having a shitty full time job, going to treatments every day is a major pain. If you are available go to her treatments with her, be her advocate when going to doctor appointments if she has questions she is a afraid to bring up to her doctor, be her shoulder to cry on if she needs it, do the little things like cleaning her house, paying online bills, picking up meds if she needs it.
When my wife had ovarian cancer, the oncologist gave her a regimen of chemo every two weeks. The normal regimen is three times as much drug every 6 weeks. He believed that 1/3 the dose every two weeks was better because it keeps a more even level of drug in her system – the larger dose less frequently would spike the drug initially and then wear off well before the next dose. He said keeping an even level rather than the roller coaster drug levels of the 6 week regimen is more effective. Her treatment wasn’t indefinite though, it was for about 6 months. So I wouldn’t place too much emphasis on the fact that it’s every two weeks, that may just be the oncologist’s attempt to provide better treatment. Not sure about the indefinite chemo though – I haven’t heard of that but IANAD, just been through chemo with two close relatives.
Yes, she’s probably going to be feeling really crappy a lot of the time, and probably won’t be able to do a lot of the things she used to do. Practical support like housework, shopping, running errands is definitely helpful. And of course she needs to have someone to take her to and from chemo appointments. Even if she has a partner or other close relative who’s doing that, you may want to offer to take on that job occasionally to give that person a break. It can be VERY hard on the support partner as well as the patient. Believe me, I know.
Thank you for your support, I’m still trying to process it all.
She has a husband and two sons. Though one of the sons is sick, too, I hate to think about what might happen if she’s having a crisis and then they get one of those calls saying, “we may have a pancreas, drop everything and fly to Minnesota just in case”. I mean, it was hard enough on the family to keep doing that when both parents are well.
I live a town or two over, but I don’t drive. So I can’t take her places, unless she really needs my Uber account for some reason. But I guess I can do moral support, she did say she wanted to come over to my house and learn to bead. I have a lot of beading supplies, but I could pick some portable ones and bring them over to her.
When my husband was getting chemo we did at one point run into a guy who had been getting chemo treatments at intervals for years, apparently it was keeping whatever was wrong with him in check. Sorry I can’t recall any more detail than that, we were both a bit distracted. But I guess some people are on long-term or “maintenance” chemo or whatever.
Most likely, the man getting lifelong chemo had some type of chronic leukemia and hasn’t gotten sick enough to be a candidate for a stem cell or bone marrow transplant.
Like I said, I don’t recall. And if getting chemo every month or two keeps your illness in check who the hell wants a bone marrow transplant with daily medication, also for life, and the ever-present risk of things like graft-vs-host disease and permanently lowered general immunity?
I’ve had a couple friends who were organ recipients. You’re a perpetual patient with this, too. Sure, it beats dying, but there’s an on-going cost to them.
A relative is on perpetual chemo (or whatever it’s called). Basically, it is a recurrence and metastasis of a particular type of breast cancer that is not curable. So chemo to halt its growth until that treatment stops working, which is a finite (but unpredictable) number of months, probably < 5 years. Plus, the side effects of chemo for the rest of life.
Oh, and a bonus, because she is ~60, she must keep working full time in order to be able to afford the treatments. Maybe she’ll live long enough to get medicare, but the treatments are expensive and so they wouldn’t cover the full course, anyway.*
America, fuck yeah!
*Edit for those more knowledgeable: this doesn’t sound right to me, but the people involved are intelligent and science-friendly and know how to work with the system, so I take it at face value.
