Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay
A Morning of Uncertainty
I wrote the first half of this blog before setting off to give my mother a lift to the hospital this morning and the second half when we got back at 3pm... what a difference a day makes!
I had to take my mother to an oncology consultation this morning and it got me to thinking about life... and death and everything in between.
So much of what we stress about is pointless when you think about it at a fundamental level. It matters until it no longer matters and then you see how completely meaningless these things can be!
Ha ha, that maybe sounds like a 'slit your wrists' proclamation 😉 but it really isn't.
Cancer is a silent invader! It takes over healthy cells, subsumes them and then turns the body against itself. It is a insidious and clever little disease. It is hard to find silver linings in this type of situation but I've noticed a change in my mother since her diagnosis of lung cancer. She has changed on a few levels. Sure she is still the same person who can't make a bowl of cereal without a three part plan. Organisation has always been the way she makes sense of the world.
But she has stopped focusing on peoples shortcomings and seems to be deeply happy with the small things in life. We spent the afternoon the other day just laughing, joking and chatting about people we both knew as I grew up. She is not a very smiley person naturally, but I saw her smile a tone that afternoon. Honestly, the amount of things she complains about has gone down from 85% of what she talks about to around 15%. I haven't asked her what has changed, I think we both know.
Staring into the void can change a person. It seems knowing the story may be coming to an end allows you to make sense of the plot twists and see through all the noise to grasp the themes at the heart of life.
A Miraculous Afternoon of Smiles
After sitting in the waiting room for over 2 hours I have to admit my mood was low. I'd already come to terms with the uncertainty and likely possibility of watching my mother suffer a long battle through chemotherapy. So as we sat down to to speak to the oncology specialist I braced myself for what I was expecting.
Knowing that my mum had done her research, and was desperately hoping for a high marker for immunotherapy (a treatment that can be a lot less damaging to the body), I kept quiet and let her talk through her thoughts with the specialist.
After collecting all her details; allergies, history of treatment, circumstances of diagnosis etc... the specialist took a deep breath and blew my mind out of the back of my head with what he told us.
Apparently, she is in a 1% of people who's cancer has a genetic mutation that was discovered in 2007 and has only been treated in the last 8 years. At first my heart sank as I thought he was going to tell us that it was invasive and the treatment was ineffective. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Here is a breakdown of what he said:
Instances of lung cancer with ROS1-rearranged gene fusion are rare and occur in approximately 1% of cases worldwide. The main drug used for treatment, crizotinib is effective in 85% of patients to either shrink the cancer, or at the very least, stop further growth. Only 15% are non-responsive to this drug and in these cases there is another drug, currently in trial, that has shown similar remarkable efficacy in halting or curing this form of cancer. Liverpool has one of the best cancer treatment facilities in the whole of the UK under the NHS, and this treatment is available with a short drive over the water to Clatterbridge Hospital. To put this into perspective, only 45% of patients respond positively to chemotherapy.
The multi-targeted MET/ALK/ROS1 inhibitor crizotinibdemonstrated remarkable efficacy in ROS1-rearranged NSCLCs, and consequently gained approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration as well as the European Medicines Agency in 2016.
Source
I have to be honest, I am completely blown away by this crazy stroke of luck. What we expected was a course of invasive treatments that would make my mother sick for around 6 months, with limited chances of success.
What this treatment will involve is her taking one crizotinib pill daily for an intial period of 6 months, with assessments and tests every month. From what they told us we should know after the first month how her body is responding, and there are little to no side effects with this drug!
On a personal level I was getting myself psychologically ready for watching her suffer for the next year, a prospect that really had me reeling as we watched my grandmother suffer in a huge amount of pain for around 3 years prior to her death 5 years ago. I desperately didn't want that for my mum and it seems that the universe has said; "shit I'll throw you guys a bone."
I'm going out now to drink a pint (or two 🍻) in celebration and breath a long sigh of relief. I'm so happy for my mother that this stroke of luck has happened to her. Fuck knows she deserves it after raising me single handed. This is by no means a cure, but it is one hell of a better course of treatment, and a lot less uncertainty.
All I'll say is: What a Difference a Day Makes 😃
Thanks for reading.
