Cycle 4, Day 15

Good grief, where have I been? I just checked, and I haven’t posted an update (besides the video cheater) in six weeks. That’s actually good news. With the exception of a few gnarly days at the beginning of my last Olaparib cycle, life has been, dare I say it, “normal.”

I even flew to Orlando to squeeze in a birthday weekend for Mike G in Orlando right before heading to San Diego to shoot stories for Ivanhoe Broadcast News. And I mean right before. I was able to hightail it home to repack my San Diego bag and give the cats snacks in the morning before hightailing it back to Salt Lake to catch my afternoon flight. Funny, the complicated itineraries I construct almost always run more smoothly than a simple connecting flight. Go figure.

I’m now back at the NIH for my CRLX infusion. Hoping this one has a little less turbulence than the last one. For some reason, my body didn’t reset in the five drug-free days I have every cycle, so I started the cycle from somewhere subterranean. That meant every side effect from fatigue to coughing to shortness of breath was transmogrified to monster-size. As always, the tidal wave of side effects ebbed, but it was a struggle for a bit.

This is my last CRLX101 infusion before CT scan number two, which comes in two weeks. My reds and whites are in good position this time, so I am counting on an uneventful 14 days. AND looking forward to spending all of those days at home in Park City. As they all do, results from this scan will determine whether I stay in the trial or have to go find another one. I feel pretty confident this one is working, and my hair is actually, dare I say it, looking like it’s growing back in, so that’s not an issue. A couple of weeks ago, the hair departure actually made me somewhat ambivalent about whether or not I get to stay in the trial. It’s somewhat surprising and inexplicable that even in the position I’m in, with limited options for treatment, hair loss could send me packing. But that’s my reality, and I own it. I am comfortable with whatever happens.

Hair or not, I look ahead. I got to reunite with one of my pals from our Ocean Tramp sail to Antarctica last year last night. Adam is the one who took a couple of years off work to visit all UN-recognized countries, 200+ of them. He’s in the 50s (as in number of countries, not number of years he’s been on earth) somewhere, but is back in the DC Metro to work for a bit. He sets a high bar for adventure-seeking, having done much of his South America (and I think Africa) traveling sleeping in his truck. So I put out some nearly irresistible bait for him, namely a trip to the other end of the earth this summer, to see polar bears instead of penguins. I’m planning a different kind of (bigger) boat trip toward the North Pole from Norway to see the bears when they’re not pacing in a cage. I can’t wait. It’ll be yet another trip of a lifetime. 🙂

I haven’t booked any of that trip yet (or any of the others I have on all the other burners) because of that CT scan coming up in exactly two weeks. The way I see it, either I stay in and squeeze adventures into the 12 days between my MD trips. OR, my summer is wide open, and I am free to travel for more than two weeks at a time. Can you say Iceland? #defy #adventure #sayyes