Karen’s new plant

Personal stuff

Sometimes life throws the really unexpected your way. Karen’s Stage IV cancer wasn’t so unexpected; this is her 4th round with breast cancer and we knew dealing with it would be a process for the rest of her life. You don’t want to be thinking about that all the time, but with her mom and two sisters all losing the battle to breast cancer, Karen has, so far, proved to be more… resilient? Still one sister left untouched by cancer, hopefully something not subject to change.

Karen is doing so well these day. It was scary for her to lose so much weight, so fast, but now that she’s stabilized at 130 or so, she’s benefitting greatly from being much lighter on her feet. A fair amount of pain & nausea, which is where that plant comes in. It will never be harvested; she uses THC edibles, with different strains useful for different things. Smoking/vaping is not an option when you have cancer that’s spread to your lungs. Not sure it should really be an option for anyone; there’s a lot of evidence that smoke is smoke and any material that’s burned and inhaled is going to be problematic. The primary advantage to inhaling is speed, the effects being nearly instantaneous. With edibles, you need to plan ahead of time as it takes about 45 minutes to start feeling better.

Wednesday is the big day for us; she goes in for her first body scan since starting her immuno & chemotherapy. We may get some clues as to what the future looks like, but things could look a lot scarier than they really are. Stage IV is not curable; you’re hoping to slow it down and, in some cases, see it disappear entirely for a while. And it may in fact be slowing down, but there’s no benchmark scan to compare to (because, as mentioned, this will be her first scan after treatment began, and we do know that prior to treatment, the cancer was growing wildly, having already caused the collapse of her left lung).

Thankfully the scan is fairly early in the day, so the initial results won’t be dinging my phone late at night, when I won’t be in a position to do anything but fear the worst. Maybe others aren’t like me, but “bad” news towards the end of the day, or during the night, seems a lot worse than bad news delivered earlier in the day. It takes time for me to figure things out and come up with a way of looking at things that I’m comfortable with.

Any way I look at it, it’s going to be a long day Wednesday. And then another couple of long days until Friday, when we see the Oncologist and decipher everything. Of course, I’ll have already tried to do a lot of that beforehand.

In the meantime, we hope that her voice changes (almost disappearing) are the result of the immune drug (Keytruda) and not the cancer pressing against her airways again. And we hope to join the small group of decade-long Stage IV folk who have somehow managed to beat the odds!

Visiting ex-Pilot at physical rehab, power but no power

Ride reports (not Tu/Th)

About 10 days ago ex-Pilot, Kevin K, didn’t show up for one of our Tuesday/Thursday morning rides. Not that big a deal; he sometimes goes on later rides when it’s a bit warmer. Nice being retired, right? But I texted to see what’s up and got back this reply- “At Stanford hospital.” I ask what’s up and don’t get a reply until the next day- he’d fractured 6 ribs and his L1 vertebrae helping a friend cut trees at his house. One of the big limbs nearly removed his own.

So Kevin and I did a pretty ugly ride, heading down to see ex=Pilot at the rehab place in Santa Clara. Not such a bad ride to the end of Los Altos, and then, taking Homestead for 6 or so miles, endless stoplights, all of them red. And every street after Homestead, same thing. It took FOREVER to get from Los Altos to Santa Clara! I’d used Strava route map to create the course, with, thankfully, a different return.

It was good seeing ex-Pilot. He’s lost a lot of muscle tone; his legs look like twigs. In just 12 days. But no permanent damage, and he should be out of rehab in a few days. It’s going to be tough for him to get around as he can’t walk without a walker, and his home’s second floor is going to be impossible to access. His plans for bicycling in Italy in two weeks are obviously gone. But things are healing up as they should, no funny issues.

We got food at the Hospital (no, not hospital food; the Salvadoran Pupusas from a food truch were excellent!

An hour or so later we were heading back, fortunately using a much better route… far fewer stop lights! Stopped off at the Peet’s in Los Altos for a quick coffee, then on to the final 18 miles. It would normally be about 23 miles back, but we stuck to the more direct, much-less-interesting route, sticking the Alameda instead of looping up through Portola Valley. Even though we were heading back into the wind, I was feeling pretty strong by the time the headwind was straight-on. Only I have nothing to show for it; for some reason my right-side power pedal wasn’t transmitting so my power levels were exactly half what they should have been.

It will be nice to get back into the hills and over to the coast, but until Kevin’s (my son, not the ex-pilot) knee is feeling better, that’s not in the cards.