The Peace of Wild Things (Wendell Berry)

Cycle 6, treatment #1


posted by Lissa mcKinley on Friday, November 20, 2009 Edit





Good Afternoon, everyone! Ok, today is a VERY special day. I can't give you an update on my steam shovel, as she is not visible from this chemo room, but i can give an update on my scan from wednesday. I have a PET scan about every 3-6 months (labelled glucose molecules that get taken up by rapidly dividing cells like tumor cells or infection resulting in these areas lighting up on the scan). Usually, it is just always a little worse, kind of all over my spine and R hip and femur with things lighting up all around--you know, no fun to get the results.



But this time is somewhat different! Are you ready? My scan show, and i quote, "Impression: No definite evidence of an active neoplastic process. The previously described multifocal skeletal abnormalities are no longer evident."

Chip's colleague who always reads my scans went running down the hall to find Chip because he couldn't believe the scan! Ok, I asked him to make sure they gave me the tracer, but the scan clearly shows the tracer in bone marrow and at the injection site, so it sounds real.



how about them apples? The doc thinks it is all from the Avastin I am receiving. This is a targeted therapy that kills new blood vessels produced by the tumor. The guy who discovered that tumors are dependent on this idea of angiogenesis (making new blood vessels to supply the rapidly-dividing tumor cells with nutrients) was thought of as a complete quack! I think it just bought me a new life! Thank you doctor Judah Folkman ( I heard him talk a year or two ago--born in Cleveland, no less)!!



Love this beauty by Wendell Berry:



THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS



When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry



Cheers to all!

I will receive one more week of the other drug I get that made my hair fall off, nails bleed, all those things. I will continue on with the Avastin indefinitely. sounds like a plan to me!