Rads

“It sure is nicer going to Thompson Hospital,” my wife observed yesterday (Tuesday, January 24, 2012).
“No traffic-jam, no giant parking-garage, tiny hole-in-the-wall office, and they take me right in.
It’s as if they’re waiting for me.”
Thompson is a small hospital in the nearby city of Canandaigua.
My wife has cancer, but supposedly not fatal, at least not yet.
Actually, she has two cancers: -a) Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and -b) metastatic breast-cancer.
The Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma appeared about four-and-a-half years ago as a hard tumor in her abdomen.
That was poofed with C-H-O-P chemotherapy.
The metastatic breast-cancer did not have a primary site; it never appeared in her breasts.
It was first noticed in her bones, where breast-cancer metastasizes.
We knocked that back with Femara®, the trade-name for Letrozole.
Femara is an estrogen inhibitor. Her breast-cancer was estrogen-positive.
Her breast-cancer just about disappeared, but has since reappeared in her bones. (No Letrozole for a while. —And now the Letrozole is generic.)
So the Lymphoma has reappeared, a tumor in her abdomen.
No more C-H-O-P chemotherapy can be applied, after eight applications you risk heart-damage, and we’ve used all eight.
Other chemotherapies have been tried, and all found wanting.
The next step is radiation, which will probably shrink the tumor, but not cure her cancer.
The tumor may eventually kill her.
A pill chemotherapy will be tried after radiation, but it’s only a maintenance chemo, and may not work anyway.
Her radiation treatment began yesterday at Thompson Hospital.
Cancer treatment began at Strong Hospital in Rochester, Wilmot Cancer Center (“will-MOTT;” as in “Mott’s” applesauce).
Strong Hospital is very large, and getting there is a 45-minute trip, usually in careening NASCAR rush-hour traffic.
Radiation can be administered by Thompson, they’re affiliated with Strong.
Yrs Trly has been the driver for every foray to Strong.
My wife is “automotively challenged.” The traffic and parking-garage would be intimidating.
But she has driven herself to Thompson; it’s not a dreadful challenge. About a 20-25 minute drive.
Chemo infusions were at Strong.
Since they took hours, what we did is I let her off for the infusion and thereafter drive back home.
We always had to leave our dog behind in the house.
That way I could come home to rescue the dog.
I’d take the dog for a walk in our fenced backyard, and thereafter await a call from my wife that she was done, and I could pick her up.
I’d then pile our dog into our van, drive back to Strong, and pick up my wife.
At Thompson we don’t have to do that.
My wife can drive herself, so far.
Radiation is only about 15 minutes per treatment.
So my wife could make a surgical-strike, while I took the dog to nearby Boughton Park (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow,” not “oh” or “who”).
If radiation treatments had been at Strong, no park for the dog.

• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• “CHOP” chemotherapy is Cyclophosphamide, Hydroxydaunorubicin (also called doxorubicin or Adriamycin), Oncovin (vincristine), and Prednisone or prednisolone.
• “Automotively challenged” means difficulty making driving decisions. —For example, stick-shift is out.